CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE HX276 .SM^Iwr""" '■'""' The imDossibilitv of social democrac olin 3 1924 030 342 921 OLIN LiBRARY-CiRCULAilON DATE DUE OOf^-f. m^^ fniNTCD IN U.S.A. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030342921 OPINIONS OP THE PRESS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES. ^^E£I9E^ " ' The Principles of State Interference ' is another of the Series of Handbooks on Scientific Social Subjects. It would be fitting to close our remarks on this little work with a word of commendation of the publishers of so many useful volumes by eminent writers on questions of pressing Interest to a large number of the community. We have now received and read a good number of the handbooks which have been published In this series, and can speak in the highest terms of them. They are written by men of con- siderable knowledge of the subjects they have undertaken to discuss ; they are concise ; they give a fair estimate of the progress which recent dis- cussion has added towards the solution of the pressing social questions of to-day, are well up to date, and are published at a price within the resources of the public to which they are likely to be of the most use." — Westminster Beview, July, 1891. " The excellent ' Social Science Series,' which is published at as low a price as to place it within everybody's reach." — Beview of Beviews. " A most useful series. . . . This impartial series welcomes both just writers and unjust." — Manchester Guardian. ' ' ' The Social Science Series ' is doubtless doing useful service iu calling atteu- tion to certain special needs and defects of the body politic, and pointing out the way to improvement and reform." — Bookseller. ' ' Convenient, well-printed, and moderately-priced volumes. " — Beynold's News- paper. " ' The Social Science Series ' has gained distinction by the impartial welcome it gives to the expression of every shade of opinion." — Anti-Jacohin. ' ' There is a certain impartiality about the attractive and well-printed volumes which form the series to which the works noticed in this article belong. There is no editor and no common design beyond a desire to redress those errors and irregularities of society which all the writers, though they may agree in little else, concur in acknowledging and deploring. The system adopted appears to be to select men known to have a claim to speak with more or less authority upon the shortcomings of civilisation, and to allow each to propound the views which commend themselves most strongly to his mind, without reference to the possible flat contradiction which may be forthcoming at the hands of the next contributor." — Literary World. ' ' ' The Social Science Series ' aims at the illustration of all sides of social and economic truth and error. An example of the spirit of candour and in(juiry pervading the collection may be found iu Mr. Heaford's translation of M. Nacquet's Collectivism. " — Scotsman. ' ' This useful series. " — Speaker. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. : LONDON. CHAELES SCEIBNEE'S SONS: NEW YOEK. SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES. SCAMLET CLOTH, EACH $1.00. 1. Work and Wages. Prof. J. E. Thobold Eogbhs. " Nothing that Professor Hoger.s writes can fail to be of interest to thoughtful people." — Athenciium. •2. CiYllisatlon : its Cause and Cure. Ebwabd Cabpentee. *' No passing piece of polemics, but a permanent possession." — Scoitish Recuw. 3. Quintessence of Socialism. Dr. Schaeele. " Precisely the manual needed. Brief, lucid, fair and wise."— 5ra(is7i Veehbj. 4. Darwinism and Politics. D. G.Ehohie, M.A. (Oxen.). New Edition, with two additional Essays on Human Evolution. " One of the most suggestive books we have met \ni\i."—LUerary World. 5. Eeligion of Socialism. E. Bblpobt Bax. 6. Ethics of Socialism. E. Belfobt Bax. " Jlr. Bax is by far the ablest of the Enghsh exponents of Soda,\ism."—Westmimtei- Revieiv. 7. The Drink Question. Dr. Kate Mitchell. " Plenty of interesting matter for reflection." — Gn-aphic. 8. Promotion ot General Happiness. Prof. M. Macmillan. " A reasoned account of the most advsvnced and most enlightened utilitarian doc- trine in a clear and readable form." — Scotsinan. 9. England's Ideal, &c. Edwabd CiBPENiBE. " The literary power is unmistakable, their freshness of style, their humour, and their enthusiasm." — Pali Mali Gazette. 10. Socialism in England. Sidney Webb, LL.B. " The best general view of tlie subject from the modern Socialist side." — Athenceum. 11. Prince Bismarck and State Socialism, W. H. Dawson. " A succinct, well-digested review of German social and economic legislation since 1870." — Saturday Jievieto. 12. Godwin's Political Justice (On Property). Edited by H. S. Salt. " Shows Godwin at his best ; with an interesting and informing introduction."— Glasgow Herald. 13. The Story of the French Revolution. E. Belfobt Bax. *' A trustworthy outline." — Seots^itan. 14. Essays and Addresses. Bebnakd Bosanquet, M.A. (Oxon.). " Ought to be in the hands of every student of the Nineteenth Century spirit."— Echo. " No one can complain of not being able to understand what Mr. Bosanquet meAns."— Pall Mall Gazette. 15. Charity Organisation. 0. S. Loch, Secretary to Charity Organisation Society. " A perfect little manual." — Atkcnteum. " Deserves a wide circulation."— Sco(3»ia)i. 16. Self-Help a Hundred Years Ago. G. J. Holyoaice. " Will be studied with much benefit by all who are interested in the amelioration of the condition of the poor." — Morning Post. 17. The Hew York State Reformatory at Elmlra. Alex,vnder Winteb, With Preface by Hayelock Ellis. " A valuable contribution to the literature of penology."— Sfaci and White. SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES— (Coiitinuea). 18. The Unearned Increment. W. H. Dawson. " A concise but comprehensive \ol\xrae."—Ec?io. 19. The Working-Glass Movement in America. Edw. Ayeling, D.Sc, andE. Mabx Aveling. " Will give a good idea of the condition of the working classes in America, and of the various org-anisations which they have formed." — Scots leader. 20. Luxury. Prof. Emilb de Laveleye. "An eloquent plea on moral and economical grounds for simplicity of life."— Acadeini/. 21. The Land and the Labourers. Rev. C. W. Stubbs, M.A. (Cantab.). "This admirable book should be circulated in every village in the country." — Manchester Guardian. 22. The Evolution of Property. Paul Lafahgue. " Will prove interesting and profitable to all students of economic history." — Scotsman. 23. Crime and its Causes. W. Douglas Mobrison, of H.M. Gaol, Wandsworth. " Can hardly fail to suggest to all readers several new and pregnant reflections on the subject." — Anti-Jacobin. 24. Principles of State Interference. D. G. Ritchie, M.A. " An interesting contribution to the controversy on the functions of the State."— Glasgow Herald. 25. German Socialism and F. Lassalle. W. H. Dawson. '* As a biographical history of German Socialistic movements during this century it may be accepted as complete."— British Weekly. 26. The Purse and the Conscience. H. M. Thompson, B.A. (Cantab.). " Shows common sense and fairness in his iLvguments." Scotsman. 27. Origin of Property in Land. Fustel de Coulanges. Edited, with an Introductory Chapter on the English Manor, by Prof. W. J. Ashley, M.A. " His views are clearly stated, and are worth reading." — Saturday Review, 28. The English Republic. W. J. Linton. Edited by Kineton Pahkes. *' Characterised by that vigorous intellectuality which has marked his long life of literary and artistic activity. —G^oserow Herald. 29. The Go-Operative Movement. Beatrice Potter. " Without doubt the ablest and most philosophical analysis of the Co-Operative Jlovement which has yet been produced. ' — Speaker. 30. Neighbourhood Guilds. Dr. Stanton Coit. " A most suggestive little book to any one interested in the social question."— Pall Mail Gazette. 31. Modern Humanists. John M. Robertson. "Mr, Robertson's style is excellent— nay, even brilliant— and his purely literary criticisms bear the mark of much acumen."— 7'(//(e«. 32. Outlooks from the New Standpoint. E. Belfort Bax. "Mr. Bax is a very accomplished and very acute student of history and econo- mics." — BoAly Chronicle. 33. Distributing Co-Operative Societies. Dr. Luigi Pizzamiglio. Edited by F. J. Snell. " Dr. Pizzamiglio has gathered together and grouped a wide array of facts and statistics, and they speak for themselves."— Speaker. 34. Collectivism and Socialism. By A. Nacquet. Edited by "W. Heaford. "An admirable criticism. Nothing could be more lucid and intelligible." — Daily Chronicle. 35. The London Programme. Sidney Webb, LL.B. "Brimful of excellent ideas." — Anti-Jacobin. 86, The Modern State. Paul Jjeroy Beaulieu. " Undoubtedlv one of the best of the ' Social Science i>Qr\^^' "—Anti-JacoUn SOCIAL SCIENCE 5EmE8—(Contmued) . 37. " General" Booth's Social Scheme, C. S.Loch, B. Bosanquet, Canon Dwyeb. 38. The Revolutionary Spirit. Felix Rocquain. With a Preface by Professor HuxiEY. " The student of the French Revolution will find in it an excellent introduction to the study of that ca^tsistrophe."— Scotsman, 39. The Student's Marx. Edwabd Aveling, D. Sc. 40. A Short History of Parliament. B. C. Skottowe. " Deals very carefully and completely with this side of constitutional history."— Spectator, 41. Poverty : Its Genesis and Exodus. J- G. Godaed. 42. The Trade Policy of Imperial Federation. Maukice H. Hbbvey. 43. The Dawn of Radicalism. J. Bowles Daly, LL.D. 44. The Destitute Alien in Great Britain. Abnold White, ; M. Cbackanthobpe, Q.C. ; W. A. M'Abthub, M.P., and others. DOUBLE VOLUMES, 3s. 6d. 1. Life of Robert Owen. Lloyd Jones. "A worthy record of a life of noble activities." — Manchester Examiner. 2. The Impossibility of Social Democracy. Dr. Schaffle, Edited by Bernaeb BOSANQUET, M. A. VOLUMES IN PREPARATION— Essay on Population. Malthus. Edited by A. K. Donald. Popular Government. Prof. Emile De Lavelbye. Progress and Prospects of Political Economy. Prof. J. K. Ingram. UniYersity Extension. Dr. M. E. Sadler. Communism and Anarchism. E. w. Burnie. Industrial Crises in the 19th Century. H. M. Hyndman, The Condition of the Working Class in England. F. Engels. SWAN SONNENSCHBIN & CO. : LONDON. CHARLES SCEIBNEE'S SONS: NEW YORK. THE 1 I ! IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. \ By the same Author. 'THE QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM." Br Db. a. SOHAErLE. Edited by Beehabd Bosahquei, M.A. (Oxon.). Crown 8vo., 2/6. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN #■ Co., LONDON. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEING A SUPPLEMENT TO "THE QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM" Dr. AT SCHAFFLE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH EDITION WITH A PKBFACH BY BEENAED BOSANQUET, M.A. FOBMEBLY FELLOW OF DHIVEHSITY COLLEGE, OXTOED LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. NEW ITOEK : CHAHLES SCEIBNBE'S SONS 1892 HX 276 A. 3^1) 62. CRMb.f,,L "'> ;'UNIV£FibiTV ■ Translated Jrom the Fourth Germcm Edition hy A. 0. MORANT. ^ 7.. EDITOR'S PREFACE. The arguments and proposals of the present work are more dependent on the peculiarities of German life than were those of the " Quint- essence." The English reader will probably feel that in many respects the labour organiza- tion referred to is so far inferior to that of England as to vitiate for us the Author's inferences relating to the need of " authority " in trade management, and to the inevitable defects of democracy. In Miss Potter's recent "Co-operative Movement" he will find in- dications that in England these particular difficulties have been solved ambulando. Other analogous ideas will appear to him altogether antiquated. Among these I must particularly designate the importance attached to imputa- tions of materialism, infidelity, and atheism, and also to the defence of certain dogmatic positions, both of which occupy a place in UBITOmS PREFA CK Dr. Schaffle's contention as unexpected to me as it was unwelcome. We have found by tlie experience of centuries that these weapons are most readily turned against the best and wisest men, and we no longer employ them in our political and economic warfare. From such purely speculative questions it is fair to distinguish sharply those matters of principle which affect the details of proposed reforms. I thoroughly assent to the author's conviction that the basis of Socialism is as yet , individualistic, the State being regarded not as a society organic to good life, but as a machine subservient to the individual's needs qua indi- vidual. And further, the author does no in- justice by pointing out the serious risks which attach to any fundamental aggression on family unity and on parental responsibility. It is easy in all these matters to confuse the reasonable effort of the public authority to deepen and assist the private sense of duty, with the un- reasonable attempt to supersede it. In practice the two movements coincide for a certain distance. Eeaders must judge for themselves of the attitude of English Socialists to the family and to parental duty. The author's account of MDITOmS PREPACK the true purposes and effects of improved public education and the like in this connection enforces a much needed distinction. I could wish that he had not elsewhere endangered this distinction by countenancing the ridiculous fallacy that derives Socialism from the idealism of Hegel. This fallacy rests on the very confusion of which he points out the danger — the confusion between distinct tendencies which bear a certain external resemblance. If, however, this confusion of external tendencies should ever be replaced, as it might be, by a fusion of essential ideas. Socialism would have become a new thing, and would probably show itseK in forms analogous to those of the author's Positivism or Social Policy, which ought in fairness to be judged on its merits, and not with reference to his monarchical and other anti-democratic ideas, dictated by the needs of the Continental empire which he had chiefly in mind. (The reader should understand that this "Positivism" has no reference whatever to Comtism.) At present there is hardly any sign that Socialists under- stand the ideas which, in as far as they claim descent from Hegel, they profess to inherit. EDITOR'S PREFACE. The extent to which the author deals with purely German problems and institutions, has made the task of revision exceedingly difficult. Complete accuracy could not have been secured without a careful study of German labour- organisation and land-tenures. (The account of " propertied labour " will be observed with interest, as indicating an agricultural condition almost unknown to us.) I hope that enough clearness has been attained to render the drift of the argument intelligible. Fortunately some of the most important illustrations are drawn from the experience of English trade's- unions and factory inspection. BEENAED BOSANQUET. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The three letters which make up this volume have the same end in view in their present form as when they were first issued. They are intended to prove in the first place, that Social Democracy, as the positive practicable pro- gramme of a new order of Society, is once for all impossible, and next, that everything must be done, and not only so, but that the necessary can really be done, in the way of progressive Social Reform, in order to make it not less impossible as a revolutionary force. The form in which the work is issued, the sequence of ideas, and for the most part the wording also thus remain the same as in the former edition. The circumstances, however, under which this new edition is published, render certain additions indispensable, which do not very materially increase the size of the work, but which are intended to convey more accurate information regarding certain momentous questions of the present and near future. These additions are to be found not so much in the First Letter, which deals with the characteristics of Social Democracy, as in the critique of it in Letter II. and still more in the " positive method of opposing it." (Letter III.) AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Between the meteoric appearance and disappearance of the Lassalle School and the enactment of the Exceptional Law in the year 1878, German Social Democracy had adopted in rapid succession two different and mutually exclusive fundamental formulae. The one, the Eisenach programme of 1869, demanded on the basis of national ownership of all the means of production that each workmen should have secured to him " the full product of his labour" in the counter-value which accrues to him. This was the Collectivism of an accurate apportionment of income and enjoyment according to work performed. But as early as 1875, in the "Gotha" programme, there came to the front the Collectivism of apportionment according to need, on the basis of an equal and universal obligation to work, that is to say, pure Collectivism : for the demand'was literally formulated for " universal obligation to work, and the equal right of all to the satisfaction of their reasonable needs ! " If before the abolition of the Exceptional Law there was room for doubt as to whether the " Gotha " programme really expressed the creed of the party, after the cessation of the Socialist Law on the 30th September, 1890, it very soon became a certainty that at this time both the greater and the lesser chiefs under whose leadership the party was firmly arranged, yielded a true adherence to the communist programme, and that Social Democracy would seek to realize this programme as soon as they obtained the power of doiag so. This is proved beyond the possibility of doubt by the Social Democratic writings and speeches, which since that time have been once more free to circulate. AUTHORS PREFACE. It is evident tliat the communist idea has even been intensified under the influence of the Exceptional Law. Their view of the State, that is, has been sharpened, or I should rather say, blunted into an even more communistic one than before. In Eisenach the " popular State " was to the fore, in Gotha it was still " the free State," at the Congress in Halle (October, 1890), the abolition of every form of State, as a reactionary institution, was held to be the right thing. But from their literature it becomes still more evident that pure communism throughout the whole range of Society, not only in industrial and governmental depart- ments but also in family life, in education, and in the whole life of the people, is at the present time the dominant idea among the leaders of German Social Democracy. There has probably never before been an instance of so compre- hensive a revolutionary idea represented by so great, so well-organized, so ably-conducted a party, as Social Democracy became after twelve years of exceptional legislation. The second ChanceUor of the German Empire has with good reason declared it to be the greatest danger which threatens the close of the 19th and the opening of the 20th centuries. The fact of the intellectual sway which communism thus exercises among the Social Democracy has forced me in working up afresh these three letters, first, in the " Characteristics " (Letter I.) to draw more clearly the distinction between the non-communistic Social Democracy of " enjoyment proportioned to performance," and the communistic Social Democracy of " enjoyment proportioned to need," and next in the " Critique " (Letter II.) to deal with communism throughout its whole extent, to regard it AUTHOR'S PREFACE. as the negation of the State, of a stable marriage-tie, of private education, and so on, and further to touch also upon the demand for female suffrage and upon what is called " Free Love." On the other hand, I could not even in this new edition decide to treat communism as the sole expression of the Social Democratic idea, and to regard other programmes earlier set forth and still conceivable as once and for ever set aside. In other countries the communism of Marx has not yet entirely gained the upper hand, and even in Germany there will sooner or later be a recurrence to some of the various forms of Collectivism, based on the apportion- ment of enjoyment to the performance of work. I have rather preferred to introduce freshly into the critical survey of the Second Letter, even that very mildest form of non- communistic Collectivism which it might, and perhaps one day will assume through the Social Democratic utilisation of the not Social-Democratic ideas of Rodbertus concerning the Norvnal Time Bay, the Normal Work Day, Normal Time, Normal Price of commodities, and Normal Wage. Both, however, communistic as well as non-communistic Socialism have been more widely sundered than ever from those non-socialistic phenomena of increasing combination in clubs, societies, institutions, municipal and governmental departments which are only a continuation of the existing line of Social advance, since my first edition has been met by certain serious misunderstandings on this subject. Under the tribulations of exceptional treatment, Social Democracy has become not only more pointedly com- munistic in principle, but also more practical in its methods of agitation. Finding that the masses are not to be AVTHOBS PREFACE. contented for any length of time with nothing but ideals, it has adopted the second part of the " Gotha " programme and had recourse to the movement for the protection of labour and of wages, and sought to busy itself with the organization for these ends, and to obtain a sway over them. At the Socialist Congress of the Paris Exhibition, it again restored the unity of the international labour party, and it is seeking to exert a dominant influence thereupon. But employers, on the other hand, are beginning to respond with provincial, national, and international employers' unions, while the existing powers of Society, from Emperor and Pope downwards, are strenuously endeavouring to avert the threatening conflagration by Positive Social Reform. This progress of events compels me to v.-ork out the Third Letter which deals with Positive Social Reform more fuUy, to enter more in detail into the subject of the protection of labour, of the national and international organization of both classes in war and in peace of the eight hours question and its prospects, so that the reader may be enabled to follow the whole social and political movement of our time from the standpoint of its latest development. The result will be that even the most alarming phenomena, if the State and the class unions be rightly guided, may work out favourably for national and international, political and social peace. Lastly, this new edition contains one other additional passage in which I have strongly insisted on the necessity for supplementing a Positive Social Policy by a no less positive policy of constitutional reform. Social Democracy owes its political influence to the introduction of universal suffrage, to the now possible procession of the myriad battalions of labour to the ballot box, which Lassalle AUTHOR'S PREFACE. foresaw for Germany, and which was set free by the great strategic move against the " Delegate-project " of the Diet at Frankfort. Social Democracy is working zealously to win for itself still greater power by the weapon of universal suffrage : it is carrying on a campaign now in the country districts, and has declared war more fiercely than ever against its chief competitor for power by universal sufirage, namely, the Catholic Church. This leads us to consider the existing constitutional system. The only constitutional counter-poise to universal suffrage, the non-payment of members, will hardly prove strong enough, and has considerable inherent objections. The continuing pre- dominance of the property-vote in the Diets and Municipal bodies is already strongly attacked, and affords but little protection against the ever-increasing power of Social Democracy in the Empire. A return to the property qualification in the Empire also is impossible. Thus there will soon come definitely to the front the constitutional question, whether the principal root of the evil is not to be found in the backwardness of constitutional policy, whether the admiuistration alike of parish, of provincial, and of imperial affairs is not susceptible of and indeed crying out for such development as would place substantial barriers in the way of the rising flood of communism, without disturbing universal suffrage, whether next, after dealing with local administration from that standpoint, a constitutional policy might not be adopted with reference to imperial affairs, which would ensure actual progress side by side with a Positive Social Policy, and no relapse into an encroaching tyranny of property. These questions also, which we may expect soon to appear on the political horizon and with ATJTHOllS PREFACE. which I hope shortly to deal at greater length in another place, it seemed necessary in an important edition of this work, hghtly to touch upon in their bearing on the positive methods of combating Social Democracy, however little immediate prospect there may be of my proposals meeting with anything but aversion or at least coldness and distrust from any party. In one point the new edition of this work remains true to its former self : it has been careful to refrain from all personal animosity. And this my writings will continue to do even should I have more provocation than I have hitherto had to return evil for evil. One more addition there is in the shape of a fuller Table of Contents. THE AUTHOE. Stuttgart. TABLE OF CONTENTS. TAOS Editor's Preface '^ AtTTHOB'S Preface ix LETTEE I. CHARACTEEISTICS OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. Occasion and delay of these Letters — Eeminisoencea of the Conceptions of Social Democracy prevailing among Politicians and Statesmen in 1871 — The relation which these letters hear to the " Quintessence of Socialism" — The ■wide-reaching possibilities and steady increase of the puhlio organisation of industry — State Socialism — Social Demo- cracy as the extreme of equalizing Individualism, in its relation to Literalism — The relation of Liberalism, Social Democracy and Anarchism to positive Social Reform (Positivism) — Social Democracy in relation to the State, the Family, Education, Philosophy, and Religion — The idea of the extension of established mimicipal publicly regulated management of industry and the production of commodities, or the " Socialism of authority '' — A misconception as to the meaning of authority — Confessions — Anti-Semitism — Proportional Collectivism, or collectivism with distribution of goods according to performance of labour, and communism or collectivism with distribution of goods in proportion to needs — Predominance of the Communistic programme siaoe 1875 — The absence ofj any ground for Communism in "natural right," and its system of universal appropriation of the surplus value — The method to be followed in the second and third letters i CONTENTS. LETTER II. CEITICISM OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. PAGE I. Social Democracy in the industrial sphere ... 63 1. Democratic organization of industry — 2. The elimin- ation of private property and of the inequality of natural endowments out of the problem of distribution : Formation of Collective Capital — 3. Ex,cluaive collectivism in all branches of Production — i. The alleged consequent heightening of the productivity of national labour — 5 . Distribution of goods exactly in proportion to the product-values of individual labour — 6. The approximate proportion between per- formance of work and share of commodities — 7. Distribu- tion according to "reasonable needs" — 8. New forms of exploitation which would be attendant on democratic collective production — 9. Alleged avoidance of aU Crises —10. "Wage-slavery" and popular slavery — Possible regulation of proportional Collectivism according to the "Normal-time" of Eodbertus — Normalizing Socialism — False absolutism of the purely material economic view of Society — Main results of this criticism of the industrial system. n. Social Democracy in the State 118 The " Popular State " and the " Free State "—The State consisting of the whole people or the " All- State" (demo- mocratio Panpolity) — Force-exploitation in the Popular State — The over-rating of Universal Suffrage — The Eman- cipation of Women, and Female Sufflrage — Result. m. Social Democracy in relation to Family Life and Education 136 The historical steady advance with growing culture from the male and female promiscuity of early CommimiBtic times. The establishment of the monogamous pair as the basis of desirable movements of population — "Free Love" in relation to the happiness of married Hie — Popular content — Prostitution. CONTENIS. PAGE State-Education, the ohildren of the family and tlie children of the people — Impossihility of personal equality. Aristocratic tendency of " Free Love " State -Education unnecessary for democratic collective production. IV. Social Democracy in relation to Scholarship, Science, and Art in Society 161 V. Social Democracy in relation to Ethics, Metaphysics, the Life of Faith, and the position of Churches . .165 VI. Results of the Criticism in respect of true Freedom and Equality 181 The danger of Social Democracy a compulsion towards a positive Social and Constitutional Policy. LETTER ni. THE POSITIVE METHOD OP COMBATING SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. I. The Main Task 191 Dangerous nature of Social Democracy as a Revolu- tionary party — Not to he met with a positive policy in the sense of the old Police-State and Police-Science — Positive ' Social-reform hy Progressive Measures suited to the time. II. The So-called Solutions of the Social Problem on lines of private right 196 The Eating-SociaUsm of Rodhertus — Nationalization of the Soil — Universal Productive Association — The Workman Associated with the Master (an extension of Industrial Partnerships) — Negative Results. CONTENTS. PAGE HI. The Positive Social Policy of Interference ty means of Public and Private Eight within the domain of the State . 210 1. The Encouragement of TTniversal Organization and handing together, hoth among Workmen and among Capitalists — The Sound Democracy of this Organization — Considerations adverse to it — Backwardness of Capital in the Work of National and International Organization. 2. Detailed Measures of Positive Industrial Policy . 220 A. The Defence of Production or " Protection of the Workman." — In particular the Eight Hours Day: detailed consideration of this point — The Eight Hours Day and the Normal Labour Day 242 B. The Protection of Income and Household, or the Modification of National Kevenue-Processes in the Interests of Productive Labour 27.5 (a) In favour of Propertied Productive Labour, particularly the retention of the peasant-class by Associated Organization of Hypothecated Credit and of the Traffic in Eeal Property 27.5 (J) In Favour of Non-Propertied Labour — The Furtheranceof Organized Wage-Associations — Sliding Scales and Wage-Lists — State-Management an Economic Model — Thrift, Free Saving's Banks, and Compulsory Labour-Insurance — Especial Crusade against Want of Work — Domestic Labour and House- hold Industry 287 0. Recent Generalization of Private Property in the means of Production 316 D. Positive Industrial Policy outside the Social Life of Private Households 324 Equalizing Policy of Taxation — Process of Equalizing by Benevolence, by Conununity of Family Possessions — Social PoUoy in Trade and Tariffs. 3. Non-Industiial Social Policy 339 OONTMNIS. PAGE A. By Tnfluencing the Non-Political Ideal Life of the People 338 -Family Life — Teaching, Instruction, the Press, Literature — Social Intercourse — Art — Science — Mor^-lity — The Church and Religion. B. By Non-Industrial Reforms in the State itself. (a) No Exceptional Laws 356 (J) Creation of a Social and Political Administrative Organization Accompanied hy Representatifc Organs . 358 The Imperial Labour-Office, the Labour-Diet, the Labour-Inspectorate and Labour-Chambers Arbitration Courts, as proposed by Social Democracy . . 359 The Inducement of Revolution by aid of this Organization ........ 364 The Positive Reform of Social and Political Adminis- tration and Representation . .... 370 (c) A Constitutional and Political advance in accordance with the needs of the time beyond Universal Suffrage without abolishing the latter, as the key- stone of the Combating of Social Democracy. Detailed proof of this 385 NOTE TO LETTER III. Bellamy's "Looking Backward," from the year 2000 — A glance forward to the year 2000 . ... 408 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OP SOCIAL DEMOGEAGY. L E T T E E I . THE CHAKACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. Stuttgart, Deceinber 15, 1884. Honoured Fhiend, I learn from your esteemed letter of the 5tli iiist. that the recent trimiiph of Social Democracy at the German elections has had the effect of still further increasing the Social - Lstic scare in Austria. You, tlierefore, urge me strongly to comply with your wish, and fulfil the promise I made you in 1878. I had been at that time enguL:;ed in preparing the necessary critical supplement to my " Quint- essence of Socialism," and a {)ositiYe counter- f THE IMPOSSIBILITY 0]<' programme. The "Quintessence" was the direct outcome of the SociaHsfcic victories in the Reichstag elections of 1874. It is the positive critical supplement for which you are now asking, and which you propose should be given in the form of correspondence. At the same time, you express your wish that I should dispel once and for all certain dishonouring personal accusations and suspicions which have heen notorious of late. Allow me first to state that my undertaking of 1878 would have been long ago fulfilled, had not the German Socialist Bill of that year followed closely on the heels of my promise. Books, as the Latin proverb says, have odd destinies. In 1878 my " Quintessence " stood for two whole days in the index of the '' Aus- nahme-gesetz " (exceptional law.) Had I at once carried out my intention, and plunged into the fray against Social Democracy, it would have been said of me laudahiliter se suhjecit. This 1 could not wish. Not only should I have thus procured an unmerited success for Herr von Quadt, a member of the administration at Oppeln, who proscribed me in the eyes of the educated portion of society, but I should also FtOCIAL DBMOCBACY. — and this it was which influenced mo — have imperilled the success of my " positive critical supplement." To lull people with tlie consola- tions of presumptuous ignorance such as the " Quintessence " had successfully cut short, and to put to sleep those very strata whose awaken- ing was in question, was what I could not contemplate. Nay, I rather carried on more vigorously than ever in volume III. of my " Structure and Life of the Social Organism," just then passing through the press, my polemic against the tinkering methods of Liberal economic policy, although it would have been an easy matter to soften down the work in usum Delphini, so as to be unobjectionable, to suit the prevailing tendencies of the moment. In yet another direction I was thwarted at that time by the German Socialist Legislation. It had the effect of a muzzling order : it bound down the Social Democracy so fast, when strictly enforced, that it could not even rattle its chain, still less bark or bite or repulse an attack — greatly to the profit of the "Freisinnige," who immediately proceeded to bark and try to bite more vigorously than before. It is not my way, however, to fall upon an opponent the moment b2 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the gag is on his mouth : neither is it yours, for you agreed that I should postjDone my attack. Now, however, the position of affairs is altered. Not only has the grass loxig since grown for me personally over the traces of von Quadt's ill-will, but the Social Democracy itself is once more upon the rostrum, as it was before the Socialist legislation. Outside the Reichstag it is allowed a longer chain to rattle, once more it preaches in a tone confident of victory " the alteration of the whole system." The aim and end of the "Quintessence" (Part I.) is attained. The world knows now from many other sources what Social Democracy means. But what the world even yet does not by any means know, is how this Socialism is to be met and combated, both critically and practically. A comprehen- sive criticism of the entire Social Democratic programme, grappling with it along the whole line in a spirit of positive reform, is not only permissible but necessary, not only opportune, but urgent. It is, therefore, with great willino-- ness that 1 accede to your request. This is not the first time that we have exchanged opinions on the subject. Do you still remember the many pleasant hours we SOCIAL JDEMOrnACY. spent together as early as the year 1871, iu the evenings after days full of toil and struggle, reading the international police reports upon the Paris Commune, and wondering at the dish which was to be served up to an '■'■International of Governments " ? Many a time in those days were we moved to laughter by the ignorance, overstepping all bounds, which was then dis- played by police and diplomats, as to the real essence of Socialism and as to the methods of combating it. To-day we can confess to each other with some satisfaction that in opposing exceptional legislation agains^t the "black and red internationals " in those now distant days, and in predicting its utter f ailu.re, we were some- what more far-seeing than our most influential Austrian opponents, and even than the Liberal journalists and the statesmen and councillors who had the drawing up of the Government programme. Why do I recall these memories ? Now again 1 am in the position of steering against the stream of current opinion, which is notori- ously a thankless one to fill. For 1 not only do not share the terror of your friends at the Red Spectre, I go further, and maintain tliat Social THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Democracy has no chance of success, no pros- pect of attainment. And this it is incmiibent on me to prove, if I am to fulfil the request you have made to me. I was neither taken by surprise, nor in any degree alarmed, by the recent Socialist successes at the elections. For what do these victories prove? That some hundred thousands of electors are not satis- fied, which of course is in itself a matter worthy of every consideration : that these same electors ha\e ceased to expect anything from Liberal- ism and the Middle Class Democracy; that the active fight against Socialism by positive methods haviiig but lately begun, its effects are not yet perceptible ; that the ' ' muzzling legislation" has had the effect of hindering the internal process of dismemberment and decomposition which is nevertheless steadily and inevitably proceeding in the frame of Social Democracy. This is all which these victories prove. Be ready cheerfully to admit more and more Social Democi"ats into the Reichstag, there to be compelled to unfold piece by piece the positive programme, whicli they still shun disclosing — then and only then will there SOCIAL DEMO Lit ACY. no longer be any serious danger to fear. The complete and methodical contest with Social- ism Avill tlien become necessary, both in the social-economic and in the politico-constitutional sphei-e, and the Social Democratic principle will be driven out of the field, even among the proletariat itself. It will always be neces- sary, indeed, to guard against riots and revolu- tionary attempts; but a positive and lasting triumph of Social Democracy in its most essential features of entire abolition of private property iii the means of production, and the introduction of Democratic collective prO' I ac- tion, I hold to be more than ever impossible. Nevertheless, I will accede to your request. I can even promise you more than you demand. In the " Quintessence," Socialism is dealt -with only in so far as its claims and consequences would affect the industrial system : prudence imposed this limitation. But it is in reality, as Herr Bebel says, an entire world philosophy (Weltanschauung). In Religion, it means Atheism; in the State, a Democratic Republic; in Industry, a Democratic Collectivism; and, may one not add, in Ethics, a measureless Optimism ; in Metaphysics, a naturalistic THE lUVOHtilHILITY OF I Materialism; in the home an almost entire loosening of family ties and of the marriage \ bond, state-education in scliools, ar d universal enlightenment (so called !) in instruction. The whole is called Freedom and Equality, with especial emphasis on the latter. Any criticism of Socialism, therefore, and any real attempt to ccmtcst it, must be made all along the line of its world-philosophy, in order to gain an intel- lectual victory over it. With your sanction I shall now ei.deavour to accomplish this in the ensuing letters to you. Still I hope that for this I shall not have to take up more space than I required in the "Quintessence" for the analysis of Industrial Social Democracy. For its refutation on' the industrial side is still and will be the main point, and of most immediate importance. At what point shall I first approach the subject? On its various claims, and conclu- si(ms in detail, on the minutiae of its world- transforming Social Organization, even on the means and methods of the transition, Social Democracy has not yet definitely pronounced. 1 suspect that this reticence proceeds not only from reasons of policy, but also from the SOCIAL DEMOCllACY. absence of any detailed programme 'worked out and raised to tlie dignity of a p^rty-crced. Its strong point, .and — be it openly confessed — its highest merit, lies in criticism, a criticism directed mainly against the Political Individual- ism which is known as Liberalism, and the Economic Individualism which goes by the name of Capitalism. If it were once committed to definite statements we should no doubt comd upon a mass of contradictions and differ- ences of interpretation among its leaders, a ilood of palpabli! absurdities and foolish Utopias. Social Democracy will no doubt long continue to keep its real practical programme in the background, and to cover its silence with the "Exceptional Legislation." There is no denying, however, that in its general programmes of 1869 and 1875 Social Democracy has made one thing clear: it bodes the destruction, of private property in the means of production, and the " alteration of the entire system." The indicaticms of this in Socialist literature are so clear that we have no choice but to place these fundamental points of the programme of revolutionary Socialism, as explained in the " Quintessence," at the basis of 10 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the whole discussion — witli the proviso of course that we are honestly open to correction. The only thinkable and therefore arguable social conception of the " Labour Party" is "Democratic Collectivism." I will, therefore, adopt your proposal, and take Collectivism for the starting point of our discussion, as being the most direct way into the heart of the matter. To quote the "Quintessence" once more: Collectivism means that there shall be no more private ownership or private right of bequest in the means of production (the destruction of private capital, or Capital^ in the sense in which Socialists use the word): it means the introduction of common or collective property in the instru- ments of production; on 1 he basis of this collective property a machinery of production, forming a single system, carried on by public corporate bodies, communal groups and systems of groups : State organization also of the distribution ' of what remains to be divided out of the collective output after the satisfaction of the public require- ments, the distribution to be made, according to the promise of the Eisenach programme in proportion to the share of work contributed by SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 11 each individual, but according to the strict Com- munists, with their peculiar craze for equality, either equally to all or merely according to individual needs ; all this, together with pure popular sovereignty both in the industrial sphere and in the State. To realize such demands as these, it is evident that the present constitution of society, with its basis of private property, would have to be entirely changed. It would involve the abolition of all relationships of private service (the present ''hire" or "wage- system ") as well as of all private dealing in commodities, in services, and in the use of commodities. This would mean the cessation of trades, of markets, the currency, credit, the abolition ofalT^inds of interest and rent, and the introduction of a system of public payment of work as the sole form of income. The Anarchists desire all these fine things also, only " without Grovernment," which, in their idea, would always involve exploita- tion. Some so-called Mutualists depend fur everything on a "brotherly reciprocity" proceeding freely from the common sense uf right. Both are consistent but confused, they desire the end without the only possible means. 12 TJIN IMPOSSIBILITY OF The only thinkable form of Collectivism is and will remain, at least until some new develop- ment arises, the Social Democrntic ideal with its centralized organization, based on popular sovereignty, of a universal and exclusively col- lective system of production. This last is in fact an essential point. The collective production of Social Democracy must be universal and exclusive. Othsrwise there would not only be still some portion remaining of the present capitalist system, but, further, any dealings with this remnant would expose that portion of labour, both in production and distribution, which was already collectively organized, to the clanger of " exploitation." Neither could there be a partial adoption of the plan of rewarding each workman according to his share in the social labour. Hence, collective production must be universal, or all would be in vain. A system of competing productive societies would be simply a new form of capitalistic production entering into competition with industrial societies and other forms of private enterprise, in order to exploit others or be exploited by them. A productive society could only be socialistic if it formed a SOCIAL DEMOCItACr. 13 part of a uniform system of coUectiv^e produc- tion. A positive Social Policy, therefore, can only desire that free productive societies should become sufficiently developed to provide scope for workmen of a heightened self-esteem ; but never, even when supplemented by cheap rates of interest, or by state credit, can they become the universal means of establishing ' ' the free- dom and equality of all," as my third letter will shew. One cannot be too careful to avoid calling any and every development of the public management of industrial or social functions Socialism; in other words, confusing Social Democracy with systems of public manage- ment. The collectivism of Social Democracy means the centralization of all production on a democratic footing, with the object of attaining an equal or at least a proportionate share of labour and enjoyment for all, this system to be adopted exclusively, universally, and simul- taneously everywhere, all traces of the wage- system having disappeared. The development of collective management with the object of best reahzing certain definite common ends under a sufficiently stable and authoritative H THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF guidance is not Social Democracy : not even should such collective management be estab- lished by states, by parishes, or by municipal corporations for isolated branches of production. Such collective management stands directly opposed to the "music of the future" of pure collectivism. It has already existed from the earliest times, and its growth is con- tinually increasing. The social economy has for a long time contained within its limits not only private enterprises working for private gain, but also mutual and associated enter- prises resting on solidarity of interests — associations for purposes of common benefit, private and endowed benevolent institutions; and finally — and this is most to the point — important state enterprises, local and municipal undertakings, and. public industrial works. It may come to pass that the State or the local authorities will establish still more intimate relations with this or that branch of production, that entirely new forms of service, of income, and of money relations will be set up of which we have at present no conception, and which will gradually weld together the workers into an entirely new kind of national organization. If SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 15 this should be done in order to introduce public production up to the point at which it is most compatible with the common interests affecting all, and the private interests of producers like- wise, there would still be no question of Socialism, in the strict sense in which the word Social Democracy is used to-day. Capitalistic production would maintain its rights, just in so far as it was best calculated to serve the interests of all in the production, circulation, and dis- tribution of commodities within the limits of private ownership. There would be no intention of organizing a collective system of production and distribution, still less of placing everything on a purely democratic basis, and least of all of shaping the whole collective production and distribution after one and the same pattern, in the endeavour to ensure an equal enjoyment of the results to all private individuals. The essence of Social Democracy is not in some degree of collective or state industry, nor even in more or less production of commodities under govern- ment supervision; it is an exclusive and universal system of collective production and distribution of commodities entirely superseding the capital- istic system, and thus also the wage system^ in ](; THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the interests of the individual freedom and equality of all, even of the proletariat, with a Democratic form of government — in short, purely Democratic Collectivism. A strictly State-organised system oi produc- tion without a Democratic regime is conceivable, perhaps even a probable development, at some very far distant time. But it is inconceivable and impossible for all time that a full blown system of collective production should be suddenly introduced in the supposed interests of unlimited freedom and the radical equality of all individuals. The kernel of the genuine historical Socialism, the Socialism which is now exciting the world, is just this level- ling down^ of the whole face of society after the pattern of a universal collec- tivism established in the name of liberty and equality, especially the latter, and in the supposed interests of the self-styled proletariat. The so-called positive social policy, and the positive State-organization of industry, is very far removed from this. Plowever antagonistic to capital the processes of industry may become, the State could only take over a limited portion of the whole of production, and that by SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 17 slow degrees, and only so far as capitalistic production became incompetent or injurious, to say nothing of the fact that no constructive domestic policy is likely to arise out of a half Atheist half Republican system of world philosophy. I propose, therefore, that for the purposes of this correspondence we should entirely drop the term Socialism in reference to the constructive policy of social reform and State organization of industry, which is known as " State Socialism " or " Socialism of the Chair P and reserve it exclusively for the revolutionary Socialism, which, as I have said, involves an absolute and purely democratic Collectivism in industry, a popular Republicanism in govern- ment, the Materialism of a superficial science in philosophy and metaphysics, a world reforming Optimism in ethics, and a pure Atheism in religion. In this sense we may regard "Socialism," "Communism," "Social Demo- cracy," " Anarchism," Mutualism," and other such, as essentially kindred growths, opposed not only to Liberalism but also, and still more, to any constructive policy of social reform. This last leaves play to every form of organization , each accordingto its relative merits, in the indissoluble 18 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF interests of the whole and of all its parts. It does not, therefore, exclude the capitalistic system of production, but merely subjects it to certain limitations and restrictions, under which the impulse of acquisition may, even unconsciously to itself, direct the whole sphere of private produc- tion in the real interest of the whole of Society. The contrast between Social Democracy and any positive policy of social reform stands out most clearly when once we have really grasped its kinship with Liberalism (Capit- alism), as well as its antagonism to it. Socialism appears at first sight to be in direct opposition to Liberalism. And it is so far true that it has known how to expose the one-sided views and the weak points of Liberalism as searchingly and as relentlessly as Liberalism itself once laid bare and shattered the edifice of Feudalism and of Absolutism. Both Liberalism and Socialism are offspring of the same spirit, the spirit of Individualism and free criticism, a pair of Siamese twins, victorious when opposed to the Positivism' of a worn -oat age, but incomplete and impotent before the Positivism 1 of a newer time. The Positivism ^ See Preface. SOCIAL DEMOCBACT. 19 which animates the more timely social reforms of to-day has aims widely different from either, and springs from quite another spirit. By the help both of the critical conquests of Liberalism over Feudalism and Absolutism, and the critical conquests of Socialism over Liberalism, it endeavours to achieve the highest possible degree of freedom and equality by the realization and furtherance of the newest standard of justice, for whose sun, moreover, there is no valley of Ajalon. It declares capital to be serviceable to the public interest, and does not seek to make away with it. It bespeaks for the wage-labourer, even under the system of private service, tbe standing and the remuneration of a professional servant of society: it puts a check on the unlimited freedom of exploitation on the part of tbe supe- rior power of capital : it fearlessly introduces state-organization there and there only, where the private system has been proved impossible, injurious or incompetent. Socialism, on the other hand, demands a democratic state-produc- tion pure and simple in the interests of universal freedom and equality of all, even the proletariat. As little labour as possible, with opportunities of c2 20 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF study and recreation for all : the equal distribu- tion of all arduous and unavoidable work : the three hours' day, and all to take their turn at boot cleaning ! Therewith as much enjoyment as possible, but equal enjoyment for all : either no champagne at all, or an equal share for everybody. A minimum of Government (so says Anarchism) or else an equal share in it for all, with the ultimate absolute sovereignty of the electors. This is not the recognition of the society as well as the individual, to the mutual advantage of the whole and of each member as part of the whole. Here the society exists only as a means towards the absolute freedom and equality of all. It is still at bottom (and more even than among Liberals) the extreme of Individualism — Individualism in universal realization, and intensified by the envious fancy of the proletariat. It was inevitable that this extreme Social- istic Individualism should take shape ; it is a legitimate and even necessary outgrowth of " subjective criticism." It is true that mscay Liberals held most sincerely the belief that for Germany political freedom and equality were attained in 1848, and economic by the Liberal SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 21 legislation up to 1879, and that now as a matter of fact the best possible social system had been introduced. But it was only that Liberal Individualism was then standing at the zenith of a one-sided development and a boundlessly self-satisfied optimism. Freedom and equality for all were not attained, but only freedom and equality for the possessors of great wealth, high culture, and distinguished descent. But the world was to become happy — so Liberalism itself had promised in the days when it was revolutionary and still unsatisfied — ^in the uni- versal freedom and equality of all individuals : now the universalization and equality of plea- sure, enjoyment, and influence for all, even for the proletariat, were found wanting. This extreme but quite logical movement away from purely Liberal Individualism resulted in the Communist or Socialist Individualism, having for maxim the distribution of well-being in equal shares, or at least in proportion to the performance of work (no more " bills drawn on heaven"), and a purely democratic free govern- ment of all by all. It is merely a pretence when Collectivism poses as an entire reversal of Liberalism and 22 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF contrast to it. So long as his aim is to secure freedom and equal well-being for all, the practical Collectivist, of course, cannot do without a society, a state, but he too utilizes it merely as a means for the benefit of the individuals which compose it. Collectivism, in spite of its leanings towards State- Absolutism, still remains deeply pledged to Individualism, Like Liberal- ism, it is penetrated through and through with that subjective view of things which character- ised the decline of the critical age that preceded the very latest epoch of thought. The two are hostile to each other, it is true, but who does not know from of old many such hostile brothers, unamiable to each other, the elder haughty^ the younger envious and churlish, and yet unable to get loose from each other ? Liberalism and Col- lectivism are just such hostile brothers, born of the general reasoned revolt of the individual against the positive social order of the Middle Ages and of Absolutism, become untenable. They are always in the negative, but against their will and by their very faults they bring positive good to pass, preparing the way for a new positive conception of society, and gradually, as it were, forcing it to the front. Collectivism, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 23 the spirit which in the negative always elicits the positive and the good, is still mere nega- tion, though in the several interests of all, not of the favoured few, and has its abiding foundation in Individualism ; its stronghold is criticism, and its opposite is not Liberalism. The true contrast and irresistible opponent alike of Liberalism and Collectivism is "Posi- tivism," not that old and obsolete order championed by reactionaries and by old- fashioned Conservatives which the tide of history has swept over and left behind, but that Positivism which in creed, custom, law, and industry leads to new positive developments of the existing social organism to meet the needs of the time, without infringing, for the sake of the community at large, any legitimate in- dividual rights or liberties. Where you find ■within the immediate range of discussion some positive reconstruction of society, some positive social and industrial programme, there you breathe the spirit of this new Positivism. Social Democracy has it not, though one of its leaders maintains the contrary. The positive spirit of social reform has not the Social Demo- crats on its side : but only because it does not 24 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF want them, and means to get rid of them. The Positivism of social and industrial reform ■would purify, but not destroy the capitalistic system of production. It places the capitalistic hemisphere of the organized industrial world again in the service of the common well-being, and under the conditions necessary to secure the relative prosperity of the wage labourer. ^ Liberalism and Socialism, therefore, stand nearer to each other in the strife of parties than either to the Positivism of the old time (if this still survives), or to the new Positivism of to- day, which is bound up with all constructive social and industrial reform. They both. Liberalism and Collectivism, fight under the same banner, even when it comes to the elections : for both embody the reasoned resistance which exists more or less in every individual according to his circumstances against antiquated institu- tions which cramp and fetter him. Both are tliuF essentially hostile to a social policy whose aim is to foster, protect, and develop the life of the community through that of its parts, and the life of the parts through that of the community, and to form an organic union between freedom and order, individual activity and aid from SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 25 institutions, public organization and private enterprise, independence side by side with mutuality. Such a Positivism is equally inconvenient to extreme Liberalism and to Collectivism : it is too far-reaching and too radical for the former, too partial, too conser- vative, and too obstructive for the latter. Neither can understand an entirely new and, in the best sense of the word, progressive Positivism, for they both start from the same fundamentally false premisses. Neither of them dare try to comprehend it lest it should drive them out of the field altogether. Some light is thrown on the nature of Social Democracy by the consideration of its extremest o£E-shoot, Anarchism. This school demands entire equality, but also entire freedom, hence the abolition of all governing authority : from this view its name is derived. The freedom and equality of all, the purest and most universal individualism, this is not possible under the rule of any government, therefore let us do without government altogether : freedom pure and simple, entire equality for all, this and this only is what we need ! This is the 'practically absurd, but theoretically qmte logical 26 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ultimate outcome of ' acquaintance with Hegel's teachings makes it clear that his system of philosophy lends itself very readily to Socialism. Hegelianism, with its dialectical spinning out of phenomena from the logical categories of human reason, its so-called "Speculative Panlogism," is at once restlessly analytic and arbitrarily synthetic in its concep- tion of the universe. This is exactly what Socialism needs : searching analysis and violent reconstruction according to subjective impres- sions at the sovereign will of the individual reason. The spirit of this philosophy is the very spirit of Social Democratic Collectivism. Ed. — Just so ! SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 33 But "the grass has long grown upon the grave of Hegelianism, as of the whole range of speculative philosophy. Its contradictions, its arrogance, its conception of the human mind as the mirror of the universe out of whose images and reflections the sum of all things may be made up, all this, all in fact that is characteristic of "speculative philosophy," has been for ever overthrown and set aside. But, for all this, it has done much to aid Socialism, and intellectually to pave the way for it. Much the same is true of Pessimism. It needed only the first shock of disappointment on the discovery that Liberalism, even at the height of its triumph, could not avail to make the world perfect, a discovery made towards the close of the sixties, in order to introduce an invasion of Pessimism into the Liberal world, Pessimism which leaves us no good thing in creation. Through the brilliant genius of Schopenhauer and of Hartmann, the cultivated world was given up to a philosophy of sick headache. For not only is the world, according to them, unutterably bad, as miserable as Dante's hell, but also its badness is quite irremediable. "To redeem the world, destroy 34 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF it" — a redemption which these pessimistic gentlemen fortunately could, not accomplish, e\ea. if they all committed suicide at once. Thus, Liberal Optimism was converted into its very opposite — Pessimism. It was after all for the sake of individual wretchedness that the whole world needed to be destroyed. This Pessimistic Subjectivism, therefore, brought grist to the Social Democratic mill. The world, including the social world, is irretrievably bad, says the Social Democrat in his advanced criticism of the existing liberal capitalistic order. Thus have the Pessimists prepared the way for the Socialist line of criticism. Socialists themselves cannot of course be Pessimists, they have rather become Atheists, Materialists, Optimists. If the world is not only bad to-day, but must be so for ever, if it is in fact irremediable, then no one can reo-ard the Socialist scheme of reformation as anything but a swindle. It is only the Liberal Capitalism of to-day, and the Feudalism of a bye-gone day, which the Socialists hold to be irretrievably bad. Only in their criticism of the Liberal epoch are they Pessimists of the deepest dye. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 35 Having announced that their " Social State '' is to be the realization of the best of all possible worlds, the Socialists must in future hold to a philosophy which decrees that all that is known as " the world beyond," the metaphysical back- ground of the good and the evil, is non-existent, and which seeks to obtain the best, or at any rate the best attainable, in this world, without believing in Grod or finding him at all necessary. From the point of view of religion, this means Atheism, which simply says "■ God is not." As a philosophy it is the metaphysic of scientists, kicking over the traces of '^ exactness," viz.. Materialism or Naturalism, the " force and matter " philosophy which prevails most widely just in those quarters where Social Democracy finds its recruits. That form of Materialism, too, which finds in equal external enjoyment for all the centre of the world's happiness, is peculiarly at home in the domain of this school of philosophy. With it, and with it only, it is possible to maintain the belief in and the demand for the ideal industrial state, however indefinitely postponed, which Socialism has al- ways in reserve, thanks to a complete ignoring of history and science, and a most unpsychological d2 36 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF handling of the problem of happiness. To render their own constant reference to the State of the future acceptable to the proletariat, they cry down all " bills drawn on heaven," and of course equally on hell. Not only is the con- scious subject apart from God, as the Deists maintain, but God is non-existent. The world, and we ourselves in the world, must get on as best we may with the sole help of the triumphs of " science." Thus without fear and without remorse they shatter in a thousand pieces the product of the ages, the liberal capitalistic world-order. As a Social Democrat, a man must reason thus, but it is only as a Naturalistic Materialist that he can so reason. This is the strict fundamental essence of Social Democracy, when stripped of all trappings and adornments. It is through and through an Individualism driven to the extremest point, but it is a necessary product of the times. In the course of drawing out its characteristic features, I have already given a refutation to the "notorious calumnies" with which you, Dear Friend, acquainted me immediately after the publication of the "Quintessence" and which rose to more serious proportions after the SOCIAL BEMOCBACr. 37 appearance of the third volume of "Structure and Life of the Social Organism." I am not really bound to touch upon this sub- ject, for you know well howunfairlyl was treated in Austria, when, in 1870, 1 acceded to similar demands. But I will do it at your request. The wish had been expressed, you said in your letter, that I had first of all plainly demonstrated the impossibility of State-produc- tion. I deliberately, and of set purpose, did exactly the reverse. I have shown that a more or less collective (State) system of production was in itself possible, if in its constitution a sufficiently strong directing authority could be coupled with a sufficiently vivid interest in the result of industry on the part of all wage- receiving individuals to ensure productivity : and I maintain, in spite of all the common asseverations to the contrary, that this is by no means inconceivable, but has even been already attempted in the existing social state of to-day. But what is impossible for all time is an improvised democratic and exclusively collective production without firm hands to govern it, and without immediate individual responsibility, or material interests on the part of the participators, 38 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF which is what the Collectivists desire, and what alone can tickle the fancy of that Individualism of the proletariat whose watchwords are Freedom and Equality. If I had proved too much, I should only have committed the same fault as the Liberals and the Socialists. I should have thrown away the wheat with the chaff: — associated, or corporative, or municipal, or state-industry with Socialism, and though I might have provoked a louder outcry from the Socialists, I should certainly not have convinced or prevailed against them. Anyone who wishes to strike a blow at Social l)emocracy must demonstrate the impossibility and futility of this very Collectivism divorced from authority, and intensified to the point of an exclusive Democratic Individualism with freedom and equality for all, and he must clearly recognize how very far removed this is from the positive industrial state and the policy of Social Reform, to which undoubted place in the future must be allowed. I therefore rather take credit to myself, for having in all my writings hitherto relentlessly, and with a certain satisfac- tion, exposed and destroyed all those evasions and idle sources of consolation which Liberals SOCIAL DEMOOMACr. 39 oppose to Socialism without waiting for the Social Democrats to do this work in their own way. There is one gross misunderstanding from which I must, however, make sure of guarding myself, when I say that public non-capitalistic industrial systems may long hold their own, and are already holding their own, and that even public production under firm '' author- itative management " may perhaps in the future prevail to a far greater extent than hitherto. Some have objected to this " authoritative guidance." But I do not mean by this, management by State officials : I do not by any means contemplate the bureaucratizing and *' nationalization " of industry. The State of the future, whatsoever form it may take, will only interfere through the constant furthering, protecting, and regulating power of the will and force of the whole community over the play of private, associated, and corporative action and inter-action. The public part of productive industry could, and must with the exception of a few central works, be carried on separately, by corporative bodies and institutions, which would under State supervision, and in accordance 40 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF with law, carry on their current service in the main independently. By a firm authoritative guidance, I therefore mean, a constitution which makes it possible to appoint and maintain efficient organs of administration and control of business, secured from constant danger of overthrow at the hands of the majority of workmen employed. Election nomination and ratification — this last always by the official standing next above in the industrial hierarchy, according as the needs of the time and the character of the individual business would seem to suggest — would probably, working together, produce the right kind of management for such corporate institutions : management which would guarantee order without destroying freedom, and which would in fact hold sway, outside the limits of the central State-administrations, over the public portion of the industrial sphere, with as much relative independence as academic senates, college authorities and learned bodies enjoy at present over the public portion of the scientific, educational, and rehgious world. In the third volume of my " Structure and Life of the Social Organism," I have already in this connexion pronounced in favour of some such constitution SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 41 of authority, according to the latest needs of our time. (^) And now I have a few words still to add in my own defence. U'he anguish of my Conservative friends who you say have lodged such complaints against me does not surprise me. It was laid upon m« to write, and I wrote : not for the benefit of those unthinking easy-going gentlemen, but against the errors of the time, not for the obsolete Positivism of old-fashioned Conserva- tives, but against the extreme Individualism alike of Liberals and Social Democrats, and in the positive spirit of Social Reform which belongs to our more highly-developed age. It could only be from mental indolence or from ill-will that such mistaken ideas could arise about me as are referred to in your letter. I have always been, and still am, by persuasion a Theist, and as such neither Optimist nor Pessimist. In politics, as regards the best constitution for great and ancient cultivated nations, I am (i) This paragraph has been inserted in the new edition, in order to set right certain misunderstandings which have arisen among eminent foreign men of letters, with reference to my use of the word " authoritative" in the earlier editions of this work. 42 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF a Monarchist, as long as there remains any- possible or capable djniasty to maintain or to re-engraft. With respect to the family, I am the very antipodes of the Free-thinkers, and most willingly come under Herr Bebel's con- demnation as " immoral," because I make a firm stand for the stability of the marriage tie as against the vagaries of individual caprice. The unlimited freedom and equality of Individualism I combated most strongly in some of my earliest writings, now nearly 30 years ago, while at the same time I unfalteringly held that freedom for each to work for the whole, in the calling best suited to him, and equality for all in the sense of the due proportion between work accomjjlished /or the whole, and reward received from the whole, must be the principles by which alone the profits of capital, as well as the wage-system, find at once their justification and their limitation. Since the year 1856, as is shewn by the volume of my "Collected Works" which appeared not long ago, 1 have been a Positivist in matters of Social Science, a Positivist, not in the sense of Auguste Comte, but in the sense in which 1 have used the word in this letter. To SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 43 the Liberal Economists, who would have every- thing free, I even then opposed the relative superiority of a positive state-economy, social and industrial policy, and the necessity of associated national reciprocal assurance. Recent developments have completely justified me in many important respects. For the last thirty years or more, as a systematic teacher of political economy, I have defended with com- plete success, as against the exclusive and unlimited private organization of the national industry, the fact, nay, the necessity of the existence side by side, and the harmonious in- terworking of corporate with private systems of management, of mutual with endowed societies, (works of benevolence.) And this view has prevailed. To-day I am more than ever con- vinced that it is this view alone which can serve as a foundation for the superstructure of a true popular state and industrial policy. Thus I have at once justified and strictly limited the domain of private capital as the social organ of production, as an organ, that is, which by right of possession and fitness must continue to hold the management of those branches of business, which, in the interests of 44 THE IMPOSSIBILITY Of society itself, can be better and more efficiently managed on a private basis than by associated or endowed (" caritative^^ (^) to use A. Wagner's expression) or reciprocal (joint-stock) enter- prises : as an organ, of course, which must submit to the conditions imposed by the con- tinued existence and welfare of the whole, including the wage-labourer, and must even give way — subject to indemnification — to the as- sociated organizations of reciprocal and benevolent institutions, or it may be share the field with them, in so far as these non-private forms of organization are proved to be the more advantageous in the interests of the whole. How far the one or the other form of organization is to be allowed to go, is a question which cannot by any means be answered, at least until the lapse of another generation. For the present and near future, as far as Germany only is concerned, I had in view, in addition to the astonishing number of public societies and mutual benefit associations which the past centuries have set going and bequeathed to us, only the great systems of railway com- (' ) " Karitativ " i.e., I presume, on a benevolent footing-, whether the funds are derived from charity or from the State. SOCIAL BEMOCRACT. 45 munication ; then, in the interests of taxation, the large license-system for the manu- facture and monopoly of sale of tobacco, and lastly, the universal system of insurance against sickness, old age, and lack of employment. To-day it seems to me probable that the great national banks are also in process of becoming state-institutions. It is possible, even probable, that electricity, heating, lighting, and locomotion, are all going forward more or less rapidly towards nationalization and communali- zation (municipalization) to be accompanied perhaps by the extension of public property in coal-mines and in water-power. Further than this, I do not anticipate the advance of public and associated industrial management. (^) The needs of two or three generations ahead, cannot possibly, in my opinion, be foreseen, even by the most far-seeing eyes. But there are four points on which I have never failed to insist : namely, (') Since the great coal-strike of 1889, the " Ooal-barons " of the Ehine and Westphalia have given the coal-nationalizers much cause to attack them. But I am still opposed, on critical grounds, to the nationalization of the mining industry. (Cp. Tubingen Zeitschrift, 1890, p. 693 and following.) 46 THM IMPOSSIBILITY OF 1. That the system of associated enterprise can never cover the whole field of national activity. 2. That the capitalist system of production is and will remain justified, so long and in so far as it subserves the industrial welfare of the whole, and also that it is not incompatible with the protection of labour, nor with its suitable remuneration, nor with the treatment of the labourer as a professional worker; 3. That the introduction of state- organised enterprises in those cases where they can accomplish what private industry cannot, or cannot so economically or so profitably do, or through the degeneration of capitalism into an absolute monopoly(^) can only do by exploiting the people, would not only be no misfortune, it would be a progressive step, which must go forward, in an orderly manner, and by the same absolute necessity which has in all ages pro- duced in gradual development institutions of general service and utility. 4. That even within the domain of associated organization individual activity can be main- tained, and that nothing can he done for the people (') Ah-eady we find increasing numbers of invulnerable rings and ti-usU, thrusting themselves forward. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 47 in any branch of pr^oduction, unless a proportion be maintained between the work done and the reward assigned, unless me^'it is everywhere recognised, and the claims of an aristocracy consisting of the most generally useful members of society. Have I now spoken plainly and un- mistakably ? I think so. And what I have defended is not by any means the Social Demo- cracy which would suddenly abolish private capital directly, universally, and by popular plebiscite, replacing it by collective production, and collective production only, on a basis of popular sovereignty which culminates in equality for all and individuality for none, and which brands all and every form of Profit as robbery. My Socialism is, and has always been, a positive social policy, practical social reform, " practical Christianity," in short, Riform Positivism, entirely in accordance with the new spirit of the time. It is true this is not progress in the Berlin sense of the term, but it is far higher and more real progress than that, a progress that overcomes both extremes of Individualism, offering equal and direct opposition to both Liberalism and Social Democracy, and a final release from the legitimate parent of these same Siamese twins. 48 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF a spirit of arrogant criticism. It matters nothing to me if this standpoint is mis- called " State Socialism," whether "practical" or "scientific." Against names, when once they have found admittance, nothing can be done, even when they are like chalk marks dabbed on the backs of opponents by the rowdies of either party. I have taken your request quite seriously. I beg now that you will have the goodness to let your neighbour in the Reichsrath read my letter, to cure him of his scruples regarding your society. The good man scents in me an Antisemite and Social Democrat in one. I am no Social Democrat, as I have just shown. Neither am I an Antisemite, for it is a thing I could never be. It is true I always have com- bated the unlimited freedom of capitalistic exploitation, and the "free life" of legalized robbery, whether carried on by circumcized or by uncircumcized "Jews," by secret trickery or by positive theft. Yet I would combat this freedom of exploitation only by a further advance in existing liberal right, on the grounds of common justice. I have as little sympathy with exceptional legislation against the Jews SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 49 as against the Ultramontanes or the Social Democrats. I haye a horror of race-perse- cution of all kinds. But for all that, I shall never, to please the Jews, refrain from helping forward, for all alike, and in the direction of positive reform, and to ensure the safety of all, the progress of that modern conception of right and justice which has been built up by the prevaihng economic political and religious Liberalism, in Jews as well as in Christians, and which must tend to make oppressive usury and exploitation impossible alike to Christians and Teutons, and to Jews and Semites. In dealing with the "Jewish question" I make no account at all of race. If we succeed in attain- ing that positive development of the basis of common justice, to show cause for which is the main purport of this correspondence, then the "Jewish question " will be settled at once, to the satisfaction of all honest Jews and of all honest Christians, and settled on the basis of the existing social order. No race-persecution of any kind need be started. It is possible that there are Semites who would fear and hate this state of things more than they would do Anti-semitism, and your 50 THE IMPOSSIBILITy Oi neighbour may be one of these. In that case it is as Ultra- Liberals, not as Jews, that they are my opponents. It is possible, on the other hand, that many who call themselves Anti- semites are working for protection from exploit- ation of all kinds without persecution of the Jews or exceptional legislation, and not out of race-hatred, but only from love of the Christian faith and of their own people, and in vindication of the things they hold most sacred. These then if they seek their end on the basis of free persuasion and of common justice are no Anti-semitea properly so-called. The Social Democrats have announced that Socialism has no need of Anti-semitism, that it can tackle Judaism (Capital) by itself. But this is by no means sure : except in case they should make a complete destruction of everything. Within the very government and administration of the Social State the members of so clever and gifted a people might yet find their reckoning. Thus even, if I were an Anti-semite I would not adopt Social Democracy as a preventive against Semite oppression : for I see quite clearly that the conservative, national, and agrarian Anti- semites, who as a whole stand further aloof from SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 51 Individualism than " Freisinnige " and Socialists from each other, have no intention of casting out one devil by means of another, and are very careful not to join the Social Democrats. Have I now spoken roundly enough to please your friend ? I am no Anti-semite. But neither am I, assuredly, a Philo-semite. . I can be no more compelled to love than to hate. I think I may now claim to have fulfilled the general purpose of this first letter, which was to draw out the characteristics of Social Demo- cracy, and at the same time to clear up mis- understandings. But one task atill remains to me : that is, to distinguish between the two main varieties of radical Socialism, namely, Proportional Collectivism, which formerly was Socialism properly so-called, and the Collectivism of Equality, or the pure form of genuine Communism. Social Democracy, not only in its programme, but also apparently in the con- victions of its adherents, — at any rate in Germany — has been constantly shifting more and more from Proportional Collectivism towards Communism, in which radical col- lectivism as a general rule culminates. E 2 52 THB IMPOSSIBILITY OF The claim of Proportional Collectivism or Socialism, properly so-called is : that on a basis of national ownership of the means of produc- tion, each should receive according to the extent and value of his labour, or more accurately, each should receive " the full producV or equivalent of the result of the share [^contribut- ed by his labour to the whole product of collective production. From this would result a proportionately equal share directly in the material, but also indirectly in the other non- material good chings of life : such as the State ("State of the People") family happiness, education, social enjoyment, and so on. Equality here, at least as regards the share in the result of social production, i.e. as regards income, means only the maintenance of an equal relative proportion. It being supposed to have been proved by the Collectivist criticism, that capital only arose and attained such gigantic proportions by absorbing into itself some of the product of wage-labour, by so called appro- priation of the surplus value, it was now required that labour in general, and as far as possible each labourer in particular, should receive the full result or equivalent of his (or its) labour. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 53 It is true that the practical maintenance of this proportion is, as I shall show, impossible on the basis of Democratic (yoUectivism. And even •were it possible, it would first be necessary to determine what, under Democratic Collectivism, would be the amount of that pure product- value of national labour which was to be subjected to proportionate distribution : for if Collectivism as a whole should prove to be a much less economical system tbaa Capitalism in its own sphere has hitherto shown itself, "Labour" would still have gained nothing, and might even fall into a much worse case than before There would be after all in Proportional Col- lectivism no departure from that eternal social principle, which alone can secure the highest productivity in the interests of all as well as of each, namely, the principle of maintaining the proportion between work done for the whole and for ethers, and amount received from the whole and from others, in other words, no departure from that fruitful solidarity between the interests of the whole society and those of its individual parts. So then it would be compatible with this form of Collectivism to recognize as labour the many kinds of work outside the production, 54 TSE IMPOSSIBILITY OF transfer, preservation, and delivery of com- modities, and to keep going the higher class of professional labour in every department of social life ; in short, to maintain division of labour equally in industry, education, learning, and science, in the state and the corporation , as well as to raise from existing conditions a higher, even if at the same time an increasingly democratic, level of development in industry, science, education, art, technique, and government. But equality for all in everything, would not be attained by Proportional Collectivism. For this latter does not by any means surmount the highest peak of Individualism, the creed which places all upon the same level, and gives to all equal rights, and equal duties. We do not find this until we come to Communism, which had already, in 1876, become the programme of the German Social Democrats, and since then has become more and more their wide-spread con- viction, but which loftily stigmatizes the ideas of the milder proportional Socialism as " spiess- blirgerlich " (narrow-minded, bourgeois.) The claims of Communism are or must be as follows : on the basis of national ownership of the means of production, to each, first : equal SOCIAL DEMOCBACY. 55 and (may we not suppose also ?) ly turns all kinds of labour, i.e., productive labour, tlie '■^universal obligation to labour " : secondly, all products to become the property of the whole community, which has the right to hold them " seeing that it has, as a whole, made their production possible ! " thirdly, outside that portion of the entii'e result of production which Society requires for its Collective needs, distribution by the community, according to the socially recognized " reasonable needs " of each individual. Thus, to each equal labour, according to his capacity to labour for the whole, but enjoyment of commodities to each, according to his reasonable needs out of the collective treasury of the whole. But equality is only rendered complete if each takes his share in industrial work — in the " social state" all other kiads of work are and will be not work, but merely play — and in every description of industrial work by turns, the more arduous as well as the higher forms of labour, and all labour is laid indis- criminately upon all, upon women as well as upon men. All labour is manual labour, and everyone is under an equal obligation to per- form it. This is literally the admissible and 56 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF in any case the theoretically inevitable inter- pretation of the "universal obligation to labour, and equality of rights." But Communism is not satisfied even with this. iEyen the non-industrial side of social life is to be so ordered as to give to individuals a personal equality by public education, cultiva- tion, and social intercourse, and to each an equal share in what would then correspond to our political and municipal life, as well as in the life of art, of learning, of social enjoyments, even of sexual gratification. Professional specialization of functions would be quite as inadmissible, in State, in Religion, in Learning, and in Art, as in in- dustrial life, for authoritative institutions such as schools, churches, universities, political government, and so on, are not compatible with the equality of all. Communism, therefore, means much more than merely the abolition of capital, it requires an equal compulsion laid upon all to labour in the national industry, and the equal claim of all to non-industrial influence and to every form of the good things of life. It breaks with all the slowly matured results of the whole SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 67 development of history which has steadily gone on, since the abandonment of pre-patriarchal Communism, in the direction of the simul- taneous growth and differentiation of both private and public professional activities. In order that no one may have, or do, or fail to do more, or more special things than any other. Communism must establish the equality of all in everything, the participation of all in every- thing, the equal share of all with all in every form of activity, both laborious and pleasant : and this on the basis of national ownership of the means of production, which terminates the supremacy of property, on the basis of personal equality, which it is supposed the public popular education of all will bring about, on the basis of the substitution for the State (or governing body) of popular sovereignty, in- cluding female suffrage, on the basis of free love, and on the basis of the entire destruction of all authority, and of authoritative social powers, and transmitted social institutions. It is in fact the horde-status, in which every in- dividual does everything and enjoys everything, and which has been hymned as the coming Paradise for earth's myriad inhabitants. 58 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Such is the Communism of Social Democracy, at least of consistent Social Democracy. How short is the way from this to Anarchism, at least for individuals and the fanatics ! This last bodes Incendiarism towards no one knows whom — " Emperor, King, Field-Marshal, holiday- makers, or horses " — dynamite as the form of politico-social protest of all good subjects a la Reinsdorf, as the "sign of every Social Demo- hip MglQrically preceded pater- nal (tribus, gens, n-eyoO^clan), as a family relation. Next, even kinship through the father (patriarchy) slowly and gradually gave place to the feudal and corporate family bond, and finally this again gave way to the modern family through the liberation of the married couple from dependence on their kinsfolk. The history of the family hitherto has led steadily further and further away from Hetwrism. In the horde, from which the development started, the wild and dog-like mixture of the sexes which Espinas has shev?-n (in Les Societes 140 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Animales), to be most suited for the animal societies, such as the pack of hounds, the flock of sheep, the herd of oxen, was to some extent possible and not incompatible with the continued existence of the social community. But on the high levels of the great civilized nations it is in every respect impossible. To man alone among all creatures endowed with social instincts it has been allotted to draw more and more closely together the bonds of parent and child by means of monogamous unions which gradually outgrew the jurisdiction of the rest of the tribe or race, in order thus to make the family and family responsibilities by means of "Capital" an organ for the carrying on of production, by means of hereditary monarchy, an organ in the government of States, and in every business-relationship all un- consciously to itself the mainspring of the due performance of social duties. This essential distinction of the whole human race the consistent fanatics for equality would drown in a new modern Hetserism, which would not even possess the advantages of the primitive maternal descent as described by Bachofen. The development of family life is still pro- SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 141 ceediiig further and further in the same direction. Before the eyes of the last generation, there was accomplished a diminution of the significance of the relationship of cousins, and even of brothers and sisters, and a number of duties which formerly were exclusively bound to the family — those of education and instruction, the teaching of handicraft, the care of the sick, household pursuits, cooking, store-keeping and so on — are passing over into the domain of the School from the kindergarten upwards, and into the domain of industrial training and higher educational institutions, into hospitals, industrial departments, industrial female labour, cook-shops, co-operative provision-stores, &c., &c. In towns this process is already far advanced. Do we see in this a loosening of family- bonds ? Quite the contrary, it rather betokens the more decided and ever-growing development and training of the family for its most essential task, that of more intense and more living com- manion between husband and wife, between parents and their own children, for the ever purer and more self-complete evolution of the union that is based on the propagation of the species. Nor will progress begin at this 142 THE IMPOSSIBILITy OF stage to consist of a refined reproduction of Hetserism ! This office of family life, namely, the propagation of the species, must be regarded from two sides — first as it affects the whole nation through the renewal, increase, and improvement of the population, both quantitative and qualitative, and next as to what it means for the personal happiness of all individuals. The fundamental question therefore which Socialism raises is whether on the existing level of civilization the progress of family development is to follow the same lines as hitherto, whether this kind of progress is the best for the healthy movement of population and for the sum of individual happiness within the whole nation. According to the answer which is given to this question, will it be determined whether we are to agree with or to refuse and oppose certain extreme views as to the family which are held by various Social Democrats. By these extreme views I mean, first, the substitution for a stable marriage-tie of a system of temporary unions, whether terminable by notice or not binding at all, or Free Love in this sense, and secondly, the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 143 more or less complete substitution of State education for family education. You will allow me to approach the subject first from the Social standpoint, that of a healthy movement of population. The most prominent feature in a population- policy is to favour those movements of popula- tion which tend to keep constantly filling the available margin of support with the bestpossible inhabitants, to check as much as possible the over-increase of population beyond the compass and degree of the advance in the means of their support — that is to say to oppose both depopula- tion and under population as well as over popu- lation, reference being had to all the accom- panying circumstances both of space and time. On the various stages of development there will be varying systems of family life which will best attain these ends. At the level of the pre-patriarchal horde it is probable that the relatively best system for the preservation of the race was that of universal sexual promiscuity on both sides : on the level of the primitive nomads, polygamy, later on the marriage-system of the agricultural patriarchs, then the feudal, the old bourgeois system, finally the modern Ui THE IMPOSSIBILITY Oi type of marriage. I will not here weary you with a more detailed justification of this view. I will only concern myself with establishing that for the near future, as far as our eyes can see, the continued existence and further perfecting of the stable marriage-tie between one man and one woman offers the best prospects for the Social movements of population. The stable society of the family consisting of a wedded couple and their children, the fuller its responsibility and the deeper its intensity, sets the more bounds on the one side to over- much propagation and hence to over-population : if husband and wife belong to one another for : life and have themselves to care for their own children, instead of forming fugitive unions and then delivering over the children to the national educational institute, there will be greater prudence exercised in contracting marriage, while the duty of caring and providing for wife and child acts as a preventive against premature and reckless propagation. But the firm family unity acts also in the highest degree as a preventive against the other extreme danger of population-movement, namely that of insufficient propagation, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 145 resulting in under-population or depopulation. Married couples permanentl}^ united and secure of the society of their children will always be ready and willing to have as many children as they have a reasonable prospect of being able to support. This will far more effectually set limits to the dangerous and offensive practice known as the '' use of preventives " than any marriage for short periods, and the production of offspring not for their parents but for the Society. If I am even approximately right in these conclusions it follows that for the existing and approaching levels of the development of culture the stable family union of parents and children improved and rendered more secure by advances in hygiene, police supervision of dwellings, insurance, and the protection of labour, will pre- eminently serve the cause of progress from the point of view of the fundamental questions of the preservation and increase of population. It is my conviction that were free love and pure State-education of children to be introduced in Germany and Austria we should first have an outburst of increasing population among the lower classes and in the youngest generation, 146 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF but that this would subsequently change and we should have to face the dangers of population at a standstill or even decreasing, as was the case in ancient times and to-day already in France. And moreover the full, common, and enduring interest of parents in the education of tlieir children will prove more favorable to raising the quality of the population than exclusive State- education. I hope I have now given you adequate grounds for my conviction, that however much family life may offer room for further im- provement, and require the support and fostering care of public institutions and regulations, yet the indissoluble union of the wedded pair with each other, and with their children, deserves to-day more than ever to be preferred to any kind of refined Hetserism, for the sake of the healthy movement of population. The "reform" of the family in the direction of "free love" and " equal " State-education, has a significance not only for the preservation and renewal of population, but also, and this in a higher degree than almost any other question, for the personal happiness of individuals. Let us examine a little more closely on this side also SOCIAL BEMOCMACY. 147 the family life of Social Deuiocracy, and first tlie main feature in it, namely, ^^ free love." What then would be the result upon the happiness of the people, if there were no longer any binding marriage-union, if marriage were to become a contract which could at any time be entered into or dissolved, and that was not in any sense binding ? The great majority of the weaker sex would lose the assurance of the support of the stronger, and the adjustment of the inequality of wage-earning power between the sexes, which to-day is accomplished by the stable marriage union, would be lost, without the woman's being able to gain any more through her emancipation than she already possesses to-day through the man, or can earn by her own capacity. An immense proportion of the happiness engendered by the love of husband and wife, parent and child, would be destroyed, and the true and purely human nobility of the office of propagation be lost ; oc at the very least, all this happiness would be constantly threatened and never in any degree secure. It is true we are told that things would for the most part remain as they are, and marriage l2 148 TUB IMPOSSIBILITY OF unions would still for the most part remain constant : free love would only be called into play for the loosening of unhappy marriages. Then why not let the stable marriage-tie be the rule, with separation allowed in cases where the marriage-union has become morally and physically impossible ? Why not have at least the existing marriage-law as among Protestants ? But the whole statement, even if made in good faith, will not stand examination. What then is an "unhappy" or relatively a "happy" marriage? No one is perfect, and therefore, not a single marriage can ever hope to be entirely "happy." First love must always yield to sober reality, after the cunning of nature has secured its end for the preservation of the species. In the indissoluble hfe- union of marriage, with the daily and hourly contact between the inevitable imperfections of both parties, there necessarily arise frictions and discords, which, if severance is free, will only too easily give rise to the most ill-considered separations from the effect of momentary passion : and all the more readily if the one party have begun to grow at all tedious to the other, or pleasant to a third party. The very SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 149 essential advantage of the stable marriage-tie is just this, that it secures the peaceable adjust- ment of numberless imavoidable disagreements, that it prevents the many sparrings and jarrings of private life from i-eaching the public eye, that it allows of openness on both sides, and avoids the possibility of pretence, that it induces self-denial for the sake of others, that it insures a greater proportion of mutuality in both spiritual and physical cares for the general run of wedded couples ; in short, that for the majority of cases at least a relative possibility of wedded happiness is attainable. Therefore the indissoluble marriage-tie must still remain the rale, and separation the exception, confined to cases where its persistence becomes a moral im- possibility. But it is clear that if once the emancipation of woman made it general for her to step out of the home into public life, and if once the bond of common love and common care for the offspring were loosened, or even weakened, frequent marriage clianges would very easily become the rule, and permanent unions only the exception. The training in self-conquest, in gentleness, in consideration for others, in fairness, and in patience, which 150 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the present family and wedded relations entail, would also be lost in the entrance of all into public life outside the home. The gain to separate individuals in point of sensual gratification through fugitive unions, would be very far from outweighing the loss of the ideal good attainable by man, and by man only, through the channel of marriage. \ Neither would "free love'' be even sure to exterminate prostitution, although this has been claimed for it. Those individuals who were least in request, and even others, more favoured, would be tempted, even with " certificate-money " of the popular State, to take and give payment for love not freely bestowed. But even free marriage, without any question of payment, might to a great extent, and probably would, cause the level of sexual intercourse to fall to the coarse sensuality of prostitution. It is therefore not possible to link the question of prostitution to the abolition of the stable marriage-tie. It is no less certain that existing marriage rights and married life are susceptible of fui-ther improvement, but this is not to say that the problem, of their personal, moral, industrial and social amelioration will be solved by facilitating SOCIAL I)E3I0CRACY. 151 for everyone the breaking of the marriage-tie ; we may rather look to solving it by restoring, perfecting, and generaliziog the external and moral conditions of the highest possible happi- ness in binding unions This can be done without Social Democracy, and cannot be done with it. The new Hetserism of Free Love reduL-es man to a refined animal, Society to a refined herd, a superior race of dogs and apes, even though all should become productive labourers, and spend a few hours daily i manual labour. The second fundamental change to take place in family relations, which we have to consider from the point of view of individual happiness, would consist in the substitiition of State education for family-education. I say, advisedly, '' substitucion." State- education side by side with and supplementarj" to family education obtains already to a very large extent in our own day. We are both of us in agreement with the generall}' received opinion that public institutions for education and training are seasonable, and are worthy of every encouragement and improvement. Especially where family life 152 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF is threatened by the factory system, women and girls have a just claim to public care and protection. The protection of children, also, by means of the Creche, the Boys' Home, and other kindred institutions, is also probably only the beginning of a far-reaching system of family protection at the cost of national pro- duction, for those exceptional cases where home education is of necessity lacking. But with none of this are we concerned here. The question in presence of extreme Social Democracy, is rather this : whether family education must entirely give way to public education and the general Orphan Asylum and general Foundling Home, whether the children shall become modern horde- children, whether their parents would only see them or be able to play v/ith them in the "many hours of leisure'"' to be secured them by the Social State, or whether the parents shall keep their children with them as hitherto, preserving a community of life with them and exerting a determining influence upon their upbringing. Cloak it as you will, there is no disguising the fact that in the Social Democratic Commonwealth which demands equal and SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 153 universal Popular Education the public training would not simply supplement family upbringing, it would of necessity weaken and ultimately supersede it. The children, almost from their birth and cradle, would be the children of the nation, n ot of the family. This system of education, this tearing out of the second chief ingredient of the indivisible living unity of the inmost family circle, robs the overwhelming majority of the people, whose well-being it is designed to secure, of tin highest and purest form of happiness, and o that very form which differences of outward circumstances down to the very lowest conditions almost entirely fail to touch: this liappiness would be sacrificed to envy. This same system would very appreciably weaken the desire of parents to work hard and to leave behind them a large legacy to the future of both public and private wealth, and hence would seriously damage the collective prospects of accumulation of the means of production. Further, it would tend either to make parents indifferent to the lot of their children, which would be prejudicial both to the child's happiness and to its good upbringing, or to se 154 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the parents constantly in arms against the organs of public education, which would place the gravest obstacles in the way of the public education system. But I cannot do more than merely indicate all this, however important it is. This one point is decisive, and turns the scale against public education : that it would unquestionably not attain Us Communistic end of reducing all to a level of personal equality. Inequality of external possessions may he aholished hilt inequality of personal endowments never! For this very reason the contest hetween the different Social strata and hetween different individuals, hetween greater and lesser personalities would not cease. The struggle would rage more fiercely than ever, either by cunning or by violence. The destruction of private property in the means of production will not compass the end of communism, nor will its corollary, public education, ever succeed in effecting the personal equality of all. Even were our children to be laid in State- cradles from their very birth, not for many ages would the equality of all men be the result. J. Jacobi, the bourgeois democrat, had a saying-" Everything that wears a human SOCIAL DMMOCliACY. 155 face is of noble race." Yet all men ai'e equally noble only when regarded in contrast to the brutes. Among themselves they have inequalities of nobleness, no tvfo wear the same face, engraved with the same story, and behind no two faces does the same meaning lie. As each one for all time has but one father and one mother from the moment of his birth, no State-education can avail to produce equ.ality. It would destroy the love of parents for their children, and of children to their parents, anc by sapping all the springs of individuality would prevent all possibility of an individuali- zing system of education on the part of the State. The universal setting aside of family nurture in favour of State-nursing is inconceivable. Even in the bee-community the nurses who are at the same time the only female workers, who kill the gallant_ males and bring up the children of one royal universal mother, are at least sexless individuals : but in the social state this is physically and morally impossible, nor would it be democratic or on principles of equality. Now, since even with free love children would still come into the world unalterably unequal. 15G THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the inequalities in their development would still repeat themselves, and possibly even in crease, under a system of public education. We shall never succeed either in making all men virtuosos, or in making them all mediocre. Moreover, an exclusively public education could never accomplish v?hat parental training, allied to public education, can do. The parental up- bringing of the children is a no less indispensable and necessary pait of family life than the rule of permanent marriage-unions. Such marriage unions indeed derive their second fundamental justification from the importance and necessity of parental upbringing. Nor is it either necessary or desirable that all should receive equal education and culture ; on the contrary, it is better for each one to lay out the talent committed to him at his birth, to bring in profit for his own satisfaction and the advantage of the whole. The rise of genius, capacity, and talent of every kind must of course be made possible in all classes. Communistic education would neutralize this advantage: while I shall further indicate in my next that a positive Social Policy might realize this claim of all to education in proportion to their endowments. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 15T You will now, I think, be ready to admit that the Communistic Hetserism of the consis- tent Social Democracy, both in propagation and in education, would mean an immense backward step, both as regards the fundamental social question of the healthy movement of population, and as regards the highest sum of individual happiness whicb may be engendered by procreative unions. But I have still to draw attention to the fact that a refined Hetserism and a modern system of tribal or horde-management of children is not necessary to Industrial Col- lectivism, nay more, that it would necessarily place great obstacles in the way of this last, and that free love would give rise to a gigantic aristocracy. Let me give a few lines to the discussion of this. Free love would by no means secure equal sexual gratification to all ; for the most voluptuous, the most attractive, the healthiest, and the most coquettish would inevitably secure by far the largest share, while there would be none of those softening and ennobling influences which in the case of stable marriage-unions constitute a corrective of the sensual by the moral side of sexual intercourse. A really 158 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OV consistent Communistic system, therefore, would not admit free love according to in- dividual choice, but rather love by turns, regulated on a basis of equality, the actual supply of women for all the men desiring them, and vice versa, a universal sex-communism, the Hetserism no longer of the horde but of the organized Social State, this is what it would require from the point of view of an extreme and levelling Individualism. Free contract results in actual "appropriation of the incre- ment " by those who attain and possess the most coveted prizes. And free contract which is to be banished from the domain of popular industry will not be any the more communistic in family life because the true communistic Hetserism is a little too much, even for the Social Democrats ! To this it must finally be added, that from the standpoint of Industrial Collectivism, both free love and public education are absolutely and entirely superfluous. Of course, to begin with, this is so with a possible system of "authoritative" collective production. If all were the official productive agents of the community, they could all enjoy SOCIAL JDEMOCRACr. 159 that private family life which is on the whole by far the highest kind, as much as do our innumerable State-officials, corporation and church-functionaries, and scholastic professors. But even Social Democracy, considered merely as an Industrial Collectivism, would not necessitate the abolition of the modern family in any of the great functions of Society. It is true that, with the right of private property in the means of production, the right of bequeathing them, and the piivate ownership of Capital would be cut off : but if subsequently Democratic Collectivism were to accomplish such immensely superior results, the family would not tend to reproduce Capitalism, hence the abolition of the family would be by no means necessary to Collectivism. The family would rather ensure a higher productivity to the Social State by the enhanced interest of parents in each other and in their children, a superior system of management for the process of production, more careful training, better dis- cipline and more assured obedience towards social superiors. It is only jealousy or alarm at the superiority of certain families, only the Utopian striving, which wou.ld reduce all 100 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF individuals to mere Social units, to horde-like creatures entirely without ori ginali ty, wliich can demand the abolition of the family in the name of Collectivism, whose ends it would by no means subserve. As a matter of fact, a really practical Collectivism would need to favour the continuance of a firm bond of family life, in order to preserve sufficient scope for man's inextinguishable need for an individual life, apart from life for and with his fellows. The Social State would Ihus be rendered more manageable, and a counter-acting influence supplied against the coUectivist besetting sins of envy, thirst for domination, intrigue, and dissimulation. This concludes our criticism of the Social Democratic family regime. Like its State regime, it evidently portends a relapse into a refined barbarism, the attempt to mould the community of the civilized nation into a gigantic horde. It would be impossible to conceive of any family-sjstem less fitted for any realizable form of Collectivism. It is moreover probable that the proletariat has a family-feeling far too firmly rooted in tradition to allow of its being to any extent tempted SOCIAL DEMOCRACT. 161 further along this path. Its suggestions could have no enduring charm, except for ruined characters, and for some of the more neglected specimens of the lowest strata of the people. Of these the former are not worth the sacrifitie, while the latter may be helped by quite other means, such means as shall secure to them also the possibility of an ordered family life, and protect it, when secured, from the tyrannous invasions of Capitalism. Would the world of learning, science and art, gain anything from Social Democracy ? Here again, I answer "No." With reference to science and art, it is claimed for the Society of the Future that it will bring full intellectual satisfaction to all, and also an equal amount of intellectual satisfaction for each. This would be absolutely impossible of attainment, even if the three-hours-day were as certain of realization as under Democratic Collective Production it is undoubtedly un- realizable. Taste, natural gifts, industry, and love of art, would still remain unalterably various. The very fabulous quantity of leisure would favour the rise of the more industrious as well as of the more highly endowed individuals 162 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF both in science and art, even if they were all obliged to spend three hours daily in manual labour. On the other hand, no one could exclusively devote himself to the progress of research, discovery, and invention. The inevitable result with the great majority would be a terribly tedious and mediocre Dilettantism^ and to the pre-eminent few the highest possible development would be by no means secured, in the interest of the whole society, in invention, discovery and amusement. The geniuses, virtuosos, and men of talent would be much more restrained from develop- ment even than they are now, to say nothing of what they might be in the progress of existing society by increased provision for them both of time and means. Science, art, tech- nique, and the fine arts generally, would be handicapped, and would work for a mediocre public by no means favorable to the highest kind of achievement. Scientific, technical, and aesthetic progress would be rendered consider- ably slower, for the sole purpose of preventing the rise of an elite of cultiiie. The large promise that science, "applied to the service of this life," would establish an earthly paradise SOCIAL DEMO en A CY. 163 even here is nothing but an empty bubble : not merely because ihe progress of science, tech- nique and art, no less than of that enjoyment of life which they subserve, has its roots not only in the understanding, but also in the will and temperament, but still more because progress in these three branches of civilization depends upon the most intensive and specialized development of all talent and genius, while this development would under Social Democracy be weighed down as by a leaden weight by the over-growth and tyranny of mediocracy both in science and aesthetics : to say nothing of the fact that universal mediocr'gcy^is not calculated to produce nearly so high a sum of popular happiness as the rise and recognition of the most pre-eminent, to the intellectual refresh- ment of the whole people, and in the interests of the intellectual advance of all. In the life of art and science the kernel of the matter again would be a universal tinkering at all trades, promiscuity in public affairs, everyone crowding upon everyone else. Art and science have never attained development upon the path which Communism proposes for them, I need scarcely say that I do not mean to m2 164 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF deny that the State, the corporation, the club, and the well-to-do generally ought in the future to do even more for art and science than they have hitherto done. But that universal manual labour for at least three hours a day would prove favourable to discovery, invention, and creative art, that the tendency of taste among a nation of maniial labourers would be definitely towards the recognition and reward of the highest in art and science, appears in the highest degree improbable, if not actually inconceivable. I can only touch in passing upon the wide domain assigned by Social Democracy to public goodf ellowship, and the reaction of this upon art. I have as sincerely at heart as any man the further ennobling of popular social intercourse and recreation. But it is in the highest degree doubtful whether Communism would of necessity, or even could, achieve this more successfully than a progressive development of society as history has moulded it. You will excuse me from the task of justifying this doubt : for you will readily perceive that here again the political and sexual intermixture of all with all running parallel with an essentially public kind SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 165 of social intercourse could not have such results as the private and familiar, political, religious and other social good-fellowship combined already have, and may in the future still more largely attain. Moreover, there are two sides to a perpetual and universally prevalent state of festivity ! 1 turn now to the ethic of Social Democracy. The latter claims on this head that it will root out all egoistic impulses and carry the moral impulses onward to their full development. I have always recognized, dear Friend, that the unlimited sway of Capitalism offers a wide-spread and fruitful field for the growth of the immoral instincts. Nevertheless, immorality can no more be directly imputed to it, than pure morality to the Social State. For in both alike morality or immorality does not arise merely out of the productive system. Social or Capitalistic. Even in the Capitalistic Society public and private virtues are by no means wanting. It is surely not so sadly devoid of patriotism, of religious devotion, of neighbourly love in every form, of fidelity, and of uprightness. On the other hand, it is a monstrous exaggeration to claim that CoUec- 1G6 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF tivism — bound up by, the way, with a universal no-religion — would directly favour the existence and growth of purely altruistic impulses of brotherliness and self-sacrifice for the good of the whole, and altogether banish immoral selfishness. Jealousy, calumny, injustice, forcible exploitation, flattery, coquetry, immodest behaviour, depreciation of merit, exploitation by means of general idleness, egoistic efforts to influence the collective industry in the direction of the smallest amount of labour with the largest share of commodities- — all these vices would be by no means excluded from the action either of individuals or of groups. Collectivism can avail as little as Individualism, Democracy as little as Aristocracy, to establish pure morality or the reverse. The one is as far as the other from having its sole root in the prevailing industrial system or even in the family-system. Virtues and vices in the Social Democratic State would take other forms and other directions, but even Social Democracy would be far from bringing to pass the pure State of Ideal Virtue. All this is so self-evident that you will pardon my dwelling on it at any greater length here ! Let us turn in conclusion to the life of SOCIAL DJSMOCllACy. 1G7 religion and of the church under the conditions of Social Demociac}". The life of the church ? Social Democracy tells lis that religion would be a private matter, and that '• the society " would take no concern for it: whoever wants it can have it. It is however supposed that it would gradually evdporate as soon as the ''priest" beca-ne a labourer like the rest - i.e., spent at least three hours dailv in manual labour. For each and all would then desire to be merely " a man among men." I mj'self do not believe that Social Democ- racy would permit freedom to the religious life. It would of necessity be far more intolerant than the existing State. The Paris commune distinctly proved this. As long as religion remained free, the whole social system of Democratic Collectivism would be threatened with a constant danger. The large Churches, in any case, would be incompatible with its continuance. The existing public institutions of the religious life with all that they afford the people of inner happiness and aesthetic enjoyment would have to be swept away, together with corporations and institutions of aristocratic 168 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF origin for art, science, and education. Demo- cratic Socialism is actually, and of inherent necessity, the deadly foe of the Christian Church. And after having rooted out all the Churches it would be only the more unmanage- able with its popular morality for this world, though it would have deprived the people of a further portion of the ideal enjoyment of this life. The religious instinct of the people would always kick against the pricks, and indulge its passion for faith and metaphysics in an indestructible outgrowth of sects and denominations. Social Democracy will not lightly get the better of the Christian Church, and of the spirit which in everything abides in God, wherein its main strength lies. Social Democracy declares that it has no need either of a church, or of any belief. It is full of the pride of knowledge. But for all that it has belief. Under no conditions can the mind of man do without this. But with what kind of belief is it possessed ? It is committed to the bigoted faith of a measureless Social Optimism, and dominated by the most untenable form of Metaphysics in relation to things beyond experience, namely SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 169 by Materialism and Atheism. Let me come back to this point once more. Sociah'sm is in fact committed to an immense mass of shifting beliefs as to the coming renovaiion of the world, which becomes more and more dis- tasteful through the Pessimism displayed by its criticism of what actually exists. It commits the alniost insane mistake of regarding the problem of well-being as essentially a question of economic distribution. And yet the contrary is borne in upon us by every moment of family happiness, every hour of pious devotion, every flash of creative thought, every evening of social fellowship, every word of cheerful intercourse, every earnest striving after love, friendshi^D, and fellow-feeling, every hour of the joy of recovered health after sickness, every form of consolation for the grief that is caused by death. Human experience from time immemorial tells us that the earth neither was, nor is, nor ever will be, a heaven, nor yet a hell. Not less untenable is the position held by Collectivism in its naturalistic and materialisiic philosophy and metaphysic, and in its atheistic religion. Both naturalistic Materialism and Atheism, 170 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF which 1 have characterized as the latest outcome of the extreme critical school, have been defeated on the field of philosophy, and rejected as the coarsest and most extravagant excesses into which Metaphysics has ever allowed itself to stray. They are a mingling of the -crudest incredulity and the coarsest superstition, Mhich can have nothing in common with Christian Theism and the great Churches in which it is preserved. The masses of heavily laden producei's will never be brought — at any rate ■\\rithout detriment to freedom and equality — to hold the Optimism of Social Democracy in Ethics, its Materialism in Metaphysics, its god- lessness in Religion. The people would lose by it their most treasured and sacred ideal possessions, and no State would be so entirely ungovernable, in presence of the most universal renovation of Society, of a wholly materialistic world- philosophy and of universal popular Atheism and unbelief, as precisely the Ideal State of Social Democracy. The Materialism and the Atheism of Social Democracy take tlieir stand on grounds of supposed scientific and empirical certainty. If we place ourselves for a moment on this SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 171 footing nith all possible calmness and absence of prejudice, we soon find that the essence of all philosophical Metaphysics, as of positive religious belief, consists precisely in this, that its contents pass out beyoiid the bounds of experience, because experience itself perceives everywhere in the world suggestions of a connexion and continuity that it can never wholly grasp, since the threads of it are lost in infinity. It may- be said by sceptics that this present world and the ''supposed" world bejond are in their essence unknowable, and that therefore we should confine ourselves within the limits of "empirical" or "exact" science, without committing ourselves to the hazards of faith. But there is nothing in this attitude of sceptical resignation to lead us into the Optimism of Social Democracy. Nor can it be said that it has been scientifically proved that beyond the limits of our experience there is nothing, not even that in which the unsolved riddle of the universe in its intellectual and material spheres, with its problems of happiness and misery, shall at last find its solution. This assumption is as little borne out by our external as by our internal experiences. 172 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Those who strike out into Metaphysics, that is, beyond the bounds of experience, and -who have at the same time the need of some definite belief, will be of necessity driven to adopt three propositions. First, that which is not attested by any fact of experience, material or spiritual, is in Metaphysics a mere conception, and in Eeligion a pure imagination. Second, that any object of belief, whether metaphysical or religious, which stands in contradiction to a known fact of experience, is untenable, since every fact of experience must be contained without contradiction in the ultimate sum-total and harmony of all things. Third, both Metaphysics and Faith are incomplete and untrue unless they embrace all the facts of ex- perience. But do these three cardinal points entail the incontrovertible proof of the truth of Optimism, of Materialism, and of Atheism, and consequently the untruth of Theism ? By no means ! To hold on the one hand that the world is irretrievably bad, on the other, that it is possible it may suddenly be rendered perfect, is in either case to make a metaphysical assumption which is entirely contradicted by experience, not, as SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 173 is by some maintained, an empirically certain fact. Neither is it an empirically certain fact that everything, even the highest intellectual process, is matter and mechanical motion. This is another contradiction of experience and a one-sided and incomplete metaphysical view ; so far from this being the case the only thing which is certain is mind itself, through which we first apprehend matter, and which is perhaps itself inherent in all matter. Even the monist theory of the identity of mind and matter does not rest on the firm ground of experience. Experience shews us, it is true, always w ithout exception, mind linked to matter : but it has not yet proved to us in a single material atom the identity of perception and mechanical movement. Christian Theism in its Metaphysics and in its full conception of God does at least adopt a unifying interpretation of all the facts of life, whether moral or mechanical, good or evil, intellectual or material. It is free from the error of accounting the whole of Nature and the course of history as the eternally mono- tonous play of mechanical movement in a 174 THli! IMPOSSIBILITY OF world-instrument void of all significance, as some have done even in the face of the high moral phenomena of history and its progress towards great intellectual culture. It faces the disorderly" (paranomen) appearances of evil in the world with the wonderful phenomena of Revelation and Redemption. This it does not in an "empirical" vacuum, but on the basis of historical fact, above all on the appearance of Christ on the earth. It is a distinct misrepresentation to say that Christian Iheism entirely sets aside all empirical basis, and that therefore a scientific Theology is impossible : the facts of Revelation, the voice of God speaking in His works through Nature and in History, form, at any rate, subjective expeiimental bases for the Christian faith. Further, it is not true that even the belief in "Miracles" is in contradiction with the laws of Nature. Christian teaching has never said that God has run counter to the laws of Nature which He Himself laid down, when in the course of religious revelation He has worked miraculously, and in the progressive development of new ideas He still works on lines which are inexplicable by an^- known SOCIAL DEMOCJiAOr. 175 laws of Nature. For these " Laws of Nature," what are they ? If they convey any definite idea at all it is of formulae representing constant series of links which connect facts and phenomena empirically discernible by us. Metaphysically, they can only be eternally and unchangeably the same, not first to be interpreted out of the -'Laws'' indicated by God's modes of operation in His already existing works. The Christian belief in miracles would of course contain an error, metaphysically speaking, if it maintained that God was from time to time untrue to Himself, and worked against Nature (conira Naturum) when He performed miracles. But, so far as I know anything of Christian Theology, this is not its teaching. God, so the Christian holds, has modes of operation above and beyond those which are accessible to our every -day experience, [supra Naturam), and these must be accepted in their metaphysical bearings just because for him they are demonstrated by well-attested facts of experience. "Miracles on earth are for the Christian Nature in Heaven," as Jean Paul expresses it. A single proved instance of a wonderful fact inexplicable 176 THE IMPOSSIBILITY 0¥ within the limits of the known natural laws — and Christianity holds several such to be proved - is enough foundation on which to base the metaphysical assumption of the Divine intervention by methods other than those expressed by the so-called Laws of Nature. Whether we believe in the certainty of such facts or not, there is no foundation for the reproach levelled against Christianity that the Church's belief in miracles rests' upon a denial of natural laws, and stands in direct fundamental contradiction to experience. Christian Theism raises the counter-question : Is human reason then a universal mirror reflecting all things from its surface ? Is it not rather a "ray of heavenly light"? And it replies that human reason, which is in us our highest good, is not the central sun which illumi- nates the world. It is not by any means fitted to be a sovereign and entire illuminator of the universe. It is a light for the human race in whom it is inherent, hut not a mirror of the world. It is the best gift of God but is not in itself the Divine Spirit. In the world as we know and perceive it, it belongs to the second and higher hemisphere of what is called experience,. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 177 " Nature " forming the first and lower. Both, however, are portions and premonitions of a harmonious scheme of things, by man unknown and never entirely knowable. What both are " in themselves, " what lies beyoni experience, is for us unknowable. That both have their roots in a higher unknowable, which cherishes and supports them, and which at the same time contains and governs the mysterious secret of their coherence, has not been disproved. This beyond, in some sense apart from Nature and the world of mind, in both of which it moves and rules, but still above both, and not the cause of their imperfection and deterioration, is the God of Christianity, and the acknowledge- ment of Him is Christian Theism. It is not true that Christian Theism has been overthrown by critical Iqv even by atheistiq Rationalism. The pure reason, with its denials and its constructions, knows not everything that has been and that shall ever be, nor yet all the laws which regulate the universe, or all God's methods of working beyond those which we experience. Created Reason cannot even penetrate the innermost secret of Nature, that is, of the purely material world. In the 178 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF spiritual world and in history there are daily- occurrences, of an ever new and surprising kind, and which are not explicable by any mechanical " Laws of Nature.'' The imperfect, insufficient vision of the human mind cannot by any means pass for a proof that there are no such laws of operation, unknown to us but not the less eternal, in which the inexplicable phenomena both of the natural and of the moral world becomes intelligible to reasonable beings of a super-human order, A man may determine to do without Metaphysics altogether, but the superiority of materialist and atheist notions and superstitions over Theism will still be repudiated by the resigned sceptic. The Metaphysics of Materialism would in any case have to begin by throwing Metaphysic over- board. Further, Theism is not the only metaphysical system whose propositions contain never literal but always symbolical truth. Materialism itself is a belief that deals in symbols. That very "Matter,'' and "mechanical oscillation" to which it refers everything, even the workings of mind and the developments of history, are not simply the matter which is examined by the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 179 microscope, or the exact motion which the dynamometer can determine, and by which machines are driven. Even the Materialist, so soon as he becomes a metaphysician, speaks unconsciously in the flowers of metaphor, and cannot take the dicta of his own creed Hterally, but only metaphorically. It is the lot of every- one, to be forced to express, or rather only to suggest in pictures of the finite, the infinite towards which our experience points. It is not a weakness peculiar to Theism that it can- not present its metaphysical teachings without symbolism, and that its propositions cannot cohere or be consistent with each other in an}- strictly literal sense. It is the very law which underlies all Metaphysics. The constructive medium of all Metaphysics, as of poetry, is a symbolical one. Christian teaching has more- over an immeasurable superiority over Materialism in two points : first, it openly and honestly confesses that the truth of its Meta- physics is symbolical : and next it finds a S5mibolical, not literal, representation of God and of his kingdom pictured forth in all that is highest and best upon earth. For uprightness and for sublimity, as well as for completeness, n2 180 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the Christian symbolism at least does not yield to the Metaphysics of Materialism with iis boasted appearance of exact science. I have no intention of becoming a propa- gandist and I would leave to everyone the freedom of his scepticism, and of that resignation which draws a line at the limitations of science and makes a thoroughgoing renunciation of all metaphysical suggestions beyond experience, the whole of experience, and nothing but experience. But for all that I cannot suppress the doubt as to whether the mass of the people will ever make this renunciation, and whether the Materialism which Social Democracy preaches, (which as Metaphysics and Religion stands on the level of the philosophic culture of artisans and commercial travellers) is in a position to drive out the Christian faith universally and by free persuasion from the minds and hearts of the people. So little prospect has this superstition of superseding Christianity, that it has already been overcome in the more highly cultivated section of Society, out of which its dark waters have trickled down into the lower strata — there also it will ultimately dry up and disappear ! Nothing is more clearly discernible SOCIAL SEMOCMACY. 181 than that the creed, or rather the no-creed, of the Social Democrats, can never either make the people happy or the Democratic Social State a more realizable form of Government. We have now regarded the collectivism of social democracy from all its sides. It is undoubtedly a logical system embracing the whole of social life, based on extreme freedom and equality of all individuals in industry, politics, family-life, education, art, science and religion. It is an all-round Radicalism carried to its highest point. It does not favour the higher organization of the various functions of private and social life, but would loosen the already existing framework of this organization, and throw all organization at the mercy of individual fancy, and the equal co-operation of all in all departments. All that is essentially human, and that marks us out as individuals and as societies from the animal societies and the primitive horde-communities of the savage, and raises us so infinitely far above either — namely the progressive elevation of both the individual type and the whole society, — cannot and will not be carried on by communism, but will rather be driven back into a superior 182 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF version of the primitive cosmopolitan inter- admixture of all the various organizations and functions both social and individual. The contempt for the nation as a whole, and its relegation to a mere means, the unlimited subjective freedom of caprice for each and every individual, the liberty to do everything according to the fancy of the moment, the casting away of all social bonds, limitations and associations, — ^this is the false freedom : whether practised by the capitalist who regards the State as merely the '' night watchman" of his property, or set before the people as recog- nised by social democracy, i.e., the proletariat, as the prospects of the future social state. Such individual freedom of caprice can never make anyone happy. Such freedom makes people only dissatisfied, doubters, gloomy hypercritics, idlers, buffoons, coquettes, breeders of social unrest and of despair, whether it shuns all work in unworthy dependence upon income, or will have the three hours labour-day (fortunately an impossibility) of the ideal social state. True freedom means the unhampered de- velopment of the individual in the service, direct or indirect, of the community, according SOCIAL DEMOCBACr. 183 fo his particular conditions, under the protection of the whole, and with the maintenance of a due proportion between his achievements for society, and the material and ideal benefits which accrue to him from society. This position must be maintained for the industrial proletariat, which serves the whole under the guidance of capital, and must be rigidly applied to capital, that it may regard itself as the accredited organ of society for the guidance and control of production. This is the true beneficent and universal freedom, which is the positive complement of capitalism. It is the same with equality. It could only be the madness of the extreme subjective fanaticism for equaUty which could maintain that each individual should be cut after tho same pattern, should labour, enjoy, rule and serve like every other. The whole tendency of the human race as seen in history has been to become more and more manifold. Inequality is grained in us from our birth by inheritance. As Aristotle maintained against the ancient communists, material goods might at last be equalized, but the difficulty, nay the impossibility would be to equalize the natures and the desires of all 184 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF separate individuals. This could never be done even by the extremest and most levelling individualism. For it is clearly provided (hat, even in the future, individuals will never become equal : since side by side vpith the great integrating processes of the grouping and uniting of nations goes as strong a differen- tiating tendency among different sections of the same people — official differences, insti- tutions, coi'porations, associations, unions, but especially differences in families, and in individuals. It is well for us that the world's progress in this direction cannot be retarded. 'J'rue equality consists in giving to everyone the right and the possibility of developing his individuality to its full measure. In this recognition and development of each lies the true and the only possible equality. This involves the equal right of all to develop their own individuality in that particular line of service for the community which suits them best. The accessibility of all posts to those who shew peculiar adaptabilities for each, the avoidance so far as is possible of exploitation on the part of employers and of systems of service which specially lend themselves to SOCIAL DUMOCMACi: 185 exploitation, — these conditions carried out with all and on behalf of all, make up the essence of true equality in so far as this is obtainable. Not that all should have everything (which would soon lead to no one's having anything), nor yet that all should rule and none should serve : this does not constitute an equality conducive to happiness. But that each should be able to develop in the service of the community the talents that are peculiar to him, and that he should be apportioned so much out of the general share as is necessary for this purpose. This does not preclude great differ- ences of property and income, nor even the contrast between those who have and those who have not a share in the instruments of production. It is only necessary that those who are pre- eminent even in the lowest grades may be able to find their way upwards, to the high levels of place and power. Collectivism, as I have already pointed out, fails to secure this, but it can, as I shall subsequently shew, be attained by positive Social Reform. The spirit of true equaKty finds its full satisfaction, in so far as the present stage of historical development allows of it, in the Positivism of Social Eeform. 186 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF You and I, dear Friend, will never be scornful of liberty and equality, but only of the extreme individualistic form of them, which beheads the great, and stretches the stature of the insignifi- cant — the freedom which will brook no kind of Social order, and the equality which cannot endure manifold varieties of individuality. Freedom and equality for all alike to exercise effectually their powers in and for the service of the community, at the most suitable place and in the most suitable calling ; this is a socially elevating and digiiifying principle which each epoch has to bring more and more into play according to the measure in which its historical development admits of its so doing. It contains the pledge of the highest welfare which is in the main possible for mankind. But how then was it possible that the communistic Social system, so palpably impracticable, insusceptible of positive develop- ment, and in this sense so futile, should have grown into such a frightful danger? Social Democracy is undoubtedly dangerous because of the fearful disturbance in which it might culminate, even though as an enduring social system in the future it is entirely without a SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 187 prospect. The course of our criticism has supplied us with the answer we seek. The evils of the unrestrained liberal productive sytem have called forth Social Democracy, and the politico -constitutional radicalism of universal suffrage has made it possible for certain highly- gifted and inspired leaders to gather together the proletariat into a party with a communistic programme. At the same time, let us not forget that as early as a hundred years ago, when first the false '' Freedom and Equality" made their blood-rod progress through the public ways, even such measure of the true freedom and equality as was then practically possible, was trodden under foot by the survivals of the feudal epoch in league with Absolutism. Neither let us forget how great were the evils of the subsequent liberal epoch, which the keen critics among the Democratic Collectivists have exposed. We shall then not be inclined to deny a certain timely merit to the extremes of individualism and criticism which produced the twin offspring Liberalism and Social Democracy. There was in them a portion of that spirit " which ever wills the bad but works the good," yet the 188 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF individuals who were possessed by it were not themselves necessarily either fools or knaves. They had a certain intellectual enlightment and among their number were noble-mindpd idealists. But my now completed criticism of Social ])emocracy has already given us some general indication of the only way in which the danger may be overcome. It is a positive social and constitutional policy, truly progressive and in accordance with the spirit of the time, as well as allied to all the forces which make for the preservation of Society. It is the policy of unresting incisive reform, the further develop- ment as occasion offers of the Society bequeathed to us by history, for the contentment of the now needy classes. To this positive method of combating Social Democracy my third and last letter will be devoted. I will only now make one remark in [anticipation of it : you cannot put new wine into old bottles. Forms of some kind are necessary for each successive historical epoch : but they must be such forms as are peculiarly suited to each. The corporations of the Middle Ages, for instance, are not calculated to satisfy SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 189 the positive needs of modern times. You are therefore not likely to hear me say much about guilds. There is now much greater scope for the fruitful exercise of individual freedom, hence for free societies, associations, and unions. Further, the compulsory associations which are to some extent necessary in modern times, must not tie up the whole life of the individual in strait and narrow bonds. Our age needs various organized association for various ends, co-extensive with the nation yet subservient to individual independence and self-help. On this I have laid stress nearly thirty years ago. Besides this the State and the local authorities have a far wider and more varied sphere of activity to fill, and public instruction a much more complicated task to carry out. Even in our forms of organization we must combat a reactionary Positivism, which can never be of any avail because it can never hold its own against criticism, whether liberal or Social- Democratic. I hope I have now convinced you of the fact that the Social Democratic Individualism of freedom and equality needs only to be carefully considered in order to appear, to any man not 190 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF swallowed up in party-fanaticism, a vain and desolate dream, which whoever dreams (and with full belief fancies it a sweet dream) shall assuredly with the first attempt at realisation have an awakening full of disillusion, remorse and terror. And with this we will close for to-day. LETTEE III. ON THE POSITIVE METHODS OF COMBATING SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. Stuttgart, January 2, 1885. You write and tell me, esteemed Friend, that in my second letter I Lave entirely wiped out my old debt of the year 1878. But this is not the case. With all due recognition of the grateful turn of your mind, I must maintain that I have done no more as yet than supply the critical supplement of the " Quintessence." I should be deeply grieved if my efforts contributed to exorcise the Red Spectre for the Conservatives before it had been banished for ever by the application of positive methods. 192 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Scientific criticism can only prove that the enduring realization of the Social Democratic " State of the Future " is entirely out of ihe question, it cannot disprove the ■possibility of a successful attempt being made to start an experiment in it through some violent upheaval of the proletariat. The criticism itself will not take effect on the proletariat, until they have had a taste of positive reform, and some experience of what it can accomplish. Until then we are faced by the fact of Social Democracy, and by the danger of the convulsions in which this movement would involve all the existing order should any great crisis give it the opportunity. We have yet to make it impossible as a revolutionary party ! Therefore I now address myself seriously to the positive supplement of the " Quintessence," as you yourself urged me to do before we entered upon this correspondence. In this task you need not fear for me a possible relapse into the '' Police State " on the "Scientific Police System" of the pre-liberal period. The whilom teachers of police-science and the doctrine of state-industry no doubt held up the banner of an active role for the State, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 103 even in the industrial system, but in their essence they meant the old-fashioned fiscalism, and the old-fashioned system of minute regula- tions. Police-science did not give birth to a single great idea of new positive construction, and its relics are not much more than useless waste-paper for the Social-policy of to-day. As a series of recipes suggested by the timidity of the police-state, it rather oppressed the working-man than gave him a better- position as against Capital. It could effect absolutely nothing as against Social Democracy. May it rest in peace ! The first and most important condition of a timely policy of Social-reform is this : that the State unflinchingly adopt a positive social policy. There must be an end of the anti-governmental, the truly nihilistic Laissez faire, laissez aller, of the thorough Liberals, just as much as of Democratic Collectivism. So far as Capitalistic enterprise, acting under the conditions imposed by the common welfare, cannot for special reasons give the result of high productivity and a passably good distribution of wealth— in the indissoluble interests of the Social State and of all its parts— 194 TUB IMPOSSIBILITY OF SO far and no further may we proceed without hesitation on the path of positive State regula- tion, and municipal and associated industry. Even in the case of those existing monopoHes in production, which are found to result in exploitation, the State or the corporation should rather first enter into competition with them than take over the monopoly at one stroke. State-production should only be introduced under the pressure of absolute necessity. The great tree of State or Municipal Collective Production will not grow as high as the heavens even in the lapse of centuries. On this subject I have already spoken with sufficient clearness. For Ihe rest, such regulation as is demanded by the age in general, and therefore also in the interests of the proletariat, should be at once applied to the capitalistic system of Pro- duction. Its outgrowths and excrescences must be pruned away. Let the arbitrary dictation and exploitation of capital be met and opposed by regulations for the protection of the wage- labourer and for securing him a proportionate share in the profits. Liberalism and Capitalism need not to be destroyed, hut only to he led hack into the service SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 193 of the common tveal. 'I'lie capitalistic regime has been productive of great but not incurable evils. Socialism lias exposed tliem to view. But it carries with it a bright ray of light which cannot be hid even under the bushel of Social Democratic Criticism. "Capital" assumes the guidance and direction of the whole business of production on behalf of the community generally. It guarantees on its own undivided responsibility, and by the very conditions of its own material existence, the wise and economical management of the produc- tion and circulation of commodities. It casts about for the cheapest methods of manufactur- ing goods of the greatest utility. It marshals, disciplines, and controls the vast armies of labour. It bears the losses which arise from revolutions in technique and from the sudden fall of prices induced by over-competition. It bears the brunt of loans, taxes, and outlay of all kinds by way of advance. It works out the enormously complicated processes of production, transfer, distribution, and profit-sharing of commodities by comparatively simple methods, and such as are least calculated to disturb the other social functions. For all this it receives o2 196 THB IMPOSSIBILITY OF the profits of capital, when it operates well and successfully in the service of the whole. And rightly so. This profit is generally speaking a premium, as actively efiicacious as it is well- deserved, on thrift and economy in the management of productive and distributive processes. The most horrible isolated outgrowths of the lawless and limitless domination of capital, and the unblushing egotism with which they are carried on, by no means constitute a reason for its abolition, and the substitution for it of an impossible productive Democracy. They do constitute a reason for regulating the use to be made of ownership in the means of production, and for establishing a seasonable equilibrium between Capitalism and such col- lective and associated industries as already exist. The question next arises : is it desirable to make a deeper attack upon the basis of private right which underlies the capitalist system ? To answer the above question, honoured friend, we must touch upon proposals which are put forward as the Conservative rivals to the purely public Collectivism which I attacked in the last letter, proposals, however, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 197 which are no less one-sided than it and consti- tute a no less impracticable form of Radicalism. But these proposals must nevertheless be passed in review. Let me here make the attempt critically to prepare your way upon this ground. The so-called Capitalistic Organization, on the lines of private enterprise, of the production of commodities and of the distribution of their product-value in the form of profit, wages and rent, is socially determined, it is true, by the institutions of public judicial right — the national police regulations as to labour and the national industrial policy. But its fundamental basis is nevertheless determined on the side of the ruling authorities, by legislation as to private right, by the system of civil justice, and by the com- pulsory enforcement of private claims. The fate of Labour and Capital is thus in a large measure determined by the form which is given to such institutions of private law as the tenures of property, real and personal, the regulations of hired service, of loans, exchange and purchase, deeds of gift, rights of inheritance, and finally the organization of civil justice in dealing with contentious or non-contentious matter, and in 198 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF using compulsion. A positive social policy must therefore not forget to enquire whether reform is not primarily needed and much progress possible on this fundamental basis, which Socialism for its part aims at destroying alto- gether. TIndoubtedly such progress is necessary. Yet we must here again at starting guard against one-sided views which might easily oppose to an extreme of public Collectivism, a Socialism of extreme private right, through police or judicial assessment made upon pro- perty still nominally private. This tendency to a Socialism of private right tempered by assess- ment must likewise be overcome before we can clearly and consciously find and retain the happy medium of positive social reform. Here we have to consider the universal system of productive associations, the universal industrial partner- ships with minimum wage, land-nationalization, but above and beyond all the great and carefully thought-out Social Reform of Rodbertus. Rodbertus, one of the greatest economic thinkers of the century, and a man of creative and statesman-like imagination, does not, as I have already said; advocate the abolition of SOCIAL DEMOCBACr. 199 private property in the means of production. Still less does lie wish for the unequal and unfair jDayment of the labourer, on the one side in proportion to the duration and severity of his labour, or on the other in proportion to the amount accomj^lished by each in a given time in his own sphere. But Eodbertus does wish that the labourers should have a proportionate share in the rising yield of national production, and moreover, that each labourer should draw this share in proportion to his own individual achievement. The result of this would be to preserve all the main-springs of individual industry, as well in the propertied as in the labouring classes. Only the interference which a Normalizing Socialism of judicial and police regulation would effect upon the capitalistic system of production, would be so considerable as greatly to change the existing order of things, and probably to introduce very speedily a Collectivism based on authority. Rodbertus, in so far as that he takes his stand on the basis of private property, attempts in a certain sense a solution of the social question on the lines of private right, and indeed, his is by far the most significant attempt of the kind hitherto made. 200 TiiJil IMPOSSIBILITY OF Into this very basis, however, of purely private right, he proposes, as I have already shewn in the previous letter, to introduce three powerful levers of universal social normalization, which we are to suppose would serve to most power- fully and continuously move the whole body of private popular industry, with reference to the manner of distribution of the result of national production, in a certain definite direction, which would be proportionably just to all classes alike. And against all this regulation and normalization which constitutes so serious an interference with private right, the many serious objections arise which you already know, and which, as your last letter assures me, you fully appreciate. The plan of social reform proposed by Rodbertus would, if fully carried out, degenerate into the forcible regula- tion of the whole sphere of private right, and in the extent of its normalizing interference does not fall far short of Social Democracy, without being altogether so bold a scheme as it. Its direct tendency would be towards the universal introduction of Authoritative Col- lectivism, for which, indeed, the only change which would be necess.iry would be to turn the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 201 highly-paid directors and managers, of employers and employing companies, into recognized in- dustrial officials of the community. Rodbertus Jias not in any case succeeded in proving that positive Social Policy, at any rate for some time to come, must go so far as he marks out the way. He does not appreciate the significance of public right, which must in all departments — in societies, corporations, municipalities, and the State — co-operate advantageously to make a free way for the independent and equally justifiable exercise of private right, and to place the necessary limitations on its abuse. He does not, in my opinion, sufficiently consider that even the judicial regulation of labour-income over against capital-income must not go so far as to endanger that measure of individual freedom, independence, acting capacity, and responsi- bility on the part of the emploj'er, which is essential in the interests of the whole commu- nity. In his gigantic apparatus for valuation and scale-fixing, he surely goes far beyond what is really required by Positive Social Kefovm in the way of regulating and restraining interfer- ence on the part of the community, with the play of individual effort. 202 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Beside the great ideas of Rodbertiis, other attempts to help matters from the starting point of private right appear insignificant and even Bungling. They move in a double direction, on the one hand by limitation of the rights of ownership of income-yielding property moveable and immoveable, and on the other by the removal, in so far as it may be practically effected, of the distinction between Capital and Wage-labour within the sphere of priA'ate industrial management — I will pause for a few moments only to consider these attempted solutions. Take first the limitation of the ownership of sources of income and especially immovable sources, in short, the possession of rentals. This limitation reaches its furthest point in the demand for the nationalization or State ownership of land ; that is, the abolition of all private property in rural and urban soil and land. The State, represented by the parish or municipality, takes over all the land as the common property of the whole people, to whom, it is said, nature originally gave it. The Community lets it o'ut in portions to individuals, so that all are in future only tenants, none are SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 203 owners of tlie soil : all rent then goes ultimately to the Slate in the form of tenants' dues, as the primary revenue of the nation considered as one great household. Called by its right name, this demand means the substitution of tenant-rights for rights of ownership, and its object is the confiscation of rent. Such a movement as this is intelligible in England or in California, where large estates stand in the way of peasant proprietorship and where nationalization would result, not in an enduring State-ownership of the soil, but in the practical rcconstitution of the farmer as a peasant proprietor. But though intelligible it is not necessarily desirable. The soil is, once for all, not the gift of nature to the nation, but a means of production slowly manufactured by the arts and labours of numberless generations of proprietors and tenants, and moreover, by far the most important portion of all the means of production which the nation has in its possession. The cultivation of the land by the owner himself is calculated to draw from the soil that higher net- product which it is the interest of the nation to ensure ; or, at any rate, the counter-claim for a mere imiversal tenant-system has not been 204 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF proved. Nationalization, in confiscating property in land, would confiscate also all that large sum of happiness in life which goes with the possession of such property, and this for what is still in many countries the most considerable portion of productive labour. For the sole possession of an inherited or purchased share in his native country will render a man happy, and, more than this, secure his independence. The exploitation of the agricultural wage-labour by the farmer who employs him would not be prevented, any more than the exploitation of the farmer hiniself by the action upon him of moveable capital in the form of mortgage and of commercial profit. All this would continue to hold unlimited sway, through the whole credit system in commercial traffic and in manufacture, and would eventually come to be, from lack of any sufficient counterpoise, an intolerable political tyranny. The nationaliza- tion of rent, bought up at a high price, in place of the land-tax and of other forms of taxation, would not even financially be of un- doubted advantage. The land-nationalization scheme cannot be justified in Grermany, even as a basis for agitation. The cause of our SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 205 suffering is not the private ownership of the land and soil but the weight. of unproductive debt with which it is charged, and it is one which can be remedied without any abolition of private ownership. I will deal hastily in passing with the two other attempts at a single solution, which are professedly purely on lines of private right. These are, first, the proposal to elevate all labourers into active partnerships with their employers by means of the so-called Co-operative System of Production, and secondly, the proposal by means of Profit-Sharing and the guarantee of a wage-minimum to constitute the labourers sleeping partners with the private entrepreneur. While it is the essential though impracticable endeavour of Collectivism to get rid of Capital and the disproportion of the natural factors concerned in the problem of a fair distribution of the proceeds, purely hy the action of public law {i.e., by nationalization), and to turn the capitalist into a labourer, we have on the other hand the opposite attempt, which is quite conceivable and indeed has long since been made, purely by the action of private right {i.e., by voluntary action) either to blend capital and 206 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF wage labour in one, or else to set up on an apparently equitable principle " Labour- Capital " (or Personal Capital) side by side with "Real-Capital" {i.e. Capital in the ordinary sense) and thus to remedy the evils of capitalist production without destroying it altogether. Both proposals have this in common that they suggest reform of private right in society through the abolition of or at least through radical changes in the relations of private service. Take first tlie establishment by law of a universal system of co-operative production. Co-operative Societies are quite admirable things if they are freely developed side by side with existing forms of business, public companies, sleeping partnerships. Joint Stock Companies, and so on. The fact that this development went on would be a complete proof that the people at large did not lose the advan- tages of the capitalistic system by the plan of admitting workman-capitalists, as in some sort partners in the management, to a direct interest in the productive result of labour. But the system of productive co-operative societies has as a matter of fact had but a very small develop- SOCIAL DmiOCJRACl'. 20T ment up till now and can probably never of itself become the sole universal form of industry. The reasons for tliis are not far to seek. To begin with there is a distinct need for naany varieties of business enterprise in our economic system. Next the workman has first everywhere to gain a share of land and of capital before he can join a productive society : even a system of State-credit would not secure him this. Thirdly, it is very difficult to secure a due share to those who do the best work, and to retain their services : only the average workers would have a heightened interest, the superior ones who desired to educate their minds would rather be oppressed and without interest in the result. In the fourth place, a very little experience of it has shewn that strife is easily stirred up over the proportion in which the respective outlays of Labour and Capital should be compensated in the division of the net- product. In the fifth place, there would not only be no guarantees against paralysis of trade, but the workman would no longer have, even when at work, that security which is worth so much to him, the certainty of drawing a fixed return from his labour, entirely free from risk : 208 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF io say nothing of the fact that tlie possibility of the exploitation of labour, either by labour or by capital, would not by any means be excluded either from within or from without. In dealing with other concerns, even if they also were co-operative societies, there is room for losses and for shortened measure, at the same timd that within the same society the better workmen might be exploited by the inferior, labour's share in the profits by capital's share in the profits, and vice versa. So it was an obvious suggestion to uni- versalise co-operative societies by compulsion or by " State-assistance " (Lassalle). The State is to furnish the Capital. But this universal remedy becomes still worse when we consider that by such a change as this in the constitution of public right society would be dealing itself a blow direct. Could the State constantly provide such a quantity of Capital ? No, or if it did, it would need to have a voice in determining the management of every business and every trade. The foundations of private management would give way to public enterprise. The mainspring of Capitalistic production would be broken. There would SOCIAL DEMOCRA CY. 209 be serious risk as regards the certainty required in guiding production, as to freedom of choice in labour and service, as to obtaining and retaining the best workers through a fair grad- ation of wage, and the maintenance of a fixed minimum wage. Nor should we be free from the possibility that the general proceeds of labour would be even less than under the present wage-system. There would be full scope for exphntation in the dealings of the various societies with each other, with those who owned the sources of income and with the consumers. There is, therefore, nothing to be hoped for, absolutely nothing, from compulsion, through the law affecting private relations, to an exclusive system of co-operative societies, with the blending of "Real Capital" and " Labour Capital." Even Lassalle dared only demand a portion of it. His correspondence with Rodbertus, published after his death, shesv^s how gladly he would have exchanged it for that reformer's plan of Social reform. It is just this insight into the impracticability of Lassalie's panaceaof Co-operative Societies, which has won and retained for Social-Democratic Collectivism the trust and belief of the proletariat. 210 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF The same fundamental idea, of reforming by means of private right in social matters, Jias taken shape in yet another set of formulae. Not the indivisible social fusion of 'capitalists and wage-labourers into members of co-operative societies, but their association with each other in a new social relation : this is the form it takes. The capitalist is still to be in the position of managing director, and is to bear the whole burden of risk, but the workman is to enter into a legally binding association with his employer, a relationship which will afford to the former both personal protection and also a share in the profits. The scheme as a whole comes to the same thing as the compulsory universal adoption of the well-known system of " industrial partnerships." The means thereto is to be an arbitrary conversion of labour-power into capital- value ("Laboiu"- Capital") with which real capital is in futm^e to share the net-value of the common product ; it is to be supposed, that an attempt would also be made to fix a minimum return for labour corresponding with the minimum amount that would serve for maintenance. This solution has latterly been maintained in some quarters to be the chief or SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 211 even the only feasible one of the social question "purely on the lines of private right." It is on all sides agreed that the industrial partnership is much to be desired as a freely chosen form of social relationship, but that it has as little chance of free universal acceptance as co-operation. It is not difficult to prove that even this solution "purely on the lines of private right," if carefully thought out and carried through by universal legal compulsion, can less even than Collectivism avail to impugn the efficiency of the capitalist industrial system, while it is at the same time less logical than it. If it is a vain attempt to turn capital, as being " labour in a congealed from," back into labour it is not less vain to attempt to turn labour into Capital. Not only as a proprietor, but as a worker, the capitalist member of a Society is quite different from the labouring member of a Society. Through his property he becomes the exclusively responsible commander of labour. This fundamental distinction cannot be shaken without striking a deadly blow at the efficiency of the capitalistic management of production. It is worth while to make sure of rendering this point quite clear. p2 212 THE IMPOSSIBILITX OF What is the obvious aim of this conversion of the wage-labourer into a self-qualified compeer of the entrepreneur ? It is meant to serve a threefold purpose, as we shall see if we consider it more closely; first, it is to afford an individual guarantee against the evils of harsh treatment, over-work, undeserved dismissal, and so on — next it is to prevent the lowering of the returns of labour below the level of subsistence — thirdly, it is to secure for the worker some share in the profits of the entre- preneur. The first object is to be obtained by the legislative fixing of a maximum labour- time, by laying down the allowable grounds of dismissal, by giving the worker a claim to a minimum period of occupation : the second by the duty of the employer to secure, in advance, at least enough to ensure a living for the labourer : the third by giving the worker a share in the profits on the net produce according to some kind of fixed scale of division. How- ever much the proposals vary in detail they have in so far as they are complete this necessarily threefold aim. Turther, thev all agree negatively that no good would be done by letting the Capitalist retain unlimited SOCIAL DEMOCJIACY. 213 freedom in concluding and arranging tlie con- ditions of social partnership, that it is of no use leaving him free to choose according to his own free will whether he would have a contract of service or an industrial partnership. Oxit of his partnership-relations there must grow for the worker a recognised positive right to fair personal treatment, to a share in the profits, and to the advance of his necessary cost of main- tenance, a right which must be made universally enforceable at law: otherwise everything would be as in the old days, the possibility of the lion's share would still remain, by whatever name it might be called, and the wage-labourer would receive as much less in wages — i.e., in advance — as he could subsequently receive more in his share of the " net product." What now do the supporters of the private rights reform in question think as to how it is to be practically carried out? They either think very differently, or they do not think at all, or they think only vaguely and confusedly. Let us now endeavour to state the proposal in its most practical form— in obedience to our method of always stating the case in its most conceivable shape. 214 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF It may be stated somewhat as follows: — The sum necessary for maintenance would be periodically laid down by the special industrial assessment-bodies, in classified tariffs according to places and calling. For if the regulation of this amount were to be left to the decision of civil judges in cases of litigation guided by the discretion of experts, capitalistic production would become loaded with an intolerable amount of law business and at the mercy of the arbitrary valuations of experts, its energy would be paralysed by uncertainty, by the impossibility of reckoning beforehand, by in- discretion, and want of discipline. Eut how should these valuation organs be constituted ? Should they consist of officials nominated by the State or the Municipality ? Should they be associated bodies formed under compulsion ? As to this we find no clearly deiined ideas. Let us take what it seems probable would be the best solution : that within the ranks of each department of trade a union should be foi-med of a certain number of representatives from the two classes of society (so many capitalists and so many workers), and that in cases where they could not come to SOCIAL DEMOCUAGY. 215 an agreement the decision should be referred to a Court of Arbitration which should be con- stituted as simply and as independently as possible and without partisanship, out of the central organs of the national trades' or j)rofes- sional societies and the chief magistrates of the State and of the Municipality. The civil magis- trates, or the specially impanelled tribunals, would have to decide in disputed cases according to the decrees by which these organs periodically laid J down the normal minimum of advance- money, and the normal rate of profit-sharing, not excluding the possibility of agreements being entered into voluntarily on higher terms in arranging the deeds of partnership. On what principle, then, would the normal amount necessary for maintenance be laid down ? Evidently it could be classified only according to what was actually and absolutely necessary for each one, including enough to cover taxation, the premiums of compulsory insurance, and so on : to go beyond this would be to engender strife without end. It would not be impossible to have a classified tariff in which every deed of partnership would have to assign his rank to each separate worker. 216 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Even thus it is very evident that it would be no light or easy matter to lay down a fair average. But let this pass. Still more would it be a difficult matter to ascertain the rate of profit and a fair per- centage of profit-sharing. From the total result of production would have to be deducted the whole productive out- lay including the sinking of the fixed Capital, the value of material which is wasted after being manufactured, and finally the amount of the advance made to labour. Are we to suppose that the capital of the company would have to pay interest to outsiders? The re- mainder of the produce after all this had been deducted would be the portion to be divided. In what proportion would this division be made ? The existing proposals assign as standards the actual current rates of interest, as well as the established rate of " wages " agreed upon in the contracts made with societies. We should prefer to avoid this. For this would leave it quite open to "Money-capital" to carry on at its will its "oppressive warfare" against " Labour-Capital," and against its own rivals in Money-Capital on the basis of competing SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 217 rates of interest, rents, and wage-advances. The off-repeated advice of these and other proposals that the wage-relation should diaw itself by the hair of its own head out of its present slough of despond savours all too much of Munchausen. Let us rather, therefore, assume — as does Weiss — that the ascertained average cost of upbringing, in fact, the labourer's costs — with graduations of labour-power according to age, sex, and conditions — would form the best basis for the division. According to the proportion which the whole value of Laboui'-Capital, so determined, bore to the whole value of Money-Capital, which would also from time to time be subject to valuation, the net produce would then be divided between the Capital and the Labour of Society. Further, we ask, how would it be divided among the labourers themselves ? Perhaps in proportion to their wages, if wages it can be called? As this would prove very arbitrary and oppressive if the employer could regulate the wages-advance without consulting the whole body of labourers, while to consult them would break the back-bone of Capitalistic management and authority, we will assume 218 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF rather that the division is to be made in pro- portion to the position assigned to each kind of labour in the drawing-up of the tariff of his training expenses. Your penetration, dear Friend, will readily detect from the foregoing how much is true and how much fallacious in these three variously- directed proposals. As for the first we are fully justified in seeking to secure for the labourer that immunity from bad treatment, over work, and undeserved dismissal, which is due to every human being. Let private right do all that bj' its peculiar judicial methods it can do in this direction, and let it argue always from the point of view that the labourer is not to be regarded in the same light as a commodity or a machine, the ownership of which is alienated by the contract of service, but as having the full worth of a human being, who enters into a contract with the Capitalist for the common work of production. Only there is no reason why it should not be made an aim of public policy that the workmen themselves by their unions and associations, both voluntary and com- pulsory, and this State and Municipality by SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 219 their police, slaould assist in maintaining Eor labour the securit}^ of this position. If this task, which might be accomplished far more simply by means of workmen's unions and associations and the state or municipal police, were to be left to be performed only by the power of civil action, it would be necessary to have new definitions of private right which would be exceedingly difficult to formulate and the execution of which would seriously endanger the needful authority, security, and business-satisfaction of the entrepreneur. The limitation of the power of dismissal is a doubtful gain ; the universal minimum of service-time which could be, if necessary, enforced by law would be a burden to the employer of labour which would be hard to justify, especially as it would most deeply affect him just at the very times when he had been forced by a crisis into a partial suspension of business : the limitation is admis- sible in the relations of domestic service, but not in manufacture or labour which depends upon the seasons. I shall hope to shew, that the same end can be better attained by means of free rights of combination. We ought to take serious warning from the experience which has 220 THB IMPOSSIBILITY OF been gained of protection " on the lines of private right " in the working of the Employers' Liability Acts(i) copied from English legis- lation. The legal presumption of the Employers' liability in cases of accident was a source of in\ justice to the employer when he was entirely free from blame; yet it was hard on the unfortunate labourer to contest in a court of law his right to free compensation from the employer and from the insurance agencies. It ended in a substitution of public for private compensation, the shifting of the risk incident to the branch of pro- duction on to the whole branch of production by means of a system of compulsory insurance embodied in public law. Let us now consider the second positive claim which would necessarily be made universally recoverable at law by the working member of the Society — the secure and full payment in advance of the amount necessary for maintenance. I say, necessarily. For if it were not made recoverable at law, the then position of the workman instead of being better and more (') "Die Haftplichtgesetzen." I do not know from what legal process they take their name. — Ed. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 221 secure, would be substantially worse than at present. The wage-contract does at least secure the wage : if the employer cannot recoup himself in the product-value for the amount he has advanced in wages, the loss is his, and his only. But in associations of Labour and Capital on the contrary, it would be quite possible, if it were not statutorily provided against, for the wage-advance together with the profit-share to fall in the last resort below the minimum of the starvation wage according to the supposed "iron" law, since in such a case the workman would share the losses. The replacement of hired service by partnership woidd thus be no improvement, but rather an aggravation of the lot of labour, so long as at least the advance of the amount necessary for maintenance were not rendered compulsory. I am not now concerned to den}' that a tariff of individual needs according to place and calling might be periodically drawn up: but this would not be, properly speaking, an operation of civil law, even were it to be carried out entirely by judicial experts, some- what after the fashion of the Irish Land 222 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Commission for the settlement of rents. ' The arrangement of the tariff could assuredly not be appropriately managed unless it were conducted by the judicial co-operation of trade-representatives with the officials of the State and the Municipality. But free agreement as to wage-tariffs, sliding scales, and so on, between committees of representatives from both sides, is beginning to make it possible to dispense with the imposition of a normal scale by public law. Finally it is important that we should not lose sight of the dangers this would create for the Capitalist management of Production. Every local blunder made in drawing up the tariff would have a most mischievous effect in expelling or attracting both Capital and Labour, and thus creating uncontrollable un- certainty. No workman who contributes less work than will cover his needs could find a place; production would have to be aban- doned sooner than needful and where other- wise a small contribution to industry would be possible, there in this system industry would cease altogether. Under the most favourable conditions not more than the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 223 minimum for existence could be secured for the "working time and this would include only the most absolute necessaries of existence. Being thus limited these proposals provoke the question -whether they are worth the risks they involve ! Without giving an uncon- ditional negative in answer to this question, I think I may say that the legislation of personal rights will take much thought before it places this necessary income from the "Association of Labour and Capital" universally in place of the fixed wage of hired service, all the more since as it is the wage by no means always coincides with the necessary require- ments of the worker. The third positive and practical advantage which the suggested reform of private right is to bring the workman, is, we are told, universal participation in the profits. This, it it true, sounds very alluring, but if it is ever con- ceivably practicable, it certainly could not be universally secured by legislation. The classification of each worker according to his potential " value as labour-capital " and the settlement of the values of all other kinds of Capital would necessitate, if we are not to 224 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF leave the steady progress of industrial activity at the mercy of the caprices of judicial experts, a system of periodic valuations which could not possibly be carried out without the co operation of those agents of common law who are specially skilled in valuation and appraisement : to say nothing of the fact that its introduction would involve the levying of a high protective tarifE as against foreign countries, and therefore the assistance of general law. These persons, as I think, labour under a tremendous delusion who believe that the industrial returns of labour would be well- regulated if a minimum share of the profits fell to the working classes. The Capitalist system of production imperatively demands that the remuneration of labour should be kept in proportion to the product- value created by individual labour. Either this. privilege would still be granted to the employer — in which case the result would be that the majority of the workers would be in a perennial state of dis- satisfaction through receiving little or no additional payment— or he would be compelled to consult the whole body of labourers before deciding on^the promotion of any one — which SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 225 would result in the best workers not being secure of their merited share of- the profits. On the whole, therefore, this solution by reform of private right, burdened moreover as it would necessarily be with a complicated machinery for valuation, would mean a seriously retrograde step, not only for the high social interests involved in the economical management of the entire process of production, but also for the working classes themselves. The fixed wage regulated by bargaining between the two sides organized, in their classes undoubtedly assures to the individual and to the community far greater advantages than the establishment of a universal private right to such and such a minimum, so long at least as no way can be found of supplementing this by a system of premiums on the best class of labour, superior to the capitalistic classification of the varying productive powers of tlie workmen. It seems probable, therefore, that the present system of hired service will continue to hold its own side by side with the new free experiments in co-operative societies and industrial partner- ships. The most pressing and important task of positive Social Reform is not the abolition of 226 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the hired-service system, but the further development oi private rights of association for purposes of credit, or manufacture and sale of commodities, the development of public rights of association for mutual assurance against accidents or loss of employment, and finally the establishment and progress of organized service and wage-bargaining between representatives of both sides. Neither in point of private nor of public right has the social legisla- tion of our time entirely failed in this duty. In this direction, through the possibility of rising to the management of such associations lies the path to the highest satisfaction of the ambition of the more successful workers. The security and independence of the Capitalistic guidance of Production could not be sacrificed to this ambition without endangering the important social interests which are bound up with the Capitalistic processes of production and revenue. We have now, I think, achieved the purpose of our investigations into the so-called attempt at a solution " purely on lines of private right." Later on, we may hope that some of their details will range themselves more clearly and comprehensively within our field of vision. In SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. Ill the meantime, our main concern has been to guard ourselves from falling into a second extreme in the treatment of Social Policy by- making it clear at the outset that even private right throughout its whole extent stands in need of improvement, but that being as it is the very foundation - stone of the whole Capitalistic order of Society it needs to be approached with the greatest caution, that here all radical changes and mere negative limitations of custom are entirely mischievous, and that it is a mistake to suppose that any such are required for the success of social reform. Herein I have secured the purpose of these preliminary observations. We are ensured on the one hand against intoxicating hopes of the magic power of the panacea, which deals ex- clusively with private right, and on the other hand, against similar hopes based on the reconsti- tution of industry by means of purely publi c right. A very dear and gifted friend of mine often says to me : " Humanity is like a drunken farmer, who falls over on the left side if he has been hoisted on to his horse from the right, and on the right side if he is mounted from the left." We have a2 228 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OV now seen ihe truth of this comparison exemplified, in the latest radical developments of Social Policy. Mounting from the left side in the name of absolute freedom and equality, humanity falls over on the right into the extreme of public and police regulations, and again, mounting the high horse on the right in the name of the " Solution on the lines of private right," it falls over to the left into the extreme judicial normalizing Socialism of private right, and from time to time the " extremes meet." Truth lies in the happy medium. Reforms both of public and private right all along the line, and reforms not of right only, are necessary in order to bring true freedom, equality, and brotherhood for all into play through and in society. The inclusion of Labour within the domain of Capital, no less than the inclusion of Capital within the domain of Labour, are both theoretically and practically impossible attempts, and all mad radical systems built upon these lead to open or concealed Socialistic programmes, to the extreme of social interference for the sake of extreme Individualism, and not to the Positivism of practical reform. SOCIAL DEMOCMACY. 229 It is to the entire contents of this Positivism of practical reform, dear Friend, that I now address myself, in so far as it is realizable in the present and near future, with your kind permission and in the hope that you will once more excuse my often necessarily scanty treatment of details. We have here to deal with three sets of considerations, which must be kept entirely distinct from one another. The first set includes the special organization among them- selves of both employers and employed, for the adjustment of their competing interests. The seccmd embraces the whole range of those especial tasks which the State on the side of its social policy has to fulfil within the national industry, in its executive, administrative, and legislative capacities. The third deals with all those duties which a positive Social Policy for the State demands from it, partly in the way of exerting its influence upon the other social forces that stand outside the boundaries of the State, and partly by a progressive and timely development of its own internal organization. As to the first set, the furtherance of special organizations of employers and employed 230 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF among themselves for the adjustment of their conflicting interests, I have dealt with it very conclusively elsewhere (') It would be a great mistake to suppose that the government, central or local, can by itself achieve tlie work of positive Social reform. The co-operation of all, in all departments, whether as private individuals or linked together in clubs or associations, is absolutely indispensable to it. Above all nmst it have for the work the co-operation of employer and employed. A complete system of representative unions of both classes affords the most important staying point of positive Social reform, and one with which the political system can by no means dispense. The State itself can do but little to secure this. It can only facilitate it by the intro- duction of "Labourers' Committees" throughout its own public works, and still more by leaving free play to the movements of the representative trade-unions of both classes in this direction. In essentials this organization of both classes, (') "How to combat Social Democracy without Exceptional Legislation." Tubingen, Laupp, 1890. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 231 employers and employed, must be completed by themselves, and this in its threefold form of trades-unions, unions of industrial districts (shires or counties) and imperial or national unions, by means of Committees of Arbitra- tion charged to arrive at a fair issue of the conflict as to conditions of labour, and to preserve the interests common to all. In England, this movement has already in a great measure taken place, by way of joint com- mittees for districts or for local branches. The pressure of interests on both sides must, before long, set this movement into action in Germany. Such lioards of Conciliation may ultimately become tlie pillars of social peace bctvi^een the two Classes. On the one hand the true Democracy, which is not anti-social in its claims, would hnd full satisfaction : the wage- earning classes as such would negotiate on equal terms with their employers, would be quite as able as they to extort a fair share in the net product, would exert an influence on political legislation, would even afford a powerful support to any Social Policy founded on lines which have been marked out by history as both 232 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF possible and progressive : all this in fact would imply for the whole labouring class practical self-government in the social demain, but emphatically not Democratic Socialism. On the other side, from the point of view of Capital, there would be a not less considerable gain to the cause of scjcial peace ; for in pro- portion as on the one hand the bodies of labourers in all departments of national industry, besides the great masses of unskilled labour ready to be turned to any purpose, banded themselves together into organized forces, so on the other would Capital stand up together in groups to offer a reasonable resistance to exaggerated demands, while if it also carefully refrained from anything like insult or arrogance it might easily lead the labouring class to be more considerate of its claims by giving them a clear statement of those conditions which make a fair settlement of wages an imperative necessity for any business. By such means as this, Capital as an organized whole would set itself in harmony with the steady progress of Production and of the wage-movement through the processes of concentration and extension of business concerns, and would be SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 233 able with the aid of the Workmen's Committees to gain the mastery over the disturbing elements on its own side, the " false brethren " of Capital who by really exploiting the labourers falsify competition and make irremediable havoc of the work of reconciliation. Yet the question may arise whether such a system of trade- organization, marshalling all the forces on both sides to carry on the conflict as to reciprocal terms on an equal footing, both sides being pledged in advance to conduct it with fairness and good sense, would ultimately remain in this stage, or whether it would carry us altogether out beyond the boundaries of the Capitalistic organization. I will not urge in reply to this, that the objection is nothing to the point, since the movement is one which cannot in any case be hindered and the further development of which even if it should be such as I have indicated could only take place step by step, by lawful methods, and without in any way despoiling the Capitalists. I rather choose to dwell upon two quite different points. This development at any rate cannot take place all at once, and it is highly probable that it will never take place 234 THm IMPOSSIBILITY OF universally, even in the sphere of industry, sriU less in that of agriculture. Moreover, if it did take place it would by no means lead to Social- istic Radicalism, but rather to an authoritative structure naturally worked out by the course of history, proceeding slowly and by lawful process from the already existing conditions, a more complete and therefore more desirable social order, alike on the side of economics, politics, and ciiltui^e. It is not probable, as I say, that the completed organization of both classes in the industrial conflict would ultimately lead to a reorganization of public right, still less to a purely State- organized and democratic organization. In a recent number of the " Zeitschrift fiir die gesammte Staatswissenschaft," it was very clearly pointed out with what disadvantages and dangers this formation would threaten us even in the mining industry, which is the very branch of production whose nationaliza- tion is already advocated by some thinkers. The most searching examination into the facts of to-day fails to'bring to light anything which must necessarily, even in a far distant future, involve the whole^of industry, including the SOCIAL DEMOCRACT. 235 present innumerable petty industries, in a State-organized collective management, or even in a system of co-operative production, assisted and supervised by the State, which last would still have a capitalistic character by virtue of its many ownerships, even though they were many collective ownerships. Most suggestive of all are the development of actual joint-stock monopolies under official administration, and the checks on national and international competition imposed by Rings, Cartels, Trusts, and so on : for the first have already some of the features of public manage- ment, and, with the loss of competition, the people lose their surest guarantee of all the advantages which, as we have already seen, are bound up with the capitalistic leadership of national production. This development may proceed rapidly or slowly, but when it conies, the new social formation will appear as a conse- quence of the Capital -monopoly, not as the result of the amalgamation of employers and employed in representative joint committees. I'he above-mentioned marshalling of both classes for the struggle as to terms would in itself rather weaken the desire for universal collec- 236 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF tive management. For it renders the position of Capital stronger and more agreeable, the relations of employers and employed in reference to the division of the product more just, the bodies of labourers more manageable, and even, by the help of labour-representatives, a sound form of Democracy more practicable both in industrial and in political matters. It is there- fore not probable than even a portion of industry should ultimately gradually strip off (still less all at once) the capitalistic manage- ment of the process of production — as the stag ' strips off his antlers. But even if this should be, no violence or revolutionary methods would be used to bring it about, since well disciplined productive bodies of a high level of industrial capacity would be already in existence, which had sprung up and gradually ripened under the fostering care of the State, but for the most part outside the actual boundaries of the State. Thus we do not discern any kind of Radical Socialism — least of all Communism — to be the probable ultimate result of the great movements we have been considering in the present and near future. What they will bring, these SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 23T industrial movements among employers and employed, is more social peace and less in- clination for revolution. And therefore it is that the State may calmly look on at their development ! The new time which has dawned for labour- organization is no less unmistakably at hand for the class of the entrepreneur. It is especially on this side that we may expect startling developments in the near future. At the present moment we have most cause to regret not that Capital is being forced to assume industrially and politically a complete party-organization as opposed to labour, but rather that Capital enters upon the new epoch in a state of organization far inferior to that of the Proletariat, And for this we must blame, if not entirely, yet in a large measure, the false security into which it has allowed itself to be lulled by the action of exceptional legislation. The breach which is caused by the expiration of these laws, though serious, will be ultimately beneficial, for it will compel Capital to work out for itself a complete party-organization both economic and political. The breach must be made : the completed solidarity of the World 238 , THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF of Labour, both national and international, will break up the force of the most indomitable inertia and compel even the employers to set to work upon the above-mentioned process of unification. The tendency to economic coherence on the part of Capital is already perceptible oa the field of industry ; each recurrent period of strikes on a large scale will strengthen and increase the growth of this tendency. It is probable that employers will enter upon an international extension of their national trade and party organization, such as has already been initiated by the International Labcmr- Party. But, it will be said, will not this very fact that both classes rise to be great party-powers, both national and international, both economic and political, and as such confront each other, increase to a fearful extent the perils which threaten Society ? I cannot say I share this apprehension. Each class is thrown back upon the other ; neither can exist without the other. For this reason either will be all the less ready to overpower and exploit the other, they will the more readily come to a moderate and just agreement with each other concerning SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 239 the conditions of labour, be the more anxious to avoid those disturbances of production which are so harmful to both sides, will prefer peaceable development to revolutionary move- ments, whether in advance or retrograde, and will prove the more receptive to the influence which the State is called upon to exert over both, the more accessible to a positive Social Policy. Not otherwise can we hope to overcome class- antagonisms by means of peaceful reform, on the basis of the already existing and not yet obsolete stage of Social development. We have nothing to fear from the extension of the representative system on both sides to international contact and alliances. The several national unions of either class would exert a moderating influence over each other, at the same time that they would press forward with equal eagerness in all nations to all prac- tical and attainable goals. They will be able actually to accomplish what the State-autho- rities of any nation cannot by themselves accomplish, and in any case could only accom- plish slowly and with difficulty : they may, in i'act, become the practical organs of an international Social Policy, without disturbing 240 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF •the equilibrium of international competition, and may assist the introduction, settlement, and control of uniform international legislation and administration, for the purpose of the protection and insurance of labour. With reference to protection of labour, you may see this idea worked out in the ' ' Zeitschrif t f iir Staatsvvissenschaft," shewing in the instance of the Labour Conference at Berlin, that even the Emperor and the Pope cannot arrive at or guarantee a practically efficient system of protective rights for labour equally for all nations without the co-operation alike of employers and employed. And what is true of the interna- tional protection of labour is also true, and practically in a far more significant degree, of a uniform system of international Labour in- surance, since the latter would involve the imposition of national burdens likely far more seriously to disturb the equilibrium of compe- tition as towards nations where labour insurance was unknown than any of the burdens imposed by protective labour legislation — only excepting the maximum labour day — could ever do. International alliances in the sphere of social and industrial reform are in themselves by no SOCIAL SEMOCRACY. 241 means an unhealthy or dangerous symptom. They answer to the fact that national industry is more and more blossoming into world in- dustry and that its parts are dependent upon each ottier, that they are mutually conditioned by the results of competition one with another. On this supposition rests the justification of uniform international protective rights for labour, hence the justification of the attempt made by the Conference of Berlin, while at the same time is justified the influence which is exerted upon the general international policy, both social and industrial, by all the national unions of labourers and employers. Both kinds of unions would be particularly suited to become the stepping-stones to a uniform international code of labour rights. They would possess the power to compel its intro- duction everywhere by moral force alone, and to watch over its equitable administration, while central international executive organs — although as discreet as a Commission or Conference at Berne— would not be readily, if at all, got together in working order. In the interests therefore of a positive social and constitutional policy, unions of the kind 242 TBE IMPOSSIBILITY OF above designated are in my opinion devoutly to be desired. The latter affords the former guarantees against stagnation as well as against extravagance and excess. If both classes, Capital and Labour, are sooner or later to make use of their completed organization successfully to realize the old formula " About us nothing without us " [de nobis ne sine nobis) as opposed to unpractical legislation and administration of social reform, and to impose by a surprising simplicity and abstinence from interference on the task of the bureaucracy even in the community dominated by a positive social policy, it follows that for no factor in social life can it appear a more desirable, development than for the "Social Monarchy." We come now, dear Friend, to the second main division of a positive social policy, which includes all the detailed tasks of government administration and legislation in the industrial sphere. Into this division fall on the one side the questions which effectthe protection of labour, and on the other the question of influencing the fair remuneration, and the actual manage- ment of all productive labour, in view of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 243 the division of the national revenue into wages, profits, and rents. You have probably not yet forgotten the abuse which I had to face twenty years ago, after the appearance of my book on " Capitalism and Socialism," owing to my emphatic demand for the protection of labour (') including the maximum labour-day, or as it was then called, the normal labour-day. But this state of affairs changed rapidly. As early as 1885 Austria conceded a very comprehensive protection to labour, and a maximum working day of 11 hours in factories. In March, 1890, Germany, with the express approval of the Pope, initiated an International Conference on the Protection of Labour, which has already begun to take effect everywhere. In the year 1891, a full and prudent regulation of the protection of labour is in process in German trade organization, thanks to the impulse given by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The State itself submits thereto in its dockyards, arsenals, factories, mines, and workshops. My old demand that "some of the most urgent deliberations of our (' ) Cf . my detailed work " On the Theory and Policy of the Protection of Laboui-," Tiibingen Zeitschrift, 1890, IV, and 1891, 1 2i4 TRE IMPOSSIBILITY OF talkative Parliament should each year be devoted to this point" has been entirely- conceded. It is true there are still many in Germany who think that this is too much of a good things and that the burden of it will become intolerable. But since Switzerland and Austria recently, and England long before, have without harm or damage gone at least as far as Germany now proposes to go, this view is not supported by experience. Compared with the burdens of compulsory Ijabour-insurance, the burdens of Labour-protection are but slight, and as they have been entered upon equally and almost sinmltaneously in all countries, it is surely evident that they are not by any means intolerable. Moreover, there is a limit to be assigned, beyond which Labour-protection must not go. And here you will specially bear in >mind that what we to-day call protection of labour is only a remarkable extension of a far wider and in part very ancient form of the same develop- ment. The labouring class already protects itself by its clubs and its trades unions. Humanitarian efforts of all kinds, both on the SOCIAL DE3I0CBACV. 2i5 part of private persons and of societies, are made •on its behalf. The Church and public morality have long afforded it a very considerable amount of protection : the same with the State itself in the discharge of its police and judicial functions. All these protective agencies do, as a matter of fact, exert a wider influence than the latest so-called Protection of Labour, which at any rate up till now has worked mainly on industrial labour, and has acted, and will probably always act, in a very unequal degree upon different classes of labourers and upon different branches of industry. Moreover the new Protection of Labour is only directed against the dangers to which it is exposed in the direct service-relations with specified employers. Other branches of necessary Social Policy, as for instance labour-insurance, do not come within its sphere. Only in so far as the old protective methods are not sufficient to cope -with the modern large industry does the labour- protection properly so called enter, that is, the direct intervention of the State partly in the .persons of the regular officials, partly, and in ^n ever-increasing measure, by specially consti- tuted officials, such as factory-inspectors and 246 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF industrial courts of arbitration. From this you will see that in protection of labour, the State is at last actually pursuing a positive Social Policy, but strictly within the limits of its functions, and by way of support to all other existing and equally qualified protective agencies. There is no question of Socialism in such a method of labour-protection as this. Long may it continue to move, as a branch of positive Social Policy, in the direction in which its actual efforts are tending to-day. Long may it continue to be " a special protection by special provisions of private, punitive, and administra- tive law, partly through the regular organs, administrative, judicial, and representative, partly, and mainly, by extra authoritiet-, exerted over those labourers who stand in especial need of protection against certain evils arising out of their service-relations with their employers."(') These particular evils call for but a few definitely limited protective measures ; such as Prohibitive Legislation, and limitations with reference to Child Labour and Female Labour : limitations of labour-time, preventive of ex- . — _ ■ — -»• (') The Author in Tubingen ZHitschrift, 1890, IV. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 247 cessive and uninterrupted labour, the maximum labour-day, securing to the labourer his night's rest, meal times, Sundays and holidays : per- sonal protection from the risks and the special wear and tear of special trades : the prevention of exploitation in private dealing ; and lastly, the protection of contracts. The protection of labour is confined to these aims, and even in these it touches each class of labourer only in so far as his case renders the supreme interven- tion of the State necessary; it does not interfere equally throughout the whole world of Labour. We are not speaking of excessive State inter- ference, nor should this ever be tolerated. The general protection of labour should be mainly exerted by the labouring class itself, by civil and religious morality and by common law, private, punitive and administrative. You will, I think, agree with me now, that the modern protection of labour means a really positive social policy, but by no means an over-stepping of the natural boundaries of the State. But is this equally true of the Maximum Labour Day ? I must deal carefully with this question, since in 1889 the "proletariat" in Paris proclaimed the universal Eight Hours ^*® THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Day, and the Ist of May as the festival of the Eight Hours movement. This question will call for a different answer, according to the aspect in which the Maximum Labour Day is presented in the different programmes. You must, therefore, have patience with me while I detail, as concisely and as clearly as may be, the various differences in question. Consider first the material difference between the Labour Day fixed by agreement and custom, and the Labour Day fixed by legislation. The first has already been in existence for some time. But the latter comes under the head of specially urgent labour protection only in pro- portion to the actual need, and especially in the case of youthful workers and women. The legal Maximum Labour Day, such as has long since been fixed, in England at from 56 to 60 hours per week for women and children in factories or workshops, and in Austria and Switzerland has more recently been ventured at 1 1 hours daily for men, such as Germany proposes to fix at 11 hours everywhere for women — and has long ago fixed at from 6 to 10 for young people — this legislative labour-time has, and will have SOCIAL BEMOCRACT. 249 purely the significance of a labour protection policy even if it should be extended to all adults in factories, workshops and home industries. But the legislative universal Eight Hours Day claimed by the proletariat at the Paris Congress of 1889 has an altogether different significance, and it is this which I must here, at your request, treat at greater length. The Eight Hours Day of the Paris Congress professes, it is true, to be a protection against overwork, and to afford a possibility of leading lives worthy of the name human, but its centre cf gravity for all that is a policy concerning the wage question. Not only the guarantee of at least eight hours rest daily, and of another eight hours for recreation, social intercourse, self-cul- ture, amusement, refreshment; these are not the only objects held in view. The Eight Hours Day, it is said, will also be the means of securing a higher hourly wage for this same eight hours day, and of course the employment of more labourers in full day shifts, in consequence of the lessening of each labourer's tender of work. In order to judge fairly of the Eight Hours Day we must first lay aside all prejudices and misunderstandings. I may remark, therefore* 250 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF that a hygienic labour day for specially arduous forms of labour is quite admissible, even should it be fixed at less than eight hours : and further, that the maximum labour A.Q.Y fixed by agreement could raise no objections, were it even eight hours, or by degrees less, and were it even to become general. 1 think it not at all impos- sible that separate nations, and even perhaps some day all nations, should arrive at such a pitch of spirit and industry throughout the masses of its labourers as that the Eight Hours Day should almost everywhere be as econo- mically justified and admissible as it is already to-day in certain special branches of labour. But it is with the universal compulsory Eight Hours Day that I am now dealing, not with any merely hygienic or other eight hours day : with one that is to be definitely fixed and solemnly enforced on, say, January 1st 1S98, or some other date within measurable distance of our own day. Some of the objections to this Eight Hours Day which have come to the front seem to me to carry little or no weight. The maximum Labour Day fixed for in- dustrial labour is, say some, only a half SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 251 measure. To make the maximum Labour Day a real thing, we should need to enforce it for agriculture and for public offices as well. It is probable that Social Democracy will be very ready with further proposals to obviate this difficulty ! Neither do we entirely dispose of the Eight Hours Day by declaring that we should never find whole nations, or even their whole labouring classes, coming to an agreement on the matter. True, this is possible, even probable, but it still remains to be proved what international labour-agitation may accomplish in an age of universal suffrage and world-congresses, especially in England, where the process of democratization has gone furthest, and whose example would assuredly be followed in any reasonable attempt. And the possibility of an approximate, to all intents and purposes equal, short 3ned international labour day would be not unreasonable or inconceivable. Moreover, there would always be in reserve the protective tariff as a politico-social weapon of defence against nations who refused to adopt it. There can be no question, either, concerning the right to fight for an extension of the 252 THM IMPOSSIBILITY OF Eight Hours Day hj agreement, for this is incontestable. No doubt the universal Eight Hours Day fixed by law would be more contestable, at any rate from the point of. view of mere labour-protection policy, just because it is not a universal need. But Social Democracy really advocates it as a method of raising wages, or at least of ensuring full employ- ment for all labourers. Hence the decision for or against the fixing of the Eight Hours Day by legislative enactment lies witli the answer to the two questions, whether the above mentioned hopes with respect to the -svage-policy are well founded, and whether the State is justified in interfering so largely for the one-sided class-interest of the present generation of labourers. Neither of these questions can I see my way to answering in the atfirmative, and therefore ^ / would continue to refuse the universal compulsory Eigh t Hours Day, until such time as the labouring class in all competing countries equally and through- out the whole range of production shall have succeeded in winning for themselves, in their struggle with Capital, the Bight Hours Daij fixed by SOCIAL DMMOCMACY. 253 mutual agreement. It will be well for me briefly to show my grounds for this opinion. In answer to the first question, no strong probability, and still less any certainty, can be established for the supposed gain to the wage- policy. For only consider what it is with which we are practically dealing : we are by legislative enactment to shorten, suddenly and universally, the industrial labour of the nation by the amount of from 20 to 30 per cent, of the present labour time, and yet for this shorter labour it is supposed more wages will be forth- coming, or at least the existing rate of wages will be maintained, together with the actual employment of all the existing labour forces ! How is it conceivable that wages should rise above, or even maintain, their present level, if labour time were suddenly, forcibly, and uni- versally, .cut short by from 20 to 30 per cent. ? It would have to be either by a corresponding decrease of profit and income among the propertied classes to the amount of the rise in wages, or by an enhanced productivity of national labour owing to progress in technique, or in the labourers' skill and application, or in both together. 254 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Now no one can precisely say how much the commercial propertied classes pocket in profits and rent, in proportion to the incoming wage of their labourers : but it is probable that if you deduct the amount which the mass of small and average traders make, more from their own work than from their Capital, you will probably find that, in spite of a cert.iin number of gigantic incomes, the commercial profits are not on the whole so very large a sum in proportion to commercial wages as they are often made out to be. It is therefore very doubtful whether it would be possible to recover any part of them as wages. Even were it possible, it would still be by no means certain that the wage-contest between Labour and Capital would ever achieve so extreme a diminution of commercial profits and proceeds, still less that it would do so by a certain specified and not far distant date. Some part of Capital, like labour, may choose to "play." Part may be diverted, and pass be} oud the bounds of Europe. It may gain extensive victories by forming coalitions. It may, by limiting production, turn aside the pistol which the universal Eight Hours Day points at its SOCIAL BEMOCRACT. 255 breast, since it would thus keep no more work- men employed than formerly. It may raise the prices of commodities, thus decreasing real wages, instead of increasing or even maintain- ing them at their present level. But even if the compulsory Eight Hours Day should have the effect of causing capital to employ a greater number of labourers, it might supply this need partly from those foreign quarters which had no Eight Hours Day, partly by drawing them from agriculture and forestry, and even perhaps after twenty 3'ears or so from the increase of population among industrial labourers. Capital in any case will do all in its power, by sterner application, sharper control, improved and increased machinery, to get more done, and in a shorter time than before. Taking all these possibilities into account, we see that the Eight Hours Day will not necessarily increase the demand for labour so suddenly and so continuously, as to force the owners of property to come upon their profits, interests, and rents for a general increase of wage, or even to maintain the current rate of wages. The very reverse is at least as con- 256 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ceivable, and perhaps even more probable — provided, of course, that there did not set in a steady and continued retardation of the increase of population. And it is most improbable that such a retardation should set in just when for the first time a general rise of real wages had begun, and increased facilities for supporting families. The assumption, therefore, that the universal and compulsory Eight Hours Day would intro- duce a permanent rise of wages, or would even secure the continuance of existing Wage-con- ditions at the expense of profit and interest is not capable of proof ; it is scarcely even probable, least of all certain. On so weak an assumption therefore, we dare not base the demand for so serious an interference on the part of the State as the establish- ment, by the 1st of January 1898, of a universal Compulsory Eight Hours Day. Such inter- ference might result in a fearful disenchant- ment to the very labouring world which calli^ for it. Quite as groundless is the assumption that when once we had a shoi-ter labour-day, a rising improvement in technique and in the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 257 energy of labour would secure as higli a level of production and of wage as when the labour-day consisted of ten or eleven hours ! We have no sure reason for supposing that the increase in productivity would be sudden, universal, and uniform. We must not allow the experience which we have had with the ten and eleven hours day- — which, observe, did no njore than prevent real over-work, inducing unproductivity — to mislead us into the other extreme of concluding that the productivity of labour increases in the inverse ratio of its duration. The supposed compensation can only be expected to ensue from the ten or eleven hours day, which belongs to a policy of protection, not from the Eight Hours Day which is part of a wage-agitation, and which cannot, like the former, be said to stop short exactly at thut point beyond which the whole day's labour begins to be less efficient. This supposed rise of productivity would be peculiarly questionable if the abolition of piece- wage in favour of an exclusively time-wage — such as is aimed at by some — came in to militate against any adjustment by increased intensity of labour, and still more if profits 258 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF decreased 'so much as to exercise a damaging effect on the rising activity of industry. But even if a rise in productivity sufficient to counterbalance the diminution in quantity of labour were as certain as it is really uncertain, it would still be a question whether the rising product value would be used for the maintenance and increase of the wages-level, or whether it would not rather go to augment profits and interest. And if an improved use of machinery supervened, especially if accompanied by a decided increase of population, the demand for labour would not be materially increased, and the result would be to place Capital in a more favorable position in the labour-market than ever. Even in the second direction, therefore, the advantages to accrue to wages from the Eight Hours Day are by no means certain. Supposing then that neither a lowering of the rates of interest and profits, nor yet a rise of productivity, supervened by way of compensa- tion, it is clear that as a result of the shortened Labour Day the wages of labour would sink some 20 to 30 per cent. And it is quite possible that at some time or other both the above suppositions would fail together. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 259 No less uncertain is the proaiised absorption of all existing unoccupied labour forces by means of the Eight Hours Day. This effect would not necessarily be produced even in the first generation, since there is always the possibility of limiting production, and if the hope of enhanced productivity is not entirely vain, more machines may be set up, and thus the necessity for any considerable influx of labour forces avoided. If not in the first generation, still less in perpetuity could this effect of the Eight Hours Day be securely realized. Increase of population might bring large reinforcements of labour into the field, aud such an increase would most probably take place, ceteris paribus, if the hourly wage were really increased, as we are told it would be, by the fixing of the universal Labour Day. Any decrease of wages, moreover, in consequence of the lessened productivity of national labour, would neces- sarily increase "the reserve force of industry," by means of a lessening of consumption, resulting in limitations of employment in the manufacture of articles not absolutely necessary. s2 260 TJiM IMPOSSIBILITY OF If the Eight Hours Da,y did actually lower the yield of national production, it would be those bodies of labourers employed upon articles other than necessaries, as well as all the inferior labourers, who would be threatened by it. For the demand for such articles diminishes first and most considerably, while the labourers who worked least well, and thus accomplished the least work in their eight hours, would ultinaately be less highly paid. We see in this connexion that the uniform national and inter- national Eight Hours Day would not have at all the t'-arae results in different countries, or even in the competing labour groups of single industrial districts in one nation. Even the very national and international uniformity of the Maximum Labour Day of the wage agita- tion has, therefore, grave objections which I will not, however, pursue here in detail. The entire prohibition of overtime work again, to prevent excessive production and the over- loading of trade, would give no security, either of a higher hourly wage, or of permanently averting, or even lessening, the superfluity of working hands. Indeed, the very reverse may prove true, at least in all those branches of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 261 industry which are inevitably exposed to recurrent periods of depression and over- production, from the very nature of the ■demand which they supply. If then it is so extremely doubtful whether the compulsory Eight Hours Day would have ihe desired effect on wages, and if the intrinsic value of the measure is so disputable, it becomes ultimately a serious question whether the State is at all justified in assuming the regulation of the Labour Day in general, and not merely by way of protective right. The State ought, undoubtedly, by its social policy, to exert a direct influence in securing a minimum wage, sufficient to allow of an existence worthy the name of human, and this it does for instance in the case of labour insurance. The very utmost it could do would be to seek, in the spirit of Rodbertus, to ensure by practical measures the possibility of which remains to be proved, and perhaps cannot be proved, a proportionately fair wage — the ideal limit of which has, however, been vainly sought since the days of Von Thunen. The State must not in any case take upon itself a measure so entirely incalculable in its 262 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF consequences as the sudden and universal cutting down of the Labour Day by from 20 to 30 per cent. The State has no right to do this ; no light as against the propertied classes, and no more right as against the labouring classes. As towards the latter, it would run a risk of diminishing their wage, at any rate the wage of all those labourers working at the production of commodities other than necessaries. It would be they who would really in part pay the cost ; for they would come short in wages if a diminution in the result of national production took place in consequence, while at the same time there was no compensation from the lower rates of interest and profits. Towards those labourers in any industrial department who, while keeping within the maximum labour timefixed by protective legislation, yet preferred working longer to earning less, the State would find it hard to justify, as a step of wage- policy, the experiment of the Eight Hours Day. It would involve a not inconsiderable- limitation of freedom to many, and that by no means the worse sort of labourers. But enough of this side of the question ! SOCIAL DEMOCBACT. 263 But, it will be said, may we not be compelled to try the experiment? No one will venture (o pronounce an unconditional negative to this question in these days of irresistibly increasing democratization of constitutional rights in all countries. The decisive vote, it is clear, lies in the hand of England. If that country does not lead the way, if it does not lose sight of the serious considerations involved in American, Asiatic, and perhaps also one of these days African competition, then we are not likely to have any attempt made at a universal Com pulsory Eight Hours Day in the remainder of Western Europe. But in England it is precisely the aristocracy of labour, the trades- union men, sJdlled labour, who are not converted to the Compulsory Eight Hours Day, and the question is whetlier tlip.y will give way to the leaders of unskilled labour — Burns, Tillet, and the rest. At the Liverpool Congress in September, 1890, as I understand, on the motion of Patterson, the universal Compulsory Eight Hours Day was distinctly opposed to the partial Eight Hours Day fixed by agreement ; the latter was refused by a majority of only 3 — 181 votes against 178. 264 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF By refusing the Compulsory Eight Hours Day should we be excluding for all time the possibility of a diminution of the hours of labour below the ten or eleven hours factory- day now in practice ? By no means. The fundamental error contained in the universal Compulsory Eight Hours Day is not the assumption that the labour-day will admit of being gradually diminished, but rather the idea that a compulsory maximum labour-day could introduce suddenly, universally^ and after a uniform pattern, what can really only be brought to pass gradually, piece by piece, unequally, and variably, by means of the maximum labour- day^a^ec^ by agreement. More- over, if so pronounced a compulsory diminution of the labour-day were ever to become uni- versally attainable it could only be by little and little, and not everywhere all at once, by means of the gradual diminution of the maximum labour-day fixed by contract in each country, and within each branch of industry, both within and without the boundaries of the actual factory system. The next step we have to take is not from the 10 or 11 hours maximum factory-day to a universal Com- SOCIAL DM3I0CRACY. 265 pulsoiy Eight Hours Day, but onwards from the former by a prolonged struggle between the two opposing factors, varying according to time, place, and business, and resulting in a varying and yet further variable maximum labour-day fixed by agreement. We should have no occasion to place any obstacles whatever in the way of such a method of diminution. We should have neither right nor cause for doing so. There is nothing to fear from the actual approach of such a diminished labour-day, which might even from time to time be subject to legal settlement at a maximum of less than 10 hours. There is all the less cause to fear it from the fact that it is emphatically to the interest of the working- classes to avoid any extreme positions from which they might subsequently be forced to retreat. The large majority of them would prefer, below the limit of overwork, to work more, in reason, and earn more, rather than to have more time for recreation and to earn less. Capital, moreover, will least of all have cause to regard with jealousy or anxiety the far distant possibility which the future may hold in store of a gradually realized Eight Hours Day, the 266 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF result of a series of diminutions mutually agreed on by both sides, and proceeding along with progress in technique and a rising scale of wages proportioned to a healthy movement of increasing population. For the sooner we arrive, first by agreement, ultimately by legislation, at a stable and enduring Eight Hours Day, the more brilliant will have been our progress in technique, the more normal the movement of our population, the more peace- able and orderly the future life of our State. I believe, therefore, that we may discuss the Eight Hours Movement without heat or uneasiness, of course with the proviso that we do not allow the labouring democracy to tear down all the constitutional limits of their absolute sway. But we need to specially emphasize tlie point that even the Eight Hours Day of the Paris Congress is not properly speaking a Socialistic demand. It may indeed be that some leaders of the movement see in it a means of weakening and undermining the Capitalist system of production, but the proposal does not in itself fundamentally threaten private property in the means of production. A day of eleven, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 267 ten, or even eight hours does not imply the triumph of Socialism. On the contrary, I rather suspect that its leaders put forward the Eight Hours Day in order to be able yet a while longer to evade their promise of the fundamental alteration of the entire system of production, Therefore we would say to the proclaimers of the Eight Hours Day and the world-festival of labour on the 1st of May, "Nothing is gained by terrorism,'' and to the pi-omoters of a positive Social Policy "Keep a cool head and go forward!" A Normal Labour Day, in the sense of Rodbertus, would, in the hands of Social Democrats, be a really collectivist measure. But hitherto, the Eight Hours Day has had nothing whatever to do with this Normal Labour Day. The latter is not a measure of protective legislation, nor yet of wage-policy, but a common denominator fixed for the reduction of individual to general social labour- time, for the purpose of a normal valuation of products and of labour-contributions : a normal labour-hour would serve this end quite as well as a Normal Labour Day. But communistic Social Democracy does not put forward the 268 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF demand for a Normal Labour Day. However strongly they would turn the screw of maximum labour-time for the purpose of their wage-policy, they are completely silent as to normal labour-time, and as to regulation of value and income thereby. As a party they have niade no pronouncement upon it, and as a party they do not need it : for they claim as a communist party, which they have been since 187o, universal distribution of income according to needs ! The reduction of equal amounts of labour- time, of different individuals in different branches of labour, to unequal quantities of normal time, or the relatively unequal remuneration of astronomically equal amounts of labour-time, goes assuredly against the grain with the masses of the democracy. It is better in their company to say nothing at all about it. Hitze, a leader who has always taken part in any proceedings in the German Reichstag with reference to protective legislation, states definitely, from his own experience, that parliamentary Social Democracy has always had in view the Maximum Labour Day, never the Normal Labour Day. His words were : SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 269 "No speaker in the German Reichstag not even a Social Democrat, has ever thought of introducing the Normal Labour Day, either in the sense of a socialistic state of the future, or in the sense of Rodbertus, but always only the Maximum Labour Day, the establishment of an extreme limit to the admissible daily labour-time, however much use may have been made in many connexions of the ambiguous term, Normal Labour Day." The movement will not, it is evident, be able eventually to evade the real issue. Some kind of proportional Normal Labour Day as a common denominator for the valuation of Commodities and the measurement of income for all, must, as a matter of theory, and of party programme, inevitably be formulated, and in spite of the danger of a split on this point, must be presented for the decision of the party in one sense or the other : especially as soon as existing illusions have been dispelled with reference to bringing in the "reserve army " of labour, and producing a universal rise in the hourly wage, by means of the Eight Hours Day. When this takes place there are three possible courses which may bo taken. The 270 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF Normal Labour Day may be logically extended into a socialistic scheme, with the aid pprhaps of the propoisal lightly sketched by Rodbertus. Or, in the second place, the Maximum Labour Day may be elevated into the Normal Labour Day— in other words, without any attempt at reducing it to a normal social labour, the astronomical time-hour of every labourer may be taken as equal in value to that of every other, and the valuation of commodities and income made accordingly. Or, in the third place, the communistic setting aside of all Normal Labour Time, on the understanding that every- one shall work as much as he can, and enjoy as much as he needs. The first of these courses, a recurrence to the methods of Rodbertus, is open to the objection that it runs counter to the democratic antipathy against reckoning equal quantities of labour- time as productive of unequal quantities of Normal Labour, to say nothing of the practical difficulties suggested in my second letter, or the defects in the formulae of Rodbertus. More easj to conceive is the second course, a development of the programme in the direction of identifying the individual astronomic labour- SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 271 time with the Social Normal Labour Time; in other words, assigning equal value to the hour's work of everyone. But it would cost Social Democracy the very pith and marrow of its present following : for the better workers would be working for the inferior, and the latter would reap the advantage. Such a proposal could scarcely come within the range of a practical attempt. But even the highest theoretic Optimism cannot dispute the proba- bility, almost amounting to certainty, that such an attempt, if in despite of its gross unfairness towards the more strenuous and more highly-skilled workers it should ever be made, would absolutely crush out all willingness to labour on the part of the most skilful, and would thus result in an incalculable diminution of the product of national labour, and hence also of wages. It it true the masses among whom the agitation is proceeding would not be deterred by this consideration, they would still demand, in the name of equality, that the astronomical labour-hour should be treated as the normal, a demand which already has half been made in the claim to universal minimum hourly wage. 272 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF In attempting to carry this out, we should be brought within easy range of the third and most extreme alternative above mentioned. No need for normalizing, no occasion for a Normal Labour Day ! No longer " To each according to his work by the agency of the State," but rather " Let each work as much as he can, and enjoy as much as he needs and desires." Even the craze for equality, which would take as the normal time-measure the astronomical hour of the Maximum Labour Day, would be outdone, and for this purpose even the identification of the Normal with the Maximum Labour Day set aside. It is true that practically we shall never reach this extreme. But it is interesting to note that during the time that the Socialist Law was in force, this cheap metliod of agitation, recurring to the extreme of Communism, became very widely circulated under the very eyes of the police. It is not my idea to maintain that the present leaders of Social Democracy, retui'ning to Proportional Socialism, would demand the astronomical as the normal Social Labour-hour, for the case of the introduction of a normal time-measure. The said leaders, as I haA'o SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 273 already shewn at present, demand the Eight Hours Day only as a matter of protective legislation and wage-policy, and this on a purely Capitalistic basis. It never occurs to them to take any precautions that the Eight Hours Day should bring to all labourers the same wage for each hour of normal or astro- nomical labour-time. Thus they actually move throughout upon the ground of the Capitalistic order of Society, however much individuals among them may think to disport themselves in the lion's skin of Socialism. If it came to the point of an attempt at actual Collectivism, the communistic programme of 1875 would certainly prove very favorable to the desire of the masses for assigning equal value to the labour-hour of all individuals. I think I have now succeeded in finding for you a sure and well-considered standpoint from which to form a judgment as to the ''world question" of a universal Eight Hours Day, and to gain a clear insight into the fundamental distinction between the ten or eleven hours day of merely protective legis- lation and the Eight Hours Day of Social Democracy with its bearing on wage-policy. 274 THE IMP08SIBILI2Y OF Moreover, I have no wish to ignore the fact that the Eight Hours Day, with its yearly festival celebration, has already been for some time in force in England's Australian Colonies. (^) I maintain, however, that the results reached there cannot be directly engrafted on the old soil of Europe, and also, that it is possible that even for Australia this triumph is only temporary and not final_ Already the Eight Hours Day has there necessitated a policy of protection, of exclusion of the Chinese, and of diverting European immigrants from the Australian labour-market, as you yourself will easily perceive by consult- ing the authentic records of Ruhland. The Eight Hours Day, dear Friend, with its primary significance for wages, has led us already to the second main division of the practical points of reform with which a positive ( ) Every year the introduction of the Eight Hours Maximum Labour Day for adult male workers is celebrated, in Victoria since the Slat April, 1856, in New South Wales since the 1st October, 1863, in South Australia since the 1st September, 1873, in Queens- land since the 1st March, 1878, in Tasmania only since the year 1880. See Euhland, Tiib. Zeitschrift, 1891, II. SOCIAL BEMOCBACT. 275 industrial policy will have to deal. I mean the question connected with the duty of the State to exert a direct influence on the distribution of the product of national labour in wages, profits and interest, so as to render it favourable to every kind of productive labour. We must here distinguish two lines of action, the duty of a positive Social Policy towards propertied and towards non-propertied labour : and again with non-propertied labour, we must distinguish between its action towards the educated and towards the uneducated portion of it, towards those who work outside their homes, and the workers at home, or in private service. What do we mean by propertied labour ? Are there then labourers who hold property, and who cannot be classed among the "proletariat " ? And if there are, do they demand the attention of a positive Social Policy ? Undoubtedly ! Propertied labour, at any rate in German}/ and Austria, still forms by far the largest portion of the whole of productive labour. It includes the peasantry and the artisans, with almost all their families and belongings. Towards these the State has merely a positive protective task to fulfil, in furthering the private and associated T 2 276 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF organization of credit and of certain of the means of production, and in allowing full play- to all the new permissive rights — of removal, emigration, and so on — which allow of the diversion to other parts of superfluous labour- forces. The Social question par excellence is the question of the retention of the peasant-class. Popular collective production, as opposed to peasant-proprietorship, is open to the very gravest doubts as to whether it would work better industrially, that ia, more productively, and. by cheapening the necessities of life, more advantageously for the masses of the people, at the same time securing to each producer and his family the whole result of his labour. It is highly probable, as vre have already shewn, that democratic collective production would rather be less productive than feasant -industry , wherever it is free from a load of unproductive debt. With this latter important proviso, of keeping free from unproductive debt, the peasant-class has not been and cannot be chained or impoverished by Capital.- The peasant with his family is proprietor and labourer in one person, and himself draws the whole of the i'esults SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 277 of hh labour : property does therefore secure the very thing which Socialism promises but cannot safely guarantee. We are therefore far from having proved that the destruction of the union of property and labour in the peasant- class is inevitable. But even supposing that Democratic Collective Production were industrially more productive or even as productive as peasant industry carried on with growing intensiveness, zeal for labour, and profits from labour, there would still be no decided advantage in adopting the former. To begin with, it is very questionable whether the modern State, and especially an unboundedly Democratic IState, would be manageable at all without the propertied peasant- class, economical and steady. But laying aside this doubt, the popular demand for hapi^iuess for tlie people would certainly decide the issue in the op|)osite sense. A quite incalculable amount of popular happiness is at present conferred by that very ideal value set upon the independence conferred by and the attachment felt to property of one's own, and even to property held on lease for the cultivator and his family. The whole peasant-class would 2T8 THE IMPOSSIBILITy OF rise in fury if we should come to the point of abolishing landed property, and even the day- labourer, and the agricultural industrial worker who cultivates his own and others' plots of land, would throw in his weight into the same scale. So great is this ideal value, that it produces a genuine "land-hunger," which results in the very root and cause of all agricultural distress, extravagai^t prices and rents for land, and the consequent overload of unproductive debt. We have here reached one of the cardinal points with which a Social Policy for the preservation of property has to deal. Agriculture is at present in a distressed state. And why ? The answer can be made out from the statistics of compulsory sales. According to the latest returns for the whole Prussian state — the result of which is on the whole confirmed by the same statistics in Baden, Bavaria, and Austria— if we except the lowest class of owners, it appears that compulsory sales diminish in the main in proportion as the income from work is greater than the income from investments. If this result does not tell in favour of a " universal machinery" of large agriculture, th© SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 279 statistics shew on the other hand where the shoe pinches for the landed proprietor. The largest proportion of cases of com- pulsory sales (nearly 42 per cent.) are caused by debt voluntarily incui-red : these might be more than outweighed in a democratic collective system by the collective waste and want of economy. The next most frequent cause of compulsory sales (about 25 per cent.) is the weight of unproductive debt incurred for the sake of the possession of land by here- ditary tenure or by purchase : in cases of farmers' bankruptcies extravagant rents stand as the next most serious cause. The general depres- sion in agriculture is only responsible for 10 per cent, of the cases, and those are nearly all cases of large properties, only from 2 to 3 per cent, of such bankruptcies occurring among the lower grades of holdings. '^I'he remaining cases of bankruptcy are classified as follows : 6'7 per cent, from " circumstances connected with the business," 6 per cent, from natural occurrences and trade disasters, 3 per cent, from excessive usury and fraudulent trade-dealings, and about as many from family causes. It is evident that by far 280 IBB IMPOSSIBILITY OF the greater number of these last cases need not occur, and many self-caused subhastations might be avoided, if only strict limits were set to unproductive debt by legislation dealing with inheritance, purchase, credit and tenant right, by means of which the owners of land would be enabled to hold their own successfully against debt, accidents, foreign competition, the commercial situation and family misfortunes. " Exploitation " by means of interest on borrowed capital would be at an end, the peasant-class would draw the whole productive result of their labour and of their property, they would hold their own capitah and be free to face competition, to make improvements and progress of all kinds, and would stand in the full enjoyment, both ideal and real, which their property would be able to confer ! This legislative development of tenant right, and of the right of agricultural purchase and credit — together with prevention of the absorption of small holdings iuto large ones, through the action of large masses of capital — is attainable in the most thorough-going manner, and without any check on the freedom of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 281 alienation when desired. The way to it is by gathering in all agricultural holdings into district unions with exclusive rights of hypothecation, under condition only to make redeemable loans for the purpose of 'purchase or inheritance of land, up to a certain percentage of the capitalized value of the yield of the land, and on the other hand hy assisting, as simply, as fairly, and as generously as possible, all institutions for productive personal credit as well as credit for insurance purposes, and for the purpose of making a provision for tJie family. The prevention of the taking over of properties at less than the capital-value of their yield, by this means checking the absorption into large estates, and the establishment on a fair footing of tenant-relations according to the three F's of the Irish Land Acts — fair rent, fixity of tenure, free sale — could be attached very simply to this "Incorporation of Hypo- thecated Credit," as I have termed the measure, which I have elsewhere thoroughly explained, without having as yet met with any contradiction. For this I must refer you to my special work dealing with this question ( ^ ). The (1) Die Inkorporation d. Hypoth. Kredits. Tub. 1874. 282 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF introduction of this measure would in my opinion, be far more pregnant with force for social conservation than even the compulsory- insurance of labour, to which as a measure for the protection of property it is the natural; pendant. Nor does my proposal exclude the\ possibility of other important, perhaps better and more practicable measures of agrarian policy, for the preservation of the peasant-class, and of desirable agricultural labour-conditions (the fee-farm, the rented estate, manor-rolls, the granting of allotments (' ) and so on.) You will now, I think, understand why I regard an incorporated system of hypothecated credit, and of the entire traffic in real-estate, as an infinitely more efficacious positive method of combating Social Democracy than even my much cherished scheme of associated compulsory poor-funds. It would, I believe, obviate universally and with full security the evils of over-payment for estates, of the over-strainirg of purchase-credit and of the credit required to meet testamentary burdens, of extravagant rates of (^) "Erbpacht, Renten giiter, Hiiferolle, Vergebung von Vorwerken.'' SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 28» interest, excessive rents, the absorption of the independent peasant-class into huge estates of the monied and landed aristocracy, and all this "without in the slightest degree interfering with that traffic in real-estate, which is socially so desirable. It would be the means of securing, in so far as it can be secured, a payment of labour which should bear something like a due proportion with the actual productivity of labour, and thus it would be — what it alone can be — the saving of the peasantry, the class which of all others is the bulwark against Collectivism, the foundation pillar of a reliable army, the unflinching support of a truly individualist industrial system, the unshaken and unshakeable basis of authority both in Church and State. Collectivism would then become wholly impossible. The most danger- ous recruits of the Collectivist "State of the Future " would leave its ranks, to become sturdy individualists in the agricultural settlements. You see that a positive Social Policy has a further very efficacious method of positively combating Social Democracy. For its details, I must, however, refer enquirers to my book already mentioned, which is probably well- 284 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF known to you. I will confine myself here to the consideration of how far the possibility of these methods has been already tested by experience. Gladstone, who was the most influential member of the Cobden Club, did not hesitate to venture upon a strong ?tep of State interference with agrarian right, in the direction of "fair rents," rents, that is, which would leave something beyond the bare margin of absolute subsistence. In Germany, where land is still largely held under Government, the State can even exert a direct influence on the fair remuneration of family-labour in agri- culture : for this purpose it need only refrain from ' ' exploitation " in its own leases. It might even again try the experiment of hereditary tenancies — without forging fresh chains to bind the peasant to the soil and without fixing rents on a permanent level for ever. It cannot be urged against the endeavour to bring back the value of estates, hereditary or purchased, to the capital value of their net produce, that by this the "natural," that is the "free" formation of prices would be interfered with. All " free '' excessive prices for land in good times, and extreme underselling in bad SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 285 times might well be called unnatural. The univei-sal associated effort to prevent the excessive and unproductive overloading of the holder of land, whether from inheritance or purchase, by indirectly producing normal prices, would thus effect universally and even for minutely sub-divided districts what the right of next of kin under the manor-rolls ( ' ) could only very partially effect. It is possible, by such means as these, not only to secure the peasant class from all extortion and exploitation, but also so to raise their efficiency and skill in labour as that they can successfully hold their own against all the competition of foreign grain. If this is successfully carried out, this rampart of the organized development of our Society will become inpregnable to Social Democracy, and more than this, a sufficiency of income will be secured for a population much larger than the existing industrial proletariat. Even the small tradespeople and handicrafts- men, who already in a large number of cases are ( ) Das ' Anerbenrecht' der lldferolle. [?]. 286 THM IMPOSSIBILITY OF holders of land, will not always remain a prey to Social Democracy. A great part will either find satisfaction where they are, or emigrate, a portion will join the wage-labourers — on the whole, without being the worse for it — and will gain a sufficiency of income by help of the reforms directed towards the remuneration of the proletariat. The remaining petty industries can never of course gain much help from guilds and trades- unions of the old-fashioned sort. The local compulsory mutual societies may be in a position to do some good in this or that particular direction by helping in the inspection of labour- conditions and quality of produce, by furthering industrial education, by forming Courts of Arbi- tration, by electing industrial councils and so on. Speaking generally, not only will industrial sub- sidiary labour have to band itself together in large compulsory associations and unions^ specialized for special objects, but also their superior leaders will need to unite in centralized and local bodies and Chambers of Commerce in order to acquire tlie necessary force for represenation and reciprocity. I frankly con- fess that I do not think much of attempting a SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 287 revival of the old-fashioned guilds. Whatever there is of active working povrer in the newest form of trades-unions, is precisely that part which is not of the essence of the old trades-guilds. But again in the matter of the distribution of income and of household-economy, the social question is of course not merely the question of the peasants and artisans, but also the question of wage-policy and of household economy affecting non-propertied labour, that is, labour in the usual sense of the word. But here also a great deal can be done by simple methods and without recourse to Collectivism. As for the latter, I have already sought to demonstrate in my second letter, in dealing with Rodbertus' plan of reform, how little it would really avail to accomplish. The labouring class is already doing for itself the main thing that needs to be done, in that it is learning to present a more and more united front to capital in the conflict as to the settlement of wages. The duty of the State is to refrain from in any degree hindering the wage labourers in this task, and to allow them full and complete freedom of combination. I have already referred to the high value of this 288 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF labour-organizatioa from the point of view of a social policy : there lies in it a degree of self-help in freedom and equality of quite incalculable worth, even if the process should be a somewhat rough one, prolific in strikes, before both classes have complete organized committees to effect the settlement, still it gives us hope of coming eventually to the highest attainable measure of social peace and compensating fairness, of freedom and equality in the good democratic sense. England is a living proof @f this, where skilled labour has long since left behind the coarser days of the movement of Trades Unionism, and where unskilled labour, now under the leadership of Burns, Tillett, and others beginning to strive after the same universal organization, will eventually reap the same harvest in its turn. Not only the amount of wages is here in question, but their stability, and their share in any rise of the net product. You, probably, have not at hand the records of the Berlin Conference, and you will, therefore, permit me to quote word for word the picture which Dale, the English delegate, draws from his own experience of the workings of the class- SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 289 movements towards settlement by agreement. " About five and twenty years ago there was a long and numerous series of strikes in the north of England mining industry. As a result of this, the employers concerted together to find a means of regulating wage-conditions. At first they altogether refused to treat with their workmen in corpore, but at length following the advice of a few of the more far-sighted among them they resolved to recognize the Labour Union of one and the same mining district. This principle once set up formed the essential basis of the system which has since prevailed for the settlement of any disputes that may arise. This has been the case now for 20 years. At first the proceedings were limited to conferences between the representatives of masters and of men for the sake of dealing with some special question. Subsequently the principle was admitted of a settlement of all questions by arbitration, and it was applied as follows: each party nominates an equal number of arbitrators, usually two, and these elect a chairman : this latter ofiice is willingly undertaken by persons of high standing. As the questions which were submitted for 290 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF settlement to this Court of Arbitration were mostly questions of the relations of wage- rates to sale-prices, for the decision of such questions it became necessary to deter- mine the latter by an official inspection of the employer's l)ooks. The most important means ■v^hich were used for the regulation of the relation between wages and prices was the introduction of a sliding scale. The sliding scale aims at establishing a relation between the rate of wages and the prices of coal. At first, the following procedure was, from time to time, adopted for the determination of this relation : five successive trade-years are taken in the course of which there have been considerable fluctuations both in prices and in wages (the latter in consequence of strikes, agreements, and arbitration). The average, per quarter, of prices and of wages is then reckoned and the numerical relation of these amounts to each other determined. The average of this numerical relation is then regarded as the expression of the normal relation which must obtain between wages and the sale- price of coal. After the scale has been thus determined the average sale-prices in all the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 291 mining-properties in the district for the last quarter are reckoned. To this basis the above- mentioned numerical normal relation is applied and the wages for the ensuing quarter determined. The same reckoning is made every quarter. The reckonings are made by two official book-inspectors, one nominated by the labour-union and one by the employers' union. -To these experts the books in eveiy business are submitted, but they are pledged to strict secrecy as to what they find there. They limit themselves to the task of certifying: 1st, that the average price of coals in the district during the last quarter is determined to have been so and so ; 2nd, that such and such wage- rates must be the result. In this way the labourers obtain without mediation or strikes or arbitration such wages as they could not otherwise have hoped to obtain without a great deal of exertion and effort. The numerical law which connects wages with sale-prices is usually fixed for two years at a time. From this time, each party is bound to give a half-year's notice of any change ; but the first sliding scale has undergone very little alteration, in the last six years. Notice of departure from it has just been given by the •w2 292 TSE IMPOSSIBILITY OF employers of the county of Northumberland as well as by the workmen of the county of Durham." Somewhat similar is the united wage-list, or wages-tariff, which appears to be gaining vogue in Germany since the example set by the printing trade. All the signs of the times seem to indicate that the English movement towards trades^unions in both classes will soon take shape also in Western and Central Europe. Honoured Friend, when I say that the State must allow free play to the organization of both classes, for mutual agreement as to the conditions of labour-contracts, I do not mean to deny its duty of positive interference, to influence wage-relations and the conditions of the labourer in a manner favourable to him. The State can exert this influence by virtue of the fact that it is itself an employer of labour on the largest scale. And it can exert it the more effectually and strongly in that it has the power of legislation and administration to use for securing this end. The State as an employer exerts a determin- ing influence, which reacts upon the whole SOCIAL SEMOCRACT. 293 condition of wages, if on all its works it pays steady and desirable wages, gives a share in the profits, and altogether sets a social example in the management of its business. In legislation and administration, the State can also approve itself to the wage-labourers by a positive social policy towards all other employers. First and foremost, it can further the Savings Bank system, and labour insurance. I will stay to consider this point a little. Both the Savings Bank system and the insurance of labour work in a manner peculiar to themselves, biit they belong together and must supplement each other. Both represent the organization of forethought and self-help against the evil consequences of penury, incapacity to labour, and loss of employment. The General Savings Banks, however, as well as the separate special labour club-funds are supported by the free desire of individuals for self-help, and consequently place the savings freely at the disposal of their owner, to be turned to every private or public purpose for self-help and for the help of others. Compulsory Labour Insurance, on the other hand, obliges 294 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF everyone unconditionally to secui'e some small provision for certain definite kinds of misfortune. Savings Banks and compulsory insurance, there- fore, whether independent of each other, or so connected as to attach free deposit banks and acceptance of savings on deposit to the machi- nery of compulsory insurance, do evidently supplement each other in a manner advan- tageous to both. Let ITS now consider the two systems each on its own merits. I will not repeat what has so often been said before as to the importance of the Savings Bank System. But I think it desirable to quote from the Prussian Statistics, just so ably worked up anew by Evert, those facts which are decisive for Social Policy in general. In the old provinces of Prussia there had been, in 1839, only 85 Savings Banks, with 18-23 millions of marks deposit. By 1869, there were already as many as 560 Savings Banks, with 343 million marks deposit,. while including the new provinces there were 917 Savings Banks, with 1,471 millions of marks* Twenty years later, in 1888-89, there were in the whole State 1,363 Savings Banks, with 1,402 SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 295 receiving-offices, and a capital of 2,889 millions of marks, a sum which, if we include reserve and subsidiary funds, rises to 3,020 millions of marks. According to Evert's skilful computa- tion, the Savings Bank deposits in separate provinces have reached a vahce equal to that of the whole agricuUnral landed property of the province ! Of course, a part of this gigantic increase of Savings Bank wealth probably represents only a new method of massing and bestowing such wealth, as was formerly laid out by the owner himself in country or town, or else directly lent out by him. But even this element of profit- bearing property has not ceased to exist and it belongs to small or moderate holders, who by the medium of the Savings Banks gain a share in commercial income, house and land income, and taxation, and are, therefore, saved from absorption by large Capitals. Out of 20 '8 million marks in the Savings Bank at Dortmund in 1888 to 1889, a round nine million of deposits represented the savings of 1,313 master-craftsmen, and 1,431 farmers, while of the remaining eleven millions, two millions were deposited by miners and smelters, 0'417 millions by journeymen and shop- 296 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF assistants, 0-287 millions by factory- workers, and seven millions by various depositors. Hence there can be no doubt that it is the moderately well-ofE and poorer classes, including the wage- labourers, who most largely make use of the Savings Banks, and that in spite of the "iron law of wages" and the "Vampire Capital,'' they continue to do so in an increas- ing measure. " We consider," says Evert, "that the number of current Savings Bank Books, which in Prussia, at present, is more than five millions, and which, therefore, exceeds by nearly seven times the whole number of income-tax-payers, that is, the number of persons whose income is valued at more than 3,000 marks, with all their dependents, justifies with an absolute certainty the conclusion that the larger portion of these books belong to the ' smaller people ' ; for otherwise, each member of the wealthy classes, including women and children, would find himself in possession of several Savings Bank Books. Also, the diminution so often observed in the deposits at times of slack work would seem to indicate that not only the majority of the depositors but also a large amount of the. whole deposits are SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 297 from the lower classes : were it otherwise, the fluctuations of this portion of the deposits would not make such a decided mark upon the whole." These three milliards of savings, one-andr half milliards of it having been amassed in the last 20 years — rapidly increasing in good times, growing more slowly, or even in certain classes diminishing in periods of depression — surely indicate that by this method of Savings Banks wherever there is willingness to take advantage of it a quite considerable amount of self-help, of amassing Capital, and of participation in interest, is possible, and that much balancing of bad times against good times may take place in the households of the poor. We are face to face with a fact which cannot be reconciled with the supposed universal sway and impoverishing effect of the iron law of wages. The most decided falling off of deposits as well as the increase of small credits at the expense of larger ones in times of depression affords us proof that in the Savings Bank we have a powerful medium of self-help against poverty and loss of employment as well as against incapacity to work and against trade-accidents or household misfortunes. The Savings Bank 298 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF represents an agency suited to the new time for the formation of wealth, for the better distribution of income and security among the poorer classes. Besides these milliards amassed in the Savings Banks there was in Prussia between 1867 and 1886, especially among the middle classes, a notable increase of more than a milliard in capital-insurance against death — which in 1867 amounted to 520 million marks and in 1886, to 1,718 million marks. Nor is the continuance and increase of wealth in the free Poor Funds (^ ) to be despised. To the above branches of free self-help there is being added in the course of this generation in Germany the Universal Compulsory Insurance, which secures for more than 12 millions of persons an extensive compulsory provision against all kinds of loss of capacity of work, even if it does not yet extend to cases of ordinary loss of employment. This insurance under the supervision of the State has also a promise of great things; When (') "Freien Hilfskassen." SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 299 it is once established on a permanent basis it will yield a yearly income of more than 100 million marks for the support of those who need it, and though not yet constituted on thoroiighly sound principles there will be a premium-reserve fund of from one to two milliards by means of which the holders of policies will obtain a share in the sources of national revenue. And this compulsory insurance is still only in process of accomplishment. It is susceptible of great extension and further improvement, as I have already shewn in my " Incorporated Compulsory Poor-Funds " and in my article on Labour Insurance. An organic connexion may be established between the free Savings Bank system and the compulsory insurance, and the organization of the former will help to effect a saving in the administration of the latter. But here L can only generally indicate what I see in prospect, without entering further into details. The enforcement of associated Poor Funds ( ' j, the beginnings of which have already attained (') " Der gegenseitio^liche Hilfsliagsenzwang." Trade or friendly societies, compulsory through the Insurance Laws ? 300 IHE IMPOSSIBILITY OF such a high growth in Germany, will secure yet other advantages besides the general amassing of provision for all cases of incapacity to work. It chimes in with what is relatively true in the demands of the Communists and Mutualists. In the way of solidarity, it achieves a universal brotherly reciprocity, and unites with this a system of remuneration not only proportioned to the performance of work, but also as far as possible in relation to needs. Every member who has his health, who has no special misfortunes, and is still in the prime of his age, and who has not suffered from any prolonged loss of employment, gives materially of the proceeds of his labour to the sickly, the suffering, and the invalided, even, as I shall presently shew, to those of his " brothers" or comrades in production who are unfortunate enough to be out of work. The latest development of Insurance Societies, therefore, works practically in the direction of the more reasonable demands even of Communism. Universal labour-insurance will also have a directly beneficial influence on the national distribution of income and property. You will remember, since you have read my SOCIAL DE3WCRAGT. 301 " Incorporated Compulsory benevolent Funds " how easy it would be to turn to account the covering and reserve-funds of the great insurance societies for the facilitation of emigration, for the lowering of the rate of interest for the benefit of productive labour, for laying out business- premises and dv/elling-houses, gardens, orchards, and fields in such a manner as to secure and regulate their rent and hire so that tenants and farmers might live by them while paying their house rent and ground rent to the Labour Insur- ance Corporations, that is, directly to the prole- tariat. Incorporated Compulsory benevolent Funds, together with the Incorporation of Hypothecated Credit, would for ever secure both directly and indirectly, without any deed of violence or radical abolition of interest or profits, thelgreater part of house-rents and ground-rents to the producers, that is, to the masses of the peasants, artisans, and wage-labourers. The same Compulsory Insurance will also work directly for the raising of wages, and for elevating the standard of life, especially when taken in conjunction with other measures for the benefit of the labouring classes. But upon this point also I will only lightly touch in passing. 302 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A simple development of common right and administrative justice, never passing beyond the legitimate sphere of the State, has command of adequate means for generally raising the level of existence for the wage-labourers and lifting that standard of life, which according to the supposed iron law of wages determines the amount of the smallest wage, everywhere above the starvation level. The legislature works in this direction, when it compels the rise of this determining standard so as to make it include the necessity of a life jit for human heings, and insured agains tpossib le acciden ts. Compulsory education, too, will help to secure it by satisfying the need for cultivation. It may be further assisted by compelling the employer to go to the expense of having proper accommoda- tion for his workers, and of making sufficient provisions for their comfort and safety : or yet again, by rendering bad dwellings impossible, by means of police inspection of buildings, and of houses, or by establishing insurance societies to undertake the proper care for the sick and needy. The Universal Insurance Society has, in common with the freedom of combination, the SOCIAL DJ3M0CBACT. 303 further great advantage of providing a field of honourable satisfaction for the highest ambition of those wage-labourers who are fitted for leading positions, but who have not the chance of becoming employers. It is calculated to smooth away many contradictions and avert much bitter class-enmity by bringing Capitalists and wage-labourers more and more closely into connexion with each other in the administration. It is only the benevolent Funds administered and maintained by their superiors which leaves the proletariat an unsatisfied mass without interest in the working of it, and w^ithout scope for intelligent leadership by the elite of the working-men. A rightly organized Insurance Society, such as I have urged in my ^' Incorporated Compulsory Benevolent Funds," will avoid both extremes. It would give employers and employed alike a share both in the payment and in the administration. The •German Insurance system both against illness and against accidents has unfortunately not been entirely free from either error. I urge you strongly to use your influence in keeping the similar legislation which is impending in Austria free from error in this respect. 304 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF You, see, dear Friend, how far-reaching may be the significance, for all the practical aims of Social Reform, of such a system of benevolent Funds, if it were gradually worked out into a full development. The reciprocity ( ' ) of such Fundsj to begin with, is one of the means of increasing the share of wage-labour in the result of pro- duction by the amount contributed to the Funds. Secondly, and I shall return to this point later in another connexion, they may be developed into a means partly of preventing trade-crises and partly of giving security against them when they are unavoidable. Thirdly, they ofEer to the best and most dis- tinguished members of the wage-earning classes a share in social administration, and a highly satisfying position of leadership. They will accomplish yet more than this, for they will ultimately become the means of procuring a fairly general distribution of property, both collective and private, among the proletariat. The State co-operates with them, but only by enforcing the actual carrying out of the plan (') i.e., between employers and employed ? SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 305 universally, as is necessary to ensure its success, and by watching over and guaranteeing the soundness of the administration. The measures of positive industrial policy we have now considered, have already established the possibility of afEording sufficient help not only against incapacity to work but also against loss of employment. The Savings Bank system has taught us this. But we have still to prove that the system of Poor Funds may contribute on the one hand to avert loss of employment by organized arbitration and labour registration, and on the other to provide assistance for cases of unavoidable loss of employment. Here we ought to mention the fact that even in the capitalistic sphere the process of averting fluctuations of trade is already being strongly carried forward. Are there sufficient means for enabling the labouring classes to protect themselves not only from incapacitation but also from the suffering caused by loss of employment ? Most certainly there are. The free and compulsory Benevolent Funds, in union with the Savings Banks, whose deposits are already counted by milliards, may accomplish quite extraordinary results. 306 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF In connexion either with them, or with workmen's and employers' committees, or with specially constituted Courts of Arbitration, we may ultimately expect the result of the avoid- ance of strikes and of the loss of employment caused thereby : while the same Societies or special officials of the Politico-Social administra- tion of industry may introduce a system of labour-bm'eaus, and a system of travel and shelter for workmen to meet the new needs of the time, as I have already indicated in my " Incorporated Compulsory Poor Funds." Especially will sufficient assistance be afforded to those out of work in times of bad trade, if the help afforded by insurance be extended to loss of employment as well as to illness or accident. This is no chimera, but a possibility that has already been largely realized, since for several decades in England insurance against trade-crises has been practically tested. (•) The possibility of the universal (') Seven English Societies, with 1,542 branches and 131,130 members, came out most strongly in the critical period 1876-1880 as Insurance Societies against trade crises. They gave during that time assistance amounting to £807,409 to out-of-works, as compared with £686,000 for sickness, death, or old age, and only £158,361 for workmen on strike. SOCIAL BEMOCBACY. 307 extension of insurance against trade-crises, I have demonstrated, down to every detail of organization, in the second edition of my "Incorporated Compulsory Poor Funds." I have shown how it could be connected with the sj'stem of a premium on savings for those trades and those labourers who most avoid coming upon the funds through trade-crises, and how by this means a general reserve-capital and source of income could be raised for the proletariat. Even to insurance against crises, the employer ("Capital") should make a material contribution, though of course I do not wish to see this introduced at one fell swoop. And their rate should be higher as they change their workmen more quickly, so that they themselves should have a distinct interest in the steady continuity of production, and hence in the prevention of crises. If all employers of the same stamp without exception, including even the directors of the above-mentioned household industries, had to bear the burden of a stoppage of trade for a definite time, and if, in so doing, they were charged with entrance and dismissal money for the men who change, they would all x2 308 IHH IMPOSSIBILITY OF begin to work in the direction of a steady- continuance of production, and then they will find in the Insurance Societies the basis of the^ necessary agreements and the material levying of contributions. The wage-labourers, on their side, will willingly undertake specially paid over- times of labour under extraordinary stress of business, for the sake of maintaining the equilibrium of production. One extremely significant sign of the times, whicb cannot too much engage the attention of a positive social policy, is the increasing development of Cartels and Trusts, that is, the absorption of single concerns into unions of large undertakings, especially Joint Stock Companies. Whole branches of production are by this means falling under one uniform system of management. There are two sides to this movement — the crippling of competition in the capitalistic industrial system by the formation of gigantic trade-monopolies, upon which I have already touched, and the maintenance of a steadier march of production. It is only this second side which concerns us here. The fact is undoubted that employers have striven for and have created Cartels and Trusts mainly SOCIAL DEMOCHACY. 309 with a view to preventing stoppages of trade. We know now that there is no such thing as a radical remedy for stoppages of trade: if the crisis for Europe comes from Africa, Australia, America, and Asia, how could a single Popular State possibly avert trade-crises at one blow all over the world, including the wheat-fields of the Deccan, Russia, and the great wheat-prairies of the Ohio and Mississippi ? But there are nevertheless means which may be employed to lessen the evil, and the Cartel-movement will probably help to pave the way for them. With the increased development of Cartels, industry will more readily adapt itself to a system of insurance against crises. This insurance, if universally applied, would give the various enterprises a direct interest in the steady course of production and the avoidance of trade crises : while the associations into large unions of all the different concerns in the same branch of production, by making it possible to keep a better oversight over them all, would afford the means of adopting methods of management calculated to exclude the possibility of crises. The uniform associating together of all who 310 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF have a share in production, in unions of a quite different character from those of the Middle Ages, is not only possible but in part already existing, and is fraught with great possibilities of good. But it cannot be done by way of Social Democratic Collective Production. In the preceding paragraphs, which deal with the duty of the State to watch over the income and conditions of the labourer, I have mainly had in view the workers in factories, leaving out of consideration for the moment domestic service, and the workers in home- industries. But Social Policy can exert a very positive protective influence over them also. The insurance against sickness, old age, and incapacitation may prove serviceable again to this • branch of wage-labour, and is so in fact already to a great extent. If insurance against old age and incapaci- tation had been as fully developed as it might be, if within the insurance-unions groups had been formed of those belonging to each special calling, with one special branch for domestic service, greater results would have been reached, and each domestic servant rendered secure of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 311 maintenance when out of work. As it is, the lion's share of payment made by masters is lost to their servants, and goes merely to lighten the burden of labour-insurance for factory- owners and large land-holders. It is to be hoped that before long the right method will be found for arranging all this. But many labourers in the home-industries are worse off than either factory-hands or domestic servants. But as with labour-pro- tection, so also labour-insurance is rapidly extending in this direction : I need only touch upon this point in passing. Further assistance can, however, be given. Protection must be afforded to the people engaged in home industries against the exactions of the agents of Capital. Only it must not be thought that Capital itself is their foe. Without it, all occupations would cease altogether : and often enough the CapitaUst is the losing party. The main causes of their misery lie elsewhere. The root of it is in their peculiar stupid clinging to their native soil, and to their old handed-down customs of trade, however worn out and inconvenient. One of the chief weapons with which it is to be 312 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OV combated, on the other hand, as I have shewn in the "Incorporation of Hypothecated Credit," is to be found in an entire remodelling of the traffic in landed property, which would militate against the endless splitting-up of holdings, the mortgaging of the fragments, the periodical recurrence of times of slack employment, and the lowering of the agricultural labour- wage. I do not mean to imply that there are not other means which can be employed. There are many such. In connexion with agrarian reforms, which obviate beforehand the possibility of the formation of such a proletariat in the future, there would be justification for giving positive support to emigration, in the case of those communities in which the condition of household industries and of the wage-earning population was worst. There should also be a gradual enforcement of compulsory insurance, which would either oblige the employer to pay higher wages, or else force the wage-labourer to quit his thankless native soil. The intro- duction of insurance against crises, while encumbering the employer, would at the same time render it possible to exact from him more permanent employment. Most important also SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 313 is the introduction of technical instruction in the popular schools, of which I shall speak again later on. The more the rising generation learns of skill in handicraft and delight in work, the sooner will come the disappearance of stupidity, of a foolish clinging to the soil, and the other moral hindrances to the free circulation of labour. The better the people grow the sooner will come the factory system and better pay, the " middleman " will disappear, and with him exploitation on both sides. To develop the study of the industrial arts is not of course a universal remedy for all ills. But the art of cultivating the soil will of course progress witii more rapid strides, the more prominence is given to technical education in schools, and the more central and provincial practical workshops for industrial training are set on foot by employers, and by the State or the Municipality. That portion of the population now so badly off, which — improved by such means — should still in the future follow their occupations at home, should undoubtedly be made subject to compulsory insurance, and in the districts where they lived, the stringency of house-to-house police inspection should 314 TSE IMPOSSIBILITY OF gradually be increased. The wholesale trans- mission of raw material should also be facilitated, the transmission of the best samples, common arrangements for transport and dispatch, the acquisition of their own means of production by the help of popular loan-societies and savings banks. Itisevident thatmuch help maybegiven on such lines as these, but no attempt should ever be made on any lines harking back to forms of labour, which have already been proved incapable of holding their own against com- petition. Only such can be tolerated as will render the labourer more productive, give him more command over commodities, and ensure him practical independence. It is possible, perhaps probable, that the science of electricity will in the near future be productive of great benefit, both for the workers in home industries, and for the petty artisans. If it should become possible to bring not only the water-supply and the heat-supply, but also mechanical motive-power in small quantities into every apartment at a trifling cost, the ground would be cleared for an entirely new era, both in the smaller arts and crafts and in the household industries. And SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 315 this would have been accomplished by means of collective or state communal agencies for the generation and transmission of force ! It is only reasonable to suppose that a general improvement in the condition of workmen's dwelhngs would inevitably result. But I will say no more : I might be suspected of falling into the strain of the " music of the future." One thing, however, I must say in passing. Even in the house-industries general self-help is possible, resulting in free success and prosperity? and — if I may revert once more to the maximum labour-day — due time for rest may be secured for the labourers. This is proved by the experience of the flourishing embroidery home- industry in East Switzerland and in Vorarlberg. The central union of the Home-Embroidery of East Switzerland sends representatives into the most distant valleys to enforce the pro- tection of labour and to safeguard the interests of a sound and healthy home-industry. In one of its Keports we are told that it has a special method of calculating stitches so as to obtain a basis for the computation of wages : that it regulates the relations of the" Fergger " or system of contracts between those who order and those 816 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF who work: that it procures markets for embroidery may be refused which by the employers on account of defects in the work; while the classification of patterns, that is, the graduation of wages according to the various degrees of difficulty and elaboration of design has been for a long time the constant duty of the Union. So much for the directly industrial duties of Politico-Social administration towards industrial labour of both kinds, propertied and non- propertied. Do they, any of them, amount to an attack on private property ? On the contrary they point to its development and stronger growth ! I have already drawn attention to the fact that in Association lies the means of universal- izing the tenure of income-yielding property, as well as of securing a sufficiency of wages and of insurance money to provide the means of subsistence both in and out of employment. But this is a very essential point in our problem. Universalization of income-yielding .private property is the exact reverse of the entire abolition of all private property, for which Social Democracy calls. Of course the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 317 accumulation of property by such Associations is not the only method of restoring even to the proletariat some share in the rights of owner- ship : I shall therefore do well to treat this point a little more in general. The proletariat demands, and can obtain, a share in possession as well as in education. The universalization, not the abolition, of private property in the means of production and in the sources of income, is our aim. Happily, it is an aim which can be attained, and which is _^even now in process of attainment. All cannot be Millionaires or large Capitalists, nor are so many such wanted. But all can have and can retain sufficient means to support his family and his own person, while hundreds of thousands can have sufficient to carry on small independent concerns of their own. I say " retain " advisedly, running counter to the Socialists. In the first place, through that very right of inheritance which the Social Democrats wish to abolish. A right of inheritance regulated in the interests of produc- tive labour will ensure to the mass of the people enduring possession of some of the means of production, upon which as basis rests, both for 318 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the possessor and for tlie members of his family, the security of an income exceeding the limits of bare subsistence. It maintains this possession continuously, without withdrawing the ground from the hands most suited to manage it. So much possession for so many would be entirely impossible without the right of inheritance. To transmit this private property into collective property would be to perpetrate the most gigantic act of " disinheritance " that was ever in history practised on the labouring-folk, solely on account of the jealous envy of a small fraction of the industrial proletariat. Confiscation by progressive taxation of iniierited property would be a no less mistaken policy. Nor is there any need for the equality of inheritance in the face of complete inequality of position and natural endowments. If the right of inheritance is preserved intact, it will be possible also to secure possession of some means of production, even to those of the proletariat who are now entirely without property, and with this a share in the revenue from sources of income, and in that portion of the national product- value which is devoted to interest, house-hire, agricultuial rent, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 319 and ground-reiit. In the interest on Savings Bank Moneys, the saving portion of the proletariat has already a share in the sources of income. There is no reason against, and in fact every reason in favour of all young people's saving a certain minimum — especially as a protection against the misuse of the freedom to marry. If the Insurance Societies which are now being so largely introduced are organized on the right basis, if they really form the reimburse- ments and reserve funds which are so much to be desired, if they and the Savings Banks invest all capital, which need not be im- mediately realisable, in houses and lands for the benefit of the smaller folks, and so acquire a portion of the real- estate of the nation (by collective, but not by Social Democratic methods), if these corporations can also be allotted shares in the dividends of Joint Stock Companies, if to the general insurance of labour could be added the system I have above recommended of the savings-premium, accord- ing to the pattern set by the English local benevolent- funds — provided all this were carried out, even the existing proletariat would attain partly means at their own independent disposal, 320 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF and partly associated means for security against misfortune, and therewith a universal share in the sources of income, so far as the need for such exists. I have already shown that a positive social policy would ensure to the peasant the greatest possible share in ground-rents for him and his.( • ) Productive labourers of every grade would thus become proprietors. The two great factors in production, private capital, and private real property, would assuredly not be eliminated from the problem of wealth distribution, but rather.all producers would have gained a shar e in the result of their common produce: and this, let it be noted, without the necessity or even the possibility of these universalized rent- sources being made the occasion of exploitation. It would be necessary to attempt, both by direct and by indirect means, the lowering of rates of Interest, rent, and hire, and the attempt would assuredly succeed. The measures to b e adopted have been already indicated: the (') Op. above p. 276., and also my treatise on "The Incorporation of Hypothecated Credit." SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 321 formation of large masses of corporate wealth, partly for lending purposes and partly for laying out in real-estate (I mean the milliards of the Savings Bank and of compulsory insurance), the legislative prohibition of all perpetual burdens of rent and interest by universal compulsory redemption, theavoidance, as far as possible, and the utmost efforts for reduction, of national indebtedness, the corporate organization of hypothecated credit, the holding of adequate ready reserves, which would prevent State loans from being raised at usurious rates in great crises, and the resulting bondage of the people in taxation. The regular supply of Capital would be so powerfully increased, the demand for it so lessened, exorbitant rates of interest, rent and hire, so brought down, that a lower general rate would be steadily secured and exploitation almost entirely prevented. This would be supplemented by a law affecting Joint Stock Companies and Exchanges which would prevent speculative appropriations of rent and Capital. The visitation with severe personal penalties of usury and adulteration, a new and more effectual supervision kept over the neces- saries of life, the abolition of the trade in money- 322 THJEJ IMPOSSIBILITY OF lending, (1) the whole business of industrial inspection and other like matters — all these matters would have to be arranged. These regulations, taken altogether, would almost entirely extirpate exploitation by loan as well as in trade. At the same time, the level of incomes would be kept up to the point which is necessary to cover both the suitable remunera- tion for socially useful achievements, and also the due, nay, the indispensable means of sub- sistence for such persons and institutions as absolutely, require other means of income than that afforded by labour, such as widows and minors, members of the Benevolent Fund Societies, insufficiently paid officials, talents free- ly devoted to art or to science, leading politicians and so on. The landed aristocracy, as well as the aristocracy of wealth, would still draw ground-rents and money-rents from their property, but no rack-rents, only such as seem fu.ny and entirely requisite for securing the social value of an aristocracy, for the preserva- tion of authority in civil life, for supplying C) " Eatensgeschaftbetriebes." SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 323 officers for a dependable army, for the guidance and development of Social production} for the cultivation of art and high breeding. There would, evidently, thus be no more ground for jealousy among the intelligent members of the proletariat, [of the remaining millionaires, even though there should be a few fortunate upstarts among them who could drink an unconscionable quantity of champagne ! Thus the universalization of private property, and even of non-exploiting capital yielding rent and interest, is actually possible. The Social Democratic ideal, to which we are supposed to be tending, is of a condition of society in which all should possess everything in common, and no one anything for himself. Nothing certainly can be so obnoxious to the Social Democrats, therefore, as the danger of our previously falling into a condition in which all would have something, and each proportion- ately much to lose. This is why they are already so much opposed to Savings Banks; and even universal labour-insurance has not hitherto found favour with them, although if it were established, the Savings Bank pence could no longer be called compulsory t2 324 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF contributions out of wages. And naturally enough : for collective property would make no man happy, while small properties, won and worked for, inherited and inheritable, bring as much relative satisfaction and subjective security for the future, as does the million for the millionaire, nay more, for he is not by any means the happiest of men, as is known for a fact of many of our millionaires. Collectivisim would make each dependent upon all for every- thing : the possession of some private property mitigates the labourer's dependence even upon his industrial chief. Honoured Friend, I beg your attention to a fact which is unfortunately almost universally misapprehended, viz., that a positive industrial policy has at its command large methods cf administrative assistance outside the sphere of free popular industry. I will take first those which affect the social processes of production and distribution. First, in the domain of taxation. I am, as you know, the most resolute adherent of the policy of retaining a nucleus of direct polititcal and municipal taxation. Also I do not wish the taxation policy to be SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 326 confused witli tlie social policy of the Govern- ment. But this does not prevent me from remarking that a policy conceived directly in tlie financial interests of tax-gathering bodies, dealing with indirect taxation, with articles of consumption, and with official fees, would remove serious inequalities in the distribution of private means, and greatly better the rela- tion of wages, profits, and rents. In this direction (you know my " Principles of Taxa- tion ") there is yet very much to be done. In- direct taxation should strike mainly at that less indispensable form of enjoyment by in- dulging in which everyone according to his kind and measure makes actual confession of his ability to bear the weight of taxes : existing indirect taxation, instead of doing this, attacks forms of consumption and trade, which afford no special indication of the individual's suit- ability for taxation, while it leaves others un- burdened who, it is quite evident, are eminently capable of paying taxes. Besides the taxation on the inheritance of large means, which I would not furthur tax progressively, I must here mention the taxation of articles of luxury of all kinds. 326 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF In this I include, in spite of the counter- assertion of Social Democracy, the use of tohacco and the consumption of liquor in those extravagant proportions which they have ac- tually attained. That the poor man pays proportionately more in taxes on tobacco and liquors is no objection, so long as the rich pays proportionately more in other kinds of taxation both direct and indirect, I care nothing for all the wearisome twaddle concerning double and treble taxation. The only real point to be considered is the whole amount contributed by each in the form of taxation. The taxation of dwelling-houses could also very well be scientifically constituted so that it should strike most heavily at those incomes which best bear taxing. We still leave entirely untaxed that boundless luxury in dress which obtains in both sexes even " down to Ihe lower classes, also luxurious feeding, extravagant decoration and luxurious rooms. This consumption is perhaps at least as fit to be taxed as the sugar, tobacco, and liquor trafiic all taken together, which in Germany are half choked up as sources of taxation. But we do not get hold of it. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 327 Can it not be got at? Some say not, but this is a mistake. If we are determined to make traders and manufacturers into tax collec- tors, as bas been done with the sugar-industry, the charcoal-burners, the brewers and other branch-industries, then this whole enormous mass of consumption can be reached by taxation, by means of ad valorem factory or sale-stamps, the duty of registering on the taxation-returns being imposed on the sellers all taxed objects of luxury and commodities of a luxurious description. I am of course not desirous of seeing this source of taxation set flowing either to-day or to-morrow. Its proper time will come when tlie political necessity for it arises, and when the commodities of luxury are completely concentrated in huge stores. Undertaken at the right moment, it would have the result of relieving the more necessary kinds of con- sumption, of lightening direct taxation as well as oppressive money-dues, and distributing the burden of taxation fairly in reference to the proletariat, the peasantry, artisans, small rent- holders, and petty officials. Nevertheless, from a politico-social point of 328 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF view, the main task of taxation-reform lies in the region of direct taxation: I mean in the general readjustment and more perfect appli- cation of the Universal Income-Tax. You are well aware of the advantages of this tax in securing a uniformly fair and generally- bearable incidence of the burden of taxation, according to the actual means of each person at the given time. But there are two other advantages in it of no less importance, which, nevertheless, may have hitherto escaped your notice : I mean its regulating influence reacting upon the whole system of taxation and finance, and tending to its highest and most perfect development ; and again its influence in furthering social and political peace and good- feeling between class and class. In both these respects it is of quite incalculable value, and deserves consideration for the purposes of this correspondence. The General Income Tax has these financial characteristics of the highest value: it yields abundantly, it is highly mobile, and its product is capable of immense development. But only under two conditions does it display these characteristics. It must spare as much as SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 329 possible the smallest and weakest taxable in- comes, and it must not over-burden even the largest. Upon this rests also the invaluable influence for good which it directly exerts upon the whole system of taxation and finance; it redeems all and every resource, including the most powerful, and sets the largest interests in motion to effect compensation for the harsh incidence of taxation of consumption, to bring the more tolerable portion of the latter, as well as the taxation of trade and inheritance, to their highest level of productiveness, to preserve the profitable propei'ty of the State, to avoid as far as possible irredeemable debts, and finally to oppose all unnecessary and premature under- takings. It is now in fact to the interest also of the Minister of Finance to spare as much as possible those small incomes upon which the taxation of articles of consumption falls with unduly heavy weight, for it is only by altogether passing over the smallest incomes and taxing very lightly the next above them that he can secure for the general income-tax that mobility which is so necessary to him, In order for the same reason to keep the rate of income-tax within tolerable limits, it is to the interest of the great masses of tax-payers, 330 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF as well as the administrators of finance, to secure for commercial taxation, and for the taxation of inheritance, as much development as these can conveniently attain. But there is also an irresistible impulse to obtain the greatest possible result from the admissible taxes on articles of consumption. And finally, it is to the general interest of all to prevent an increasing load of debt, and to avoid un- necessary undertakings at all times. All these influences are excited and maintained in activity by a general Income Tax, in the minds both of tax-payers and administrators. The slightest movement of the Income Tax, whether upwards or downwards, sets political forces at work in the endeavour to effect an all-round improvement in the system of taxation and finance, and these principally at the instigation of the fairly well-to-do classes, with the support, however, of all non- propertied voters. As the whole system of taxation advances into fuller development, the three great public departments of finance (') (}J i.e., in the Austro-Hungariau Empire. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 331 become financially more eflficient and can always retain a firm hold over their especail sources of taxation : to the Kaiser will go his dues — the great taxes on consumption and on the traffic in real- estate — to the King his dues — namely, the direct taxes and the universal taxation of inheritance, and finally to the local authorities their dues, which are the remnants of the old taxation of raw products, the surplus of the moveable direct taxation, taxes on special articles of local consumption, and a share in the burdens imposed on the traffic in real- estate. No less clear is the second main advantage which the general Income Tax possesses from the point of view of social policy. I mean its invaluable effect in the furtherance of peace in state and society, and financial harmony of class-interests. This effect is self- evident, and consists in the increasing individual fairness of taxation on the one hand, and its increasing mobility and productiveness on the other, but most of all in the character of its incidence, namely, that it spares the poorer classes and lightens their burdens proportion- ately to their power of bearing them. In its personal application of its measure to the 332 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OP actual net-income of each, the general Income Tax on its own domain excludes the opposition of class against class. The taxation of produce, on the contrary, is everywhere overladen with such contrasts between labour and property, commercial and non-commercial wealth, property in land and property in dwellings. Every class complains of too heavy burdens, and is always willing to be stirred up by social and political agitation against every other, and at the slightest rise all are in open discontent against the Governm ent, while even when it is lowered there are always many dissatisfied. With a system of taxation which takes no account of the real personal net income — the only true measure of a justly-distributed taxation — it can hardly be otherwise A fuller development of the general Income Tax, and less resort to taxation of produce, is therefore highly desirable from the point of view of social policy. All the advantages above stated are matters of experience wherever the general Income Tax has been in force for any considerable time, they are no mere inventions of theory. England is the country where this experience has been SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 333 fullest: England, whicli can look back upon nearly a century of Income Tax returns, both central and local, or at least upon a system of taxing property and income which is very similar. There is no doubt that it is not only to the wealth of Great Britain, but also and mainly to the Income Tax system introduced under the pressure of the war with Napoleon I., and subsequently more fully developed, that we must ascribe the diminution of the English taxes on such articles of consumption as tobacco, spirits, coffee, and tea, or the further fact that all traces of the Crimean War are already effaced from the records of the national debts, and that all the commercial taxation, and the taxation of inheritance, is willingly borne by the propertied classes. To me it seems that on the basis of the existing order of Society an entirely satisfactory system of taxation and finance may be founded, and that we may therefore hail with the liveliest satisfaction the increasing extent and improved regulation of the universal income-tax. The workings of benevolence, and the care of the poor, stand in need of as much improve- ment as does the course of taxation. Benevo- 334 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF lence, both public and private, supplies yet another corrective of the industrial distribution of private incomes, working as it does with reference to needs. This noble communism, which finds the strongest support in Christi- anity, would, like the latter, be destroyed by Social democracy. A popular State made up of materialists would either have to let the wretched alone in their want — of course, with ideal sources of comfort they could have nothing to do — or else its vitals would be eaten out by impostors who were members of the sovereign people. It is not to abolish benevolence, but to ennoble it, to raise it, and to intensify it, that we need. The times are ripe for this work, thanks to the Christian Churches, the benevo- lent associations, and humane people generally. In such positive lines of action as these, the hopes of Social Democracy will once more be out to shame. A last and most widely effectual redistribution of property in relation to needs and (as with reciprocal and benevolent associations) not of income only but of those ideal and personal advantages which contribute so much to men's happiness, takes place by means of the family SOCIAL DMMOCRAOT. 335 and in the relations between husbands and and wives, parents and children. Quite half the happiness of human life rests upon this. Social Democracy threatens to break up this universal and most steadfast bond of brother- hood, which lies in our very blood, and which is essential to a happy solution of this same problem of distribution. Perversity can scarcely be carried further than this. Never- theless, I do not maintain that family life to-day is perfect, or that it will ever prove the one exception to the universal imperfection of human things. On the other hand, it is open to improvement by other means than by the introduction of a modern Hetoerism. Children need protection from their very cradles from all that can stunt or degrade them, and from the maltreatment of unconscientious parents. Women as wage-labourers stand in peculiar need of protection. Whole masses of women are still bowed down and overladen with work which ought to be given over to machines. There is yet much to do in relieving the burdens of mothers and housewives by the institution of creches, kindergartens, deaconess homes, hospitals and practical labour-instruction in schools. Universal insurance can be 336 1HB IMPOSSIBILITY OF iatroduced for widows and orphans. Women who do not marry stand in need of protection, and of openings for satisfactory employment in branches of labour which are fitted for the feminine nature. But a modern Hetcerism would give us no help in all this, while by positive social reform much may be done, and is in fact in process of being done, in the directions I have named, by efforts and institutions peculiar to our time. Furthermore, it is not the women of the proletariat only who stand in need of assistance. Among the hand-workers and in small agricultural holdings there are women far more heavily laden then even in the proletariat, and in the way of providing dwellings and recreation for adults both in town and country there is even more scope for activity than in the already existing crfeches and holiday-funds ror the children of the proletariat. There is no apparent reason why here at any rate gradual assistance should not be given. In conclusion, industrial social policy has directly to do with commercial and customs policy. First in reference to maintaining harmony between class and class : I need only mention SOCIAL VJEMOCRACr. 337 tlie universal complaints over the increasing price of necessaries since 1879. It is my opinion that we in Germany have gone too far with our agrarian protective tariff, and that we ought long ago to have dispensed with the premiums on the export of sugar. I have also shewn already that agriculture is mainly suffering not so much from foreign competition as from the wanton luxury of large land-owners and the unproductive debts of peasant-proprietors. If this diagnosis is correct, and I have been able to support it by statistics indicative of causation, it will be possible to remove these protective tariffs as soon as we have set our hand to the thorough extinction of the debts of the peasant-class. Commercial policy, too, has it in its power to render the course of trade more steady and crises less frequent. Many years ago, when first I addressed these letters to you, I wrote these words — "The best means of avoiding loss of employment would be the establishment of a union of the whole European continent, for regulation of taxation, customs, and commerce generally." In another generation or two it will be impossible to avoid the necessity of such a 338 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF union, for customs, taxation, and trade, if we Europeans are to hold our own against the giant-realms of Asia, America, and soon I suppose of Africa also, if we are not to lose our hegemony of civilisation, wear each other out in a war of export bounties, and find our pea- sants and our labourers sinking to the level of coolies, ryots, and fellaheen. Asiatic com- petition is the most dangerous of all, in view of the constant cheapening of transport, and will continue to be so as long as the value of money in Asia is so much higher, and hence wages and market prices so much lower than in Europe : a union such as I have suggested might even consist at the outset only of Germany and Austria. To-day there is a decided prospect of this coming to pass ! The peace of Europe, which would be almost impregnably assured by a generation of industrial growth and progress on our contment, would obviate the worst and most threatening and deadly of the stoppages of trade and disturbances of the revenue, those internally caused, to the great advantage of all. Honoured Friend ! — At last we come to the third department in which some of the chief tasks of positive Social Policy lie, namely, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 339 the grand effects of State action as exerted through reforms of law in the domain of the ideal life of the people, and thorough improvements in the conditions of its own administration and constitution. The reform of the family I have already touched upon. Let us not forget that there is much that is rotten even in the existing family conditions. Idle and dissolute members are sucking the very life and marrow of almost every family, supported by a sentimental morality. Parents misuse their children, for begging purposes or worse, so that baseness and the starvation-level become hereditary, without any efficient attempt being made by the adminis- tration to prevent it. Even women and children were left far too long without the protection which is now being gradually afforded them by means of the labour-protection policy. The un- married fatherhood of the gilded youth is not repressed with the needful severity in private law : it would not be necessary that the penalty in as far as it exceeded the amount needful for support, should ]go to the profit of the foolish mother. The labourer's wife is burdened with household labour which could be much better z2 340 TSE IMPOSSIBILITY OF performed by large wash-houses and food- supplying institutions. This, and much else must be borne in mind, when on the other hand we reject the CoUe-ctivist Individualism of Free Love. Reject it we assuredly shall and must : not five per cent, of the proletariat women would vote for the loosening of family and mar- riage ties, which secure to the majority of human beings the protection and care of the stronger sex in childhood, and which already effects far more than Social Democracy can even promise. In the subject of the education of the young, I am far too much of a novice not to withstand the temptation of trotting out to you the chief hobbies of our contemporary educationists. I should run a risk of coming to grief in the process. But I may say that I have for years kept myself as closely in touch with their methods and their efforts as is necessary for the purpose of dealing with that part of the question which fringes on the industrial domain, and which ought not, therefore, to pass unnoticed in this correspondence. If we would have a system of instruction which will make men happy, and at the same time be fruitful of good results for industry, we SOCAL DEMOCRACY. 341 must have not an equal education for all, but one suited to the individuality of each, not mere book-learning, but such as will form men's lives, not the improvement of the understanding only, but also the ennobling of the heart. The peculiar source of the misery of the masses is their slavery to habits of idle loafing, their caste-superstitions, and their clinging to their native soil. Each new generation must be f et free from this, first and foremost by education, though also by the administration of the law, and by means of real freedom of movement and freedom to choose their own employment : in this way ako mainly, we must hope to save the slowly sinking population of the home-industries, small handicrafts and petty holdings. It is evident that this can only be efiected by the harmonious inter-operation of many different educational measures. I will only indicate a few of them. We have already Frijbel's Kindergarten : can it not be more universally applied ? In France we see the latest code for poj)ular schools extending the kindergarten system into a complete course of instruction in labour for 342 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF the wliole time spent at school. Shall we not soon be obliged to follow suit ? There is no question of setting on foot " school-manufacture" and " school-factories " which would make still more competition for those of adults. We are only speaking of its extension ii *o a kind of practical gymnastics which would not infringe upon the work of instruction in book-learning already carried on. A general grasp of practical labour, the simplest kind of modelling and such like, might very easily be learned both by parents and children, and practised by the latter as recreation. The technical strong point of each individuality would then speedily shew itself : the love of work would spread and increase : the endeavour to rise above their traditions and to get out of a groove would become general. Bodily and spiritually they would be cultivated up to a higher level, and spiritually not only in memory and reasoning power, but also in temper and in will. Labour instruction such as has been impossible for most of them ii the houses of their parents, will be secured to each child without infringement of parental rights and duties. The younger generation will become more active, they will SOCIAL DMMOCBACT. 343 conquer the most irksome servitude of all, the bondage to habits of caste, of a groove, and of sticking to the soil. A glance at educational literature shevrs us that from this side, also, progress has begun to be made. Girls' private boarding-schools abuse parental affection to the point of extortion, and are at the sauie time ioaccesfible to the poorer girls who stand most in need of cultivation. In public institutions for education and culture many highly cultivated women who have not married might find an assured and highly esteemed position for a life-time, and still more could be trained for positions suitable to their capacity, and appropriate to women's disposition, which are to be found in the popular system of education. Social Democracy hopes, among other things, that in the State of the Future, everyone will be able to study. Equality requires this, they say. What the principle of equality really requires (and the welfare of the people requires it too) is only that the most distinguished childen among the proletariat should have the opportunity of rising to as high an educational level as the most distinguished children of the wealthy. Is there any means 344 THE IMPOSSIBILITY 01 of securing this, and would this means serve to combat Social Democracy ? In point of fact, there is. The Church, the School, and the Army have long recruited the best heads from among the people to be priests, teachers, and officers, by the simple method of holding competitive examinations (in Cloister Schools, Teaching Seminaries, and Cadets' Training Schools) and thereby picking out the choicest youths to be educated at the public cost. This very policy which is pursued by the Church, the School, and the Army, needs only to be more generally developed. In all callings, but especially in technical departments, a certain number of free places should be secured to the most approved boys and young men, after the test of general competition. This would take away all grounds of dissatisfaction from poor parents, and from exceptionally gifted pro- letarians, set aside half-and-half education by thoroughgoing instruction, put ready for every- one the ladder by which he may rise to the highest levels of the Social order, and thus rob the army of discontent of its most capable leaders. To do all this, is actively to combat Social Democracy by fulfilling a requirement SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 345 which the principle of equality justifies us in demanding ; a general university-education for the proletariat, on the other hand, is not only more than we can afford in social time and in money, it would also prove a great misfortune to "the people." It points directly to the impossibility of ruling the so-called " Social State," especially for such a nation of doctrinaires as the Germans. The Press and popular literature have also their share in the task of Social Reform. The freedom of the Press, which we owe to Liberalism, need not be sacrificed in the effort to overcome Socialism. The abuse of the Press for the purpose of demagogy will come to a natural end without any fettering of criticism, even without Lassalle's Monopoly of Advertise- ment, which at any rate is not a necessity of Social Politics, as soon as the bulk of the electors are as individuals averse to revolution and have learned from the working of the new " Corporations" what reforms are possible and most to their own interest. When that time comes the mass of the electors will decline the fare which demagogy offers^to set before them. The Press and popular literature will then be 346 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF compelled to subserve the cause of rational Social Reform, and will cease to attack these strongholds of popular faith which stand firm against all Materialism and on which security ultimately rests, even for the Jews. Groodfellowship is even now not difficult for the working-classes. The " Social State" itself cannot do more than is already done (in spite of the " Iron Law of Wages ") by the rapid growth of Social Clubs. Nor would it be good to do more. State-superintendence will hardly be felt to be a necessity in this sphere, even by the proletariat. Practically the possibility of good-fellowship of the higher sort falls back once more upon the question of the proportionate distribution of income, of which point enough has already been said. The patronage of Art generally, and of instruction in the industrial arts, has already been very definitely undertaken by the State and the Corporation. I will not, therefore, dwell on this point. If besides this there still remain private persons wealthy enough to purchase works of art, this can work only for good. An organised Capitalism favours Art. There is no need for the State to remain deaf to Art SOCIAL DJSMOCBACY. 347 because of it. The commodities used by the masses have gained infinitely in beauty of late. Science on her side must contribute her quota to the task of averting Social Revolution, by counteracting erroneous teaching and working out ideas of reform. Nor will she fail to do so. Not less important is the prohibitive influence of morals and the religious life of the Church. To elevate not only learning but morals also, must be the task of the Educational forces of Society. Education may to a large extent check the vicious moral outgrowths peculiar to the extremes of free-individualism (Liberalism, or Capitalism), such as excessive avarice and overweening ambition: it may also heighten the sense of duty in both sections of society, the labourers and their employers. The substitution on the other hand of public for private organization of industry would not in any way provide for the extirpation of the vices peculiar to the extreme of levelling Individual- ism. Capitalistic avarice of course would be no more, since there would be no longer any Capitalists. Avaricious exploitation of picked labour by the mass of common labourers would however, as I have shown, be as possible as it is 348 THB IMPOSSIBIILTT OF probable. To this -would be added the special vice to which extreme Individualism is prone, jealousy of their betters among the common folk. Public life — and what part of life would not then be public ? — would take in jealousy, misrepresentation, popular flattery, at every pore. These vices would become dominant in a manner and degree never hitherto known. From the point of view of morals therefore, the Collectivist Popular State is not in any way calculated to be superior as a social system to that of private production. The only thing which would be its superior is the State with a positive Social Policy. May the Church long continue to be a strong support and protection ! Catholicism is not justi- fied in fathering Social Democracy on to Protes- tantism. The Protestant is neither Deist or Atheist. The Orsni bomb, the Nihilists' dynamite, Voltairianism and the first Revolution, did not arise in Protestant Germany, but in Italy, llussia, Ireland, France. The prospects of both the great Churches are far better now than in the time before the outbreak of the Social Democratic Spirit. The educated of all Communions of every station and country SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 349 must share the blame of the thought, speech, and writing whose latest fruits are Optimism, Atheism, Naturalism. The spirit which gave birth to the Social Revolution seems however to have lost much ground in the upper classes. The arrogance of the worthless Metaphysics of Materialism which is not even a match for Theism, still less capable of overthrowing it, has probably been cast overboard once and for all. Both the Churches have perhaps a more potent staff of clergy than they ever had before, and in the German Kingdom they are the most potent of all. The prospects of Social Democ- racy are therefore bad, in the task of emptying the contents of popular faith. Both Churches and States have a common interest in the positive overthrow of Social Democracy, and this will give a powerful impulse towards peace both between the Churches, and between the Protestant State and the Catholic Church. Social Reform is " Practical Christianity " for all. For the Church the latter does not of course consist in dealing with economic questions, but in the full realization and enforcement of the command to love one's neighbour as one's self. This results in respect 350 TSE IMPOSSIBILITY OF for all labour, both of management and of service, and in those minor forms of distribution which act as fundamental corrections and supplements to the Capitalistic process of division, the cultivation of reciprocity and benevolence. Here the Christian Church enters directly into the play of national industry as an agent of conciliation, while in its spiritual gifts it offers compensation for inequalities of material fortune. So great is the work of the larger Christian Churches in these directions, that it alone would be sufficient to destroy the prospects of the Social revolution. The chief contrast between the great Christian Churches lies less in doctrine than in the arrangement of their hierarchy. The breach at this point cannot be bridged over, but it does not cut so deep as their common interest against an Atheistic Social revolution. Outside the ranks of the peasantry and the peasant section of the Army, the Church, though outwardly divided, stands as a further impregnable rampajft of the existing Social order. I do not under-estimate the dangers of an overgrowth of political parties by ecclesiastical. SOCIAL BEMOCRAOY. 351 This is in my opinion the darkest cloud in the political horizon of the German Empire, darker ever perhaps than the whole of Social Demo- cracy itself. Nevertheless, I do not see that the prospect is entirely dark. Tou wrote to me many years since to know if it were true, as was being said in Vienna, that in two generations Germany would be once more Catholic. I begged you to wait till the Luther Celebration took place. This brought no ambiguous answer. Germany is and will remain Protestant, as regards the majority of its inhabitants. Protestantism with its triumphs of religious and scientific free thought is as little likely to be destroyed as Catholicism. The institutional polarisation of Christianity in the two great Churches has, moreover, some advantages. The Protestant Church without the Catholic would easily degenerate into subjectivism, unbelief, Cesarism, while the Catholic Church without Protestantism would probably sicken with the maladies of over- strained authority, popular superstition and the international domination of the Papal Chair. Every Protestant may admire the world-wide social structure of the Catholic Church — an 352 THE IMPOSSIBILITY 01' incomparable blending of monarchical, aristo- cratic, and democratic elements in social architecture — but he must never be expected to adopt once more the Catholic Hierarchy. Nor need the Catholic Church be expected to become Chauvinistic. If my insight is correct, then in spite of the split between the Churches the national unity of Germany will be main- tained in all its essentials, and all one-sided degeneration be avoided in both Churches. Germany will weather the very serious dangers of the considerable overgrowth of political by ecclesiastical parties. The exceptional laws against Catholics might fall through, without the anti-German frenzy being let loose in the Catholic portions of the Empire. (This has in fact happened since these words were written). Exceptional laws, especially those dealing with death-bed sacrament, must of course be given up. They are ineffectual, the appropriate rallying points of the "Centre." Their damaging effect on the State makes the question of whether they are necessary and right wholly superfluous to a Statesman. The Non-Catholic majority and freedom of belief effectually secure the German Empire from subjection to SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 363 the Infallible Pope in matters temporal. Protestantism will preserve the national spirit of Germany quite enough for it never again to allow its emperor to pass " beyond the mountain," while Catholicism on the other hand ' will render impossible the absorption of Catholic countries into Germany, wherein lies the pledge that Austria may securely and without danger to itself go hand-in-hand with Germany. A German Empire which^should restore a Catholic majority in Germany by means ©f conquests in Austria, would be simply impossible to govern. It happens very fortunately that in Germany the majority are Protestants, in Austria Catholics. Peace and confidence between the two empires is thus guaranteed against all the temptations presented by the lust of conquest. In this very confidence lies much of the strength of these monarchies in resisting the Social Revolution, The security that the Christian Churches will not sink back into the literal belief of the masses, that their metaphysics will remain symbolically in harmony with all the sure facts of experience, has to their great benefit been for ever guaranteed by the freedom of investi- 364 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF gation and belief won by the critical epoch. Criticism, nay, even the freedom of unbelief, is a pledge that the Churches will constantly return"^ to the deeper and truer conception against which even Atheists can have nothing to say. There are Religions which have endured longer than Christianity, but none which have been so tenacious and so powerful through sach immensely stirring historical scenes as those of the West since the Emperor Augustus, and through the flux of worldly powers and philosophical opinions, as to be able to conquei^a world like the Roman World, to satisfy in the Middle Ages the religious needs of the most advanced nations, to live through three hundred years of criticism, and still to day to keep the majority of the nations bound to the holiest which is within their reach. It is very evident that Social Democracy has no chance of blasting this Rock with dynamite. The Churches may be to the Atheists a horror, a hydra whose destruction is devoutly to be wished. As a man of the people and a political seer, the Social Democrat cannot conceal from himself the fact that the Christian Churc^lidpieans for the people Equality before SOriAL DEMOCMACY. 355 God, and that if the Commune were to cut off the head thereof in the principal towns, the Church would grow a new head and new limbs among the people. After Social Democracy has ex Cathedra avowed Atheism to be its religion, its opponents are not to blame for weighing the strength of Christian Theism against Social Democratic Atheism as I have just been forced to do. The object was not to tender a personal confession : we do not play Faust and Gretchen in public. The object was to attempt to measure the prospects of Social Democracy, and the probable power of Christianity as opposed to it, without any. pretence of piety or any hypocritical cant. It was not intended either to disparage exact science. Nothing that this can prove to be an actual fact of experience must be contradicted by the teaching of faith. It was not intended to attempt to justify the literal interpretations which have been put upon certain facts and Bible-texts. Christian Metaphysics cannot be accepted, nor can its reading of the Bible be the true one if any established facts of experience stand in actual contradiction to it; ) Shall we return to the system of electoral qualifications ? By no means. We should then only be substituting liberal for democratic Individualism, and effecting a complete retro- grade step, bringing in evils of another and worse description, driving in the poison of revolution into the blood of the people. To set aside the labour- vote altogether would be to curtail freedom and equality to an undesirable extent and to deprive the State of that hold over the hearts of the meanest and poorest which is so necessary to it. If we were to abolish universal suffrage we should commit an error scarcely paralleled even by the anti-culture legislation. Universal suffrage has grown up with the growth of the German Empire. It (') Op. my " Method of combating Social Democracy withoift Exceptional Legislation. CO 386 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF was the counter-move against the Diet of Princes and the Parliamentarism of the stormy period in which Bismarck and Boon defended the power of the monarchy. To abolish the suffrages of the proletariat would weaken, not strengthen, the kingly power, and give political predominance to Capital. Impartial justice to all interests, prevention of class-government, whether Capitalistic or proletarian, herein lies at once the purpose and the strength of mon- archy ; it can only acquit itself of this ta?k if the conflicting interests are represented and can thus make themselves heard. Universal suffrage is at least not worse than any known system of electoral qualification. It is to my thinking more probable that these latter systems will lose ground step by step in the constitutions of our provinces and parishes, succumbing to the onslaught of democracy, than that universal suffrage vsdll disappear from the constitution of the Imperial Diet. On the other hand, Universal Suffrage is nevertheless in a quite special degree the constitutional expression of an extreme demo- cratic Individualism, a world-philosophy which declares the immediate sovereignty and equality SOCIAL DBMOCBACY. 387 of the individual, and regards the nation merely as the sum ef the individuals which compose it. This fundamental error, however, must in any case have been demolished even if it had not given birth to Social Democracy. The majority of all the votes does not represent the actual will of the people : it is only the accidental average of the wills of the individuals composing the majority, almost of all them surrendering their own opinion under pressure of electioneering compromises, and forced into a stream for the election day in a state of excited passion. But just because of this it is all the more necessary that makeweights should be provided and dams set up in organizing the single expression of the will and power of the nation — ^'.e., in the constitution of the State — to break the injurious force of electoral currents and to prevent the continual undoing of what has been carefully built up by the ever-recurring change into the opposite current. If the will of the majority were actually " the will of the people " — and as generally reasonable and good as the will of the people is represented to be by flatterers of the many-headed monarch — everything of course ought to bow to cc 2 388 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF it, and government by parliamentary majorities would be justifiable in and by itself. But there is no such " will of the people," and the "will of the majority" is only a concentrated approximation to it, the" wild and varying interest of a majority of the electors which is always a minority of the whole people, and which exists only on and for the election day. It is to be regretted that the cult of the will of the people, as represented by the will of the majority, should be a superstitious idolatry. But so it is. It would be fatal to the influence of majorities and to universal suffrage also, if it had to stand and fall with this superstition. The truth, in my opinion, lies in a different direction. The direct universal popular suffrage of individuals must be supplemented by special selection on the part of the active popular groups and modern institution^ of to-day. The constitutional policy suited to our time is one which leads not away from universal suffrage^ hut leyoni and above it. Let us retain the equal recognition of all individuals in the State, but let us add to our nominees of universal suffrage, a body of representatives from the great public and SOCIAL DEMOCBACT. 389 popular corporations, either as a separate Chamber, or within the same Chamber, or as a portion of both Chambers. The real root of the intellectual hold which Social Democracy has over the masses, the deepest cause of its danger, lies in this Individualism of natural rights which regards the people only as the sum of individuals with equal "inborn rights of man," and the will of the State as merely the majority decision of the masses, instead of organizing a representation of the people at once in its complex structure of quasi-communal corporations, and in the manifold departaients and branches of an ever-growing civilization, — a form of Democratic Individualism in the sphere of constitutional right which for the last twenty years we have not been able to shake off. Hence it can only be combated by a positive solution, conceived entirely in the spirit of the new time, of the second side of the problem of a good popular representation ; by this means only can we hope to crush revolutionary aspirations, and to secure a positive Social Policy in the attainment of actual social peace. As long as our con- stitutional system lags so far behind the 390 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF requirements of the new time, we could not expect other than that Political Democracy- should in practice develop more and more into Social Democracy. On what lines, then, do I justify, on the one hand, the universal representation of individuals, and on the other the necessity for a representation of the various parts of the complex organization of the people in our day? More than ever before, in the course of history, the individual, and every individual, to-day has a fullness of freedom and independence in life, and more or less sense of what is due to the individual life of others : the State is the stronger when each individual is imbued with patriotism towards the whole, sympathy for other individuals, activity and intelligence in his own just interests of life. The political life of the nation becomes lax, and loses its strongest incentive to progress if all adult males of good character as citizens have not the possibility of making their influence felt in the choice of popular representatives ; without the impulse given by the mass of the people we should have in the State no positive effort on behalf of the people. But universal suffrage, however SOCIAL BUMOCRACY. 391 easy to justify as the only means of individu- ally associating the people as the sum of individuals with the State, is no less one-sided and inadequate if used as the exclusive method of organizing popular representation. The people is not only a sum of individuals ; it is also a whole composed of quasi-communal members in the territorial outlines of its social structure, and a manifold set of institutions covering all departments of civilized life in the domain of culture. In this territorial structure, and in this social differentiation — in respect to both of which different individuals are inthemost complex way associated and interwoven, and in the representation of which they are represented — the people must of necessity be drawn into intimate connexion with the State, in which ultimately its collective will and action is con- centrated. To effect this would be our task even if there were no Social Democracy in the question, for before this arose State and people alike were threatened by its very opposite - the extreme liberal Individualism of Capital. But since Social Democracy has come to life and to such rapid growth, it has become a matter of pressing necessity for our social policy to make 392 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF positive progress in its second great task of re-moulding popular representation in accord- ance with the needs of the times. The seals of the greatest wealthy of foreign commerce, of industry, of constitutional life, of the highest public offices and professional institutions for Art, Science, Education, social intercourse — viz., half Berlin, the Hanse towns, Hanover, Frank- fort, Munich, Mannheim, and others — are to-day represented for and by the proletariat! Does this not give us occasion to consider whether it is not necessary to supplement the mere representation of the masses with a representation of the local and social divisions of the nation, if we are not to condemn to utter extinction all that has the deepest mean- ing and the highest worth, and in which the lives of all individuals are most intimately concerned? No unprejudiced person, from whose eyes have fallen the scales of that un- limited Individualism of the oft-refuted "rights of nature," will feel able to answer this question in the negative. Under an exclusive systeift of popular representation by the votes of the masses it cannot fail to happen that the numbers of those who possess little or nothing, with SOCIAL DEMOCBACT. 393 those who for some other reason are discon- tented, will form the majority, and that this majority will exploit the power thus attained for the special ends of those who compose it just as relentlessly as in the past the old land- owners, or more recently the Capitalist minority have ever been able to do. It lies in the very constitution of man that where the individual has to make a decision, his first care is for him- self, and he regards as only secondary the concerns of others and of the entire people. All previous opposing forces, the monarchy and its official hierachy, the military and so on, will not prove permanently capable of resisting it, but will themselves be in danger of gradually succumbing to generations of slowly disinte- grating shocks. Not thus can this advance be checked towards exploitation of the power of the State in the special interests of the proletariat, nor can we thus succeed in banishing the revolutionary tendency. All constitutional history suggests by numerous analogies the ultimate development into mob-tyranny. The optimistic opportunist notion that universal suffrage — which I combat not in itself but in its predominance without counterpoise — will itself 394 THM IMPOSSIBILITY OF remedy these evils, cannot hold water : as long as it is cherished Social Democracy will continue to thrive, and crush the revolutionary outbreak as we will, it will burst forth again. This development can only be mastered and re- strained if, without detriment to the proletariat but in the many-sided interest of the whole people, the local and professional corporations, if the great public organs which already represent large interests and together include almost every section and division of the people, if all these, 1 say, are bnilt up into the structure of popular representation, whether in one Chamber or in two. One of the most important tasks, there- fore, of the art and science of politics in the face of existing social dangers, lies in the domain of general constitutional policy. This task cannot be accomplished all at once, nor by individual effort, nor quite satisfactorily at the first attempt, but sooner or later accomplished it must be. Let the proletariat continue to elect, even at the risk of its winning a quarter or more of the entire number of seats. But do not hand over to it the whole State, which belongs not to the numerical majority but to the whole people in its living organism ! SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 395 It is true our provincial and local constitutional right seems to afford us a strong protection against sudden and complete democratization. And there is no doubt that property, from the strongholds which still remain to it in the constitution of the district and the province, will actually carry on the most vigorous defensive warfare against extreme demo- cratization. But we cannot regard it as a normal state of things that the mass of individuals should go for everything in the Imperial Diet, but for nothing or not nearly enough in the Local and Provincial Chambers. Whether the three class system so drastically condemned by Prince BismarcVor some similar arrangement is possible, is quite another question. It is clearly to the interest of both classes to seek and find the Positive Third — which will not assuredly be either a mere universal majority vote, practically that of the labourers, or a mere universal property vote— andwhen it is found, to keep it deliberately in view alike for Imperial, Provincial, and Local constitutional policy. It is to be hoped and supposed that the future belongs to this third and medium course, involving neither the absolute 396 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF sway of property nor that of non-property, maintaining universal suffrage in its integrity, but at the same time moderating andfertilizingit. This might be achieved by the admission either in one or both Chambers, of the corporate" elements to the representative bodies. In nothing have the latest developments of public right been so fruitful of good results as in the formation of new kinds of public corporations in matters municipal and professional. We find in Prussia and elsewhere the whole structure of the latest communal system, both in town and country, taking more and more the form of corporations. For some twenty or thirty years the Chambers of Commerce and Industry have been constituted as corporate bodies of the newest type. We see agriculture everywhere seeking to form stronger and wider unions. Before our eyes the gigantic growth of compul- sory public Insurance Companies has taken in 12,000,000 of labourers. Surely from this growing tendency of public right we may conclude that while the universal vote is still and always to keep all citizens in touch with the whole of public life, yet the more destructive influence of the preponderating SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 397 mass of non-propertied voters in public life will be counteracted, and its merely progressive and vivifying influence secured by the adoption of new forms of corporative representation. That the future has this in store for us is more than probable ; it is, indeed, indispensable, if our civilizatien is to be saved from wreck. It may be effected with one Chamber or with two, by placing as delegates or as senators in the repre- sentative bodies, side by side with the nominees of universal suffrage, representatives of the communal bodies (also reformed in the same spirit) in province, district, and town, and on the other of the great public professional bodies, viz., representatives of agriculture, trade and industry, of locomotion, exchange, and insurance-system, representatives of learned bodies, of the Church, the Universities, the Academies, and the free professional associations of every kind. This would not be to restore the privileged classes of the old times, to raise the ghosts of long extinct historical forms ; it would be for our day bone of its bone and spirit of its spirit. Our two main requirements would then be satisfied, for we should have the repre- sentation of the masses with all the stirring 398 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF impulse which it yields, but we should also have the will of the masses moderated, and fruitful results secured for it, by the influence of men of high character and intelligence, and experts of the first order, and this from each of the two hemispheres of the organized public life of the people — from the public communal bodies or local authorities, and. from the public representatives of the liberal professions. For the old order of privileges there would be no place, still less could there rise above the horizon of constitutional policy the more modern privi- leges of the highest tax -payers. Non-payment of members would then cease to be a necessary counterpoise, and their payment might even become the sign of politico-constitutional development. But this idea is to-day a foolish- ness to some and to others an offence, just as was 20 or 30 years ago the idea of Labour-insu- rance which I even then advocated strongly in connexion with a corporate modification of popular representation, but which was then rejected by the loudest of the State-reformers, only to be later adopted, though in a shockingly unjjractical shaj)e, as the key-stone of a positive social policy. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 399 I have felt it to be a patriotic duty to work out this idea more definitely and more exactly now than I did when I first despatched these letters to you some years ago. If these views prevail — and I hope later to present them to you in a more accurate and more easily comprehended form — they may become specially fruitful in those countries whose constitutions are still founded on a mere representation of interests on the basis of property qualifications, and may become the means of coping with the ever- growing strength of universal suffrage and also of effecting a constitutional reconciliation between the third and fourth orders. With an Austrian statesman, therefore, this last and ■ highest idea of positive Social reform should find a ready acceptance, and therefore it is that I specially commend it to your earnest attention. Honoured Friend! — In order to show you as briefly as possible the many prospects of Social Reform, I have been obliged to lead you up a steep and rugged way. We are now at our goal. From the height to which we have somewhat painfully climbed, we can now draw our concluding judgment upwards from its source, while we look down upon the 400 TSE IMPOSSIBILITY OF seething mass of contradictory opinions below. However reserved our decision must be as to the various measures in detail, and as to the time and extent of their appropriate appli^ cation, still, on the whole, as you are doubtless now convinced, we have at command a fullness of positive reforms by means of which to solve ''the Social question" as each past age has solved its " Social question," and each future age will also do — through continuous development of what already exists, through gradual and timely reforms. The solution purely on lines of public law is entirely impossible, no less than that on lines of private law only. The universal system of pure Collective Production with distribution of the product according to Social labour-time or according to need, is for ever excluded, even in the form proposed by Rodbertus, still more in the Social Democratic form. There is no need to break our heads for the distant future in deciding how far Collective Production will ultimately take its place beside private production. For to-day, private production regulated by public law in the spirit and interests of true freedom and equality, has still an assurance of far greater SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 401 success both for indmduals and for the whole. Positive Social Reform promises help not only to the industrial proletariat, but also tothe laborious and over-burdened classes of the small pro- prietors, artisans, workers in home industries, and day labourers. It is, however, a complex whole, consisting of many measures which would work harmoniously with each other, and which thus would make all Antisemitism superfluous. Not one of them constitutes a radical change or requires an apparatus of bureaucratic stringency to guard it. The worthy achievements of the liberal capitalistic epoch not yet deceased, need not be sacrificed to positive social reform, nay more than this, it is by its means that they are rendered effectual in reaching all. Personal freedom and equal rights for all will become a realized fact for all, without the exclusion of the higher remuneration and compensation which is due to the aristocracy of personal merit, by the utilization of clubs, unions, and professional associations, and other custom- ary institutions of private right, including the School, the Church, the Corporation and the State , In the same way we perceived the possibility of freeing the proletariat of all grades from 402 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF routine and bondage to the soil, the prac- ticability of endowing everyone with some share of property and of the sources of rent, as well as of effecting the rise of merit even from the proletariat up to any height on the social ladder, further the means of satisfying the most burning ambition in those who still remained wage-labourers, and lastly, the possibility of supplementing capitalistic dis- tribution of wealth by universal reciprocity and benevolence. All this and much else which hfis been touched upon can be attained without endangering at any essential point the guidance of Production by Capital. Positive Social Reform, therefore, far surpasses both private assessment Socialism and public Collective Socialism in the success attainable by it and in the simplicity of its means. The State would not be forced to overstep in any direction its natural limits as a central organ of will and of force : in the special politico-social branch of its administration it can always limit itself to the necessary central restraints, incitements, and regulations for organization which are indispensable for the avoidance of disturbances in the fertile production and activity of SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 403 individual freedom. Neither extreme In- dividualism nor extreme Collectivism is what we need, but the freeing of the individual by means of statutory and institutional compulsion on the part of Society, and the progress of the Society by means of the free labour of indivi- duals. Nor do we need to revert to obsolete types of social organization. Our methods and forms are not borrowed from the feudal and police institutions of a departed age. They have, in common with such, nothing but the fact that they are positive organizations within which individual freedom and equality work with fruitful results in a rightly ordered struggle for existence. Moreover, in their special char- acteristic of national extension they are better marshalled, specialized, and differentiated, than older forms. They pour new wine into new bottles, and they thus attain afar greater fullness of true freedom, equality, and brotherhood. If we look back upon the comparatively short time which has elapsed since these letters were first sent you, containing the same ideas as now, we cannot fail to recognize that history has already made and is daily making powerful strides in these very directions of dd2 404 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF positive Social Policy which I have indicated. The pi'o visional settlement of German Labour Insurance, the powerful impulse given to Labour-protection by the Emperor William II., the progressive organization of both classes into their respective unions for settlement of labour-terms, the evident endeavour of Con- tinental trade-policy after greater freedom and wider range both in commerce and industry, this and many other signs of active progress yield a welcome corroboration, and that on a large scale, to that view of Social Policy which I had the honour to lay before you as early as the year 1870. But most welcome of all are the clearly discernible leanings of Old Liberals and Old Conservatives towards that very positive Social Policy which was formerly so repugnant to them. Only Social Democracy itself is not yet converted. J3ut even now that in Germany it has just escaped from the heavy fetters of exceptional legislation, it maintains a practical Party Programme against the more scientific but v.^holly unmanageable Programme of extreme Communism : indeed, to do otherwise would be to court certain dissolution. The SOCIAL DEMOCRACy. 405 most cultivated man of the whole party has lately even anathematized the Atheistic Propaganda within his party although his own friend has been the Pope thereof. In the ques- tion of the Eight Hours Day, all reference to the Collectivist Normal Labour Day has been dropped, and in Parliament the party takes its share in practical legislation. This whole moderation of demeanour may be calculated, seeing that the party is engaged in carrying the agitation to the country with the prospect of gaining hundreds of tliousands of fresh votes. But even the more moderate leaders will not demolish the sanctuary of their Social Demo- cratic belief. Nor do I deplore this fact. Social Democracy nmst remain and must grow until it has compelled existing Society to undertake positive Social Reforms all along the line, and to carry them through energetically and without delay, a consummation which has by no means been arrived at yet. In reference to the two points, especially, which to me seem the most important— in the development of the law of transfer of real estate for the purpose of getting rid of loads of debt incurred from inheritance or purchase, in the 406 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF interests of the larger portion of productive national labour, i.e., the peasant-class, and secondly in the development of constitutional right. Imperial, Provincial, and Local, to meet the requirements of the times — hardly any- thing has yet been accomplished, in spite of property-registers, rights of next of kin, and " homestead-legislation. " I cherish the cheer- ful anticipation that this very extension of social democratic agitation into the country, this fever- heat of electoral agitation, these votes for the labour-party increasing with each election, will have just the necessary effect of compelling positive Social Policy to enter upon these most essential tasks. Here, again, Social Democracy will prove itself to be the spirit which, by negation, brings to pass positive good. When once it has fulfilled its mission of stirring up positive Social Policy all along the line, it will then have brought it to pass that even the proletariat will leave the dream-dove of the future to brood upon the roof of the Socialistic State, and will sit down contentedly to pluck the fruits of reform now well within their reach, and brought there mainly by the driving force of the attacks of Social Democracy. SOCIAL SEMOCBACy. 407 Even then the present camp of the Social Democrats will not be entirely broken up. The greater number tmll become the fighting army of the most Radical reform, and this extreme left of a positive Social Policy will become the leaven of progress, and act as a counterpoise against any reaction into the laissez aller of Liberalism, thus performing the best possible service to the cause of social advancement. On the strength of the foregoing lines of reasoning I now pronounce my conclusions with the unshaken assurance of a thoroughly considered conviction. As the party of thorough-going social reform, Social Democracy, even if it did not change its name, would be no longer essentially Demo- cratic Collectivism, and would at once cease to be dangerous: as the party of Democratic Communism, it is and will remain — impossible. APPENDIX TO LETTEK III. January 10, 1891. Honoured Feiend, 1 have just received your last commu- nication, in which; while fully approving my efibrts, you ask for a further addition by way of Appendix to the third letter. You are, you say, entirely in agreement with the main contents of my three letters ; you hold that democratic, and especially communistic- democratic communism is impossible, in the sense that it is impracticable and incapable of continued existence. You recognize fully on the one hand the danger of revolution in case a positive social and constitutional policy should not do its duty by tempering universal suffrage with supplementary representation through SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 409 the communal-corporative structure of the latest social forms : for however much the proletariat, united in their hatred of Capital, may appear to you incapable of positive construction, you yet recognize that a revolutionary attempt might be productive of even greater destruction, than took place in the risings of the Spartan Helots, in the Roman slave- outbreaks and in the German peasant wars through the exploited and down-trodden masses of destitute labourers. But now you would like to know how I picture to myself the industrial world of the year 2000, under the supposition that meantime the progress of tech- nique should celebrate future triumphs, that positive Social Reform should reap an ample harvest, and thatuniversal suffrage provided with due constitutional restraints should continue to give a powerful impetus to the improvement of all social conditions. Bellamy's seductive romance " Looking Backward,'' of which more than three hundred thousand copies have already been circulated, has, it seems, fascinated your friends of both sexes ! Now I frankly confess that the curiosity of your friends places me in a position of no 410 TSM IMPOSSIBILITY OF small embarrassment. No writer is less fitted than I to set about inventing a Social romance in competition with Bellamy. Besides, you do not ask for a romance, but the approximately actual fact, to which we may expect to look forward. Now " the times of God are his secret," and the forms and organizations of a far distant Social future no less. The desire of your friends is very natural, but the fulfilment of it passes human capabilities. Pray put a damper upon their curiosity by asking them whether they suppose that they, if they had fallen asleep in a trance, as did Bellamy's hero, in that very different Austria before the days of Maria Theresa, waking in the year 1900, would be able to comprehend the altogether new Austria of to-day ! Austria was then a large but loosely connected territorial empire ; to-day it is a modern twin-state. T he central State-activity was then very slight, as the military and financial arrangements of that day prove. All the manners, family life, the life of science, art, and religion,, were incomparably different. Tliere was no question of constitutional rights in the diets or of the parliamentary system of to-day. The difference SOCIAL DEMOCRACl. 411 ill the state of affairs and the extreme poverty and scantiness of public life from 1706-1740 is shewn by the fact that the State-debt, and its expenses, military and civil, absorbed yearly only 30 million florins, and that at the accession of Maria Theresa the National Debt amounted only to 50 million florins. (' ) If in those days anyone had written a political romance foretelling- approximately the state of things to-day, he -would have been regarded as a fantastic dreamer, perhaps as a fool. Nevertheless, we have to-day for a smaller total territory, with, of course, a much denser population, an expenditure thirty times as large, andanational debtahundred times greater! And yet your conservative friends expect me to prophesy concerning the actual result of the period which will end in the year 2000, and which bids fair to be far richer in new forms, far more creative in invention, infinitely more rapid in living than any which has gone before. Their expectation is one which cannot be fulfilled. (1) Op. The Finances of Austria, 1701—1740, Von Mensi Vienna, 1890. 412 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF But if you wish to know what I think of the idealism which pervades Bellamy's romance, and how much of it I hold to be possible, taking the very best view of things, I will speak frankly enough on this score : yet in what I have to say you will find only the strict conclusions suggested by the whole fundamental view contained in these three letters. I must first of all remind you that Bellamy gives no practically conceivable organization to his State of the Future. A great part of his success is due to this, that he does not weary his readers with such hypothetic forms of organization of collective production as I have attempted to suggest in the third volume of my " Structure and life of the Social Organism," or as may be constructed out of the writings of Rodbertus. Moreover, Bellamy leaves untouched the existing marriage relations and religion, to which, added to the charm of his presentation, a further portion of his success is owing. 'Bellamy is undoubtedly a Communist, as regards distribution of products; for each individual receives the same yearly credit-card, with the same number of products claimable according to his choice from the public SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 413 magazines. Yet Bellamy is not a Democratic Communist, he is no Social Democrat. He is an aristocrat and authoritarian of the strictest order. His notion is of a society of mandarins, medallists, and labour officers, such as no Democrat could tolerate, and which I myself — seriously trying to picture myself as critically reflecting on the morning of the 26th December, 2000 — assuredly could not accept, although I regard a purely Democratic Collectivism as prac- tically andforeverimpossibie. Bellamy does not give us the slightest hint as to how — especially under the conditions of American Democracy — he will provide a constitutional basis for his State of labour-mandarins, medallists, and examiners of work, as well as for the prepon- derating influence of old age and so on. Bellamy is only a Communist and stickler for equality with reference to the distribution of material goods ; as regards distribution of honours, power, authority, and feminine charms he is an^ aristocrat from top to toe, and to this fact again must be ascribed some of his success. Only in his aristocratic tendencies he seems to me very unpractical : for however conceivable it is that with advancing civilization 414 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF new forces besides the desire to gain will be set at work to induce zeal in the service of the whole, I yet do not believe it possible that on the one side in the sphere of industrial work and pay the merely material proportion between performance and enjoyment will ever quite dis- appear, while, onthe other hand, side by side with this Communism of material goods, so great an inequality subsists in reference to the ideal goods of life, and that out of these two conditions will spring so luxuriant a growth of virtue, industry, and productivity. In his lofty and inspiring ethical anticipations, Bellamy is as optimistic as the most radical Social Democrat, without being as consistent in his pursuit of equality. Bellamy also soars too high into the regions of a primeval angel-nature, once inherent in man, and only overgrown and spoiled by family and industrial selfishness, and he altogether under- rates the necessity for giving all individuals a material interest in the result of labour, and of carrying on in a higher form the old struggle for existence. Bellamy, it is true, will have the maintenance and perfection of division of labour and of all professions among all individuals between the ages of 2 1 and 45 j but SOCIAL DEMOCRAOr. 415 Le thinks far too lightly of the task of distributing the whole forces of labour, including all the various branches in the most •economical manner possible by a mere system of State-tests, and authoritative orders and instructions, and without any of the induce- ments or deterrents of a rising and falling rate ■of service-payment respectively. There are other critical objections I could make, but I must beg you to consider them yourself. For the benefit of your friends of both sexes, I will only remark that I have as little belief in the Aristocratic Communism of the honest Doctor Leete, of the charming Edith, and of the newly awakened H. West of Boston, in the year 2000, as I have in the victory of Democratic Com- munism, such as was designated in the Gotha Programme of our Social Democrats. '' Looking Backward" charmed me as a romance, but as a possible condition of the future it did not in the least convince me. But although the fair prospects of " Looking Backward " fail to rouse me to any warmth, yet a positive outlook upon the year 2000, even as I conceive it, leaves me quite as cold. The utmost I can do for you is to avow in explicit 416 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF terms what I do consider possible. I think it possible that by that time there will have been a slow and gradual development of public management of many departments of business, in industry, trade, mining and so on, which to-day are directed by private capital, and that thereby — as compared with the industrial and commercial Capitalism of to-day — a very considerable economic progress will have been made : further, I think it possible that the valuation and appraisement of commodities and services as it takes place to-day will have been succeeded by a more regulated system of rating, practically satisfying the criticism of the industrial and commercial Capitalism of to-day,which Bellamy has given us in tlie form of a political romance. I hold it possible that by the year 2000 such a more public economic system may be manageable, and may effect a progress to a far better state of things in certain spheres than we have in the industrial and commercial Capitalism of to-day, as well as reacting beneficially on the private production which will even then still be the rule in agricul- ture. If in the course of a long period of time public management were to take the field to SOCIAL DEMOCRACY. 417 any very large extent, it would be essentially through the agency of Capital itself, and by the process of converting competition into monopoly both in industry and commerce : but this would mean that it had ultimately degenerated, either severally in its parts, or by association, into an intolerable money-slavery, both dangerous and harmful to the common- wealth, bringing ruin to the greater number of employers, and bondage to the labourers. It is not probable that Capital will ever reach such a self -destructive stage, but even should it do so the State by the year 2000 would, there is no doubt, have a constitutionally tempered universal suffrage quite sufficiently at its comm and to check without revolution the consequences of this self-survival. Female labour will by that time probably have attained a well regulated organization. Protection of labour will have been carried to a far higher develop- ment. The inequalities of wealth and income will have been considerably modified : the disappearance alike of enormous properties and of the hosts of destitute poor will have been succeeded by, and have rendered technically possible an incomparably higher and better- E E 418 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF to-do average condition of the entire people. But then the professional differentiation of all social functions must have been carried to a height never before attained, and the separate individual development of each have been set fully in harmony with the interest of the whole. I have thus but little to change of the opinions expressed in the third volume of my " Structure and Life of the Social Organism." Nor do I see anything which is calculated to inspire alarm in the prospect of such a development, proceeding not upon the storm wind of universal revolution, but slowly by way of never ceasing reform. I have no faith in the millennial realm of Democratic Communism, in the fabled social kingdom which is to give everything equally to all, to dispense with government and aristocracy, to be rid of all established pro- fessional differentiation and all private gain, and, instead of elevating, altogether to destroy the efficacy of the struggle for existence. Such a faith, I say again definitely and with conviction, is a mere bigotry and superstition, and as uncouth a one as has ever been cherished in any age. I have said only that I regard this progress SOCIAL BEMOCRACT. 419 by the year 2000 as possible. Whether it will actually be accomplished or not, depends upon whether any Communistic outbreak occurs in the meantime, and whether international relations take a favourable and peaceful course. The international brotherhood, which demo- cratic Communism is forming, represents a danger which we may not under-estimate. Still, property is already being compelled into similar combinations, and governments are already stretching earnest hands to each other with a view to Politico- Social action. It may be that these very facts will draw the nations of the world closer to each other, and subserve the purpose of Political and Social peace, thus helping to work out new and better conditions, both Political and Social, which are betokened by the olive-branch of the "Apostles of Peace," longed and striven for by conferences of learned men, artist-souls, and hygienic reformers, but which such as these cannot alone avail to bring about. May these things be ! But will they ? Who can tell? In any case, let us not seek any further to puzzle the heads of our — great-great- grandchildren ! THE END. Chas. Stkakeb & Sons, 'AVEKUE Works," Bishop,sgate Avenue, London, B.C.