mi3S6/ n President White Library Cornell University The date shows when this volume was taken. To mww this book copy the call No. and give to the librarian. HOME USE RULES ,;< ^., p. 703. of means of communiration, the opening up of the world's markets, and the increasing number of nations taking part in international competition, put an ever tightening pressure upon the capitalist, and demand that more and more of his life's energies shall be spent in business. Although the statute book teaches him business morality and protects him against certain forms of unprincipled and anti-social competition (like adulterated goods and long hours), he is compelled to drive the sharpest bargains, to adopt methods in busi- ness which he could not employ honourably in personal relations, and to cross far too frequently the line of dishonesty. He can indulge in few sentiments ; he cannot enjoy very much of the luxury of morality. Business is a war in which he whose nerves are not always well strung, whose eye is not always fixed upon the vigilant enemy, and whose heart is not always prepared to drive home every advantage, is likely to be overborne. The purpose which must dominate the moral- ity and the thought of the business man is a favourable balance sheet, and only in so far as an exercise of the finer sentiments does not adversely influence that summary of trading operations can he give way to them. The result is inevitable. The arts languish, the vulgar empire of plutocracy extends its gilded borders, luxurious indulgence takes the place of comfort, selfish pursuits that of public spirit, philanthropic effort that of just dealing. We are accustomed to regard the present as a state of individualism, but no delusion could be more grotesque. Nothing is rarer in society to-day than individuality, and it is doubtful if ever there was less individuality amongst us than there is at the present moment. One has only to look on whilst the sons of the nouveaux riches spend their money, or whilst the crowds which our industrial quarters have disgorged enjoy themselves, to appreciate the meaning- less monotony of our pleasure. From our furniture, made by the thousand pieces by niachines, to our religion, stereotyped in set formulae and pursued by clock-work methods, individuality is an exceptional characteristic. In the production of wealth, owing to the differentiation of processes, there is less and less play for individuality, and as this more exclusively occupies the time and thought of both employers and employed, uniformity spreads its deadening hand over Society, imita- tion becomes a social factor of increasing power, respectability becomes more securely enthroned as the mentor of conduct, and a drab level of fairly comfortable mediocrity is the standard to which we conform. No tiling is, indeed, more absurd than an argument ii; support of the present state of Sqciety, ba^ed on the assumption that as we move aw^y from it in the direction of Socialism we; are leaving 8 individuality and individual liberty behind. Liberty and regular employment — the fit- ting of men to the work which they can do best — can be secured only when the various functions of the social organism — the capital- istic and labouring, the consuming and pro- ducing — are all co-ordinated. At present each function is self-centred. It is as though the appetite, the head or the muscles of the human body worked each for itself — as indeed sometimes happens in the case of gluttons, hair splitters, or slaves. But then we know the consequences. There is an interruption in the general health and growth. There is a dwarfing of some parts and an abnormal de- velopment of others. The body rebels periodi- cally, and teaches the functions that only when they take their proper places in the whole, and act obedient, not to their own appetites, but to the needs of the complete organism, do they enjoy an unbroken and a full satisfaction. We can best express this failure of present- day Society to enrich all its classes not merely with worldly possessions, but with character and capacity to employ leisure time, by de- scribing modem conditions as being poverty- stricken. For to judge the prevalence of poverty merely by returns of income or de- posits in savings banks, is like judging a piece of architecture by the size of the stones used in the building. We have a vast accumulation of actual physical want. Mr. Booth says that about 30 per cent, of the London population must be classified amongst that accumulation ; and if it is not relatively growing, it is not actually decreasing. We seem to have reached the maximum of improvement which the existing social organisation can yield. Further amelior- ative efforts of a purely reforming character can produce little fruit. Our social machinery apparently cannot employ more than 97!- per cent, of the willing workers at best, and it cannot raise more than from 70 to 80 per cent, of our people above the " poverty line." In addition to that, our Society bears a still greater accumulation of mental and moral poverty, and apparently this is increasing rather than decreasing. Such are the conditions which challenge the social reformer. They cannot be the final state of social evolution. There must be another state ahead of us less marked by failure, less chaotic, better organised, and the question is, how are we to move into it ? It appears to be the special task of the twentieth century to discover a means of co-ordinating the various social functions so that the whole community may enjoy robust health, and its various organs share adequately in that health. But this is nothing else than the aim of Socialism. Chapter II. SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. It is of the utmost importance, at the very out- set, to understand with definite clearness to what type of unity societies and communities of men belong, because otherwise we cannot judge what the relations between the individual and Society, between conduct and law, ought to be ; how the various activities within Society — e.g., trade and commerce, education, &c., should be regarded ; whether professions should bring profits to individuals, or be functions contributing life to the whole ; what the State is, and what its sphere ought to be ; what the nature of individual liberty is. If men live together, forming tribes, nations, communities, societies, like stones accumulated in heaps. Society is only a collection of separate men, laws are only rules preventing their hard corners from knocking against the sides of their neighbours, the State exists only to main- tain the heap (and not that necessarily). In such a unity the individual man alone counts. Individualism must be the pre- dominating idea. Liberty is the freedom of action of the individval, and is a thing of II quantity, every limit imposed on its extent — as for instance the legal command, " Thou shalt not kill " — ^being a curtailment of it. If, however, Society is a unity of the organic kind, totally different conclusions follow. The individuals composing it are still separate and conscious, but they depend very largely upon the Society in which they live for their thoughts, their tastes, their liberties, their opportunities of action, their character — in brief, for everything summed up in the word civilisation. It is in Society, and not in the individual, that the accumulation of the race experience is found. Liberty is a matter of quality and not of quantity, and curtailment of its limits does not necessarily lessen its amplitude. The community enters at every point into the life of the individual, and the State function is not merely to secure life, but to promote good life. How far do these theoretical deductions agree with the actual facts ? How far, to begin with, is the life of the individual organ- ically connected with that of his Society ? I. Put an individual from a well developed Society into the midst of a different civilisa- tion, or place him in wild nature, and he is helpless in proportion as the Society to which he belongs is " advanced."® Paralyse in a well- * The reason why the sailor is a " handy man" is that a ship's crew is a type of a primitive form of Society. 12 developed Society all the life which it has inherited from the past — its economic machinery, its legal processes, its institutions of every kind — and the individual is left more helpless than the primitive savage catching fish with his shell hooks. The present is rooted in the past ; the future can be dragged away from neither. An individualist psychology exaggerates the free play of the human will, and denies the organic type of Society mainly on the ground that each individual in Society has an independent will and consciousness of his own. In the organism consciousness is con- centrated in a small part of the whole — the brain or nervous system ; in Society conscious- ness is diffused throughout, and no specialised function of feeling can be created. This, Spencer calls a cardinal difference. But upon examination the difference appears to be not nearly so great as it first seems.* The cells that are ultimately differentiated to become the nerve systems of organisms are the ordinary cells which go to make up * It is not within the scope of this political study to discuss this point fully, but I cannot help thinking that at this point Spencer sacrificed his philosophy to his individualism, and Huxley's lamentable surrender of his previous position in the Romanes Lecture was owing to his failure to estimate accurately how small this difference is. 13 organic tissue, and they differ from muscular cells no more than a doctor differs from an agricultural labourer. Moreover, the work of organic nerve systems is paralleled in Society by political functions as a Socialist conceives them. The function of the nervous system is to co-ordinate the body to which it belongs, and enable it to respond to impressions and experiences received at any point. It can also originate movement itself. Evidently the individualist cannot admit any such differentiated organ in Society. But the Socialist, on the other hand, sees its necessity. Some organ must enable other organs and the mass of Society to com- municate impressions and experiences to a receiving centre, must carry from that centre impulses leading to action, must originate on its own initiative organic movements calcu- lated to bring some benefit or pleasure to the organism. This is the Socialist view of the political organ on its legislative and ad- ministrative sides. It gathers up experience, carries it to a centre which decides corres- ponding movements, and then carries back to the parts affected the impulse of action. Upon this point the psychological sociol- ogists do not face facts. " Within aggrega- " tions of men, mental activities are con- " tinually asserting themselves, and working " themselves out in conformity to psycho- H •'logical la^v. In this process the human " mind, aware of itself, deliberately forms krid " carries out policies for the organisation and "perfection of social life, in order that the " great end of Society, the perfection of the " individual personality, may be completely "attained."* The distinction here set up between thought arid nature by the expres- sion " in conformity to psychological law," in spite of the writer's protests to the contrary, leaves the problem at its most interesting point. What is the relation between psychological and biological law as factors in human evolution ? What is the scope of biological law? Did the psychological process of evolution appear only with man ? Undoubtedly the mind of man moulds society, but only just as the mind of the animal assists its biological evolution. The difference is of degress, not of kind. So that, if we begin to assume the airs of the psycho- logical sociologist, we must regard the evolution of the whole universe as psycho- logical, and when we refer to biology we include psychology in our idea all the time. The truth is that man's power to influence the social organisation in which he is placed is lihiited to the biological method of influencing and changing functions. The simple fact that the changing impact is a human will, does not *Giddings, The Elements of Sociology, London. 1897. p: 150- 15 make the change or its method psychological. The view taken of Society by the individualist psychologist is that which the cell in the organic body might be expected to take of its own liberty and importance. We now know that the cell has an individuality of its own, and we can imagine the strenuous efEorts made by cell philosophers to prove that the body existed for them, and that the modifying and moving force in the organism was the indivi- dual cell.* We over-rate our individual importance in these matters. When we build our houses, use the facilities of modem town life, become enraptured with our religious consolations, contemplate the productions of our art, or plunge into the speculations of our divine philosophers, we seldom think that all these precious possessions and exercises belong to Society, and not to the individual, and that when the individual enjoys them he is in reality putting to use possessions which he cannot keep for himself, which he did almost nothing to acquire, which he can do little more than ■' There is less of the purely fanciful in these considera- tions than we may be inclined to think at first. Recent investigations into the nature of cells, and recent specula- tions, based upon scientifically observed facts as to the meaning of cell activity — as, for instance, Binet's Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms — ^point to a fulness of cell life which foreshadows many of the characteristics of the highest animals — such as memory, will, fear, &c. i6 protect from rusting and corrupting, and which he simply has the privilege of borrowing for usury. Throughout our lives we are but as men feasting at the common table of a bountiful lord, and when we bear in the dishes of the feast, or gather up the crumbs which have fallen from the board, we pride ourselves on our wealth and the magnificent reward which our labour has brought to us. When, in time, we die, however, our vacant place is of little consequence. Every- thing we have done, everything we were, becomes social property, and our life is of value mainly in so far as it has contributed to the fulness of social life and the development of social organisation and efficiency. This is borne in upon us with irresistible force when we think of the few individuals whose memories are rescued from the grave. Our Dictionary of National Biography makes a grand display on our library shelves, but when we think of its great array of volumes, in the midst of the crowded market-place or the streaming thoroughfares where humanity flows like a tide, what a puny collection it seems ! What vast echoless generations does it ' suggest ! What millions of nameless ghosts gather round its few pages of imperishable memories ! The "being" that lives, that persists, that develops, is Society ; the life upon which the 17 individual draws that he himself may have life, liberty and happiness is the social life. The likeness between Society and an organism like the human body is complete in so far as Society is the total life from which the separate cells draw their individual life. Man is man, only in Society. This dependence of the individual upon the form and nature of the social organisation also determines the individual's function. As the organisation of society changes, men's functions in it change also. The great divisional epochs of sociology — primaeval and early society, the mediaeval age and modem times — were distinguished by certain general characteristics of tribal and national life expressing itself in different forms of social organisation which determined the modes of thought, the economic pursuits,and the relative values of social functions, classes and men, and which settled whether men and classes were regarded from the point of view of status and subordination, or of equality and liberty. Man, himself, has been the same thing, has been built upon practically the same principles of physiology and psychology as he now is, right through human history. But it would have been as absurd to claim equality for him in the feudal age as it would be to claim a free and absolutely separate individuality for i8 the cells in his own body. His status was determined by the social organisation of his time. When his tribe became a part of a nation, his political function was changed ; when his nation moved from its military to its commercial stage, he had to be the weaver and the ironworker instead of the man-at- arms, and his status was changed accordingly. As a workman in the commercial epoch, he finds his function in society altered with every machine that is invented. The boot and shoe operative of to-day is almost as different from the boot and shoe operative of fifty years ago as the stomach of the bell animalcule is from that of man. Every improvement in loco- motion, everything which breaks down inter- national barriers and opens up the world, every extension of markets, every attempt to reorganise industry by the more effective use of capital, every vital impulse given to the country to empty itself into the town, changes men's functions, alters their relations to each other and to Society, implants new habits, new virtues and new vices in them, gives them new ideals to guide conduct, modifies their body, and impresses itself generally upon the race. III. All this change has come, not because any individual or combination of individuals has sought it, but because someone, impelled by the possibilities which the social organism 19 offered for a modification of its functions, and by the creative opportunities which circum- stances gave to thought and will, altered the organisation of Society — for instance, by labour-saving machinery — at this point or that, with the result that the whole organism had to re-adjust itself to the change. When Stephenson made his steam engine he had no thought of the social results of his action, except in its immediate consequences as an improvement in hauling machinery, and yet how fundamentally has Stephenson's engine changed men. A study of history shows, not the free play of the individual will in determining the character and direction of human activities, but the almost absolute con- trol of the social organism. The Great Man has undoubtedly modified that organism now and again — the soldier, the preacher, the thinker, the inventor, the organiser of industry, — but the results of these men's work have not been gained as a direct influence on their fellows, but through a modification of the structure of society, and a consequent change of the functions which individuals are called upon to perform. To the sum total of these modifications many small changes have con- tributed much more than a few great altera- tions. War, the most revolutionary force of all, has had to lower its flags to the persistent dogged- ness of Society (if the expression may be used) 20 in going its own way. The inroads of Rome upon Europe left less permanent results than was at one time supposed. The incursion of the barbaric armies from the North upon Italy had no greater effect than a violent storm has upon a vigorous sapling ; little that was permanent followed the partition treaties and edicts which marked the triumph and sealed the downfall of Napoleon; few real organic changes were effected by the destructive hurricanes of the French Revolution. After the war which was to do so much to revolutionise the social and political life of South Africa, the country began to develop from the point it had reached before the war broke out, and upon lines but little different from those laid down before war was thought about. Effect, of course, all these revolutions had, but how little compared with the furies that accompanied them, and the tremendous efforts which were consumed by them. And as the pre-revolution and post -revolution times are minutely examined, although change may have been rapid (as indeed change from one variety of a species to another, as in flower culture for instance, often is), the continuity between the old and the new is well marked.* * This opinion, so contrary to the views of the Radical writers of the last two or three generations, is becoming a commonplace in sober history — the history where colour and movement are subordinated to the sober facts. These revolutionary epochs, these ditches supposed to be dug across history, do not bear examination. Even what we 21 Or, we may consider how very little difference there is between the Republican United States and the Monarchial Great Britain, and that what difference exists is westerns have been taught to regard as the greatest of all these ditches, the difference between Paganism and Christianity, hardly exists. In the chapter. Some Thoughts on the Transition from Paganism to Christianity, in Professor Bernard Bosanquet's The Civilisation of Christendom, the subject is dealt with in accordance both with what I have written above and also of the views I express later on regarding the growth of political parties. Mr. Bryce in his Holy Roman Empire (chap, iii.) summarises the effect of the barbaric invasion in these words: "It is hardly too much to say that the thought " of antagonism to the Empire and the wish to extinguish " it never crossed the minds of the barbarians." Surely no one who knows European history will dispute the view that the partition of Europe by the representatives of the Powers at Vienna resulted in the wars which Germany, Italy, Austria and France have undergone to break down the artificial arrangements of Metternich and his masters. The Radical Epoch has altogether exaggerated the real influence of the French Revolution. Its effect upon law was supposed to be one of its most blessed contributions to European history, but according to Professor Viollet, corroborated by Professor Maitland (Cambridge Modem History, vol. viii., p. 7S3), "the Revolutionary Epoch " manifests a truth, which no historian of whatsoever ' ' school ever expressed more felicitously and clearly than " Portalis in the preliminary discourse of the Civil Code : " • The Codes of nations are the work of time ; properly " 'speaking, they are not made.' . . . French legisla- " tion in the century just passed . . . is the result of '■historical forces, and no mere invention or artificial " creation." Exactly the same is true of social and political France. 22 owing not to Declarations of Independence, but to the difEerences in social organisation, which are caused by the fact that one is a new country and the other an old one, and that one had a prairie up to yesterday, and the other has had none for many a generation. The mode of progress is, the individual, endowed with possibilities of action by his ancestors, is launched into Society — the race — to receive from it the impress and impact of its inherited qualities, and thus by the play and interplay of the individual and social in- heritance, and individual and social dynamic, progress is carried on. IV. The influence of the individual upon Society is of two kinds. There are, in the first place, the rearrangements in social functions which result from a reorganisation of industrial structure consequent upon invention, e.g., the application of steam power to processes of production and exchange. Then there is the bombardment of social structure carried on by the disquietude and discontent of indi- viduals who demand from Society better moral results than Society in its existing constitution can give. The work of the Utopians belongs to this second class of effort. This second moulding force is to be much stronger in the future than it has been in the past, because it cannot come into full play 23 until political democracy is established.* The people must gain possession of the State before the moral shortcomings in the working of Society become disassociated from other ques- tions, and present clear political and social issues. The first comprehensive problem which faces an industrial and enfranchised democracy is how to make Society conform in its function- ing to the moral standards of the individual. The moral sense of the individual, conse- quently, is constantly attacking a morally inefficient state of Society, and acts as a modi- fying force upon it, hastening and guiding its development. Political programmes to-day are being moulded by the demand, emanating from the individual conscience, that Society should do justice, that merit should be rewarded, that the righteous should not need to beg for bread. If the righteous cannot find a market, it is said by the defenders of the present chaos, either for their labour or the fruits of their labour, the righteous must starve. But this answer satisfies nobody — at any rate nobody working at " the mills of God." The question continues to be asked, why the righteous can- not find a market ? and the question is repeated 'After political democracy has been established in a few countries, others more backward politically may, however, carry on their socio-moral agitations at the same time as they carry on their political ones. Russia is a case in point. D 24 whether the righteous is a fool or an imbecile or an honest but baffled and unfortunate man. Men will not be satisfied with a non-moral answer to a moral question. Descriptive economics will not soothe the enquiring moral intelligence. The dissatisfied moral nature will simply turn to change the economic re- lationships of Society so that the righteous may have a market and be saved from begging for bread. It must be remembered in estimating the power of this modifying influence that it does not depend for success upon the numbers of its conscious advocates, but upon the clear- ness of its thought and the justness of its pre- sentation. In a sense Jerichos are not taken by assault ; their walls fall down at the blast of trumpets. Moral truth comes like the dawn, not like an army of conquest. It can- not be energetically opposed after it has been discovered. "Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just " — if the fact that justice is on his side is recognised by his opponent. So when the time comes for a further effort on the part of Society to perfect itself, the step to be taken must be one which not only vmifies the organism more completely, and which makes its organs work more in co-opera- tion and less in competition with each other, but also one which promises to satisfy more fully the demands that social action and 25 individual action should approximate to the same standards of morality. The satisfying of the moral sense of the individual and the economising of effort in Society must proceed hand in hand in progressive social evolution. The development of social structure more accurately embodies and satisfies the moral demands of the individual as we approach the time when Society is prepared to be modified in accordance with the dreams of the Utopians. Education liberates the individual will and intelligence so that they are increasingly effec- tive in producing the machinery necessary for economy of social effort ; this reacts upon in- dividual morality, and makes it more exacting in its demands upon Society, because the individual himself is then surrounded by social circumstances which press closer and closer upon him the necessity of undergoing the discipline of will and intelligence which makes character and justifies the thousand and one movements aimed at improving human quali- ties. This play and interplay of social organisation and need of individual will and character, seems to me to be an accurate description of the scope and method of individual action in Society, v. But the great reservoir of inheritance is the race and not the individual. When one con- siders in detail how much the social ego controls individual action this moulding 26 power of the race seems to be limitless. Patriotism, a pride in one's national history, is the life of the organism imparting itself to the individual. The generation into which a man happens to have been born, the social circles in which he moves, the character of the vital moulding forces which play upon him in accordance as he lives in a suburb or in the centre of a city, the etiquette (settled genera- tions before and now largely irrational) of the profession to which he belongs, the tenure of an office round which traditions have grown up, the very language he uses, are influences which haunt him as persistently as his shadow, and do more than anything else to determine the tenor of his life and thought. But they are all drawn, not from the reservoir of individual, but of social, inheritance. This error of under- estimating the influence of social inheritance upon individual life has led to the very grave practical mistakes of political and moral individualism. It has been characteristic of the Liberal epoch to regard the individual as a separate, self-con- tained, creative being, bedecked in the regal garments of possessions and rights. This individualism has received the homage of a century whose interests, pursuits and problems blinded it to a fuller conception of human qualities. No age has been less fitted than the nineteenth century to value the common 27 life, to find contentment in working in single- ness of heart for the good of the whole, to be at peace in a prosperous organism. But at last the falseness of this individualistic emphasis is being recognised. On its moral side it is not bringing peace, it is not advancing the frontiers of the kingdom of righteousness. On its political side, whence it has yielded the greatest amount of gain, it now stands baffled by the problems of State authority ; on its industrial side it has divorced economics from life and has failed absolutely to solve the problem of distribution. The code of laws imposing with ever-increasing stringency upon traders and manufacturers the elementary principles of honesty and fair-dealing grows steadily, and every addition is a fresh impeach- ment of self-regarding individualism as the basis of conduct. The gulf between rich and poor, the periodical breakdown of the modern industrial machine, causing wide-spread desti- tution, the sinister economic mechanism by which the owners of monopolies — especially of land — can claim an extra toll every time that commtmal wisdom and conscience adopt some scheme to alleviate the lot of the most hardly pressed classes, conclusively show that Society does not yet meet the requirements of human standards of use and value. On the other hand, every attempt to correct the shortcomings of what has been the domin- ant typeof individualism — except the attempts 28 of charity either organised or disorganised — tends to supplant the type. The individual in search of liberty finds that the ideas and the claims contained in the modem expression " individualism " only mislead him. The individualism of the Factory Laws, of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Acts, of Weights and Measures and Adulteration statutes, is an individualism taught to find outlets for its energy in social directions, and individualism disciplined by and co-ordinated with the requirements of man's social nature. In such administrative rules as those of public authorities to provide in contracts that fair wages must be paid for the work, we observe the same movement in operation, laying down the conditions under which the individual must be, not a wild buccaneer, but a humble organ in society, seeking peace in service and wealth in sharing. The acquiring self-regard- ing / is an altogether imperfect realisation of the human ego. In fact, disguise it from ourselves as we may, in our so-called " practical " moments, every conception of what morality is — except neurotic and erotic whims like those of Nietzsche or antiquated pre-scientific notions like those of the Charity Organisation Society — assumes that the individual is im- bedded organically in his social medium, and that, therefore, the individual end can be 29 gained only by promoting the social end ; that the individual is primarily a cell in the organ- ism of his Society ;* that he is not an absolute being, but one who develops best in relation to other beings and who discovers the true mean- ing of his ego only when he has discovered the oneness of Society. " Man rises from the " life of his petty self to that of his family, " his tribe, and his race, mankind, finding his " greater self each time in these."! VI. Two difficulties still remain, having a bear- ing on the purpose of this study. The form of an organism is the result of its past racial experience in the struggle for life, and has been moulded by the same forces which have determined the functions to be performed by its organs. Has Society a form ? Unless it has, it is impossible to conceive of organic functions - I am not discussing here what the scope of individual- ism is. The individual is by no means " a quiescent cell." He has a law of his own being, an evolution of his own, and an individual as well as a social end. The fears lest I should be denying all this can arise only from an imperfect view of what the life of a cell in an organism is. AU I am insisting upon here is, that in any adequate system of in- dividualism the fact that liberty and freedom of action (involving right to possess and so on) must be conditioned by social considerations in the interests of the individual himself, has to be recognised, and the system constructed accordingly. t Carpenter, The Art of Creation, London, 1904, p. 192. 30 being performed by the individual and groups of individuals. Society has no bodily form like a plant, or an elephant, or man himself. But here again it is more the appearance than the reality that is wanting. For, after all, organic form is only useful for holding together the relation- ship of organs. The human body, for instance, is not essentially a form composed of head, trunk, and legs : it is essentially a relationship of various organs which, in co-operation, compose a living unity of the human type. If we piece together two legs, two arms, a head, and a trunk, with their organs, we have a bodily form, but no organic unity. But if these organs are joined in that relationship which we call living, it would not matter whether they were in actual contact or not — whether they had form or not. If the character- istic vital relationship were still possible, they, in that relationship, would be an organism. A vital relationship between organs, not a bodily form containing these organs, consti- tutes an organism. Society is such an organism. Its organs are connected by a living tissue of law, of habit and custom, of economic inter-dependence, of public opinion, of political unity ; and these living connections maintain the stability of relationship between organs precisely as bodily form does. In that tissue the individual and the class are not embedded as stones in 31 lime, but live as cells or organs in a body. That living tissue, on the other hand, is modified in biological fashion by external and internal impulses, needs and influences, arising from the experience of the whole organism. It lives when the individuals die, and preserves its vitality, identity and authority, after the component. cells and organs of any given moment have all disappeared and given place to others. Law survives generation after generation (just as the human body, with its three score and ten years of life, may be said, from the cell point of view, to survive generations of cells), obtaining from people unborn when the statutes were passed as much reverence and obedience as from those who helped to pass them. So with custom, public opinion, habits, mental attributes, institutions. The individual is part of them. They are the life into which he is born ; their pulse regu- lates the beating of his ; their qualities deter- mine his own. The second difficulty is, that Society is not self-conscious. As a matter of fact, Society is keenly self-conscious For, what are law and custom but evidence of the self-consciousness of Society ? And, as Society approaches a greater definiteness in organic relationships, its self-consciousness becomes more accurate and more under its control. 32 VII. Hence it is that the laws governing the existence and growth of human Society could not be understood until biological science was sufficiently far advanced to explain, with tolerable fulness of detail, the laws which regulate life and its evolution. For Society belongs to the biological type of existence because it is no mere collection of separate in- dividuals, like a heap of sand, but a unified and organised system of relationships, in which certain people and classes perform certain functions and others perform other functions, and in which individuals find an existence appropriate to their being by becoming parts of the functioning organs, and by adopting a mode of life and seeking conditions of liberty, not as separate and independent individual- ities, but as members of their commimities. The chief problems of social life relate to the organisation and development of codes of law, institutions, economic relationships, social ethics, public opinion ; they include the growth and decay of functions, the development and deterioration of organs and their relationship to the total life of the organism, the gradation from one stage of organisation to another by internal modifications — e.g., from primitive to mediaeval and on to modern society — and the persistence of a social individuality after the composing personal units have passed away. 33 The chief difference between the social organism and the animal organism is, that whilst the latter, in the main, is subject to the slowly-acting forces expressed in the laws of natural evolution, the former is much more largely — though not nearly so largely as some people imagine, and in a less and less degree as it becomes matured (another organic characteristic) — under the sway of the com- paratively rapidly moving and acting human will. This gives the former an elasticity for change which the other does not possess. But the type of its organisation, the relations between its various organs, and the mode of their functioning — and it is with these that 1 have to deal in this book — are biological. Chapter III. THE ECONOMIC PERIOD. If we are to consider, with any profit, what are the imperfections of existing Society, and what is the law of its further evolution, we must begin by reminding ourselves that there is a law of mutual aid in life as well as one of the struggle for existence, and that the former is predominant in human Society. The struggle for life, fought on the indi- vidualistic plane at first, is transferred to the social. One of the very first results of the individual struggle with nature and with other individuals, is to create groups of indi- viduals for mutual protection. This is a law of life from the cell to the mammal. Mutual aid thus becomes as important a factor in evolution as the struggle for life. The law of group existence and development blends with that of individual existence and development to weave the pattern of progress. The study of mutual aid therefore leads us to examine group organisation with a view to ascertaining what is the position of the indi- vidual within the group, how its organisation affects his liberty, and how far every member 34 35 within it contributes to its efficiency. Social- ism is nothing more than a criticism of Society from the point of view of mutual aid and the formulation of a policy in accordance with the laws of mutual aid. I. One of the chief characteristics of existing Society is the incoherence of its functions. It is a machine which is always getting out of gear, as is shown by its alternating periods of overwork and unemployment, its excessive riches and despairing poverty, its enormous gross income and its appalling records of destitution and pauperism. Its productive and distributive functions are not organised so as to serve the common well being, but are working for their own special interests.* They are, therefore, competitive. It is as though a stomach performed its functions, not as part of a body, but as an organ conscious only of its separate existence, and thinking primarily of that existence. At present each separate organ preys upon all the others. True, it must to * It is interesting to note, as an addendum to the dis- cussion on how the individual is organically connected with his society, that in fulfilling the particular end which contemporary society is striving to attain (in the present day, the production of wealth), the individual is valued just as he succeeds in making that end his own (in the present day, amassing wealth), and he manages to square his conscience to any immoral acts which may promote his success in this direction. 36 some extent and in some indirect way serve the community, for preying must not be too rapacious or the organ preyed upon will die. The landlord cannot exact too much rent, or industry will move elsewhere : the employer cannot cut wages too low or he will be unable to command skill and physique : the workman cannot demand too high wages or he will give an incentive to capital to break up labour combinations, introduce machinery and otherwise rearrange industrial processes. But in all this there is no working of a social organism balancing work and distributing awards. There is an exercise of judgment in determining how far one organ can safely go in preying upon another ; there is a call for diplomatic skill. But that is all. The laws which govern this relationship are of the same kind as those which govern the relationship between the shearer and the sheep. To establish an organic relationship, — a relationship by which each, contributing co- operatively to the life of the whole, may share in that life, — has now become the task of Society. This task, become the subject of a political propaganda and the guide of social change, is known as Socialism. Socialism is therefore not an abstract idea, nor a scheme of logical perfection, nor an acutely designed new social mechanism, nor a tour de force of the creative intelligence. It is the next stage 37 in social growth. It is a proposal for the settlement of the problems which the present stage has raised by reason of its success. It is a recogiiition that the vital forces to which the present stage has given birth, but which it cannot nourish, must, nevertheless, realise themselves. II. History is a progression of social stages which have preceded and succeeded each other like the unfolding of life from the amoeba to the mammal, or from the bud to the fruit. To-day we are in the economic stage. Yesterday, we were in the political stage. To-morrow we shall be in the moral* stage. To-day, individual property and economic interest are the predominating influences upon society ; yesterday, the predominating influ- ence was national organisation — the necessity of national solidarity ; to-morrow, it will be justice, tempered by the virtues of sympathy. In other words, the course of evolution has been, the making of communities, the ex- ploitation of nature, the cultivation of men.f * I use the words to characterise man's responsibility to both his intelligence and his conscience. "I" There are two remarkable inconsistencies between the general sociological position taken up by Marx and Engels, and their persistent assertion of the economic basis of history, which should be pointed out here. In the first place they agreed that Hegel's greatest claim to fame was his demonstration that " the whole world," as Engels expresses it in Socialism : Utopian and Scientific 38 At no time, however, are these epochs divided from each other by hard and fast lines. At any moment a virar may throw a nation back upon the first epoch when national self-defence would subordinate every other consideration ; whilst we have frequent reminders that econ- omic success cannot be pursued absolutely without regard to moral considerations. The political epoch is marked by the subor- dination of the individual and his right to liberty and property, to the national or tribal need for a head — a central nerve nucleus — connected with the natural mass by certain differentiated baron classes — nerve fibres and ganglia. The moral epoch will be marked by the complete emancipation of man so that he becomes master of himself — that self in- cluding the necessities of life, labour, and everything it requires for its existence and expression. Whatever may have been the particular (P- 36), " natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as " a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change, transfor- " mation, development. " If that be true, is it conceivable that every department of life—" natural, historical, in- tellectual," (by-the-by a very slipshod division) — is chained to economics and cannot attain an independent development and existence of its own? In the second place Marx's insistence that each epoch has its own characteristic law of development is inconsistent with the assertion that economic considerations are at the basis of all historical evolution except that of primitive folk. 39 circumstances under which the various com- munities have been formed, they have all grown owing to the necessity of self-defence. A strong central organisation was imperative, and this organisation had to be linked up to the masses around, by some aristocratic and military class of leaders subordinate to the head.* In this process of unification we have the family joining with others to form, or itself growing into, the clan or tribe, and the clan or tribe, partly by eternal — e.g., voluntary impulse, — ^partly by eternal compulsion — e.g., conquest — joining to form a nation. For a time, the integrating forces are resented and opposed by the disintegrating sentiment and tradition of the clan, and only colonies of separate groups are formed at first. History is then a record of conflict between central and local authorities, between the integrating and disintegrating forces, the King and the Barons, the nation and the shire or municipality, Parliament and the guild — in which of necessity the law of integration asserts itself. This is the first chapter. The next chapter is marked by the organis- ation of the masses into a political unity and their initiation into the rights of citizenship. The opportunity for progress * It is still a well observed fact that uncivilized tribes which are governed on a monarchic plan are most successful in war, and consequently survive best. B 4° through this second stage comes first of all from the needs of the central authority,*' — the sovereign — to maintain its position against the local and clan disintregating forces, or against rival sovereigns. This leads to the establishment of some measure of political and economic freedom for the plebs — in other words, a nerve connection between the central nucleus and the surrounding mass. Meanwhile, the mass itself ceases to be amorphous and becomes differentiated into functions, e.g. , trades and classes. The economic stage is beginning ; the political one is fading away into the accomplished past. But the process of political intregation continues. The municipium, at first merely the wattled place of refuge for the people scattered on the soil, becomes a market, a centre of industry, a depot, a chartered community, a society, enjoying widening powers of self-government. The individuals composing it are divided into this trade and that. Some men and finally a class of men, acquire control of the means of * This connection is brought into great prominence by the study of ancient and mediaeval democracies, especially of the city republics. In Carthage, democracy increased its powers with Hannibal's military exploits ; in Rome, the power of the commons increased as the armies of the commons became necessary to rival rulers. The struggle between Emperor and Pope started the Italian cities upon their careers as independent republics. The political movement in Russia to-day is an interesting illustration of the same principle. 41 production — the necessary conditions for an industrial community ; they secure credit or gain capital, and from the time that the producer has to depend upon a distant market cither for his raw material or for the sale of his produce, a separate class becomes the owners of these industrial necessities, the organisers of trade and the employers of labour. Opposition is at first shown between the old aristocracy of title and land, and the new plutocracy of wealth and manufactures, but again the laws of integration, of conserva- tion and imitation, come into operation. Assimilation and co-ordination take place. Production has become the grand social function, and those organising it are in a position to demand citizen rights. The owners of capital and property are first of all received into the fold of the sovereign lawmaking authority.® When society has developed so far, it still contains a vast amorphous mass of proletariat imconnected with its controlling central authority, although of importance as food providers who are, when roused, the in- vincible majority. Meanwhile, State activity touches more and more intimately the every-day life of the people, and it becomes more and more essen- * In their efforts to gain an entrance into this fold they have to make it easier for the lower classes to gain an entrance also in accordance with the law referred to above. 42 tial that the people themselves should be able to pronounce what they think on the laws. The imperfect way in which any single indi- Aridual, family or class can represent the national unity or express the national will, necessitates the creation of an organ in which all interests and classes are represented, and Representative Democracy is established. The stage of political construction then ends. III. The economic period, at the end of which we stand and from the maturity of which Socialism springs into life, is marked by the organisation of production and exchange of wealth ; and production and exchange are best begun in a Society of the individualistic type. The scramble of competitors, the struggle for prizes, promote the exploitation of nature and create, to begin with, the best machinery for production and the best facilities for marketing. We therefore find that the first chapters in the economic epoch deal with the organisation of markets, the separation of the trading from the producing classes, the differentiation of capital from labour, and the setting of the producing functions over all other functions — in a word, they deal with the establishment of the bourgeoisie, the middle class, the plutocracy. As the epoch develops, frequent dislocations of industry take place, political 43 and industrial agitatibii of a democratic and Socialist character disturbs society, as the life of the coming epoch germinates in the bosom of the order which is maturing, and glimpses of a better organisation are caught through the suffering of the victims. Utopias are dreamt of. But Society goes on evolving in its cuinbrous way. Organic things are not created or re-created in a day. The various phases in industrial evolution, the horrors of child labour as well as the beneficent effect of a world commerce, are as much a "necessity" in the nature of things* as the process of organic evolution revealed in the ponderous books of stone from the Cambrian schists to the river gravels. To indulge in dreamy imaginings upon how much more bless- ed we should have been had not this movement or that been crushed out by force or starved out * I am aware of the attacks that have been made upon the use of these words. But they still express better than any others the belief that every living thing develops in accordance with the law of its owa being, and that every function of society is ultimately limited in its operations by the whole social life. The living conscious individual partly obeys that law in accordance with the views of Determinists, but he is also partly obedient to his concep- tions of that law operating in a higher stage of perfection, and in a changed relationship. " Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." He can therefore move from the fixed present, and secure some of the better possibilities of the future. We might say that the warp and the woof, of life are given to us, but that we can modify the pattern that is to be woven. 44 by ignorance, is one of the vainest and least profitable of all serious recreations. The past was " necessary " ; the future is ours to make or to mar. Until the individualistic and competitive phase of our economic evolution had worked itself out, after building up an efficient mechanism of production and ex- change, we were not ready to deal with the problem of distribution, or with that of use and consumption. But the necessity of dealing with the problem of consumption — which is really the problem of endowing the individual with economic freedom, because freedom to con- sume is the last and most comprehensive of all economic freedoms — slowly emerges from the conditions established under the phase of productive effort. It is not only that the sense of justice is violated with increasing harshness as the contrast between the poverty- stricken and the luxurious classes becomes more marked in a nation whose aggregate income motmts up by leaps and bounds, but the very machinery of production tends to be transformed in such a way as to compel the public to guard their interests by gaining control of this machinery. Competition tends to pass away and monopoly takes its place ; the common needs, sacrificed by private interest in profit-making, assert themselves more and more through Factory Laws, experi- 45 ments in municipalisation, Sanitary Laws and so on. In other words, the various functions in Society, acting originally inde- pendently of each other, tend to become grouped and be subject to a will and an interest common to the whole group ; and in time the groups themselves tend to become completely merged in the whole organism and to act in accordance with its will and interest. IV. At what point of this evolution are we now ? How far was the efficient organisation of labour gone ? How far has the machinery of production been transformed ? In attempting to answer those questions, we must remember that one of the chief tests of efficient organisation in industry is sub-division, accompanied by co-ordina- tion, of function.* In this respect we have attained a perfection which must be approaching its limits. Even in our domestic arrangements — the last to respond to change in social organisation — this sub-division and co-ordination have gone far. It is a long time since our wives and daughters spun at our own firesides wool from *Adam Smith's expression " the sub-division of labour " is an inadequate one as a description of what happens under the Factory System, because the co-operation of the work of those employed in the sub-divided processes is as necessary a characteristic of the system as the sub-division itself. 46 the backs of sheep grazing on our own meadows. These operations supplied too wide a market to remain domestic. But functions which were purely family and dom- estic, the materials for which were growing in our garderis, the implements for which were nothing more than a fireplace and a pot, and the performance of which was much more personal than even spinning (personal and wifely as that at one time was), have been organised apart from the duties of the housewife, until to-day our cooking is done to a large extent in bakeries, jam factories, canning and tinning establishments, and the very care of children is becoming more and more a specialised function of Society. But it is in the staple industries — those which supply a great market with a uniform article — that the process of differentiation and co-ordination has gone furthest. The cloth-worker used to alternate weaving and spinning with agriculture. But the inevitable law of differentiation forced him to leave his fields and give himself up wholly to his machine and his frame, which had become one of many in a factory. In the factories them- selves differentiation made itself felt. Separate departments were formed, and the division of processes became so great that different establishments confining themselves to differ- ent operations, like spinning and weaving in the cotton trade, were created. 47 The chief sociological effect of mechanical invention has been to aid this process of sub- division and co-ordination of function. Adam Smith's reference at the opening of the Wealth of Nations, to the sub-division of labour in pin- making owing to the employment of machinery has become classical. But since Adam Smith's day, sub-division has gone both far and fast. I may illustrate this from the boot and shoe and tailoring trades. In 1859* men's ordinary cheap boots were made by 83 different operations done by two men; in 1895 they were made by 122 different operations performed by 113 workers, some of whom were women. In 1863 men's medium grade calf shoes, finished in style, were made by 73 operations done by one man; in 1895, by 173 operations performed by 371 work- people. Equally striking is the change in the names by which the workpeople describe themselves. In 1863, the men were shoemakers ; in 1895, the word has become little better than an abstraction, and no single workman is indicated by it. Instead of shoemakers we have vamp cutters, tip markers, second row stitchers, eyeleters, feather edgers, insole sorters, counter buffers, pullers over, welt strippers, outsole layers, * Report of the Commissioner of Labour on Land and Machine Labour, Washington, i8g8. The unit of pro- duction for the figures quoted is 100 pairs of shoes and 100 vicuna coats. 48 heel nailers, stitch dividers, bottom stainers, shank burnishers, treers, edge polishers and such like. The effect of mechanical appliances upon the clothing industry is equally marked. When men's ordinary vicuna coats were made by hand, 22 operations had to be performed and four men were employed upon them ; in 1895, these coats were made up by 28 opera- tions upon which 254 workers were employed. The hand workers were known as tailors, trimmers and cutters ; the designation tailor has not survived the use of machinery, the trim- mer barely survives, whilst fitters, basters, sewing machine operators, button hole cutters, finishers, pressers and button sewers attest to the minute sub-division of the trade. Every industry shows the same process. Every minute operation in the manufacture of any article becomes separated, a staff is employed to perform it alone, and the aggre- gate number of hands in the labour unit of production is on the increase. The individual workman is no longer the unit of production, but a body of from 100 to 400 persons as in shoemaking, and from 100 to 300 as in tailoring. The same process has also affected trades. One trade dovetails into another, either be- cause one supplies raw material for the other or in some other way is a complement to it. 49 For instance, a municipality doing its own street sweeping finds it to be advantageous to make and mend its brooms ; if it employs horses it finds that doing its own saddlery is economical ; if its stable is large it may em- ploy its own veterinary surgeon and start its own forge with profit. The necessity to destroy its dust and refuse may compel it to generate its own electricity, and for like reasons it may be driven into brickmaking, the supplying of electric lighting apparatus, printing, and so on. I have been told that a certain well-known slaughter and packing house found its bye- products so embarrassing to dispose of that it had to start the manufacture of sausages, bristles, glue, felt, candles, soap, table condi- ments, manure ; it owns the rolling stock which it uses ; in order to protect itself from competition, it has acquired railroads and organised transport in several cities ; it has opened retail shops ; it insures itself, and through a bank of its own, conducts its financial business. The activities of the American Steel Trust afford another example of this co-ordination of industry. As a manufacturing concern it includes operations like the making of tin- plates, tubes,bridges,wire and nails, which used to be separate businesses. But it has carried organisation and co-ordination much further than that. It has acquired 55,000 acres of 50 the best cokirig coal lands in the Connellsville region, and has built over 18,000 coke ovens'. It holds 106 iron ore mines in the Lake Superior region, and large limestone proper- ties in Pennsylvania. It possesses 132 wells of natural gas, which yield on the aggregate 11,000,000,000 cubic feet per annum. It owns 1,200 miles of railway, and has a controlling interest in five other lines. It has a fleet of 112 ore-carrying steamers, together with docks and landing stages and the machinery neces- sary for handling the iron ore.® With this sub-division and co-ordination of labour and industry has proceeded an enor- mous improvement in the means of communi- cation. Fifty years ago if one sent a message from London to Edinburgh, it took about a week to receive an answer, whilst from Lon- don to New York it took a month. The stage coach going at from seven to ten miles an hour, was the substitute for the express train going seven or eight times as fast, and the fare per passenger was not less than ;f 10 for a journey which can now be done for thirty shillings. The ship depending upon the fitful winds was all that could be had instead of the ocean steamers which now run so punctually that one can catch a certain train by them at the end of a long voyage. There was *British Iron Trade Association : Report on American Industrial Conditions, London, 190J, pp. 22, etc. 51 no regular cable service between the Old and the New World until 1866, and rates which are now a shilling a word were then £1. Telegrams were little used until between 1840 and 1850, and then a good machine could only send 2.000 words per hour,* whilst now twelve times as many can be sent, and devices are employed for duplicating and for working several clerks upon the same message. And now the telephone is superseding both telegram and express train, t The Napoleonic capitalist sits in his office and conducts his trade in every coimtry and every clime as though his markets were but at the end of his street. There is only the space of a few minutes separating the Old from the New World. With these magical facilities under his control, the capitalist is no longer a private person operating in a little comer of his parish, whose success or failure only ripples the calm surface of the life of his village. He deals with Society ; the fate of peoples depends upon him ; he rules empires ; legislatures which monarchs cannot control are his pup- pets. Nominally, his property and his busi- *McCulloch's Dictionary of Commerce, London, 1882, Art. written 1869. 1 1 have heard that owing to the adoption of the tele- phone one of the express trains running between New York and Chicago has been taken off. 52 ness are his own, but the consequences attending the way he controls them are spread over Society. This becomes a matter of serious importance when labour-saving machinery is largely used. A machine which lightens labour can very easily be turned into one which takes the place of labour, and whether that happens or not depends upon whether the machine is held by a class which employs labour for a profit, or whether it is used by labour for its own benefit. So long as there are expanding mar- kets at home and abroad, machinery creates a demand for work, partly because the machin- ery itself must be made, and partly because it cheapens production and therefore increases consumption. But its employment enormously increases the power of the capitalist over the wage earner. It increases the proportion of un- skilled labour in the community,® and enables the capitalists to call in to his aid the weak and the casual workers, generally children and women, to take the places of men and *Cf. American Industrial Conditions, supra, p. 3 17, "The tendency in the Amercan steel industry is to reduce by every possible means the number of highly skilled men employed, and more and more to establish the general wage on the basis of common unskilled labour. , The American steel manufacturer has succeeded in late years in largely reducing the relative numbers of his skilled and highly paid hands." 53 reduce their wages.® No sentiment, no tradition, no social interest can resist the imperative demand in the present economic state that the most convenient kind of labour — convenient to the capitalist — shall find its way to the factory gates. Whilst we prate, for instance, about the sacredness of the family life, we allow the convenience of the machine to undermine the economic props of the family group. A pillar of Sabbatarianism can prove satisfactorily to himself that his works must — the economic, not the moral must — go seven days in the week ; a man full of phrases glorifying humanity employs married women or girls to cut down the wages of men when he needs cheap labour, and turns men away from his factory gates. "Business principles " — the "business principles" of self- regarding individuals, not of Society — are made the excuse for human waste and unrighteous- ness, and we are willing to accept as a last word in social ethics an appeal that the rights — or the fancied rights — of property must be respected even should the heavens fall, and that the rights and duties of wage earners should be subordinated to the needs of the machinery which employs them. Thus we see how machinery, which might *A workman in an industrial town in the Midlands re- marked to me the other day : " I have eleven children, but thank God, most of them are girls. They can easily get work, but the boys are difficult to place." 54 lighten labour, supplants it when used in the interest of a capitalist class, or increases the demand for cheap and unorganised labour without providing facilities for a cultured leisure. Thus we see how tools, a dead factor, rule men, the living factor in production, and how a class engaging in production for profits controls the class which takes part in produc- tion in order to maintain life. Things dominate men, with results spelt out in moral, social and physical deterioration. The workman has to accommodate himself to his employer's ledger. The owner of the land and the means of production is the owner of the lives of the people. He holds Society in the hollow of his hand This is no indictment of the individual capitalist, who is often trying his best to listen to ethical imperatives in his business. It is an indictment against a system of dis- organised functions in which even the success- ful capitalist is a victim morally, if not economically like his employee. Nor can any combination of labour in the form of Trade Unionism or Co-operation break down this form of economic slavery. These combinations, particularly when sup- ported by individual character, protect the wage earners up to a point, but capital and its interests can be concentrated much more 55 thoroughly than labour and its interests, and ultimately the contest depends upon the phy- sical fact that the battalions of labour are numerous, and have a limited reserve of supplies or none at all ; and this unwieldiness of numbers and early fight with starvation must always be an enormous disadvantage to the wage earners. Hence we have reached a stage when the interest of the community in the use of some forms of property is much greater than the interest of the legal owners of that property, and when, in consequence, we must seriously question the advisability of allowing it to be controlled by private persons for private ends. Even if it were physically possible for a person to own the light and air of heaven, so imperatively necessary is it for human beings to use them, that the right of private property in them is unthinkable. But the difference between light and air on the one hand, and land and industrial capital on the other, is only one of degree, and not one of kind.® As population multiplies, as it is deprived of free access to raw materials, as it becomes more dependent for life upon employment for wages. Society becomes increasingly interested * This is seen when as a matter of fact private ownership of land in towns, by causing overcrowding and slum con- ditions, really involves a private ownership of air and light. 56 in the uses to which land and industrial capital are put. Its right to insist upon the social use of property grows, until at last the expediency of allowing private ownership in these necessary conditions of life is destroyed. The reasons which make the private owner- ship of light and air unthinkable tend to make the private ownership of land and in- dustrial capital also imthinkable. This inevitable growth of the necessity for Society to insist upon the proper use of land and capital is hastened in its final stages by the ceasing of competition within large econ- omic and geographical areas, and the ruinous intensification of competition between those areas. The competitive stage is always one of unstable equilibrium. The successful com- petitor always tends to swallow up his rivals, and then proceeds to fight a cannibal battle- royal with those who, like himself, have done some swallowing, have grown massive in consequence, and who have in due course to be faced by him. Or, he may come to a truce with them in a Kartel or Trust. The law of competition is that the operations of the indi- vidual capitalist become wider as capital becomes concentrated, and that at last a monopolistic peace is declared. Thus, in this country there is little com- petition in railway rates ; for years there has been little competition in paraffin oil ; in the 57 iron, milling, shipping, tobacco, thread and other industries we have had in recent years combinations, created either after or without a competitive war, that have been more or less effective in reducing competition to a minimum. The wallpaper trust controls 98 per cent, of the trade, the Bradford Dyers, the Textile Machinery Company, the London Coal Combination, and several others, claim about 90 per cent., and the list could be extended to some length. Even when the combinations fail, the causes, however difficult they may be to overcome, are all seen to be vanquishable. The failures are but the backwash of the encroaching tide. The fact is that the state of individualist competition, the state of serving the com- munity by making personal profits, is nothing except the chaotic interregnum between two states of social organisation, in the present instance between Feudalism, when society was organised to maintain national life, and Socialism, when Society will be organised to maintain the industrial and moral efficiency of the community. It is inconceivable that the unregulated clash of individual interests and the haphazard expenditure of individual effort, which competition means, with all their accompanying waste of economic power and of human energy, should stand for ever as the final word which rational beings have to say upon their industrial organisation. 58 But whilst within certain areas the bounds of industrial peace are being widened, the growth of aggressive political nationalism has transformed an economic rivalry between trading firms into a nationalist struggle. No movement in recent years is more menacing in its probable results and more absurd in its methods than this. If it is encouraged, it will postpone for generations the success of the tendency towards international peace, and will divert and arrest the growth of that humani- tarian sentiment which blots out from our minds — if not from our maps — national boun- daries. Already, under the mistaken belief that trade follows the flag, we have put an enormous strain upon our imperial resources and national wealth. Commerce, which, according to the Radical manufacturers, was to be the handmaiden of peace, has been en- listed upon the side of war. But no State can allow its international relations to be decided by its merchants. The interests, or supposed interests, of individual merchants must give way to the interests of the community. The fiscal agitation has, moreover, drawn our attention to the depredations of parasitic interests and the waste of disorganised indus- trial efforts. The jeremiads which have had to be uttered in order to give some appearance of evidence in support of Tariff changes, have made us conscious of the weight of the unneces- sary burdens which our industry has to bear, 59 and industrial economy has been advocated, by the Socialist and Labour organisations at any rate, as the alternative to political protection. It has been shown that our railways are sacrificing national interests for private profits, that our iron and coal industry is weighted with mining rents and royalties, that our education system is paralysed by the contests of secta- ries, that our whole social organisation is maintained for private and class profit. Every crack and subsidence which has been proved to exist in our national commerce has been shown to be mendable, not by tariffs, but by the better organisation of industry. There is also another circumstance which we must take into account in considering how far the present organisation of Society is capable of improvement. At the present moment we are in the midst of a strong ten- dency in legislation to establish what is called a national minimum of social conditions — e.g., wages, sanitation, leisure, etc. Now, as a matter of fact, competitive industry will not bear all this, if the minimum is to be worth striving for, and a point must soon be reached when the far-seeing Socialist will cease to press for these superficial palliatives, and exert increased pressure for public ownership. When the legislative palliative is inconsis- tent with the system upon which it is 6o to be imposed, the awakening moral con- sciousness which prompts the demand must see that it really condemns the existing state fundamentally, and not merely in some of its superficial and alterable features* V. Labour and industry have been sub-divided and co-ordinated only in so far as has been necessary for efficient production, the sub- division and co-ordination have not gone on for the purpose of increasing the health of the whole social organism. Land, capital and labour ; the producer and consumer ; the worker and the instruments of work — are all opposing functions in Society. Hence the wealth created by this system of opposition is inequitably distributed, and the civilization which it permits is a mixture of barbarism and Byzantinism, of philanthropy and injus- tice. The private ownership of land, express- ing itself through monopoly values, mining rents and royalties, wayleaves, rights of * I hold this point to be of the greatest importance for the future success of Socialism. State interference under Commerciahsm is strictly confined within limits. If we go beyond these our experiments will be failures, and like the Paris workshops of 1848 will become bulwarks behind which reactionaries will shelter themselves. Public owner- ship, which after all is Socialism, as distinguished from State interference which is only the path to Socialism, must not be allowed to be pushed into the background of Socialist effort, and in its interests, palliatives must be reijected sometimes. 6i enclosure and powers to withhold from use, limits enterprise and is a heavy burden upon industry. The power of capital to look after its own interests first, makes our railways a hindrance rather than a help to our industrial position, subjects trade to serious periodical crises, prevents any effective attempt being made to regulate supply and demand, makes a national organisation of industry impossi- ble and an anarchy of superfluous wealth and bankruptcy, overtime add unemployment, permanent, and it dooms its dependent wage earners to lives devoid of that security and comfort which are essential to the liberty and moral advance of man. The separateness of labour and its subordination to capital breed the anti-social spirit, the conditions under which it has to do its work undermine honesty and craftsmanship, the reward it receives gives it no encouragement to attain to artistic or scientific skill and barely yields to it an opportunity to exercise the virtues of temper- ance and forethought. The organs of a healthy body politic are now in existence. In their variety and co-ordination they mark an advance upon the condition of Society a century ago. They indicate a substan- tial improvement in the economy of effort and precision in gaining results. But each organ is serving an interest of its own. When it is serving the whole, it is in order that it may serve itself first. The next stage in our social 62 evolution must be marked, not by the develop- ment of more special functions, but by the co-ordination of the functions which are already in existence. The life of the com- munity must take the place in economic, political and moral eflFort, that the interest of the classes now occupies. VI. This is the biological view of the evolution of Society towards Socialism. The evolution is accompanied by an opposition of different interests proceeding pari passu with a more complete organisation. But the predominant or vital fact is not that conflict, but rather the steady subordination of all functional and sectional interests to the living needs of the whole community, and the certain predomin- ance of those which are carrying on what at any given time is the chief concern of Society. Each epoch has its own appropriate " histori- cal basis " and motive, determined not by the fact that the stages of social evolution are the creations of the desire of individuals to live or to possess, but by the organic evolution of the functions of Society. One conclusion from this view must be specially noticed. As each stage of enfran- chisement approaches, we find that, by the influence on the individual mind of the pre- paredness of Society for change, intellectual 63 and moral movements arise in harmony with the impending change, and weaken the resis- tance of the doomed interests. A movement towards more effective organisation is of necessity preceded by more comprehensive views of social utility, and of moral right and wrong. Since, under democracy, the form of social organisation is directly dependent upon the community's need, we have an increasing security against cataclysmic change, and a greater guarantee against revolution. Con- tests between the organism and the function, — between Society and a class, — become at last gradual surrenders to which day and date can hardly be assigned. VII. In this growth of organisation Society presents a special feature owing to the con- stant attempts made by individuals to secure for themselves certain advantages, economic and social, which can only belong to a few and which are enjoyed as a rule at the expense of Society as a whole, or of subordinate classes in Society. The opportunity which a small class has to put itself in the position of a parasite is very great owing to the fact that in social evolution certain functions become from time to time predominant. The organ — class or group of persons — which fulfils these functions, and the individual cells — persons — composing these organs, are held consequently 64 in distinction and acquire interests which, when a further social change has ripened, are found to be opposed to that change, and to have centred round themselves a group of organic relationships which are but obstruct- ive growths in the social organism. Parasitism breeds parasitism. The predominant function, with its accessories, in every stage of social! growth attempts to retard social evolution beyond the circumstances which give it pre- dominance. It seeks to establish itself as d vital part of Society to injure which means death ; it creates a practice of morality which serves it as a foundation ; it constructs an economic system which suits its needs ; it establishes by its Acts of Parliament a legal system to preserve its own lordly place ; it inculcates a habit of mind in the other social functions which makes them unwilling to consider any other system of social relation- ship than the existing one. The place of monarchy in the politifcal evolution of the community may be cited in proof of this. When the time came for tribes to amalgamate into nations, it was necessary to devise some means by which national unity could express itself, and this could be done only by selecting a national head. Except for such a head, nations subject to the storm and stress of invasion and internal disruptive forces, could not have existed. But just in proportion to the stress of the national need for a king, 65 the king was able to set aside every tradition and custom which limited his tenure of office. He was able to raise himself into a class of which he was the only member, to establish that class upon a basis of divine right, to sur- round it with bulwarks of dependent classes, to make its continued existence appear to be essential to the existence of the nation. To- day, long after the nations have organised themselves into unities which find expression more effectively through representative assem- blies and by temporary heads, monarchy survives deprived of its legal authority but supported by the parasitism of thought and interest which it has inherited from the time when it performed a necessary function in Society. In the economic development of Society, the same law holds good. The territorial baron holding land in trust for the community and fulfilling that trust by maintaining on that land a body of yeomen whose arms were at the disposal of the community in case of need, expressed in the most effective way possible the necessity for the community being properly defended. The circumstance that this allowed private wars on the part of the barons and personal expeditions on the part of the king, was only incidental to the state of national organisation at the time. When, in due time, the industrial development of the country necessitated a more perfect national 66 organisation than feudalism, the new functions of capital and commercialism found the old ones of the land — feudalism — the vital centres of laws and privileges which had to be abolish- ed altogether or shared with the new classes. Although feudalism is no longer of any con- sequence to national life, the habit of mind which it engendered and the social distinctions which it necessitated still influence us, and we tolerate the existence of a House of Lords, make barons and baronets of those who do party services, and imagine we are thus main- taining the existence of the good old British aristocracy. Thus we see that though the diseased func- tions atrophy, they retain a sort of parasitic life and maintain a ceremonial and social existence owing to the incapacity of the social organism to assimilate them completely. Intellectual and social parasitism is one of the most formidable barriers to progress. VIII. The economic period has its characteristic ethical and political aspects. Whilst it was unfolding, the idea of individual liberty was becoming clearer and was pulling at the pillars of Society with alarming violence. Slavery was being abolished, evangelicism was crowning the meanest being with divine re- sponsibility, and the "rights of man" was being proclaimed from the street corners by agitators, and preached from studies by 67 philosophers. The feeling of subordination inseparable from the organisation of feudal times was wearing off, and the separate individual, crowned with his priceless rights as a human being, was moving with an aggressive stride on to the stage to play his part. On its moral side, the epoch is best dis- tinguished by the evangelical movement which swept aside all barriers between man and his creator, all intermediaries, all intercessors of flesh, and established, once and for all it is to be hoped, individual responsibility for voluntary sin. It made man regard himself as an independent unit in the eyes of God, directly responsible to God for thoughts, words and deeds. In reality, perhaps it only raised anew the problem of Free Will and failed to answer it, but to that answer it made an important preliminary contribution by placing the burden of moral responsibility on the shoulders of /, not on those of we. This is not its final resting place, for / and we will have to bear the burden between them, but individualist morals had to be established before social morals could be understood. The shortcoming of evangelicism as a source of moral guidance was twofold. First of all, whilst attempting to place the seat of moral authority in the conscience, it in reality placed it in tradition and dogma which depended upon 68 "the will to believe " almost exclusively, and it hardly touched conduct — except self-regarding conduct — at all. As a consequence of this, evangelicism was compelled to dwell with practical exclusiveness upon that aspect of morality — so often merely formal — which deals with the relations between man and God, — other-worldliness — and neglect that which is concerned with the relations between man and man. It has failed to insist upon the application of those parts of the Gospel whioh impose secular duties upon the Christian or has treated them as being metaphorical and poetic. It has therefore done little directly to create the moral demand for a change in the social organism. The method and need of personal regeneration have bounded the vision of evangelicism. Its second shortcoming was its individualist standpoint and philosophy — necessary so, one has to admit. Not only were individualism and evangelicism contemporary in history but they were akin to each other in principle ; so much akin, in fact, that just as evangelicism failed to conceive of an organic church, so did it fail to conceive of an organic state. Evangelic- ism viewed the problem of state interference mainly from the point of view of ardent religionists opposed to a State Church and Arminianism. It thus started from a false conception of the proper relationship between the state and the individual. It assumed that 69 any increase of state activity was detrimental to individual character, and it was therefore incapable of directing the large volume of moral effort which it undoubtedly created, especially amongst those in the humbler walks of life, into a pressure acting from with- in society tending to readjust social relation- ships so that social results might approximate more and more to the requirements of the moral individual. On the whole, it therefore contented itself by encouraging the moral individual whom it created to regard the moral world as something exterior to his every-day experience and to live the dual life of " other-worldliness." In these later days distinctions cannot be drawn quite so clearly as I have done in the above sentences, but we are passing out of evangelicism. The Free Churches are begin- ning to deal with the social problem which is facing them. Morality is separating itself from dogmas and is endeavouring to interpret and explain itself through life and life only. The existence of a communal moral personal- ity, a communal moral will, a communal moral conscience, is being made the reason for legislation. The moral movement which characterised evangelicism is floating into the mid stream of progress to play its part as an agency in the epoch of social construction upon which we are entering. 70 IX. The direct contribution made to political progress during this period has been the democratic reforms of Liberalism. Liberalism is not necessarily democratic, though under political conditions such as ours it can hardly help becoming so. In this country if it has not succeeded in establishing a pure democracy, it had gone far in that direction before paralysis overtook it. It had answered in practice by passing a series of acts ending with Household Masculine Suffrage, the philosophic problem : In whom does the sovereignty rest ? After the struggle for political liberty has ended or has spent itself, political interest tends to become concentrated on questions regarding the function of the State, and parties begin to range themselves, on the one hand, round the atomic individualists guided by some idea of individual right and regarding the State from the point of view of what is erroneously called individualism® ; and on * I desire to emphasise that individualism and socialism do not express two opposing tendencies. What is generally called individualism is only that kind of individualism which regards the State as though it were mechanically built up of atoms called persons — atomic individualism. Socialism is a theory of individualism in which the individual is regarded as being in organic relationship with his fellows in the community, and in which, consequently, the State, the community and the individual are seen to be pursuing the same ends. 71 the Other, round the organic individualists who apjproach political and social problems froin the point of view of service and duty. The work of Liberalism has made the position of the atomic individualists quite untenable. For, the State, after a democratic suffrage has been established, is no longer an authority external to the individual ; a law is no longer a decree imposed upon the people by ah arbitrary will bending the common will according to its desires. The democratic Statie is an organisation of the people, democratic government is self-government, deniocratic law is an expression of the will of the people who have to obey the law — not perhaps thfe will of every individual, but the communal will, voicing the need of all classes in their relation to the community, and may fitly be regarded, in spite of the opposition of a min- ority, as teing "for the good of all concerned." Consequently to speak or think, after the Liberal epoch, of State action being " grand- motherly," a limitation upon liberty, a doing for the individual something which he should do for himself, is as meaningless as to talk of the Hanoverian principles of Liberalism and the Jacobite sympathies of Toryism. Whilst the antagonism of interests, classes and functions still exists, or its memory still lingers, and whilst such class legislation as is passed to-day perverts the popular mind arid 72 colours its vision, some bitter experiences of democratically decreed legislation may have to be borne. An interest finding itself tem- porarily in a position which enables it to dictate its own terms may pass laws beneficial to itself and oppressive to the rest of the community, but just as competition in indus- try ever tends to exhaust itself and give way to co-operation, by a similar law democracy tends to legislate for the whole social organ- ism and not merely for one of its functions. Democratic law tends to become national law, because democracy in working tends to harmonise and co-ordinate the social functions. A democratic government expresses the will of the social organism, and when it directs the actions of the people it speaks to them in their own voice. This has been the chief contribution of Liberalism to the evolution of social functions and their organisation. The economic period is therefore closing. Politically, morally, economically, its fruit has ripened and is being gathered. It has handed down to us three great problems which have arisen owing to its success in having solved its own. What is the sphere of the State ? What is the relation between individual and social morality ? How can national productive resources and accumulated 73 wealth be used so that they may contribute most to the welfare of the whole community? Up to this point has progress brought us. Upon the portals of Socialism these three problems are written. Chapter IV. UTOPIAN AND SEMI-SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. Before the idea of biological evolution regulated the thought and methods of social reformers, proposals for social reconstruction took the form of creations of a new earth and new men, made by the fiat of someone whose authority was equal to the task. The man who judged social results by his ideas of right and wrong was driven to plant his ideal community, wherein dwelt righteous- ness, on some undiscovered island in some imknown sea ; and when, in times nearer to our own, the reformer did not merely write of Utopias, but tried to make them, he bought land in the hopes of founding a society modelled on a plan devised from his own intelligence. I. The fundamental mistake of the Utopia builders was that they did not understand that Society develops in accordance with laws of social life, and that it could not be rebuilt right away like a house on plans designed by the moral consciousness and administrative 74 75 aputeness of individuals. They did not see tJiat the reforming operations of the individual ■will are limited by the fact that Society progresses by the readjustment of its existing organisation. They assumed that the social,, relations were casual, and that the group life offered the very slightest resistance to tota^ readjustment. They had not grasped the idea that Society at any given time had been moulded and fixed by the experiences of the social group up to that time, — that it had inherited its form from the past, and that therefore it could not be made the plaything of men's imagination. Society could no more return to primitive bliss than man could return to the arboreal habits of his ancestors. They hoped to build anew, when all they could do was to aid in modifying structures and in changing relationships. They approached their task as though they were men consider- ing whether a house is adapted to their needs, whilst, by the nature of the problem, they should have approached it as men who desire to restore to health their ailing bodie^. They regarded Society as though it vyere an architectural construction of fixed parts, not as an organism maturing by the laws of variation and growth. Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Robert Owen's experiments illustrate this error. More was an apostle of the liberal thought 76 of his time, such as it was. Guided by the humanism of the New Learning, he cast his eyes over the state of England, when the evolution of national industry was destroying the peasantry. The English manor system was being transformed into private ownership of land inspired by commercial considerations. The stream from the country to the towns had started. The landlords, responding to the alluring temptations of commerce, were beginning to regard their lands not as the instrument of territorial power but as a source of income, and the demand for wool made them turn their tilled acres to grazing, and put sheep on the fields instead of men. Society was moving from the territorial and agricultural stage to that of world markets and commerce. Capital was concentrating and slowly organising itself into a function separate and apart from labour, and the guild ordinances which protected the older methods of trade were passing into impotence. The unemployed were everywhere ; social conflict was everywhere. Everywhere the rich seemed to be in conspiracy against the poor. In More's own words : " The rich are ever "striving to pare away something further " from the daily wages of the poor by private " fraud and even by public law, so that the "wrong already existing (for it is a wrong " that those from whom the State derives " most benefit should receive least reward) is 77 " made much greater by means of the law of " the State." The poor, in consequence, were leading " a life so wretched that even a beast's " life seemed enviable." Everything, even Christendom itself, was powerless to avert all this wrong-doing, he moaned. This indictment is wonderfully modern, wonderfully like the last Socialist speech one has heard, wonderfully like the present-day expressions of reformers who try to view honestly the facts of life.* And yet More, the New Learning, Christendom, did little and could do little to avert or shorten the calami- ties. The iron law of social evolution grinds out its results with magnificent callousness. Why ? Why did More write as a modern ? Why did his criticisms fall like seed by the *Cf. for instance these sentences of John Stuart Mill : — " If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Com- munism with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices ; if the institu- tion of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence that the produce of labour should be appor- tioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour — the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remun- eration dwindling as the work grows harder and more dis- agreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life — if this or Communism were the alternative, all the difficulties great or small of Com- munism would be but as dust in the balance." — Political Economy, Book II., chap. i. 78 wayside ? The position of Robert Owen may as well be examined before an answer is, attempted. Owen's Utopias were products of the Indus- trial Revolution. He lived in a system designed exclusively for the production of wealth, devouring both the physique and the character of children, men and women. Human beings were the raw material upon which the growing industry of his time fed. Revolting from the spectacle, Owen began to condemn it on account of its moral deficiencies, began to address protesting appeals to the public intelligence and the public conscience. At first, his schemes were aimed at modifying the structure of the social organism. He proposed! to limit by law the labour of child- ren, to provide them with a suitable educa- tion, to humanise the environment of the people and, by alluring them to walk in more pleasant ways, draw them away from the paths of destruction they were treading. His work of that time afterwards earned for him the title of " the father of factory legisla- tion " and " the founder of infant schools." There was, then, little Utopianism about his piroposals. They were the constructive schemes of a man of penetrating thought and ripe experience who attempted to modify social environment without creating an ideal Society from the material of his own intelligence ; 79 and they remain his chief contribution to the social changes of last century. But as time went on, Owen felt more and' more the discouragement of the idealist who lives some generations before Society is in a position to listen whole-heartedly to him. Cobbett was unknown in 1800 when Owen took over New Lanark ; and Cobbett had to re-inaugurate the Radical demands for poli- tical enfranchisement, and the Cobbett cam- paign had to be carried on for two or three generations, before Owen's social ideas could be pushed to the forefront of public interests. When Owen started his first community (1823) capitalism was but beginning its triimiphs. The State had only just given up its attempts to fix wages, having been bafHed in its bene- volent intentions by the vigorous and extensive changes in industrial conditions which the new economic order was bringing about, Even in industries like the woollen, which had been controlled by capitalists for over two centuries, the employers were but moder- ately rich. The same was true of cotton.* The Peels were separated by but one genera- tion from their yeoman origin. In Scotland, the first cotton mill had been erected only twenty-two years before Owen acquired New * " The cotton industry had not in the ' fifties ' sufficiently developed for the notions current to-day to emerge." — Chapman, Lancashire Cotton Industry, p. 250. 8o Lanark.* A subscription list opened in Liverpool in 1798 in aid of the funds required to carry on the war with France, contained only two amounts of ;£'5oo and one of ;^4O0, and these were the largest sums subscribed, t As late as 1841, according to the report of the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland, presented to the Committee appointed to enquire into the condition of the unemployed Handloom Weavers, out of 51,000 weavers south of the Firth of Clyde, not more than 3,500 were employed in factories,! whilst it was quite common until the middle of the nineteenth century for agriculture and weaving to be carried on by the same person.§ As late as 1834, it was stated before the Committee on Handloom Weavers that "if a man can pur- " chase a winding machine and a warping " mill and get credit for a sleep of yarn he can "get into motion as a master." !| Power- looms had not seriously menaced handlooms, * Industries of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, British Association Handbook, Glasgow, 1901, p, 141. + Baines' History of Liverpool, pp. 503-4. In 1801, ;^8o,ooo was subscribed in three hours for building an Exchange with a Square in front (ibid, 506-7). Even that would not have been considered a great feat a generation afterwards, and the great fuss made about it is significant. X Quoted by Chapman in Lancashire Cotton Industry, Manchester, 1903, p. 24. § Ibid, pp. 10, 1 1, etc. II Ibid, p. 25. 8i and were so imperfect that their use was not clearly economical. Spinning machinery was equally imperfect. Great as had been the strides of invention, and though the " Indus- trial Revolution " had been accoriiplished, the industrial organisation of the country was still but rudimentary. The factory system, characterised by specialisation and sub-divi- sion of labour together with centralised town industry, was but beginning ; the meEins of transport and locomotion were nothing better than the new canal system, which had been the subject of such feverish speculation in 1792, and the stage coach; international trade was insignificant. But the character- istics of the industrial epoch were developing. The economic and political conditions of feudalism were passing away. The national existence of the country had been finally secured, and its economic development deci- sively begun. The first stage of that develop- ment had to solve the problems of how to produce wealth and create markets and marketing facilities. Therefore, the form of the social organism had to respond to those needs of the social life, and all the organs and cells in Society had to be subordinated to the organisation best fitted for satisfying them. This subordination entailed suffering and misery. The towns became pestilential, children were done to death in the mills, pauperism increased, the people threw up to 82 heaven angry protests, Utopias were built from the mental stuff of the just and the generous, Owen agitated. But protest as the organs and the cells might. Society continued to organise itself so that it could produce wealth abundantly ; and all the fine ideas that were scattered abroad made no difference except in so far as they could modify the social structure within the limits of the econ- omic function imposed upon it by the charac- ter of the social need which had in due course arisen as an expression of the developing social life. Processes of readjustment and experiments in amelioration were begxm early. It was found by experience, for instance, that, in spite of the opposition of the capitalists, who were chiefly fulfilling the social functions of the epoch (labour, however necessary, being functionally subordinate), certain limita- tions imposed by Factory Legislation did not retard the development of the Factory System as the most efficient method of wealth pro- duction, but in reality aided it. We must not therefore commit the error of assuming that Factory Legislation is in principle opposed to the spirit embodied in the Factory System. Factory legislation, so long as its effect is tested by its compatibility with the efficiency of private capitalism to produce wealth and exploit labour, is an essential part 83 of the capitalist system. It is an essein'tial influe'nce upon the social organism at a time When the form of the organism is determined solely by its efficiency in piroducing wealth. Hence it was that Owen's proposals for the state regulatioh of factories were efEective, and fructified in society, whilst his Utopian experiments were valuable mainly as warnings to future reformers. This was not because the legislative proposals were moral or right in the abstract, but because society was ripe for them ; they were " natural " in the sense that they were produced by the circumstances of the time, and advantageous to the vital pur- pose of the generation. And, above all, they were modifications of the social structure. This contention is strongly reinforced if we consider what at first seems to militate against it, the development of Co-operation from Owen's Utopian schemes. Co-opera- tion in Owen's mind was as much a tour de force as his New Harmony. It was a new organisation of society bringing the workers into a new relation with each other and altering fundamentally the condi- tions under which production and exchange were carried on. Logically it was an excellent idea. If it were possible for the individual — the cell — to create at any time a new social organisation, Owen's scheme of integral co- operation might have worked. But the indi- 84 vidual lives in an organism — Society, — his will expresses itself in accordance with the life of the organism, his morality is able to act effectively only in so far as it can modify the social organism and is guided by the vital activity of the organism, and his confidence is given only to systems similar to, or but an easy stage removed from, the organism of which he is a part. Therefore, when Owen's idea of co-operation was adopted, its Utopian characteristics were gradually dropped, and, as its success became possible, the features it held in common with existing society became more marked. When the Rochdale Pioneers began their experiment in 1844, the Utopian features of Owenite Co-operation were becoming subor- dinate. True, the Pioneers threw out fore- shadowings of a new earth. The unemployed were to be absorbed, and an identity of interest between producer and consumer was to be established — in the long run. But the organi- sation of the movement was modelled on the organisation of existing society. The rest was ornament, and that ornament has had but the slightest influence in the development of the experiment. There was an opposition in Society between the functions of production and exchange, between the wage-earner and the person who sold him his food and clothing ; and the latter was drifting more and more completely under 85 the control of the capitalist employers. The question was : Could that tendency be stopped without hindering the efficiency of the social organism to produce wealth, and without having to create an organisation difEerent in form and idea to society as it existed ? Ob- viously, dear and adulterated food, the credit system, an alliance between shopkeepers and employers were not only not essential, but might be harmful, to the efficient production of wealth, and the idea of the workmen being their own shopkeepers militated against no principle upon which production depended, So these things were alterable. But the private ownership of capital, capitalist control of the workshop, and competition in produc- tion, together with the existence of the xm- employed, were essential to the epoch of production, and these could not be altered. The question upon which the success of the Rochdale experiment depended was : Was there a sufficiently strong sense of solidarity amongst the workers to secure for the stores such a determined patronage as to protect them against outside competition ? As it turned out, there was. The Co-operative Store was patronised, not because it was more efficient or cheaper than the shop of the private trader, but because it was the Co- operative Store. The movement, in the main, did nothing to alter the organisation of 86 society.* Some of the leaders of the move- ment, inspired by an antiquated conception of what they call " self-help," and masses of its ordinary members whose visions are nar- rowed by dividends and who regard Co- operation as being merely a venture in profit- able shopkeeping, have actually turned the movement into a defence of the present industrial system, on the ground that if distribution to-day is faulty, the reason lies in the defects of human character and not in social organisation. One ought not to blame the Co-operative movement for " falling away from the faith : " one ought not to call its shortcomings failings. The line of development which the movement took only illustrates in a very conclusive way how the chief furiction which an epoch is called upon to perform, postpones the success- ful application of moral notions of social relationships, until the circumstances arise for such a change as will allow them to be grafted upon the social stem. That the Co-operative Congress should be the last resting place of the inadequate theories of the economic period is exactly what one would * Society is now, however, becoming fitted for an appli- cation of principles which underlie the Co-operative move- ment, and so co-operation, so far as it is intelligently kware of its own interests, is beginning to move in the direction of constructive State action, and Society is responding to the co-operative impulse. 87 expect. The law of parasitism described elsewhere "'■■■ provides that in movements like Co-operation, the theories and assumptions held by the generation which made it a success should become embodied in the tissue of the movement, and resist change long after less well organised movements have responded to new ideas. II. Now we can see why Utopias of all ages reveal as their foundations practically the same clearness and firmness of moral vision. They all assert the right of man to life and to human consideration against the operations of social evolution which every now and again, owing to functional changes, sacrifice the personal interests of individuals and sec- tions of individuals. They all demand moral results from Society. Men, thinking and writing at those times of rapid change, make claims and utter criticisms from an ideally moral point of view. Hence, at every time of social change and of activity in social speculation, men dead for centuries are described as being " modern men." The moral standards of the builders of Utopias are the result of the experience of well co-ordinated organisms, such as man is. But the organisation of society has been loose and partial, its will has been weak, its function- ing imperfect, its morality, therefore, rudimen- *pp. 63-66. H 88 tary. The individual is therefore in moral possibilities far in advance of Society. Society, slowly and by organic adaptation, becomes more and more capable of expressing the moral consciousness of man, its lack of or- ganic coherence resulting in a lack of moral impulse. So, before the co-operative move- ment could " go back " to Owenism, it had to wait for a more complete sub-division of the various functions of the workman, a more thorough application of mechanical contri- vances to production, and also for the co- ordinating movement which proceeds along- side the disintegrating one, and which forms into a new social unity of functions the various divided classes which are rendering service to the whole. But before this advance in social organisa- tion has been reached, sociology has passed from its architectural or mechanical stage to its organic stage, and men have left behind the standpoint from which it appeared to be possible to build a New Jerusalem by Utopian methods. Reforming effort is seen to be im- potent unless it effects variations in the social structure, because it is seen that the defect giving rise to all the miseries which set Utopists dreaming, is, that every function in society has not been completely organised so that each co-operates with each and all with the whole. Moral criticisms on social organisation are 89 useful only in so far as the critics bear in mind that the organisation hitherto has been necessarily unable to respond to them, and that the chief concern of moralists should be to improve the organisation of Society so as to make every function contribute to and share in the benefits of the whole organic life. This is the aim of Socialism. III. An accurate view of the meaning and the method of social progress could not precede the success of biology in explaining the mean- ing and method of organic evolution. But biological science is not much more than a century old, and for fully half its lifetime it has had to grope its way through tangled masses of ignorance and prejudice. Being the study of change in the organs and forms of life, biology had to remain dwarfed, whilst the miraculous views of creation, in accordance with which the world was supposed to be but in its youth, man almost as old as it, species the work of the hand of God, prevailed, The first movement towards the final success of bold enquiry and speculation came from the geologists towards the end of the eighteenth century, and within fifty years this new science had thrown into the dusty lumber room of ancient beliefs the literal interpreta- tion of the Biblical narrative of creation and everything it implies. The geological attack go proceeded shoulder to shoulder with specula- tions regarding the origin of the species, and these cut even more deeply at the roots of cosmological views. Erasmus Darwin in 1794, and Lamarck from 1801, challenged the assumption that species were fixed, argued that difEerences of function altered organisms, and regarded these alterations as the cause of organic variation. From 1806 researches in embryology discovered the remarkable fact that in his embryonic history man goes through stages of life which are a summary of his species evolution from the protoplasmic cell to the human being. Science was occupy- ing every position, and when in 1858 Darwin's Otigin of Species appeared, the revolution was complete. There were still gaps in the evi- dence, there was still a possibility of alternative explanations, but evolution, the dynamic of life, was carried in triumph into the company of accepted beliefs. IV. The philosophers, however, since philosophy was, had been exploring this same problem of evolutionary processes in its world significance. In the seventeenth century, that part of those processes which is concerned with man in community, began to receive special attention. In the eighteenth century, national circum- stances gave these speculations a political character. A contest was raging throughout 91 Europe between the people and their rulers. The people were asserting their rights to political freedom, and such an agitation necessarily brought into prominence the separate individual endowed with natural rights. The view of Society which gave most sympathetic countenance to these demands was that of a collection of individuals bound together by some mythical social con- tract. Only from some such assumption could the advocates of political natural rights find historical roots for their agitation. The questions which were studied in an evolution- ary frame of mind were, by political necessity, not the forms of social organisation itself, but the changes which had taken place in the political relationships between the parties to the contract, as, for instance, the growth of the kingly power, the deterioration of the status of the people in the government, the constitution of representative assemblies, the character of parliaments Thus, social science and philosophy were, for the time being, pushed aside to await the closing of this individual- istic chapter in politics, and the liberating effect of science upon thought in general. In Germany, however, the political problems which influenced intellectual speculation upon the nature of the social unity were different from those of France and England. In the German's heart the idea of a national unity 92 lay directing his thoughts to the life of communities as well as to the liberty of individuals. Thus, Herder stated (1767) that " there is the same law of change in all man- "kind and in every individual nation and "tribe," and later on (i784-i79i)he developed the idea that each nationality " lived out its "own spirit." Kant followed and amplified the same idea, and Fichte, smarting as a Nation- alist under the heel of Napoleon, and employ- ing his intellect to awaken Germany to a sense of national pride, proclaimed that the perfect individual life could only be found im- mersed in the common life. Hegel developed the idea. To him all things and all processes were but the manifestation of Spirit or Idea, which evolved itself by a peculiar method. The acorn becomes the oak through self- destruction : the animal continues to live only so long as the tissues which com- pose it continue to be destroyed : death is life : life is death. Hence, the universe exists by a constant change in its elements. But what is the nature of this change ? Not, says Hegel, a change of growth in the things them- selves, not a natural succession of one condition from another as youth insensibly matures to manhood. The change is really in the Idea, of which the changing phenomena are the manifestations.* This, which has been called one of Hegel's " most unfortunate blunders," Encyclopddie, § 249. 93 IS the error of the metaphysician, of the logician, untrained in the methods of science. It is naturally followed by a pronouncement that the issue of the more highly developed organisms from the lower is " a nebulous idea which thinking men of speculation must re- nounce." Hegel's philosophical conception of evolution included aj defence of fixed species, and was being shattered by science at the time it was absorbing the attention of meta- physicians. Its interest to us is that, modified and applied to history, it was made the basis of the first grand attempt to give scientific pre- cision to the Socialist idea by Karl Marx. Marx was born in 1818, and attended the universities of Bonn and Berlin at a time when the chairs of philosophy were held by Hegel- ians, and when Hegelianism was unchallenged in its sway over German thought. He re- sponded to the Liberal spirit of hope which the accession of Frederick William IV. to the Prussian throne in 1840 quickened in Prussia, and threw himself into politics and journal- ism. These pursuits required some knowledge of economics ; and a study of the French economists, and of Proudhon in particular, directed him towards Socialism. In 1 844, he met Engels in Paris, and from that time on- wards he was engaged in completing the 94 fabric of his Socialist theories and in creating the organisations which were to give them practical efiect. When Marx became a Socialist, he entered a movement distracted by many leaders each with difEerent views, and ineffective by reason of loose organisation. No strong penetrating mind had welded the dreamers into a united and aggressive organisation or blended their dreams into a comprehensive social faith. In France, where Marx then was, several schools of Socialist thought and propaganda flourished, each bearing the name of one or other of the distinguished Frenchmen who paved the way for the modern movement. First amongst these was Saint Simon, whose views, indicated by his last work Nouveau Christianismc , sought the establishment of a moral order of international peace and co- operative industry, and gave birth to a move- ment which hoped to bring about the reign of fraternity by destroying all the privileges of birth, of which inheritance of property was considered to be the chief — "the effect of which is to leave to chance the apportionmeni of social advantages and condemn the largest class in number to vice, ignorance and poverty' — and by bringing into "one social fund" all the instruments of production and regulating their use by a hierarchy who should apportion 95 work according to a man's capacity and assign wealth to him according to his work.* Then came Fourier, the fantastical specula- tor upon the wonderful cycles of our Earth's evolution and the architect of the Phalanstery where men, working in groups according as desire prompted them and sharing by certain rules in the wealth produced, would be led by their circumstances to live harmonious lives. Louis Blanc was the first of those pre- scientific Socialists to hold that if the basis of Socialism was moral, its method, nevertheless, should be political. He gave up the editor- ship of a newspaper because his proprietors objected to his opinions in favour of railway nationalisation. But he had not discovered that an idea which is not supported by an organisation of electors is politically impo- tent ; and his belief that a member of a ministry could, all by himself, effect radical social change by persuasion or permeation, tended to misdirect the energies of his fol- lowers from building up an independent organisation to taking part as an unorganised party in current political issues. Round him centred the demand for national workshops by which alone the characteristic tenet of his ® Letter addres.sed by the Saint Simonians to the Presi- dent of the Chamber of Deputies, quoted in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, London, 1904, iii., p. 346. 96 creed, the right to work, could be maintained, and the absorption of the means of production by the community be effected gradually and with certainty.® But it was Proudhon who was in the ascen- dant when Marx sought refuge and oppor- tunity for study in Paris ; and he stood on the border line between Socialism and Anarchism. Finally, in intimate touch with the Socialist movement proper were groups of revolutionary and reformist parties aiming at social re- construction — from Blanquists to Comtists. Here then was a floating mass of human- itarian feeling, of Utopian dreaming, of fanciful speculation and of sound economic criticism having in common a condemnation of the existing industrial system on the ® Perhaps no social experiment has been more mis- understood and misrepresented than the Paris National Workshops of 1848. I.ouis Blanc, who is supposed to be their originator, wrote of them :— " As the kind of labour in these workshops was utterlj' unproductive and absurd, besides being such as the greater part of them were un- accustomed to, the action of the State was simply squan- dering the public funds ; its money, a premium upon idleness ; its wages, alms in disguise." After describing the sort of workshops he wanted to establish, he pro- ceeded : " The National Workshops as managed by M. Marie were nothing more than a rabble of paupers." Then he goes on to show " that these workshops were organised in hostility to me, as the official representative of Socialism, " 'LowisVAs.nc, 1848 Historical Revelations, London, 1848, chap. ix. 97 ground that it failed to feed, clothe and pro- tect the producer of wealth, and also a belief that only by the organised people controlling the instruments of production could labour secure its due reward and the workman be able to command the comforts which he had earned. But this mass of dreaming and discontent could have no great social value until it was pruned of the offshoots which were dissipating its vitality, until it was taught its own real meaning, until a definite statement of what was floating vaguely in its mind had been made, until its feelings were translated into a dogma, until its genesis was discovered. To do this was Marx's task. His Hegelian out- look presented to him a clear-cut view of the process of progress, and showed him the historical place of the whole movement ; and he chose words to express its meaning design- ed to draw together the floating elements of the Socialism of his time by giving simple and clear definitions of the Socialist purpose, and by sifting out from the movement every vestige of vagueness and Utopianism and every trace of bourgeois Socialism which would not assimilate with the economic basis of history, surplus value and the class war. The Communist manifesto was the first result. Issued when France was on the point of bursting out into revolution in 1848, the g8 proletarian defeat in " the first great battle between Proletarian and Bourgeoisie,"* stifled for a time the movement of which the mani- festo was the mouthpiece, but it was called upon sixteen years later to perform almost the same service as Marx originally designed for it, when the proletarian movement, divided into " the English Trades' Unions, the followers of Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, and the Lasalleans in Ger- many,"! had to be brought together and its aspirations expressed in a common set of phrases. Marx rejected the Utopian constructive proposals of his time, and fixed his attention on the evolution of Society. He turned away from the creation of Phalansteries, and sought to change the social fabric. He also brushed aside, as being of secondary importance in social change, in his day at any rate, moral notions of right and wrong. The broad out- lines of the Socialist state were laid down by him, the passing character of existing social conditions was emphasised by him, the demo- cratic control of capital was established for ever by him as the distinguishing mark of Socialist opinion. But his conception of the method of social change misled him as to how the socialist forces were to act. Darwin had ■* Engel's introduction to Communist Manifesto, Lon- don, 1888, p. 3. + Ibid, p. 4. 99 to contribute the work of his life to human knowledge before Socialism could be placed on a definitely scientific foundation.* The influence of Darwinianism upon Social- ism does not depend upon whether Darwin's special theories of evolution do or do not lead to Socialism. Virchow has said they do ; Haeckel has said they do not ; and the con- Ixoversy will not be settled until the evolution of the state and Society deprives it of reality. Socialism as a conception of a desirable organisation of Society is an idea which scientific investigations have illuminated and aided, but not created. The plan upon which the reconstruction was to be made, the justifi- cation offered for it, the way to attain to it, have depended very largely upon the state of scientific knowledge, and particularly upon the nature of the science which happened to be predominant — e.g., mathematical, chemical, biological, or psychological. What Darwin, then, did, was not to lay down biological laws which, to use Virchow's expression, " lead directly to Socialism," but to present a view of biological evolution which fundamen- tally affected our view of social evolution, and which, in consequence, indicated to us a more commanding standpoint from which *This subject is discussed in the first volume of this Library, Socialism and Positive Science, by Enrico Ferri, London, 1905, lOO to judge our Socialist proposals, a more accu- rate way for carrying them into effect, and a more scientific phraseology in which to ex- press them. Darwinism applied to sociology is as far in advance of Hegelianism as Hege- lianism was in advance of Kantian individual- ism. Marxianism, however, is a product of German thought during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century. It reflects the method of that thought ; it reveals the imperfections of that thought.* " Scientific socialism, once for all," wrote Engels, " is an essentially German product." Marx rejected Hegel's Idealism, but he re- tained the Hegelian notion of how the Idea evolved itself. Hegel's great contribution to thought was that he once more brought us back to consider all being as in reality a becoming. The metaphysician is ever prone to lose himself in a maze of unreal oppositions and contradictions because he microscopically examines phenomena at a given moment, and refuses to consider their growth, their poten- tialities, their origin. Thus is created an unreal world of problems, absolutely insoluble because they are not part of the world at all. * Cf. Engels. " Readers will be surprised to stumble on the cosmogony of Kant and Laplace, on Darwin and modern physics, on Hegel and Classical German philo- sophy in a sketch of the growth of Socialism." Intro- duction to Socialism : Utopian and Scientific, dated 1882. One is surprised to find Darwin, but not the others. lOI But so soon as we regard phenomena in their movements, in their evolution, in their poten- tialities, \ve are dealing with realities and not abstractions. Hegel brought us back to those realities. Hegel's idea of growth, however, was mis- taken. It is contained in the oft-used expression " the negation of negation." A process starts by a certain condition — e.g., the individualised production of primitive times ; it then develops an opposite condition — e.g., the communal production of to-day, organised, however, for private profit ; it finally reaches equilibrium, and spends itself in a third condition which harmonises in itself the two opposites of the previous conditions — e.g., the coming Socialist State, which will combine communal produc- ■tion and individual advantage through col- lectivist organisation. Marx and Engels seized upon the common radical view of the eighteenth century — the view which lay at the root of Saint Simonian politics — the class struggle, fructified it by bringing it in contact with the Hegelian dialectic and by substituting economic class motives for idealism as the moving power, and constructed, by a remarkable effort, both a philosophy of history and a political method. Change presented itself to Marx not as a process of functional adaptation, but as a result of conflicting economic interests seeking equilibrium. Hence, to this day, the meta- I02 physical and logical faults of the Hegelian dialectic are vitiating the theories and dogmas of one Socialist School — the Marxian. The Hegelian dialectic is unfitted to describe biological evolution. It describes superficial appearances rather than explains deep seated causes '■•■ It would, for instance, explain what goes on in the hedgerows in Spring as an opposition between the bud and the envelop- ing sheath : it would be blind to the great stirring up of life from deepest root to highest branch tip, of which the opposition between bud and sheath is but a small — if dramatic and easily seen — incident. For this reason, it cannot be dissociated from the idea of catastrophe and revolution, of accumulated energy bursting through opposition, of a simplicity of opposing forces which is never found in the actual world. Marx himself, in his preface to the second edition of Capital,^ illustrates this in the words he has chosen to express his indebted- ness to Hegel. The rational Hegelian dialec- tic, he says, " is a scandal and an abomination " to bourgeolsdom and its doctrinaire profes- " sors, because it includes in its comprehension " an affirmative recognition of the existing " state of things, at the same time also the " recognition of the negation of that state, of *This is particularly true when it is used apart from Idealism, as Marx and Engels used it. tDated " London, January24, 1873. I03 " its inevitable breaking up ; because it "regards every historically developed social " form as in fluid movement, and therefore " takes into account its transient nature not " less than its momentary existence ; because " it lets nothing impose upon it and is in its " essence critical and revolutionary." One holding modem biological views would have expressed himself difEerently. Biologi- cally, " the negation of the existing state of things," its " inevitable breaking up," " its momentary existence," is impossible. Here we find, as we find everywhere in the Marxian method, a lack of a real guarantee (although there are many verbal guarantees) that change is progress. The biological view emphasises the possibilities of existing society as the mother of future societies, and regards idea and circumstance as the pair from which the new societies are to spring. It gives not only an explanation of the existing state of things, but of its death — but certainly not its nega- tion — in giving birth to a future state of things. It also views every form of existence in its actual process of movement and there- fore on its perishing — very different from " perishable '' — side. It lays the very slightest emphasis on its " critical and revolutionary " side, because it is mainly constructive, and the idea of "clearing before building" is alien to its nature. Street improvements are not biological processes. I04 There is a very great difference between the constructive dynamic, the perfecting or- ganisation, the more coherent co-operation of the organs of society, which is the biological view, and the logical movements, the super- ficial oppositions, the cataclysmic changfes which social progress appears to be when seen through the contorting spectacles of the Hegelian dialectic. The phenomena which need studying in a biological frame of mind, are the growing strength of the life-currents in Society, their deflections owing to their strength, and the modifications in functions and organisms which are necessitated in con- sequence. In short, the biologist as social reformer deals with social life as a whole, studies its evolution as a whole, and in terms of the underlying whole regards the surface things which his eyes see and his ears hear — the oppositions of classes, the brooding revo- lutions, the perishing social tissues, the " ne- gations " of what exists. Biology alone was competent to give the clue to the proper imderstanding of the pro- cess of evolution, because it was the science which dealt with the modes of change followed by organisms, and biology was as yet but stuttering its wonderful tale. Biology alone deals with the processes of vital change, the growth of the unlike from the like, the appear- ance of new qualities and characteristics, the gradual absorption and modification of parts. 105 the development of new organs to fulfil new functions and respond to new circumstances. Taking on the one hand, the well-marked forms of new species, and, on the other, the forms of old species, biology had to study the growth of the first from the second, and from the very nature of its subject matter it had to reiject explanations which assumed revolution- ary changes or special creative fiats""" ; and it held it to be axiomatic that whatever change it was studying issued from the total life of the organism and expressed the needs of that total life. If, for instance, it is a stomach that is being modified, the modification is owing to a change of food which nature has imposed upon the organism, or to the re- adjustment of the organs and functions of the organism. But Hegel was no biologist, and Hegel, not Darwin, was intellectual father to Marx. * Dr. Bastian, Professor Hugo De Vries, Mr. Bateson, and others ,have pointed to certain facts and experiments which appear to show that organic transformation takes place rapidly or by leaps. Recently, this view has been brought before us particularly in De Vries's book on " Species and Vaiieiies : Their Origin and Mutation." If this view should succeed in receiving the support of investigators it will still only partly explain the origin and variation of species and would be very far from affording a biological analogy to the revolutionary con- ceptions of the Communist Manifesto and parts of Capital. It would go no further than emphasising the method of epochal political progress by the formation of indepen- dent political parties which I discuss in Chapter vi. io6 Therefore it is that the expressions " revolu- tion" and "revolutionary," which are so frequently met with in the writings and speeches of Marxians to-day, and upon which they insist as a mark distinguishing them from mere reformers, do not only indicate, as is sometimes supposed, and as Social Demo- crats when hard pushed try to make us believe, that emphasis must be placed upon funda- mental change so as to make it clear that Socialism is not merely a proposal for engrafting upon existing Society reformist shoots.* The words mean more than that. They indicate what Marx borrowed from Hegel. From his master in philosophy he acquired the habit of regarding social pro- gress as moving from one epochal character- istic to its opposite over an intervening short revolutionary period. His mind dwelt on a " periodic cycle, through which modern in- " dustry runs, and whose crowning point is " the universal crisis."t He never fully recognised the character of those intervening * Cf. Ferri's definition of revolution : — " The critical and decisive moment, more or less prolonged, of an evolution which has reached its climax." What this means exactly is not very clear, and the biological examples which might be produced to throw light upon it cannot be used as sociological analogies. The critical stages through which a butterfly evolves, for instance, are the reminiscences of a racial past summarised in each indi- vidual ; but there is no analogy for that In Society. t Capital I., xxxi. London, 1896. I07 stages. To the biologist the old disappears by renewing itself, and whilst the transforma- tion is taking place there is perhaps a rest, an apparent reaction, but no revolutionary chaos, nothing " short and sharp." But to Marx all that was meaningless. It was a view which was reactionary. Revolution was to him a real social fact when the old idea, crumbling by reason of its age, was being swept away by its own antithesis. Our own epoch of production, amongst others, was to pass when* "the integument [of capitalism] is burst "asunder. The knell of capitalist private "property sounds. The expropriators are " expropriated." And again, " Communists disdain to con- " ceal their vows and their purposes. They " openly declare that their ends can only be "attained by the forcible destruction of all " existing social order."t These sentences are typical of the deficiency of a sense of continuity which one finds in Marxian methods. The condition of England when Marx knew it (1840-1870) supported him in his error. Economic considerations as the spring of conduct were preached from the most respectable housetops, and the state of society, absorbed as it was in production, and hopelessly confused when higher and more permanent ends were thrust upon it, gave ® Capital i., 789. ■(• Communist Manifesto, p. 31. io8 ?imple justification for the most material|stic conception of the economic basis of history, class war and revolutionary methods. The couijtry seemed to be flushed with incipient jrevolution. The " antithetical " stage of pro- duction was at its height. The truth of th? Hegelian "movement" of three stages ap- peared to be about to show itself amidst thQ glow of flames ^nd clouds of dust. Engels wrote his l^orking Classes m England in 1844. as a last chapter in the history of tlie pre-Socialist state. "The England of 1840- " 1870 has therefore become to the Social " Democrats what the Land of Canaan was to " the Covenanters— the land from which all " illustrations are drawn, on which all theories " of what is and what ought to be are based."* But the England of 1844 did not break jout into revplt ; Chartism did not develop into Socialism. The logical conclusion was not the line of advance. The class war created trade unionism ; the working classes became citizens ; law, morality, the force of com- bination lifted to some extent the pall of darkness which hung over the land. The Marxian to-day still wonders why England fell from grace. England did not fall from grace. Neither Marx nor Engels saw deep enough to discover the possibilities of peaceful * Hon. Bertrand Russell ; German Social Democracy, London, 1896, p. 9. I09 advance which lay hidden beneath the sur- face. Their analogies misled them. Only when we understand the mind and the historical circumstances of Marx can we under- stand the phrases and key words that pass as current coin amongst Marxians all the world over. His philosophy belonged to an old generation ; his logical view of the state was unreal ; the words which he used, together with the conceptions which they expressed so accurately, are inadequate in relation to modern thought, and misleading for practical conduct ; in short, whilst fully accepting the coUectivist and Socialist conclusions of Marx, we must explain and defend them with a different conception of Society in our minds, different formulae on our lips, and different guiding ideas for our activities. The place which Marx occupies is on the threshold of scientific sociology, but not altogether over it. Chapter V. TOWARDS SOCIALISM. What, then, are the forces in present-day Society which Socialists should regard as making for Socialism ? The Marxian answer is that a war of classes is going on which one's eyes can see and one's ears hear. On the one hand is the exploiter, the person who accumulates surplus value, on the other, the exploited, the person who sells his labour power for a price which tends to sink to a bare subsistence level.* The opposition between those two classes grows in intensity. It will continue to grow until the workers become class conscious, seize political power, and establish the Socialist state. In the words of the Communist Mam- ■* " The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bour- geois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modem labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class." — Communist Manifesto, pp. 15-16. Ill festo : "The proletariat will use its political " supremacy to wrest by degrees all capital " from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all in- " struments of production in the hands of the " state, I.e., of the proletariat organised as the " ruling class."* Such a view is both inaccurate as to facts and misleading as a guide for action. In the first place, it is not true that there are only two great economic classes in the community.f Marx was so anxious to sepa- rate himself from "bourgeoisie" economists that he determined on no account to recognise the conflicting interests of the receivers of rent and of profits.^ Some of his followers without allowing for the admission in their systems, concede the antagonism, as for in- stances when Mr. Hyndman describes the trinity of labourers, farmers and landlords as being "as compact a little set of antagonisms " as any in our society, "§ and later on when he states that "the only results of the confiscation "of competitive rents or royalties by the " State . . . would ... be the strengthening " of the hands of the capitalist class." || This * p. 21. t The Communist Manifesto, even in its day, admitted as much, but made no place for the fact in its theories. } Rodbertus made the same mistake. § Economics of Socialism, London, 1896, p. 194. I) P- 209. 112 is true only on condition that there is an economic antagonism between landlords and capitalists as well as between capitalists and workmen, and that the " class war " is carried on not between two but three armies, between any two of which there may be treaties of peace and offensive alliances.* But further, any idea which assumes that the interests of the proletariat are so simply opposed to those of the bourgeoisie as to make the proletariat feel a oneness of economic interest is purely formal and artificial, f It is a * jE.g., when the landed interests joined with laboui to secure factory laws, or when the capitalist interests join with labour to agitate for land nationalisation or for nationalisation of mining rents, etc. + An attempt has been made (cf. Kerri : Socialism and Positive Science, Socialist Library, vol I., pp. 75, 145, etc.) to give the class war a biological meaning. In industrial society, it is said, the struggle for life is carried on not so much between individuals as between 'classes, the bour- geoisie and the proletariat, the exploiter and the exploited. This does not correspond to the facts, for the more clearly economic lines are drawn between classes, the more intense becomes the struggle for life within these classes. What is in reality the most significant change in the struggle for life as seen in society is, that the individual struggle is no longer against nature, but against a social organisation. In pre-civilized days man struggled with man and nature for subsistence which was scanty because nature was niggardly or unwooed by human toil j to-day man struggles with man and Society for subsistence which is scanty because the organisation of Society prevents the plenty which exists from finding its way into tl;ie possession of industrious men. The class struggle is not a biological idea at all. "3 unification arrived at only by overlooking many differences and oppositions, which have been growing for some time rather than diminishing. For although, in the earlier years of the Factory System, the line between work- man and employer was not clearly drawn, and men could reasonably hope that by saving and by procuring credit they could become masters, to-day there is still a goodly number of workmen who cross the line and become employers or employing managers, whilst the great thrift movements, the Friendly Societies, the Building Societies, the Co-operative So- cieties, connect working class interests to the existing state of things. In addition, there are considerable classes of workers in the community whose immediate interests are bound up with the present distribution of wealth, and who, obedient to class interests, would range themselves on the side of the status quo. Of course it may be said that all these sections, in refusing to help on the change towards Socialism, are making a mistake from the point of view of their own interests, and that if they were properly enlightened they would see that they belong to an ex- ploited class, one and indivisible. That may be true, but a mode of action which is in- effective until men are " fully enlightened " is a chimera. Moreover, it is equally true that 114 if the capitalist were fully enlightened, he too would embrace Socialism on account of the great blessings which it would bring to him. Thus all that the class war, when used to indicate the opposing armies whose combat is to usher in the reign of Socialism, means, is that an enlightened proletariat, not blinded by its immediate interests but guided by its permanent ones, will be Socialist. But so also will a similarly enlightened bourgeoisie ; hence the value of the class war as an uncom- promising statement of hard economic fact becomes a mere semblance. It is nothing but a grandiloquent and aggressive figure of speech. It is an indisputable fact that the wage earner and the wage payer have interests which are antagonistic, and in the nature of things cannot be reconciled. The supposed identity of interest between capital and labour, which is assumed to be proved by the discovery that unless capital pays high wages it will not be able to command efficient labour, is no identity of interest at all. The efficient labour which high wages produce is still bought and sold by capital, is still em- ployed or. rejected as it suits the convenience of capital, is still underpaid to enable capital to accumulate high dividends, is still treated not as something possessing rights of its own but as something which ministers to the in- "5 terests of others. This opposition may be expressed as a class war. But it is only one of the many oppositions tending to modify social organisation, and it is by no means the most active or most certain in improving that organisation. There is, for instance, the opposition be- tween consumer and producer. This opposition is peculiarly complex, because a man is a producer one hour and a consumer the next.® The most valid objection that can be taken to Trade Unionism (if it can be substantiated) is that it sacrifices the interests of the con- sumer to those of the producer. This has been illustrated in agreements between capi- talists themselves and also between capital and labour. Combinations of capital to raise prices or to monopolise the market, and agree- ments with workpeople to share in the benefits of artificially high prices on condition that they support the pool by refusing to work for any firm outside it, are examples of this rival- ry between the consumer and the producer. Sometimes the rivalry takes the form of a war between capitalists, as when the German pro- ducers of pig iron damage the interests of the * Tariff as it affects the wage earning class is the best illustration of this conflict of function in the same person, and the tug-of-war between the Protectionist and the Free Trader largely consists in the efforts of the one to induce the electors to think in the frame of mind of producers, and of the other to induce them to think as consumers. ii6 German steel manufacturers by dumping the rawer material in England. In other words, trade rivalry is as real and more forceful as an impulse of the day than class rivalry. Sometimes capital and labour in combination fight against a class consuming certain com- modities, as in the late bedstead combination ; sometimes labour alone fights against the consumer, as in the building trades where the increased price of labour has influenced costs of building, and consequently of housing accommodation.* The conflict of economic interest between the consumer demanding cheapness and the producer desiring to sell the use of his labour or the use of his capital at the highest rates, is also an economic con- flict which must not be overlooked or smoothed away in a formal generalisation. And it must be emphasised that the opposition is not one whit more unreal because the same man may belong at the same time to both the opposing classes. Certain modern developments are tending to break up into well defined economic * I desire to guard myself against misrepresentation here. Whilst I believe that the above statement is true, I impute no blame to the building trades' unions. If we have in the community a class so poor that they cannot afford to dwell in a house made under proper conditions of labour, that proves the existence of social evils which are not cured but intensified by keeping wages in the building trades at a low level. 117 sections this " uniform " proletariat class. Of these the Co-operative and Building Societies are the most important. In the first of those movements, the wage earner becomes an em- ployer — or, as it presents itself more familarly to him, he is a receiver of dividends which, in part, are profits from other people's labour. All day, at his work in the factory or mine, he thinks of himself as the victim of the ex- ploiter, as the loyal trade unionist, as the wage earner. But he comes home in the evening, washes himself, puts a better coat on his back, goes to his Co-operative Committee and immediately undergoes a fundamental change. Psychologically, he is a different man. He is no longer a wage earner and a trade imionist, but a capitalist employer, who has been known to join in the anathema against labour combinations. This does not mean that wealth is being better distributed, but rather that the psycho- logical basis of class is being undermined. The boast of a control of "millions of money" which is made at every Co-operative Congress and the threat that capital and trade will leave the Stores if this or that departure in policy is decided upon, inculcates the capital- ist frame of mind in the worker, and though his sovereigns may be few, it is not the actual possession of riches which determines with what class a man associates himself. Imita- ii8 tion, as well as identity of economic interest, determines for practical purposes the class to which a man belongs. When a Primrose League dame shakes hands with an elector on polling day, she may or may not leave behind the shake a £^ note. But she certainly re- moves for the time being the psychological props upon which class feeling has been rest- ing. Down it tumbles, and the elector goes and votes for his "class enemy." Patronage and charity have the same effect. But the point is best illustrated by certain recent developments of co-partnership, which as an industrial theory is admirable, but as a sociological influence may be most repre- hensible. The South Metropolitan Gas Com- pany a few years ago determined to put an end to the organisation of its men, and con- sidered expedients for doing so. It decided to try co-partnership, and it succeeded. It bound its men to itself in precisely the same way as the proverbial man bound his donkey to his will by hanging a carrot in front of the animal's nose. Hoping ever to reach the carrot, the donkey romped home, and the driver's end was cheaply accomplished. It is interesting to work out the financial equivalent of the class solidarity of the proleta- riat, and this gas company's experiment throws some light on the question. The co-partner- ship scheme has been in operation for fourteen 119 years, 4,000 men are affected, and their total holdings are ;^i 70,000.* Hence, in fourteen years under the scheme a man can save a little over ^40, or about £^ per annum ; and as his active working life does not average thirty years, this scheme allows the average man to save altogether something under ;^ioo. For this the men have given up their right to combine and their freedom of action, and have consented to place themselves absolutely at the disposal of the employing company. The result has been that, whilst nominally they are receiving specially good treatment, in reality specially good profits are being made out of them.t By the second of those organisations — Building Societies — the interests of theworking classes become identified with those of the landowning classes, and are opposed to every attempt of the community to enter into posses- sion of the value which it imparts to land. There is also another aspect to this. The * Paper by Sir Geo. Livesey on the scheme, in Methods of Social Advancs. Edited by C. S. Loch. London, 1904. ■(■ This is admitted by the manager, who, in the paper referred to above, stated that the bonus given to the men is first of all earned by them. "This," he says, "is proved by a comparison with the wages accounts of com- panies where the system is not in force, the rates of wages being the same, but the cost per ton of coal handled is considerably less." 120 interests injured by our present social state are not merely those of the wage earners. Con- siderable classes of people depend on the wage- earners, and of these the small shopkeeper is a type. His social grade sympathy, however, unites him with the petite bourgeotste and divorces him from his economic supporters — the working classes — and thus re- bukes the theorists who see in social motive little more than economic motive. Then there are those whose comfort and success under existing conditions are but precarious — the bankrupts, the struggling business people, those engaged in industries which are passing under the control of trusts. All those are in economic positions which expose them to the allurement of the Socialist ideal. But they are possessed by a pathetic desire to attach themselves to the classes which rest in econo- mic calm and bask in a blaze of social sun- shine above the tempests and the shadows in which the lower strata live, and from the depths to which they sink they cast an adoring eye upon the villas of suburbia, and from the midst of their ruin they bow the knee to whatever bears the approving stamp of respectability. At this point we are able to strike at a vital defect in the " class war " conception of progress. When we appeal to class interests what do we do in reality ? A man's class in- 121 terests surely appear to him to be only his personal interests, — ^not his interests as a member of the wage earning class, not his interests as a citizen, not his interests as a member of a commimity, but his individual interests from day to day. There is no prin- ciple of social reconstruction in this feeling. There is the motive of a scramble or of class defence and preservation, the motive to secure big wages, short hours and favourable condi- tions of work. But that is all. The tug of the class war is across, not upwards. There is no constructive value in a class war. The best expression of the class war is Trade Unionism. It is created on the assump- tion and experience that capital will do its utmost to exploit labour, and that labour ought to do its best to prevent capital from succeeding. The position is a simple and frank recognition of existing industrial fact. It concerns itself with no opposition except that between capital and labour, no union of interests except the interests of wage earning. It leads nowhere because it has no ideal goal ; its only result can be the bondage of one side or the other. Here is a pure example of the class war. Nay, more, it is the class war. The Trade Unionism, moreover, which is the purest expression of this simple antagonism between capital and labour, is what is known in this country as the Old Unionism, the 122 Unionism which was opposed to labour poli- tics, to Socialism, to everything except con- ferences with employers and strikes as a last resort. It was sceptical of any reconstruc- tion, and decided in its opinion that if such reconstruction were to be tried. Trade Unionism was far too wise to have anything to do with it. This state of mind was also characterised by a narrow conception of trade interest as opposed to general interest. It is only the emptiest flattery to tell the old Trade Union movement that its various sections ever have, or ever could have, considered anything but their own immediate interests when settling their policy from time to time. Each of the wings of an army for carrying on the class war is bound in the nature of things to fight its battles mainly for its own hand. Trade solidarity rather than proletarian solidarity is thereal outcome of a class warin practice, and trade interest is ultimately individual interest. Convey it in what spirit we may, an appeal to class interest is an appeal to personal interest. Socialist propaganda carried on as a class war suggests none of those ideals of moral citizenship with which Socialist litera- ture abounds — " each for all, and all for each," " service to the community is the sole right of property," and so on. It is an appeal to individualism, and results in getting men to accept Socialist formulae without becoming 123 Socialists. It springs from a time in the evo lution of the Labour Movement when the narrow creed of the old Trade Unionisin was the widest revelation that nature had yet made to men striving to protect themselves against the encroachment of capitalist power. In other words, the "class war" idea belongs to the pre-Socialist and pre-scientific phase of the Labour Movement. I am aware that the Marxian argues that this class struggle is the last, and that when the proletariat have been emancipated, the epochs of struggle end. The argument is absurd. The emancipation of the proletariat will of itself be the signal for new struggles of economic sections with apparently opposing interests, and so long as these oppositions are made the main reason for social change, each triumph only leads to other battles, again and again renewed. It is not the emancipa- tion of the numerical majority, or of a class so big as to be "no class but the nation," which matters. What matters is the character of the motive power which effected the eman- cipation. If that power is the conflict of interests, it will reappear in the new regime, and if it finds no complete class to infuriate, it will enter herds of sections which will then be prepared to fly at each others' throats. The assumption that by a class triumph Society is to emerge from the epoch of class conflict and sail gaily away upon the calm waters of 124 fraternity, can be held only by those who have not ceased to believe in the magical and the irrational. II. The antagonisms in society which result in organic change of a progressive nature are not merely economic. They are also intellectual and moral. Man is moved by his head as well as by his pocket, by the growth of social instinct as well as by cupidity. The richest possession of any man is an approving con- science. People who themselves have no quarrel with existing economic arrangements, must measure the achievements of existing Society by standards of right and wrong, must enter its dark corners and sojourn amongst its waste places, its wrecks and its ruins, and must turn in horror and weariness from the spectacle and begin preparing for a new order of things. Everybody does not pile up riches on his inner lights so as to smother them. Even if we regard economics as the main- spring by which history moves, that does not prevent us from recognising that only by a combination of intellectual guidance and economic needs does historical change become one and the same thing with progress. The scheme upon which humanity evolves to higher and more humane stages of existence is either rational or it is not. If it is not, all organised attempts to hasten reform and make it effective — Socialism included — are waste 125 effort. If it is rational, then progress becomes a matter of intellectual conviction, and man, seeking intellectual peace as well as economic security, will have to choose which he is to pursue. Even supposing he is a wage-earner and his pursuit of the means of life brings him into conflict with the existing state of Society, his success will not depend upon his richness of experience in poverty, but upon the meaning he places upon his experience and the methods he adopts to place himself in different conditions. Economic needs may give volume and weight to the demand for change, but reason and intelligence, the maturing of the social mind, ideals of social justice grasped so firmly that they have become real existences for those who hold them, give that demand a shape, a policy, a direction. Socialism must, therefore, recognise the in- tellectual as well as the economic movement. And if it over emphasises either side, let it be the former. For the pressure of economic need may exert itself in several conceivable direc- tions, not every one of which opens the gateway to progressive advance. A conscious- ness of class disabilities may be either a motive for reactionary sycophancy or for revolutionary indignation. A man's poverty may make him a Socialist, but it is as likely to induce him to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage. The slum life may blossom into revolution, but it is as likely to flourish into 126 imperialism. The rich are led away from the light by their great possessions, but the pressure of poverty also induces the poor to be content with the immediate satisfaction of appetite, and incapacitates them from patient and strenuous striving. Not only, therefore, is it incumbent upon Socialism to recognise the existence of an intellectual motive, it must place that motive above the economic, because without it the economic struggle would be devoid of any constructive value ; it would be a mere tug-of- war ; it would never bring us to Socialism. This line of thought appears to overlook the article in the Marxian creed that Socialism is inevitable. But the industrial and economic inevitability of Socialism is a mere fancy. It is inevitable only if intelligence makes it so. It is inevitable only if we are to develop on rational lines ; it is inevitable, not because men are exploited or because the fabric of capitalism must collapse under its own weight, but because men are rational. It is the action of reason alone which makes our evils a sure cause of progress and not the possible begin- ning of final deterioration. Intelligence and morality set out the goal which makes struggles to escape the existing purgatory eSective. Human evolution is a stretching out, not a being pushed forward. Acorns produce oaks, grubs grow into beetles, tadpoles into frogs, but 137 slums, industrial crises, poverty, trusts, do not in the same way grow into Socialism. Man was " inevitable " so soon as the amoeba ap- peared, but in the struggle for life which has taken place in the world of nature since life began, many species have been exterminated, many evolutions have never been completed. Arrested development is as conspicuous as finished processes. The workmen who vote Liberal and Union- ist to-day are perfectly conscious of the drawbacks of a life of wage-earning ; they are also quite conscious that they belong to a separate economic and social class — and a great many of them would like to belong to another. In short, in any natural meaning of the words, they are class conscious. But they are not Socialists, because they are not con- vinced that the intellectual proposals of Socialism should receive their support. In order, therefore, that the social organism may perfect itself, there must be the will for perfection and the definite idea as to what changes are required^ The life of the organ- ism is continued through change, and the organism itself is ever in a state of reorganisa- tion. Nation after nation has risen and fallen, others have risen, have attained to a certain civilization and there have stuck. But stagnation is impossible for our own Western peoples. They may fall ; political combina- tions may crush them ; the canker of poverty 138 may make them degenerate. But if they are to continue to grow and to adapt themselves to new circumstances, if they are to continue to improve, it must be by the organisation of opinion and the operations of a constructive genius which sees the stage ahead and teaches the people how to attain to it. The Socialist appeal, therefore, is to all who believe in social evolution, who agree that the pro- blem which Society has now to solve is that of the distribution of wealth, who trust in demo- cracy, who regard the State not as antagonistic to, but as an aspect of individuality, and who are groping onwards with the co-operative faith guiding them. That appeal may find some people in poverty, and they may follow because it offers them economic security ; but it will find others in wealth, and they will follow because it brings order where there is now chaos, organisation where there is now confusion, law where there is now anarchy, justice where there is now injustice. Socialism marks the growth of Society, not the uprising of a class. The consciousness which it seeks to quicken is not one of economic class solidarity, but one of social unity and growth towards organic wholeness. tii. We can now see to what combination of i2g interests and convictions we must appeal, and how we must direct that appeal, in order to create the organic order of the Socialist State out of the atomic chaos of the present day. I reject what seems to me to be the crude notion of a class war, because class conscious- ness leads nowhere, and a class struggle may or may not be intelligent. But still, we turn our hopes first of all to the wage earners. They are the most certainly doomed victims of the present chaos ; they suffer most from the in- ability of the present system to provide em- ployment, wages, life ; they are least buoyed up by elusive hopes that a lucky turn of the wheel of fortune will pitch them up on the backs of others ; they are the helpless spills tossing on the troubled waters of present day strife ; their attempts to share in the benefits of an efficient method of production result in little but turmoil, hunger and poverty ; and above all, their needs have now become the chief concern of Society, because in fulness of time social organisation is being tested by its human results, and because the economic en- franchisement of the people naturally treads upon the heels of their political emancipation. And it is of special note for the moment, that they have been subject recently to rebuffs and attacks in the Press, the Courts of Law and Parliament, and thus have been taught the necessity of political unity and independent organisation. The politics of an enlightened I30 industrial democracy is of necessity social, and is aimed at ending experiences of un- employment, old age pauperism, and so on. Hence, as one of the laws of evolution is that need creates organs, redistributes and organ- ises functions and changes biological types, working class policy must be directed towards the organisation and the development of the organs and functions of mutual aid in Society. So soon as a serious attempt has been made to frame a policy directed to such ends, it will be found that monopoly in land and the use of industrial capital for individual profit, are the sources of the experiences which Society now seeks to shun, and they must conse- quently be supplanted by public ownership and production for use before labour can enter into enjoyment of the blessings which an efficient method of wealth production makes possible. Labour has but one intelligent road of advance — that of economic and industrial reconstruction — that of Socialism. Amongst the wage earners, therefore, we must expect to find in fullest development, and in forms most political and effective for organic change, those vital and vitalising disturbances which indicate active life push- ing out to higher forms of organisation. But those disturbances, as has been shown, are not purely economic, and are not therefore con- fined to wage earners, and consequently in order to gather together the forces making for 131 Socialism, the basis of the movement must be such that everyone sharing in the disturbed promptings may be included. All barrier phrases and sectional dogmas must be removed from Socialism. The ex- periments in factory legislation, in public health regulations, in education, in municipal- isation, are pointing out to men of all classes the desirability of going yet further along the road which leads to Socialism, and are form- ing in the minds of men of all classes a conception of Society, of the community and the individual, formed on Socialist principles. When we think systematically of the scattered fragments of reform promised by the political parties, we see that they are but the fore- shadowing of Socialism ; when the tendencies begun by scores of experiments — factory laws, public health laws, municipalisation — are followed out, joined together, systematised, Socialism is the result. This completeness of organisation, this idea of national and communal growth, this state of business efficiency, nothing short of it and nothing which is sectional in it, should be laid down as the basis of Socialism. And the political movement which is to express, and ultimately satisfy, this need for the organic unity of Society, must be a movement of the whole of Society and not of one of its functions — the working classes. As the brain moves obedi- ent to the grossest as well as the purest 132 prompting of the needs of the living thing, so must the political organ in Society be subject to the purest prompting of moral intelli- gence as well as the grosser prompting of economic need, but both must be united if a more perfect form of Society is to be created. Economic hardships are the flints on the road, but these flints may develop on us the hoofs of the beast, or may compel us to use our intelligence to find smoother paths. Socialism is the latter alternative. Chapter VI. POLITICAL PARTIES AND SOCIALIST THOUGHT. Socialism has sometimes been defined in such broad terms as to include philanthropic endeavour and moral efEort which rests upon individual will. Such a definition is inac- curate. The community, acting through law, and organised into definite forms determining the lines of individual action, is an essential part of the Socialist idea. The Socialist con- siders that the State is as essential to individual life as is the atmosphere, and he regards the evolution of political democracy ashavingbeen necessary in order to create a State which could respond to the common will. The modem State in most civilised countries is democratic, and, in spite of remaining anom- alies and imperfections, if the masses of the ordinary people are agreed upon any policy, neither rich electors, privileged peers, nor reigning houses could stand in their way. That being the case, the Socialist sees that so soon as the problem of : — In whom does the sovereignty rest ? — has been solved, progress presents to the community as a sequel the further conundrum : — What is the sphere of the 133 134 State ? This is an essential part of the Socialist conception of social organisation. I. This involves a positive view of the State.* The Socialist refuses to regard the State as a mere atomic collection of individuals, the majority of whom coerce the minority ; he regards it as the means of expressing a will which belongs to the minority as well as to the majority, because the minority is organically connected with the community for which the State is acting ; he, therefore, does not consider legislative and administrative work to be a coercive limitation of individual liberty, be- cause he cannot think of a community as only a crowd of individuals, each self-centred, each pursuing his own ends, each endowed with natural and inviolable rights. The communal life is as real to him as the life of an organism built up of many living cells. When, there- fore, he is told that self-help and State activity are opposed to each other, that individual liberty and a thick statute book are incon- * It is true that a positive view of the State has been taken in much of our recent legislation, as, for instance, in Factory Acts, and in everything known as socialistic legislation, but it has been haphazard and unsystematic, and has been applied without understanding. State interference has often been resorted to as a quack remedy. Socialism comes with a clear and scientific idea of the aim and method of State activity, and can, therefore, dis- criminate between mistaken and fruitful methods of State action. 135 sistent, that the action of the electors through parliament or municipalities is different in kind to that of individuals working separately for their ends, or that communal property is a limitation of private property, the Socialist confesses he does not follow the argument. There is no opposition between these things. Not only do they exist side by side — they are naturally interdependent. They indicate that the law of individual wellbeing is a law of social personality, and that mutual aid exists with individual struggle as an element in the process of progress. The State is, therefore, essential to Socialism, and we must consider Socialism as an influence in politics, and in relation to political parties. The history of State activity and political parties has been different in this country from that of the Continent. In modern times we have not had to fight wars of self-defence like Ger- many or France ; we have not had revolutions and revolutionary changes uprooting the present from the past ; we have not had, like France, political minorities, whose avowed objects have been to overturn the established political order ; militarism has not exercised its fatal influence of separating the State from the people ; since the days of George IV. our Parliament has been free to legislate as it wishes. We have, therefore, had few crises. 136 Progress has been steady, if slow ; the dams obstructing its course have given way to slight pressure, and no floods of pent-up evil have had to break down barriers and rush furiously down courses where they might have mean- dered peacefully. On the Continent it has been different. There, the modern period was ushered in by revolution, wars followed, and natural boundaries were destroyed and a new crop of kings reared. When peace came, Europe did not begin where she had left ofE before the French Revolution exploded in her midst. She was partitioned to suit Austria and Mettemich, and volcanic forces were im- planted in Italy, Norway, Germany, Prussia, Belgium, Holland, and they began their pro- testing thunderings almost at once. Europe for well nigh a century was ruled by political Utopists, by gentlemen of individualist beliefs, who thought that the human will was invinc- ible, and that States and peoples were but blocks of wood to be cut into whatever forms the fancy of a few rulers decided. The result was revolution, sudden change, catas- trophic politics. This difference in political history between ourselves and our neighbours has had a deter- mining influence upon the work and nature of political parties here and in Europe. The difference is temporary, but it is important. Continental conditions have encouraged 137 theories and dogmas regarding the course of progress, and have created parties to embody these theories and dogmas. Thus, we have rigidity in party relationship, and a lingering survival of the revolutionary method. Here, our revolutionary period ended with 1832, and before that its revolutionary charac- teristics were very mild. As on the Continent, that period of our politics was characterised by political dogmas and systems of progress built up upon assumptions of class wars, economic motives, and other simple explana- tions of complicated problems.* But, since 1832, parties have been in touch with life and national need, and, in a biological frame of mind, have been busying themselves with results, rather than in a logical frame of mind declining to budge one degree from some imagined meridian of sound political theory. Speculative politics have been proceeding pari passu with experimental politics. Parties do not therefore in this country survive after their theories have become use- less for practical purposes. The weird mum- mies of a byegone generation, which form the Liberal parties in most Continental countries, are unknown here except as individuals camp- ing outside the walls of the regular parties. * For instance, Philosophic Radicalism sprang from our revolutionary period, and hardly survived the generation which followed 1832. 138 An influential minority can for a time thwart the will of the majority, but when the supreme test comes, a party finds its strength to lie not in its rich minorities, nor in its select sup- porters whose interests do not coincide with: its rank and file, but with the rank and file itself, and it is the experience of the rank and file which ultimately directs party policies. Our political method no doubt cripples intellectual movements in politics, but it lays massive foundations by patient experiment. It finds its chief motive for action not in the flaws of a system which one can detect, by logical processes, but in evils actually experi- enced. It compels the assimilation of all useless political organs, and does not allow the atrophied remnants of old parties to enr cumber the State by retaining a separate existence. It makes it impossible for parties to flourish on words, and forces them to apply themselves to the satisfaction of the needs experienced by the communities where they rule. But as the experimental method ever requires the guidance of theory, all scientific progress being a combination of in- duction and deduction, the British political method demands for its success a clear com- prehension of the social and individual ends which it from time to time embodies in its work, so that it is by no means a " living from hand to mouth." The British method is not opportunism, but the experimental method in the full scientific meaning of the term. 139 III. The immediate origin of the present Socialist movement was the Industrial Revolution. It was the vague dreams of a Socialist order which men lingered over when they beheld the young dragged to the factories before their tiny legs could well carry them there, adults exploited of life and possession by the unchecked greed of capital, the ugly town raised up haunted by vice and inhabited by disease, poverty become chronic, "economic law" proclaiming the end of human sentiment in -business operations, men beaten and bruised and torn under the harrow of commercialism and left without consolation and without hope. The first germinating growths of the prac- tical Socialist spirit were to be found in projects for land nationalisation promulgated by men like Thomas Spence and Professor Ogilvie. The Spencean Philanthropists, who were a thorn in the side of the purely political Radicals, " openly meddled with sundry grave " questions besides that of a community in " land, and amongst other notable projects "petitioned Parliament to do away with " machinery."® Dr. Ogilvie was an Aberdeen Professor, who turned his attention to the depopulation of the country, and wrote An Essay on the Right of Property in Land, in which * Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace. Bohn's Edition, i.,p. 8l. 14° he advocated the taxation of land values and the establishment of a Land Court. In the direct line of succession to these two came Robert Owen, who widened the outlook and the interests of the social reformers by laying down theories of the relation between education, character and environment. With him, English experimental Socialism may be said to begin. He started the epoch of social legislation which gave us our Factory Laws, and which, mainly through those laws, has made us familiar with the idea that it is the business of the State to protect the weak and create conditions favourable for the full dei- velopment of men and women. As the result of Owen's work, the tendency towards Social- ism in this country made itself manifest in certain directions, but particularly in politics through the growth of State activities and a movement in labour politics ; in ethics through the assumption, which ever since has had such definite practical effect, that man and his circumstances cannot be separated in any consideration of reform ; in business, through the growth of the Co-operative movement, first in distribution and latterly in production. The beginnings of a political labour move- ment, for which Owen was responsible, soon grew into Chartism under the nurturing care of evil social conditions and a lack of social sympathy in both political parties. It is marvellous that this movement did so little 141 either by contributing ideas to succeeding generations or by direct influence upon legis- lation. Two explanations can be offered for this. In the first place the country was not quite ready even for political Chartism, and was far from ready for the social implications of Chartism. In the second place, although the people were prepared to be led, Chartism produced no genuine leaders. Under the political circumstances of the time, the voice of the masses of the people could penetrate Parliament only through secondary channels ; and the most permanent effect of Chartism was to give an impetus to the individualist and voluntary movements of Co-operation and Trade Unionism. Labour then ceased to organise itself for political purposes. The demand for labour which followed the inauguration of free trade, the development of railways and rapid transport, and the consequent opening up of the world's markets, allayed social agitation and gave the Radical wing of the Liberal Party an opportunity of inspiring the imagination of the working classes with visions of the blessings which would follow upon political reform and the curtailment of aristo- cratic privileges. Thus, the social problem as a direct political issue receded for the time. The enthusiasm of political democracy grew more ardent. A self-confident, impatient, spirited mass gathered to storm the last cita- 142 dels of the politically privileged classes. Labour sentiment had been diverted into purely political channels. AH parties accepted the situation : the people were to rule. It might be the people drunk or the people sober, the people rational or the people cajoled. But still it was to be the people. This condition reinforced the national char- acteristic of trusting to experience rather than to theory. A sudden outburst of democratic ideas, owing mainly to Continental influ- ence, appeared in the fourth decade of last century, and have been dying gradually away ever since, because life is more or less tolerable under a monarchy, a House of Lords, and an Established Church. The attacking army has become dispirited, or content with things as they are. "The enemy" is not so bad after all. The spirit of the Labour Radi- calism of the seventies has gone out of us. But in the meantime legislation has become more and more intimately connected with life, administration with public needs, and the State with the individual. In this pro- cess, parties have changed and have accepted the inevitable.® Nothing is more difficult for * After the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, Peel said during the debate on the Address that he would accept the Reform Act as " finally and irrevocably " settling the ques- tion of reform. His speech was tantamount to a declaration that the party which he led would change its spirit, and accommodate itself to the new conditions. The history of the Tory party since that time shows how well Peel under- stood the life of British political parties. 143 the foreigner investigating our political con- ditions than to master this most elementary characteristic of British politics. He thinks of party as the embodiment of a political dogma, and finds ours to be the temporary exponent of a method. He looks for some- thing fixed and rigid, and finds something constantly in a state of flux and flow. He expects to find something founded on the rock of first principles, and discovers a barque floating upon currents and moving with the stream. IV. This characteristic of British political life is of the greatest importance to the Socialist movement. It necessitates a special phraseo- logy and a special political method. It means that in this country Socialism cannot create for itself a political party founded on its dogmas — it can only hope to become the spirit of a party which may not profess the Socialist creed as church folk profess that of Athanasius, but which will take the Socialist outlook and use Socialist constructive ideas as guides in practical legislation. It explains why Socialism is traceable in every kind of progressive acti vi ty, and why it is slowly and organically changing the structure of society, just as new' modes of thought change the whole of a man's outlook on life, or as a change in diet modifies the the digestive organs and the bodily structure. 144 In spite of this, and in a way because of it, the life of a party is finite. A party applies certain general principles in certain directions, and to certain conditions, and then it is gradually faced by conditions very dissimilar to those which originated it, and which gave rise to its working principles. Then, whilst it struggles valiantly to adapt itself to the new conditions, it decays through a period which is a transition or reactionary period. There is some reason for regarding the present time as one of theseperiods. Capitalism has worked itself out ; atomic individualism has become barren ; the conception of property is being revised ; all the old axioms regarding the State and the individual are being swept away into reliquary chambers ; the centre of gravity in social economics is shifting from problems and methods of production to prob- lems and methods of distribution. In the political arena the old champions of political freedom, having fought their fight with their own appropriate weapons, are riding off the lists, whilst their places are being taken by a new generation, armed differently and fighting by new methods. Finally, a very definite and pressing need has arisen for the development of moral and social wealth, which can bring no dividends to capital,and therefore is neglected by capitalism. The character and quality of citizenship can 145 be nurtured and encouraged by a policy of legislation and administration, but there is no private profit in it. The clearance of slum property, the maintenance of parks, the estab- lishment of havens of rest for the aged, the general improvement of the texture of human material by education,are communal questions. The deterioration of the physique of our people is of but remote interest to the factory owner or the house agent, and by them can be neglected, on the ground that it will not materially afEect profits and rents — this genera- tion at any rate. Indeed, profits and rents can really be made out of the very conditions which hasten this deterioration. But, for the community, every depopulated parish, every overcrowded area, every class of under-fed children, is dead loss. This does not always mean that new work must be undertaken. It very often means no more than that services, only part of which can pay dividends, and which are divided into paying and non-paying businesses, should be co-ordinated. At present, the paying parts are developed, and the non-paying neglected. But from the point of view of the community, both should be developed. Experience teaches that the full social need can never be supplied by self-interested capitalism. There are certain public needs which, though different and separable from the point of view of private enterprise, are inseparable from the point of view of public policy. Private enterprise, for 146 instance, separates a housing from a transport policy. One interest builds houses, another constructs trams, and the activities of both are limited by rents and takings. But, from the point of view of the community, houses and trams, overcrowding and transport, are in- separable, and a policy regarding them is neither justified nor condemned by financial gain or loss. It would "pay" a community to run "free" trams as it now provides "free" roads. Further, in considering its policy of building up its structure, of gaining for itself healthy life in order to supply vigour to all its parts, of increasing its efficiency as the con- dition of individual eflBciency, a community has always to consider whether certain public needs — e.g., locomotion — have become so " primary " as to be part of a common charge — e.g., schools or roads — and, therefore, to be paid for from rates on the principle that the common needs of a community should be borne by the property of the com- munity or by those who are deriving most benefit from the community ; or whether they are still, in the main, personal luxuries and advantages, and, therefore, to be paid for out of the pockets of the user at certain rates per unit of use. This new conception of social structure and public policy could not be adapted to the political organisations which came into being to carry on the work of last cen- H7 tiiry.'* Change in society is continuous, but new generations, organically connected with the old but not the old themselves, are required to carry on the change. If a generation spanned the space of a century and not of only a third of a century, change would be slower, because new organisations and new conceptions of epochal change would be more difficult to create. Consequently, when in politics a new outlook and objective are presented with comparative suddenness, a new political organisation is required. Ever since 1868, when the workmen in the boroughs were enfranchised, the growth of a new political organ has been apparent. This Reform Bill led at once to a conflict between organised labour and both political parties. After its lapse into a purely political groove, the labour movement again developed upon its own special lines. Trade Unionism demanded certain alterations in the law of conspiracy, of master and servant, of combi- nation ; the conditions of factory labour were such that no satisfactory improvement could be made save by further Acts of Parliament ; a mass of questions in social economics * An unexpected proof of this has been given while this book was passing through the press by the heavy Liberal vote in favour of the supply of electricity within the Metro- politan area by a private monopolist company. The vote of itself is of the greatest significance, but the defence cf their conduct which several Liberals have offered is at once the most amusing and most significant pronouncement that blundering politicians groping through a transition time ever made. 148 grouped round the ownership of land, wages, unemployment, hours of labour, were occupy- ing the attention of the working classes, and the politicians were not prepared to face them. Moreover, in industrial warfare em- ployers forgot political differences and joined in opposing labour's demands. Thus was the necessity for a new political departure made clear. Nor were the new forces being gathered merely to the tune of the political incompe- tence of the old. Moral and intellectual tendencies and ideas that had been moving in Society for a generation and more, mingled with the revolt which was creating the new movement. Carlyle and Ruskin had troubled conscience and intellect ; the Chris- tian Socialists had struggled with the practical problems of association and organisation ; the craftsmen of later times, like Morris, laid down the only conditions under which honest work could be done, and whilst thundering against the shoddiness of the present system, infused a warm idealism into the new move- ment by writing and speaking of it in its artistic and craftsman aspects. Even Spencer's opposition, being based upon such a palpable failure to apply his philosophical system to Society, ripened into Socialist fruit, and Mill's later confessions contributed to the same end. Here, if anywhere, were the germs of a new 149 political birth, too distinct and too powerful to be merely a fresh stimulus to an old and jaded political organisation. To begin with, they were perhaps but vague gropings rather than clearly defined visions, and their first result was a flood of estimable but xmcontroUed effort and willingness such as that which Marx found in Paris in 1847. From this flood arose the definite, at first tiny, but swift and straight running current of Socialism which organised itself in 1884 through the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1893, to very much better purpose, through the Independent Labour Party. In 1900, the Socialist and Labour movements combined, and the Labour Representation Committee was the result. Thus by the bio- logical process of a union between thought and experience, the study and the bench, the movement for a complete reconstruction and the demand for an immediate readjustment, a real political organism has been brought into life which is capable of embodying all the tendencies, gropings, thoughts, idealisms, which together are urging society forward to greater perfection. v. If we review our present political position from the standpoint of this chapter, we dis- cover in it a new meaning. For the past twenty years, Liberal politicians tell us, we have been in the trough of reaction. In one 15° sense that is true, but reaction does not adequately include all that has been happen- ing. The enfranchised people have disappointed their backers. Interests that were supposed to be doomed thirty years ago not only continue to exist, but have gathered strength. The King, the House of Lords, the military caste, have not only survived demo- cracy, but have found in its weakness a new source of power, and in its interests a new- bulwark of defence. This is not surprising. Metamorphosis exhausts the organism. The caterpillar, at the end of its caterpillar days, retires, and in a comatose and helpless condition passes through its transition stage. Every critical change in an organism is attended by a suspension of vital energy and a seeming ebb of life. Such is the condition of our society at the present time. The Liberal stage is past : the stage of Socialism has not yet fully come. Liberalism stood, in the political sphere, for enfranchisement, for freedom, for democracy. Its battles have not been won fully. The register of electors is limited ; the democracy are not enfranchised ; not a single woman can say directly what the law should or should not be. And, towering above the whole 151 democratic fabric which has been erected since 1832, the House of Lords still raises its privileged head, the negation of popular sovereignty, the custodian of narrow class interests, the safeguard of everything anti- social and parasitical. But the flame of political democracy has died away. The demand for political power, except perhaps in the special case of women, will, for its own sake, stir up to no more crusades. The finishing touches will not be put upon political democracy until the exist- ing constitution is proved to be a barrier to social legislation. On its religious side. Liberalism stood for the liberation of spiritual organisations from the binding patronage of the State and for equality of all sects in the eyes of the law. The latter for most practical purposes has been secured, and the recent attempt to go back upon it made by certain provisions of the Education Act of 1902, blew the dying flame of religious Liberalism into a blaze which materially contributed to the happy change in Liberal prospects which has taken place since then. But in this department of Liberal activity, nothing remains to be done except to disestablish the church. In this, however, there is no great interest. The Liberationist argument has to be re-stated because the negative conception of the State upon which 152 it rested is no longer held. But in the re- statement of the argument the Nonconformist must be willing to commit himself to doctrines of freedom of thought which involve what he erroneously calls " the secularisation of the State," and that he will not do. So, except under special conditions such as those created by the Education Bill, the religio-political principles of Liberalism have ceased to inspire enthusiasm and to provide a battle cry. In the matter of national finance, the retro- grade proposals of the Tariff Reform League and the stupid extravagance and maladminis- tration of the Government since 1895, have raised into a temporarily renewed value the classical economic doctrines of Liberalism. But these doctrines, whilst making excellent fortified camps for defensive purposes, are of no use to an army on the march. Free Trade solves no social problems. It may make poverty less oppressive, unemployment less severe, cost of living cheaper, labour combi- nation easier, monopolist combination more difKcult, and so on. But none of these advantages amounts to the solution of prob- lems. Economy is good, but not so good as profitable expenditure ; waste must be stopped, but with the desire to stop it must not go an idea that all State expenditure is wasteful. A campaign to encourage suspicion against national expenditure is a necessary and a IS3 good thing as a corrective to maladministra- tion in our spending departments, but as a positive policy it is futile. From the point of view of social organisa- tion, the function of Liberalism has been mainly negative. Liberalism has cleared the ground of ancient, tottering forms of property. It broke the feudal relationships which, during the political or nation-making epoch, knit the various classes in an organic whole, and in its attempts to solve the problem of wealth production, it glorified the rights of the separate individual and sub-divided the func- tions of labour down to the finest possible difierence ; but it made little attempt to co- ordinate these individual rights and sub- divided functions, except in so far as it was necessary for them to co-operate for the production of wealth. At certain points like education, factory conditions, public health, the pressure demanding public interference was so great that Liberalism had to find a place within itself for constructive ideas, which, when matured into full luxuriance in the next epoch, were to mark off that epoch in opposition to that of Liberalism. But the distinctive mark of the Liberal epoch was the disruption of social organic relationships, and the emphasising of atomic individualism as the controlling power in industry, religion and politics. Now, that atomic individualism. 154 in face of the problems which the new century is called upon to solve, and of the knowledge which it has inherited, is seen to be false and of no practical value, Liberalism is compelled to apply the authority of the State for con- structive purposes in a haphazard way, and in relation to separate grievances as they come up. The attempt is futile. It only unites in opposition all the threatened interests, because the Liberal attack seems to be specially against them, and not the manifestation of deep national impulses of growth. Here again we see evidence of the close of an epoch. Finally, as regards a generous belief in the principle of nationality, to which the history of Liberalism owes some of its most inspiring pages — where is that belief now cherished? When our South African policy reached the fateful point when we had to choose the way of peace or that of war. Liberalism was split in twain, and the party which a few years before boasted of its nationalist sympathies has to bear a heavy share of responsibility for the discreditable transaction which removed the names of two Republics — one, the best governed in the world — from our geographies, and put in their place a corrupt and corrupting plutocracy. In both vegetable and animal kingdoms, when youth is past, the hard structures of the 155 body are hardened and thickened, the saps of life flow more and more slowly and suffer greater and greater impediments, until at length motion ceases altogether, the sap rises no more in the Spring, the blood pulses no more through the veins. The weakening life of the Liberal epoch has been the most marked feature of politics during the past quarter of a century. Before the final silence comes and shadowy memory sits where life was, the forces of destruction, the armies of parasites, are already busy upon the decaying organism, preying upon its strength and living upon its sustenance. Even in human affairs we do not often see this humiliating spectacle of harpies pouncing upon the treasures which the en- feebled being can no longer defend ? Do we not detect this activity of the harpies of decay in our political life to-day? For what else are those organisations of one idea which induce electors to barter their votes and turn parties into separate fragments, which hang together only so long as each has a nostrum which has not hitherto been recognised by Act of Parliament, and which make alliances with other factions nursing other nostrums ? So long as a party is in vigorous health it keeps these party interests in their places, and prevents the dominance of faction and the menace of particularism ; but when it becomes feeble these maggots luxuriate and fatten, and 156 national interests pass under the custodian- ship of groups which have bargained with each other for a majority, and which live on the decaying life of what was once a healthy party. But again, as in biology, dissolution happens only after germination, and organisms die only after they have given life to other organ- isms, so, in Society, one epoch dies after it has nurtured the epoch which is to succeed it in the process of evolution. We may therefore examine the characteristics of the present alleged reaction with some expectation of finding it to be nothing but the condition intervening between the vital activity of an epoch that has "lived its life," and that of another which is as yet an infant on the lap of Time. Do present political conditions fulfil such an expectation ? Is the reaction through which we have been going a definite back- sliding ? or, is it the lethargy and stupor of a people passing through a crisis in its develop- ment ? Has it been accompanied by changes in vital organisation which are as yet rudi- mentary, but promising ? VI. In a book recently published written for the purpose of discussing this alleged reaction,* '^Democracy and Reaction, by L. T. Hobhouse, London, 1905. 157 complaint is made that the biological theory of the struggle for life, misinterpreted and misunderstood, has afforded a new defence for aristocracy and for government by classes, and has weakened the conception of democratic equality as a guide in politics, economics and ethics. This, however, is true only to a small extent, and is much less true in this country (where the reaction has been more marked than anywhere else) than in France or in Germany. Discussions on the applica- tion of Darwinism to politics have hardly rippled the surface of politics here. Mr. Spencer's individualism was never more than a wail against new times and new men. His political arguments have never had the least weight on our public policy. They have never won the ear of a statesman as the Wealth of Nations won Pitt's ear, and the only attempt to make them the basis of a propa- gandist society was initiated by a few obscur- antist peers and private persons. Spencer's general philosophy, in the hands of intelligent studerits, has, however, contributed to the stability of Socialist thought, mainly by his clear exposition of the fact of social evolution. The Socialist literature of twenty years ago abounds in Spencerian arguments directed against Spencerian individualism. The crude individualism of the Rights of Man, as understood in the Eighteenth century ^58 — of the " all men are bom free and equal " type — which was the foundation of Liberal politics, and which gave to the Liberal epoch such magnificent power for destroying the crumbling organisation of feudalism and laying the foundations of democratic govern- ment, had to be supplanted by a doctrine of rights more accurate to the farts of social life before we could enter upon a constructive epoch. Hegelianism, in the hands of German bureaucrats and British imperialists, is no doubt subversive to the most elementary con- ditions of democracy; biological theories of evolution, in the hands of the threatened aristocratic and monopolist interests, are no doubt used to defend inequality, class govern- ment and the subjection of the many by the few. But the ultimate value of ideas cannot be estimated by the temporary abuse of those ideas, by their partial application, by the use made of them by interested classes in their own favour. The German bureaucrat and the British imperialist are not to have the last word on the application of Hegelian- ism and Darwinism to politics, nor are the Conservative aristocracy always to be in the ascendant as they have been during the past twenty years, and to have, in consequence, an opportunity of explaining by scientific jargon about the survival of the fittest, or philosoph- ical jargon about the governing classes, the simple fact that they are looking after them- 1 59 selves, and are preying upon the community. Both Hegelianism and Darwinism came into conflict with the political philosophy of the Liberal epoch ; both denied the principles of atomic individualism ; both challenged the intellectual basis of Radical Democracy. Progressive politics had to be re-systematised. The old crutches were broken ; the old lights blown out. The State had become a real thing and an essential condition of individual liberty ; the social organism had become a real existence subject to laws of growth modified from those of natural selection by the fact that selective reason had become a factor in further change. And that had closed a chapter. But when this happens, reaction always appears to follow. So soon as any prop is shattered or any old faith supplanted, a pro- cess of dissolution sets in. It is really not the old organisations which carry on the new life. This, for instance, happened at the Reforma- tion, when Luther had to confess : " No " sooner did our Gospel arise and get a hearing " than there followed a frightful confusion. . . " Every man at his free pleasure would be and " do what he liked in the way of pleasure and " license, so that all law, rule and order were "overthrown." This has happened every time that liberalising influences have softened the hard dogmas of faith, every time that i6o the ethical imperative has been modified, that greater leisure, greater knowledge and greater comfort have freed men from the con- trol of the dead hand, emancipated them from custom and opened out wider and unfamiliar horizons for them to explore and exploit. Nat- urally, under such circumstances the menaced interests endeavour to arm themselves with the new ideas, and to the superficial observer these ideas may even seem to be the cause of reaction. But further, does not a careful examination of the period of reaction discover germinal growths which make us doubt the reality of reaction ? The political history of the past twenty years has not been a record of the defeat of the Liberal party and the rout of progressive opinion. It is mainly a record of the split-up of Liberalism and the disintegration of the progressive movement. It is of the greatest importance to remember this fact, if we are to arrive at an accurate conception of what is really going on. Like the cell which is about to divide and create a new organism, the Liberal party now contains more than one nucleus. At the same time a new manifesta- tion of vital activity has appeared. Socialism has at length reached a stage when it is more than a diffused influence, and becomes part of a definite organ functioning in politics. i6i Whilst for the moment the reactionary ele- ments in society were luxuriating almost unchallenged in the midst of " a frightful confusion," Socialism was becoming a definite factor in administration and legislation. Reaction in national affairs was proceeding whilst constructive policies in local govern- ment — Municipal Socialism — were becoming a menace to monopolists and individualists of all kinds ; imperialist will-o'-the-wisps were enticing the people into muddy morasses whilst sound policies of social reconstruction were lighting warning beacons to blaze for a century ; whilst aristocratic notions were supplying wizard music to the ears of the crowds, the people were beginning to hum snatches of their own tunes ; whilst the nation was applauding the grandiloquent sentiments of its privileged classes it was beginning to formulate a few demands of its own, ask itself how it liked the exercise, and gather round its own advocates and applaud them with growing emphasis and ardour. The period of reaction has not been one of simple relapse. In local government, the period has been the most fruitful of any we have ever experienced. Even in legislation and in national affairs, in spite of certain out- standing events, it has been far from purely retrogressive, whilst, in the country, harvests of political opinion have ripened which a few years ago appeared to be still rank and green. l62 The period of so-called reaction has been, in reality, a period of reconstruction and re- organisation. We have witnessed during the last quarter of the nineteenth century the transition from democracy clamouring for political recog- nition to democracy experimenting how best it can use its political power. Questions of political sovereignty have receded into history with those of kingly divine rights. From the parish to the nation democratic forms have been conceded, and from the parish to the nation democracy is now busy assuming authority, discussing what is its legitimate sphere of action, moving tentatively out in this and that direction, making incursions upon fields hitherto held to be sacred to individual enterprise, undertaking responsi- bilities which, it has hitherto been assumed generally, the public in their corporate and political capacity could not and ought not undertake. We are still living too near to this change to understand fully how thorough it is ; the change itself is too little understood, its features are yet too much the haphazard con- cerns which meet us with the dawn and pass from our thoughts with the night, its inward meaning is too imperfectly seen, for us to grasp the tremendous significance of the transition from democracy in form to democracy in i63 power. The Franchise Acts of 1868 and 1884 closed, not merely a chapter, but an epoch in political evolution. One of the chief reasons why we cannot see the magnitude of this change is that parties maintain their old names and appeal to their traditions. But that both Conservative and Liberal parties have been revolutionised in twenty-five years must be apparent to every- one who has withdrawn himself from the stream of political event and noted its pro- gress. Mr. Herbert Spencer's polemical state- ment of the change in his The Man versus The State may be unfounded in its conclusions and mistaken in its inferences, but it is true in its facts. " Most of those who now pass as Liberals are Tories of a new type " ;* " it seems needful to remind everybody what Liberalism was in the past, that they may perceive its unlikeness to the so-called Liberalism of the present . . . how are we to explain this spreading confusion of thought which has led it [Liberalism] in pursuit of what appears to be public good, to invert the method by which in earlier days it achieved public good ? " t And Mr. Spencer sees an inversion of method not only in the Liberal party. " If the present drift of things con- tinues, it may by-and-by really happen, that the Tories will be defenders of liberties which *P- I- t P- 4-S. 164 the Liberals, in pursuits of what they think popular welfare, trample under foot."* The facts which justify Mr. Spencer in coming to these conclusions are indisputable. He inter- prets them in the spirit of the controversialist. He throws upon them the misleading light of that rich fund of illustration which is his peculiar method. He fails to notice adequately that the change of the Tory party is quite as significant as that of the Liberal party. But the fact remains that, whether to its praise or blame, the progressive idea of the century has in these latter years borne fruit in ideals and purposes which, logically at any rate, seem to be in antagonism to their parentage. It is, therefore, no surface change which has taken place if present tendencies are to continue, and if from them a new epoch of legislation is to spring. Our complete con- ception of democracy, its forms, its functions, the nature of its government, its method of expressing itself, the interpretation which it is to put upon the old watchwords of liberty and progress, its relation to its pioneering heralds, is being revolutionised by the very short practical experience which we have had of its aspirations now that it has been estab- lished as sovereign power. The irresistible movement of events has transported us from * p. 17. 1 65 thoughts of democratic form to thoughts of democratic function. VII. These conclusions have an important bear- ing upon the relation between the old parties and the new. One sometimes hears of "the profound gulf " fixed between Liberalism and Socialism, and of the Liberal party being crushed out. That is the thought of the logician who sees things in the abstract, and not of the biologist who is accustomed to deal with life. The fact is, there are no gulfs in the course of organic evolution, and nothing in the main stream of that evolution has been crushed out. Lower forms merge into higher forms, one species into another, the vegetable into the animal kingdom ; in human history, one epoch slides into another. Each new stage in evolution retains all that was vital in the old and sheds all that was dead. Even when we see revolution and sudden change in thought or habits of peoples and individuals, we only behold the result of many hidden influences become visible. Socialism, the stage which follows Liberalism, retains everything that was of permanent value in Liberalism, by virtue of its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism. Thus we have seen in recent times that when two vital principles of Liberalism were assailed — the existence of nationalities and the policy of free exchange 1 66 between nations — Socialism rallied to their defence even when enfeebled Liberalism could not always command enough vital force to do so itself. The democratic work of Liberalism is the basis of the Socialist State ; the indi- vidualist morality of Evangelicism is the basis of the social morality of Socialism ; the economics and organisation of production are the basis of the Socialist economics and or- ganisation of distribution.* This gradual transition with periods of rapid change is peculiarly the characteristic of British conditions, where parties do not hold to principles as dogmas, but are prepared (within limits, of course) to be guided by experience. Hence it is that in the evolution of a new political organisation in this country it appeals not to one but to both the preceding political parties for recruits, and embodies principles from both, unified by reason of its more commanding and comprehensive point of view. It is very nearly true that new wine can be poured into old bottles. The new biological offspring has much in common with its decaying parents — even when it is starting upon a totally new line of development. * It is worth while noting that this is also true of modern Toryism. The Toryism of the end of the Liberal epoch is a new creation owing to the achievement of that epoch. Cf. p. 140 f.n. 167 The characteristics of our time of apparent reaction are as follows : The decline in vigour of the old progressive party and the activity within it of narrow visioned and one idea groups : The formation outside it of a nucleus of a new political party, building itself upon fun- damental political theories which reflect the pressure of current problems, and which there- fore are careful to separate themselves from the fundamental principles of the old parties legislative and administrative, and to start a series of experiments upon new ideas : The almost unconscious change in the principles which underlie administration and legislation, in the direction of the principles upon which the new party rests,® and this tendency cannot be obscured by the reaction- ary doings of the party in power during the transition : The steady growth of what may be called an unassimilated mass of political support, the result of social instinct rather than of individual reason, and also the result of a law of intellectual gravitation by which a small body made weighty, because it knows its own mind, draws mass to it : - The explanation of this is, that fiuitful political ideas cannot anticipate very far vital social movements, and that these movements have begun to transform society even when it is busy combatting and rejecting their more general and absolute expression. K i68 If in the meantime the reaction has been violent and the enfeebled party distressingly impotent — as has happened in our own time— the more healthy sections of the old party co-operate with the new party, and so by a process which is not altogether assimilation, but very much like one of sexual reproduction, the new political organism which is to carry on the life of the epoch is at last formed. This party flourishes until in due time its vitalising idea becomes feeble by success, and it becomes pregnant with a new political life to which it gives birth and then passes away. This is the normal process. Repression, force, revolution, catastrophe modify it, but this is the order of birth, virility and decay which has hitherto guided all political parties. The Socialist party will be no exception to the rule. Away beyond into the eternal future we cannot go. The only thing we are certain about is that Socialism itself will create problems hardly dreamt of as yet, and that in its bosom will germinate a new social life which can be brought to birth only through the gateway of death and dissolution. But sufficient for the day is the good thereof. To solve the problem of poverty by co- ordinating the various functions of society; to quicken the social instinct by making the community play a greater part in individual life ; to discover to men, wearied after a 169 fruitless search for liberty, that the paradise they sought is to be found in faithful service to their group and ultimately to humanity; to bring law and ethics into vital relationship with life ; to create from the anarchy and injustice of the present day, order and fair- ness ; to make the State a hive of busy workers enjoying their rights only by virtue of their services ; and to use as the power of action from which these changes are to come the conception that the State is the comple- ment of the individual and legislation a foim of individual will — that is to be the task and the method of the Socialist Epoch. CONCLUSION. Our experience has shown that the owner- ship and use of monopolies essential to the production of wealth, like land, and of the capital required under the factory and asso- ciated labour system, determine the method of distribution, and the extent to which the indi- vidual members of a community share in its wealth and prosperity. So long as land is privately owned it can exact unjust tolls from public and private enterprise, and its owner can dip his hands in wealth created, generally in spite of his opposi- tion, and nearly always without his help. This is no place to discuss in detail the merits of the rival schools of Land National- ization and the Single Tax in any of its forms. Suffice it to say that not only is the Single Tax wrong in its economic theory, and inaccurate in its description of itself, but it would fail to solve the problem of private ownership of the land monoply. The Socialist must support the nationalisation of the land itself and not merely the nationalisation of portion of rent. 170 171 But when the land has been nationalised, the private ownership of industrial capital will still present the problems which arise when the supply of public needs is left to the care of private interests. The nationalisation of the land will not solve industrial problems. Unemployment alternating with overtime, riches with poverty, the trading in luxuries and the pandering to vices and weaknesses which private interest encourages without a thought of the wider consequences because it is concerned only with the more immedi- ate result of profit upon the transaction, all point to the same conclusion — the control of industrial capital by the community. If one could rely upon moral checks on individual conduct, or if it were sufficient to set bounds to anti-social action by legislative enactment, a mingling of public law and private character might be a suf&cient safe- guard for the public, and thus the problem of the use of industrial capital might be solved on lines individualistic in the main. No doubt, this solution would preserve to us some of the advantages of the individualist regime which, were it possible, we might well take pains to preserve. But when we survey the tendency of the times, the rise of finance in succession to legitimate business, the soul-less character of most of our business organisations, the strangling pressure which business interests place upon moral impulse, we must give up 172 in despair any hope that in this way can the problem be solved. Public ownership must be resorted to. Trade must be organised like a fleet or an education system. No doubt within the limits of the existing social organisation, much could be done to aid a more equitable and economic distribution of wealth. The incidence of taxation could be readjusted so that incomes which represent services rendered might be relieved, whilst those representing rents and monopoly profits might be more heavily burdened. Following the idea that what appears to be over-produc- tion is in reality under-consumption,* caused by a method of distribution which necessitates a wasteful and harmful accumulation of wealth at one end and so acts as a bar to the steady and uninterrupted flow of wealth through Society, we may go some length yet in this present system in the direction of increa- sing the consuming efficiency of the public and thus maintain a steady demand for labour. But the key to the position is production, and so long as production is in the hands of competing private individuals, demand and supply caa • Writing of this, one must acknowledge the splendid services which Mr. J. A. Hobson has done, both to the science of economics and the art of government, in working out and applying his theory of under-consumption, which was the basis of the Physiology of Industry, written by him and Mr. Mummery in 1889. 173 never be kept in touch with each other except by periodic industrial crises, when some of the accumulation is scattered. For the facts are these. Every producer to-day acts as though he meant to capture the whole market for himself, and so long as there is an efEective demand to satisfy, he pro- duces to the utmost capacity of his produc- ing machinery. In times of confidence he is over confident. He does not think of the many streams of produce flowing in to take the place of the materials drawn off by the consumer ; he only thinks of how the stream issuing from his own works may be as great in volume as possible. Then, his people are working over- time ; they are making unusually high wages ; and, as they are living in a rush and are over-exhausted, they spend a high percentage of their income uneconomically. The inevi- table glut takes place. In two years the unregulated powers of production can produce enough to satisfy three years of consumption. Hence it is evident that however desirable it may be to increase the powers of consump- tion enjoyed by the wage earning classes, that of itself will not obviate industrial crises, because it will only be a further incentive to the individual producer to produce a greater proportion of the markets' demands. A rising demand is a spur upon supply. It is also obvious that abstention, thrift and temperance on the part of the wage earners will not avoid '74 unemployment periods, (although such conduct might rob them of their worst experiences) because these periods are not caused by the fault of consumers. They are the fault of producers. There can be no steadiness of industry so long as there is anarchy in production. The flow of production must be regulated at its source. The instruments of production must be socialised before unem- ployment is obviated, and the problem of distribution solved. This is supposed to be tantamount to saying that there must be no further improvements in machinery, no further advances in industrial organisation, no more saving of effort. But that is a mistake. Under Socialism, a portion of the national production will be earmarked for experiments, and there will be more room for, and encouragement given to inventive initiative and experimentine with new processes than under the present system which, by trusting to individuals with limited capital, by encouraging the growth of monopo- lies, and by stunting human capacity is, in spite of its boasts to the contrary, pre-eminently unfitted to develop to the utmost either the human or the mechanical elements in produc- tion. The Economic epoch cannot complete itself. So far from being a static state, Socialism, by raising each worker into the position of co-partnership with all other workers and by 175 proportioning reward to approved honest effort, will call for such an application of science to industry as the world has not yet seen. It will provide a constant incentive to improve the means of produc- tion because such improvement will not be a menace to labour, but a direct and certain cause of more leisure and comfort to it. Under Socialism, one may rest assured, national production will not only be charged with the expenses of the political state, but the wear and tear of the industrial state — e.g., old-age pensions, improvements in machinery, scientific experiments — will be duly provided for. I have been aware when writing of the problem of distribution, that our economists have done their best to deny its existence altogether in the way in which I have been considering it. Marshall tells us that "capital in general and labour in general " are re- warded "in the measure of their respective " (marginal) efficiencies,"* a somewhat vague statement which leaves the reader to answer for himself the question which immediately occurs : " Efficiencies in what ? " But the most detailed examination of the subject that has been made by an orthodox economist in recent years is that by Professor Smart.| His * Principles of Economics, London, 1898, p. 617. t TAe DisMiutien 0/ Income, hondort, 1899, T76 conclusion is that there is enough "rough justice " in the present system to enable him to call it " Distribution according to Service." The public, according to him, by making demands and by patronising or neglecting to patronise, rewards with wealth or dooms with failure. This, however, is not the case. The machinery of production, of financing, of buying and selling is not run by the public, but by interested parties. The public have not placed South African mine magnates in Park Lane, and English workmen in two or three-roomed houses in dull, sunless streets. The conditions under which property is held, and under which the function of production is carried on, the relation between the market and the factory on the one hand and the home and the factory on the other — in short the whole industrial mechanism, determine the proportion of national income assigned to each of the classes in the community.* The conclusion to which we are driven is that those economists in whose hands econo- nomics is simply a descriptive and not a critical science, are compelled to accept the present state of distribution as something which has to be defended with a mild amount * It is true that Professor Smart lays down as a con- dition to his conclusion stated above, " given private property." But it is not " private " property which is the important thing at all, but the present organisation and use of private property. 177 of enthusiasm. The Socialist who regards economics as a branch of Sociological science and who illuminates it by discriminating appreciation or depreciation of the social conditions which exist at present, is not con- tent with those descriptive exercises and those ingenious apologies for what is simply because it is. With him the science of econo- mics and the art of government go hand in hand. In that respect he goes back to Adam Smith. He is not content with Professor Marshall's characteristically inconclusive " efficiencies," or with Professor Smart's mis- leading " given private property." He does not think that the existing distribution is just ; he regards the character of the industrial mechanism as the determinant of how distri- bution is to be made ; and from that stand- point he sees the inadequacy of all personal and individualist theories accounting for mal-distribution, such as drunkenness and improvidence, and he labours, in consequence, for a readjustment of the parts of the mechanism. At the same time he takes no mechanical view of the problem. He Imows that an absolutely accurate distribution according to merit is quite impossible. The problem is biological, and is therefore incapable of a nice mathematical solution down to moral decimal points. Nor indeed is this necessary. 178 We do not object to the present system because it fails to discriminate between desserts measured by ;£"ioo and those measured ^y £^°° ^nd sixpence. We object to it because it dooms whole classes to inadequate food, inadequate mental equipment, inadequate opportunities to become human beings, and all that Socialism and a Socialist system of distribution can claim to do is to destroy social parasites, and secure that everyone who gives service to Society shall receive from Society an ample measure of opportunities to live and enjoy living. Attempts have been made from time to time to lay down limits to the socialising process, and settle by a prion logical methods that certain trades are in their nature indi- vidualistic, and, therefore, incapable of being included within the scope of Socialist recon- struction. That may or may not be so. We are not in a position at the present time to hold any very definite opinion on the subject. The character of these trades— e.j'., the artistic group — will not remain as it is at present after Society has taken upon itself a different organic form. It may be that they will fall into a proper place in the organisation — it may be that their necessities will be the soil from which is to spring the new growth of social idea which is to characterise the epoch after Socialism. But, whether the one or the 1/9 other happens, matters little to us at present. The function of the Socialist theory is to guide. The seaman, in his voyages across the seas, steers by certain marks, and at certain points alters his course and follows new marks when the old can lead him no further. So with Socialism. Its method is not the archi- tectural and dogmatic one of building straight away from bottom to top, but the organic and experimental one of relieving imme- diate and pressing difficulties on a certain plan, and tn accordance with a certain scheme of organisation. We have, therefore, begun with municipal administration, and have proceeded from water to trams and from light to milk, the necessity for the latter developments being suggested partly by the principle which un- derlay the first experiments, and partly because as a matter of experience certain definite grievances met us as we went on. From administration to legislation is a natural and necessary step; and as pressing matters like housing and trams were ready for treatment, and as practical plans had already been prepared for their settlement, they were first of all dealt with in Municipal Socialism ; so in National Socialism the harvest which is ripe and most easily reaped will be gathered first, and the experience gained in reaping it i8o will be used when more difficult harvests have to be brought in. Thus, we shall begin the process of nationalizing capital with services like the railways, or with exploitations of na- tional resources like mines ; or we shall begin the process of industrial reconstruction by ag- rarian policies which will bring the towns into contact with the country, re-populate the de- serted villages, and re-till the waste fields. As the problem of the unemployable and the unemployed is most pressing, and as it is the direct result of some of the most glaring follies and imperfections of our present system, it will afford the first opportunities of es- tablishing Socialism on a large scale. This will open out the way for us, and further steps will come naturally. Solvitur ambulando, not stc volo — laboratory experiment, not revolution — is the method ot Socialism emerged from the Utopian and pseudo-scientific stages. It has been said that this method will post- pone the Socialist millennium till doomsday. But the reply is obvious. Social resistance to change is much more quickly and surely overcome by these methods of organic modifi- cation than by any Utopian revolutionary attempts. In the same way torrents of printed matter have been issued from the press, discussing how property is to be held under Socialism — and i8i all to no purpose. The Socialist creed upon property is perfectly simple. It considers that property can be legitimately held only as the reward for services. It condemns the existing state of things, because those who do no service own most property.* Socialism is, therefore, a defence of property against the existing order. As, however, it regards the living factor in production — man — as being of more consequence than the dead factors — land and capital, — it seeks to set limits upon the employment of property for the purpose of keeping men in economic subjection, and it proposes to organise Society in such a way as to render it necessary that the services upon which property is held are continuous, and not as to-day, stored up, so that a Marl- borough, who fought a few battles and had a wife who could manage her Sovereign two centuries ago, could found a family and put it in a position to consume other people's wealth for ever and ever. To secure this aim. Socialism need not refuse to recognise the right of inheritance. Its business is not to prevent accumulation, or prohibit its transference, but to provide that such accumu- * Cf. " How small a part of all the labour performed in England, from the lowest paid to the highest, is done by persons working for their own benefit. Under the present system of industry this incitement [property in labour's produce] does not exist in the great majority of cases." Mill, Political Economy, bk. II., chap. 1. l82 lation is not made at the public expense, and not employed to keep the public in subjection for all generations. But, on the other hand, the Socialist con- tends that the community, as well as the in- dividual, creates values which it should hold as property and devote to common interests. Every valid argument which establishes the right of individuals to own and use property, is equally applicable to a defence of the community's right to own and use property. Social income, in the shape of taxes and rates, is not private income appropriated, and the theory and method of taxation should be revised, so that values created by the public may find their way into the public exchequer. This would lead to a substantial redistribution of wealth, because whilst tending to deprive parastic classes of their nourishment, it would ease industrious classes of burdens and provide nourishment for the active functions of the community. Here opens out another broad avenue leading to the Socialist state. Similarly we have had acute discussion which has been worse than useless upon labour notes, coins, and other forms of Socialist cur- rency and standards of value. At the present moment all that the Socialist need do is to lay down and defend as a general principle that reward for work should be certain and suffi- i83 cient, and that full opportunity should be given to each adult to work at some remunera- tive employment. Whether our successors are to calculate in labour notes or in pounds ster- ling, our successors will have to decide when the application of the Socialist principle has gone so far as to make the matter a practical one. Some things will have happened in the interval, we may depend upon it, which will have a very important bearing on the question. Again, not stc volo, but solvttur ambulando ! A misunderstanding regarding the Socialist attitude to labour-saving machinery is equally widespread. At present, as I have explained, such machinery is used by a class in the interests of that class primarily. The con- venience of the machine is the first considera- tion in industrial organisation. If it does skilled work the skilled workman is displaced, if it does heavy work the strong workman is displaced, if it splits up complicated work into simple and automatic processes women and children take the places of men. With- out any attempt being made to protect human interests, to conserve social experience, to guard spiritual growths like the family, we permit Society to be moulded by the opera- tions of machinery. To-day we have in many towns — of which those engaged in the boot and shoe and hosiery trades may be taken as examples — a movement going on which will t84 end in the transformation of women and girls into the bread-winners of the family, and of men and boys into casual labourers or habitual loafers. When this tendency is pointed out to well-meaning people they adihit its potency, but shrug their shoulders in helples^ despair. What can be done ? The men rnust go. The machine, like the young cuckoo, inust wriggle the other fledglings out of the nest to make room for itself. It is sad, but inevitable ! The Socialist objects to this. He is deter- mined ^to make the machine a social instru- ment, to make it serve Society and not control Society. He is, therefore, not against mechanical invention. "He is no Luddite. His idea is that such aids to labour should be con- trolled in the common interest. Moral con- siderations should in the main determine the form of social organisatiofi, and the non- social use of economic forces should be put an end to before they destroy the moral growths which Society at present shows. The Socialist welcomes every new machine, but demands that it be used as part of a moral organisation, and not put into operation under the control of sectional, interests. Machinery must amplify life, not profits ;* it must there- * The argument that the community benefits by the cheap products of machinery is good up to a point. The cheapness of sweating, the cheapness which destroys crafts- manship, the cheapness which means unemployment, is the cheapness of deterioration. Socialism also means cheap- ness, but an economic cheapness. i8s fbfe be Subject to social conttol, arid nbt class Cbntirol. Withili the sCopb of this communal oirganisa- tion of ihdustiy thdre Will be a nfefed lor Smaller grodps, such as tradd Unions, churches, familie~s. Itideed, the larger organisation will greatly depend upon the sillallfer groups for its Success. As the domttiuilal Organisation becomes fllore efficient, the individual will respond with more intelligence and more char- afctet, and as this individual thuS irSsfjonds, these smaller grtiupis will become more important. Trade unionism keepitig the communal in- dustrial organisation in the closest touch with the needs of the workers ; a church attending with enthusiastic care to the life, and not merely to the dognxaj of Christianity ; a family organisation built upon a sound economic basis and embodying, in as pure a form as humanity will allow, the spiritual needs of men, and safeguarding at the same time the rights of the community, would be precious organs in the body communal. One of the assumptions which bear up the fabric of Socialist thought and expectation is that as Society approaches in its organisa- tion to the Socialist condition, the individual will respond to the moral responsibilities which that condition will lay upon him. The individual is in tune with his Society, and for that reason Socialism can purify the gross. 1 86 blundering, vulgar thing to-day called indi- vidualism into an impulse which will seek to express itself and find its liberty in social conduct through service to the community. Hence it is that the key idea to the under- standing of Socialism is not a wiping-out but a transformation, not a re-creation but a fulfil- ment. The impulses and appetites of the old are to be carried on into the new, but they are to run in different channels and demand different nourishment. At the threshold of Socialist speculation stands as sentinel the Law of Continuity, and as guides the Laws of Variation. Printed by Wadinorth &• Co., The Rydal Press, Keighley. THE SOCIALIST LIBRARY. Prospectus. FOR some time it has been felt that there is a deplorable lack in this country of a Socialist literature more exhaustive and systematic than pamphlets or newspaper articles. In every other country where the Socialist movement is vigorous, such a literature exists, and owing to it Socialism has taken a firmer hold upon the intellectual classes, and, amongst Socialists themselves, its theories and aims are better understood than they are here. Comparing the output of Socialist literature in Germany or France with Great Britain, one must be struck with the ephemeral nature of the great bulk of the matter which we publish, and the almost complete absence of any attempts to deal exhaustively with Socialism in its many bearings in economics, history, sociology and ethics. This failure is all the more to be regretted, because just as the special development of British indus- trialism afforded the basis for much of the con- structive work of foreign Socialists half a century ago, so the growth of British democratic institu- tions and the characteristics of British political methods have a special and direct bearing upon Socialist theories and tactics. It is also disquieting to think that, on the one hand, the intellectual life of our country is becom- ing more and more attached in its interests and sympathies to reaction, and that, on the other, so many who lift up their voices against backward tendencies either look behind with regretful regard upon policies which are exhausted and can no longer guide us, or frankly confess that they are dis- consolate without hope. To the promoters of this Library, Socialism appears to be not only the ideal which has to be grasped before the benumbing pessimism which lies upon the minds of would-be reformers can be removed, but also the one idea which is guiding such progressive legislation and administration to-day as are likely to be of permanent value. But those experimenting with it are only groping ; are working with an instrument they do not under- stand ; are applying an idea they have not grasped ; and it is therefore believed that as a practical contribution to political principles and methods, the Library may be of some value. The Library, however, with more assurance of definite success, will aim at providing studies in Socialism, or from Socialistic standpoints, which will be stimulating to the Socialist movement, and which may do something to knit together the different sections of Socialist opinion and activity in this country. It will contain translations of the best works of foreign Socialists, as well as contribu: tions from our own writers. It follows that the volumes will not be selected because they advocate any particular school of Socialist thought, but because they are believed to be worthy expositions of the school to which they belong. April, 1905. LIST OF VOLUMES. I. — Socialism and Positive Science, by Pro- fessor Enrico Ferri. i/- and^i/6. 3rd Edition. II. — Socialism and Society. By J. Ramsay MacDonald. i/- and 1/6. 3rd Edition. III. — Socialist Studies. By J. Jaurfes. Socialism and the Drink Traffic. By Philip Snowden. In preparation. Capitalism and the Native Races. By Sydney Olivier, C.M.G. Progress of Socialism in England. By Sydney Ball, M.A. Socialism in Parliament. By Members of the Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party. Translation of Works by E. Vandervelde (Belgium), K. Kautsky (Germany), E. Bernstein (Germany). 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