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MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
Modern Socialism 
 
 AS SET FORTH BY SOCIALISTS 
 
 IN THEIR SPEECHES, WRITINGS, 
 
 AND PROGRAMMES 
 
 EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY 
 R. C. K. ENSOR 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 
 1907 
 
 ■V- 
 
A. ^:^/ v^6 
 
 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A BOOK like the present could not possibly be completed on 
 its English side without the kind co-operation of many English 
 Socialists. For permission to reprint important matter which 
 has appeared otherwise, I am deeply indebted to Mr. and Mrs. 
 Sidney Webb, to the literary Trustees of William Morris, to 
 Mr. J. Keir Hardie, M.P., and to Mr. John Burns, M.P., to 
 the Fabian Society, to the Labour Leader, Limited, and to the 
 Clarion Newspaper Company. 
 
 For the foreign translations I am personally responsible, 
 except in the case of the extract from Kautsky's " Social 
 Revolution. " For this I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. 
 J. B. Askew and the Twentieth Century Press, whose translation 
 of the whole work has laid every English Socialist under a 
 sensible obligation. 
 
 But for Mr. Askew, very little translation from foreign 
 Socialist writers has been attempted since that of Marx's 
 classical works in the 'eighties. One result of this, and of the 
 limited currency of conscious Socialism in England, is that the 
 translator has no cut-and-dried vocabulary. Words like 
 " proletariate," " proletarian," " bourgeoisie," " bourgeois," 
 lack in English the everyday actuaUty which their equivalents 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 in French and German possess, and it is a question whether 
 to use them. I have used "proletariate," "proletarian," 
 without hesitation, only regretting that the antithesis between 
 them and "capitalists" has not more generally replaced m 
 English the meaningless one between "poor" and "rich. 
 "Bourgeoisie" and "bourgeois" are more doubtfully adopted ; 
 the objection to substituting " middle-class " is, that Socialists 
 do not treat the bourgeoisie as anything intermediate, but 
 essentially as one of two parties to a duel. The poverty 
 of English in words expressing the general conceptions of 
 sociology is not confined to English Socialism. We had to 
 borrow "Philistine" from Germany, and we have still no 
 equivalent for " rentier." 
 
 English people interested in Socialism may miss a reference 
 to certain movements, which in this country are its allies, 
 though elsewhere sometimes its rivals — such as "Christian 
 Socialism," or the tendencies expressed by Carlyle and 
 Ruskin. To treat these upon a European scale, however, 
 would have meant going very far afield without really increas- 
 ing knowledge of Sociahsm per se. I have, therefore, with 
 some regret, left them wholly on one side. 
 
 In conclusion, I must thank a great number of friendly 
 advisers, not all Socialists, for much friendly advice and 
 assistance. 
 
 October, 1903. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 I HAVK tried in two ways to bring up to date the first edition, 
 which is now out of print. So far as regards the extracts, some 
 have been replaced by newer ones, and the head-notes and 
 foot-notes to all have been revised. The old General In- 
 troduction, — ^an attempt to describe European Socialism as it 
 existed in 1903, — has been allowed to stand; because the 
 picture is not at all out of date in its essentials, while to 
 tinker with its details would blur whatever unity has been 
 attained in its presentment. The interval since 1903 has there- 
 fore been dealt with in a Supplementary Introduction ; a 
 course which, it is hoped, may prove less confusing to the 
 reader, and possibly more suggestive also. 
 
 The English literatxire of foreign Socialism has been added 
 to a little in the last three years. In particular one might 
 mention two translations published by the Independent Labour 
 Party, — that of M. Jaurfes' Etudes Socialistes and that of Signer 
 Ferri's Socialismo e Scienza Positiva. 
 
 January I, 1907 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction to the Second Edition . . . xi 
 Introduction to the First Edition . . . xix 
 
 I. The Difference between Modern and Utopian 
 
 Socialism. By A. Bebel i 
 
 II. Marxian Socialism in Politics. By W. Lieb- 
 
 KNECHT 
 
 4 
 
 III. An Account of Marx's Theory. By F. Engels . 14 
 
 IV. The Programme of the "Communist Manifesto." 
 
 By Karl Marx and F. Engels • • • • 35 
 
 V. The Standpoint of Lassalle 38 
 
 VI. The Saint-Mande Programme. By A. Millerand . 48 . 
 VII. French Reformist Socialism. By A. Millerand . 56 . 
 VIII. The Labour Question from the Socialist Stand- 
 point. By William Morris 65 
 
 IX. Problems of Modern Industry. By Sidney and 
 
 BEATRICE Webb 90 
 
 X. Whether Class Antagonism is Softening Down. 
 
 By K. Kautsky 114 
 
 XI. Social Reform in Germany and in France. By G. 
 
 von Vollmar 13s 
 
 XII. The Revolutionary and Reformist Controversy, 
 as illustrated at the Bordeaux Congress of the 
 French Socialist Party 163' 
 
 XIII. The Theory of Increasing Misery . . . .185 
 
 XIV. German Socialists and the General Strike . . 189 
 XV. Socialism and the Capitalistic Transformation of 
 
 Agriculture. By E. Vandervelde . . .198 
 XVI. Socialism and Agriculture as officially regarded 
 
 by the German Social Democratic Party . . 220 
 ix 
 
lii IXTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 This difference has now disappeared, for those of them who are in 
 the Labour Party. In the first session of Parliament they have 
 secured an Act restoring trade-unions to the position which 
 they were supposed to occupy before the Taff Vale decision. 
 But the Labour-Socialist federation shows no signs of being 
 weakened thereby, for Labour has learned very much in recent 
 years, both of its weakness while it keeps outside politics and 
 of its possible strength if it goes into them. And the new 
 conviction is not confined to the leaders, but has taken root 
 remarkably among the rank and file throughout the country. 
 
 Meantime, in international interest for Socialists, Great 
 Britain by no means takes first place. The new House of 
 Commons is ecUpsed by the new French Chamber, that 
 elected in May, igo6, which is the most advanced House yet 
 Fpeneh chosen by a first-class nation. The French, largely 
 
 Socialism, tirough having the second ballot, have developed 
 a party system quite unlike the English; instead of our two 
 great parties, each welded rather by mechanical pressure than 
 by community of ideas and principles, they have a number of 
 parties each definitely and logically standing for a particular 
 pohtical point of view. Of eight such parties in the new 
 Chamber three, — the Radicals, Socialistic Radicals, and 
 Socialists, — wield together a substantial majority; while of 
 these three the least advanced, the Radicals, would be thought 
 very advanced in om: House of Commons, and the largest, the 
 Socialistic Radicals, would here be denounced as Socialists, 
 and have a programme for immediate purposes resembling 
 that of our Fabians. Add that the Socialists themselves 
 number seventy-five in a Chamber of 591, that they are 
 disproportionately rich in able men (the ablest of all Socialist 
 shades having secured election), and that fifty-four of them 
 regularly act as one Uctical unit. As soon as this Chamber 
 assembled, occurred -the famous debate between M. Jaurfes 
 the leader of the United SociaUsts, and M. Clemenceau, the 
 leader of the Socialistic Radicals. Nothing could be less 
 accurate than to suppose this a debate between SociaUsm and 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xiii 
 
 anti-Socialism. It was one between a systematic believer 
 in Socialist principles" and an empirical believer in particular 
 Socialistic measures. The victory of Socialist tendencies took 
 a plain shape in the autumn, when M. Sarrien was replaced by 
 M. Clemenceau as Prime Minister. The new Cabinet in- 
 cluded three SociaUsts, — MM. Millerand, Briand, and Viviani, 
 the last, who is perhaps the strongest of the three, taking a 
 new Ministry, — that " of Labour and of Social Prevision " 
 {prevoyance sociak), a significant title. The Ministerial pro- 
 gramme prominently included old age pensions, the nationali- 
 zation of two large railways, the facilitation of collective 
 bargaining, and a progressive income-tax. The near future in 
 France is complicated by the struggle between Church and 
 State; but it will be surprising if some of these Socialistic 
 measures are not carried in the lifetime of the present 
 Chamber. 
 
 At the other end of Europe, Socialism has played a great 
 part in the upheaval in Russia. Its course, like that of all 
 Russian reform movements, has been much 
 chequered by party divisions ; but it can claim, 
 not only to have supplied the bulk of the militant agitators by 
 whom the awakening first of town workmen and then of 
 peasants has been achieved, but to have held out its ideal to 
 the whole nation across the welter of to-day's chaos as a beacon 
 for the footsteps of reform. One of the first consequences of 
 the Russian crisis was the change_in Austria, where ^yg^pj^^ 
 at, last ajaeasure estaEBsffig manhood sufirage 
 has been carried. No single force outside the Parliament 
 contributed so much to this end as the Austrian Social 
 Democracy, which is now very strong in numbers, though on 
 the old franchise very slightly represented in the Reichsrath. 
 Its decisive step was a demonstration in favour of universal 
 suffrage in Vienna in November, 1905, when over 300,000 
 Socialists marched in perfect order through the streets. 
 Another country immediately affected by the Russian crisis 
 was Scandinavia, where the result was the severance of 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 Sweden and Norway. Here, when the prospect of war between 
 
 the two countries looked gloomiest, the Socialists decisively 
 
 Norway and Stopped it by threatening a general strike, a threat 
 
 Sweden. ^hich the Swedish Government knew, from an 
 
 experience in 1902, could and would be carried out. The 
 
 strongest European foothold, perhaps, which Socialism has, is 
 
 in the very democratic State of Denmark, which 
 
 also leads the Continent in the practical realization 
 
 of Socialist ideas. In 1903 the Danish Socialists cast 55,593 
 
 votes and elected sixteen members of the Folkthingj in 1906, the 
 
 corresponding figures were 76,566 (over a quarter of the national 
 
 poll) and twenty-four. Moreover, in 1906, at the municipal 
 
 and communal elections, out of 417 seats for which polls were 
 
 taken, 155 fell to the Socialists, who with the Radicals have 
 
 the majority in Danish local government. These figures are 
 
 worth quoting because they show, as the history of New 
 
 Zealand also shows, that Socialistic ideas do not necessarily 
 
 lose, but may actually increase their popularity by being 
 
 embodied rapidly and visibly in the statute-book and 
 
 institutions of a country. 
 
 Italy is the only important State in which Socialism has lost 
 
 ground ; in 1900 its Chamber had thirty-three Socialist deputies, 
 
 in 1906 only twenty-four. This has been, however, 
 
 Italy. ' ■' . ■; . ' . ' 
 
 less due to outside pressure than to internecme 
 
 differences within the party, and may be expected to change 
 
 when, as at last seems probable, the differences diminish. In 
 
 Belgium the arresting of the Socialist march seems 
 
 e g um. j^^^ ^^^j _ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ j.^^j^ doubt that the effective 
 
 forces of Socialism there have never been stronger than they 
 are to-day. Not the least remarkable of all Socialist develop- 
 ments is that shaping itself blindly and inarticulately in the 
 The United United States of America. The Socialist parties 
 states. there are polling large votes in some centres, 
 
 though so far these bear an insignificant relation to the 
 amount of real Socialist opinion indicated by the circulation 
 of Socialist and Socialistic literature. The campaign of Mr. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xv 
 
 Hearst for the mayoralty of New York in the autumn of 
 1906 gives a juster idea of this movement, which is quickened 
 by discontent against the Trusts. 
 
 The last three years have seen some minor developments 
 of Socialist statesmanship and theory. In England this work 
 still largely devolves on the Fabian Society, which inner de- 
 has carried its own gospel of "gas and water" volopments. 
 Socialism a step further by an elaborate study of the different 
 areas and authorities requisite for different branches of 
 collectivism, and has tried to acclimatize the Australasian 
 gospel in Europe by some practical proposals for a legal 
 minimum wage. Abroad the most noticeable feature has 
 been a slackening of the tension between "reformist" and 
 " revolutionary " Socialists. Concessions have been made on 
 both sides. In France M. Jaurfes induced his large reformist 
 wing to conciliate and finally re-unite with the smaller revo- 
 lutionary fraction. In other countries, such as Italy and 
 Germany, the advances have come from the revolutionary 
 wing, whose best leaders saw themselves undermined and 
 out-Heroded by the general strike propaganda, against which 
 they formed with the reformists a coalition of common-sense. 
 
 This general strike propaganda requires some detailed 
 study, since it is the first big attempt for thirty years to 
 divert and subvert the Socialist movement by an general 
 Anarchist movement from within. It derived its strike pro- 
 main impetus from the supposed success of the ^^^^^ 
 great strike in Russia, which wrung from the Tsar the 
 ambiguous constitution of October 30, 1905. Russian con- 
 ditions are unique; and we need not here examine how far 
 they rendered that general strike the best or the only tactics 
 in a fight for Russian political freedom. Events have since 
 shown, that the first estimates of its success were too high, 
 while the failures of frequent attempts to re-enact its drama 
 prove how terribly it overstrained the human actors. Its 
 example, however, struck Western Europe at a psychological 
 moment. In Germany, Italy, and France alike, there was 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 lurking among Socialists a new impatience at Parliamentary 
 delays. In Germany the powerlessness of the Socialist 
 members of the Reichstag, in spite of the three million 
 votes behind them, was felt to be well-nigh intolerable. In 
 the French and Italian democracies the complaint was 
 different; their Parliamentary Socialists had been anything 
 but uninfluential ; but a fruitful period of Socialist alliances 
 with non-Socialist Ministries was drawing to a close, to an 
 inevitable accompaniment of self-criticism and disappomt- 
 ments. Under such influences the ultra-revolutionary wings 
 of the Socialist parties developed a new gospel, which they 
 claimed to be Marxian, though it really was an anti-Marxian 
 revival of the doctrines advanced in the early 'seventies by 
 Marx's Anarchist rival and adversary, Bakunin. They argued 
 that State action was fundamentally vicious, and the new 
 organization of society must be a sort of federation of 
 autonomous trade-unions of producers. Their means for 
 attaining this was the general strike, supplemented by 
 insurrectionary violence; and Parliamentarism, because it 
 implied associating Socialism with the State, was banned. 
 This doctrine is now known on the Continent as le 
 syndicalisme rholutionnaire, or " revolutionary trade- 
 unionism." Its exponents include, in Germany, Rosa 
 Luxemburg ; in Italy, Labriola ; in France, the Confederation 
 du Travail, organized by men like M. Griffuelhes, and several 
 brilliant writers such as Georges Sorel.^ For nearly a year 
 after the Russian outburst it spread; and in France, during 
 April, 1906, it gave rise to serious political disturbances. 
 But soon the tide ran against it. For one thing, the trade- 
 unionists rejected it, wherever^ as in Germany, the trade-unions 
 have large funds and are seriously proficient in collective 
 bargaining ; for another, it aroused the natural hostility of the 
 great "revolutionary" leaders who believe in Parliamentary 
 methods, such as Bebel and Enrico Ferri. In Germany the 
 
 » Sorel's eloquent "Reflexions sur la Violence " is among the best short 
 expositions of this point of view. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION xvii 
 
 Social Democrats, having dallied with the general strike at 
 their Jena congress in 1905, repudiated it (under the strongest 
 pressure from their trade-unions) at their Mannheim Congress 
 in 1906. In Italy, at the Rome Congress in 1906, the party 
 was split in a novel way, the " reformists " and the great 
 majority of the "revolutionists" composing their quarrels 
 and combining to leave a small paring of " syndicalists " 
 out in the cold. In France the general-strike propaganda 
 has steadily declined, since the election of the present 
 Chamber in May, 1906, encouraged a more hopeful view of 
 Parliament For the present, it probably may be dismissed 
 as moribund; but it needs to be carefully appreciated, both 
 because of its prominence in the tale of the past year, and 
 because it is certain periodically to recrudesce. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST 
 EDITION, 1903 
 
 Socialism has too long and varied a history for its study, with 
 that of the different national problems which it implies, to be 
 profitably attempted as a whole within short compass. Some 
 standpoints for abstraction must be selected. In this volume 
 there are two ; and the subject is the political jiotjem 
 SociaUsm of Xhef resent It is, of course, impossible political 
 to know the present without knowing something of So^'^l'^™- 
 its antecedents ; but the antecedents illustrated here are intro- 
 duced rather for that reason than for the sake of mere anti- 
 quarianism. Thus Marx, Engels, and Lassalle appear in this 
 volume ; but the important thing for its purposes is not what 
 they actually meant to teach, so much as what the modern 
 Socialist politicians of France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, or 
 England have learned from them. 
 
 There are two advantages in this method. On the one 
 hand. Socialism is a faith whose part in politics was never so 
 great as it is to-day, nor ever seemed surer of an important 
 future ; on the other, the political Socialism now confronting 
 the world is singularly little realized by English politicians. 
 The majority of them still confuse it with a Socialism of sixty 
 years ago, and chiefly appreciate in that the picturesque crudities 
 which have not lasted. 
 
 This ignorance is the less excusable, because the Socialist 
 parties regularly do a thing which no others do — formulate 
 a written programme. Of these a considerable its pro- 
 number are made available to English readers in grammes, 
 the present volume. They may, of course, be read with some 
 
XX INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 reserves, especially where not recent. But the oldest here 
 given, the Erfurt Programme of the German party, only dates 
 from 1891 ; and although, if it were now re-examined, many 
 points in it might claim revision, they are insignificant beside 
 what would still be unanimously upheld. Each programme 
 declares certain principles, and appends to them a list of 
 "immediate" reforms. These lists repay study, and if, 
 perhaps, they strike an English reader as slapdash^ he should 
 remember the Continental aversion to shackling the legislator 
 by forecasting legislation in detail.^ The foreign programmes 
 have, in fact, been threshed out and voted upon by large 
 assemblies democratically representing very large organized 
 parties. 
 
 Let us here first briefly review the extent of Socialism in 
 Europe. For this we may usefully classify Continental 
 Its extent countries into those which have representative 
 In Europe, democratic Governments and those which have 
 not. Among the former may be reckoned France, Italy, 
 Switzerland, and Denmark j among the latter, Germany, 
 Austria, Spain,^ and Russia. Belgium, Holland, and Sweden 
 we might class as " mixed ; " their Governments are essen- 
 tially Parliamentary, but not democratically representative.* 
 Obviously, Socialists are in a different position in the demo- 
 cratic and undemocratic countries. In the former they can 
 at once exert influence in proportion to their numbers ; can 
 profitably agitate for reforms one at a time; can negotiate 
 with and even enter the Governments. In the latter they 
 cannot; their only immediate aim must be to multiply their 
 numbers as a party, and for this a hard-and-fast aggressive 
 programme and uncompromising resistance to their arbitrary 
 Governments have been found of most service. Here, too, 
 
 ' Cp. Sir C. Ilbert's Legislative Methods and Forms, chaps, iii. and xi. 
 
 '^ Spain has nominally a liberal franchise, but its operation is an 
 acknowledged farce. 
 
 ' Belgium is the nearest to being so, but a system of privileged plural 
 voting has still to be surmounted by a working-class party. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxi 
 
 their organization cannot lose sight of an ultimate appeal to 
 force, not, perhaps, to instal Socialism, but to instal preliminary 
 democracy; which has not been won without force, or the 
 threat of force, in any modem State. They tend, therefore, 
 in undemocratic countries to be the more numerous, united, 
 doctrinaire, and imposing, and in democratic countries to be 
 fewer, less united, less uncompromising, but more constructive 
 and more influential. 
 
 In France, Italy, and Denmark, Socialists have for some 
 years inspired and dominated the Government.^ In 1899 the 
 Dreyfus case was skilfully used by M. Jaurfes, ppance. 
 leader of the French Socialist party, to effect a 
 working agreement between the Socialists and other demo- 
 cratic parties in France, whence issued the Waldeck-Rousseau 
 Cabinet, with M. Millerand, a Socialist, for its Minister of 
 Commerce. The Cabinet lasted from June, 1899, to June, 
 1902, when, after winning a general election, it gave way to 
 the very similar Cabinet of M. Combes, also dependent on 
 Socialist votes, although not including a Socialist. Both 
 Cabinets have been fertile from the Socialistic standpoint. 
 In Italy,^ in February, 1901, a similar situation was realized 
 by the Zanardelli-Giolitti Government, which con- j^^j^^ 
 tained no Socialists, but depended on Socialist 
 support The negotiating parties were Signor Giolitti on 
 the side of the Government, and Signor Turati on that 
 
 ' In France this policy provoked a Socialist split, two sections under 
 MM. Guesde and Vaillant leaving the "French Socialist party," and, 
 finally, coalescing into the (much smaller) "Socialist party of France." 
 In Italy there was no split, but there have been extremely violent dis- 
 sensions. 
 
 2 The Itahan Socialist party is of recent but very rapid growth. It 
 sent to the Chamber in 1895 eight deputies, in 1897 sixteen, and in 1900 
 thirty-three. In 1900 it captured control of no less than 1268 municipal 
 and communal councils, to which a remarkable law, passed by the Zanar- 
 delli-Giolitti Government, subsequently gave unique facilities for developing 
 municipal Socialism. In 1905 and 1906 this growth of the party was 
 considerably pruned back. 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 of the Socialists, and tlie result was a Socialistic policy 
 which may fairly be said to have changed the face of Italian 
 administration.' This came partially to an end in June, 1903, 
 when the Socialists, perhaps prematurely, broke away, and 
 Denmark. Signor Giolitti resigned office. In Denmark, during 
 the same period, the Socialists supported, to their 
 advantage, the Radical Government of Professor Deuntzer. 
 Shortly before the general election of June, 1903, they broke 
 off relations, and in the election polled 29 per cent, more 
 votes than in 1 901.2 In gji (.jjggg three countries very remark- 
 able experiments in Socialistic legislation and administration 
 have been initiated. In Switzerland Socialists are prominent 
 only in the towns, especially Zurich, and their /<7/'/<? is municipal 
 Socialism, In 1901 their national party organization absorbed 
 the chief non-Socialist workers' organization, the Griitli, and 
 has since made progress. 
 
 Turning to the undemocratic countries, the first to consider 
 is, of course, Germany. The State Parliaments and the town 
 Germany, councils are elected on very undemocratic bases, 
 and few Socialists figure on them. The exception 
 is the little State of Hesse, where, however, their activity, 
 though interesting, cannot compare with those we have men- 
 tioned. The imperial Reichstag is elected by universal suff- 
 rage, but its active power is nearly nil, and its composition is 
 vitiated by an obsolete distribution of seats.' The remarkable 
 votes polled at Reichstag elections by the Social Democrats * 
 
 ' For a summary of some of its labour measures, see an article by Mr. 
 Bolton King in the Economic Journal for September, 1903. 
 
 ' In 1895 eight Danish Socialists were elected to the Folkething, in 
 1901 fourteen, in 1903 sixteen, in 1906 twenty-four. An exceptional 
 feature of the party is its strength in rural districts. 
 
 » The constituencies have not been altered since 1869, when Germany 
 was still mainly agricultural. Hence the Social Democrats, whose strength 
 lies in the new great towns, are under-represented. In 1898 each of the 
 56 Socialists elected was returned on an average poll of 37,626 votes, each 
 of the no Clericals by 13,228, each of the 54 Conservatives by 15,911, and 
 each of the 47 National Liberals by 20,666. 
 
 ^ In 1877 they polled 493,288 votes ; in 1881 (under the first pressure of 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxiii 
 
 are indications, therefore, of the power which they ought to 
 have rather than of any power which they have got. The 
 Social Democrats are in the position of seeing their immense 
 hold on the masses of the people officially recorded every five 
 years ; they have in the Reichstag a public platform, on which 
 they can criticize and expose the governing class with all the 
 great abiUty which many of them possess; but they cannot 
 legislate or administrate an iota. The position is very bad for 
 them, the barren irritations of a standing injustice being sub- 
 stituted indefinitely for the fruitful if sobering effects of govern- 
 mental experience. German superior intelligence, and in 
 particular the German workman's exceptional readiness to 
 think things out, has preserved their political sanity ; but it is 
 idle to expect from them the Protean constructive genius 
 called forth in Socialism by democratic opportunities. Closely 
 allied to them is the Austrian party.^ In the industrial dis- 
 tricts, especially in Bohemia, it is numerically Austria, 
 strong, although no such record of its numbers is 
 available as is afforded in Germany by the Reichstag elections. 
 Its leaders show favourably among Austrian party politicians, 
 and have displayed skill in dealing with the Austrian race 
 difficulty. As theorists they have been helped by distinguished 
 University professors ; one need only name in this connection 
 Schaffle and Anton Menger. Thirdly must be considered 
 Russian Socialism. Its growth in Russia has, of uuggia, 
 course, been wholly underground, and it is driven 
 to be violent and non-constructive. Its party organizations 
 are much divided, and have still to fight for political freedom 
 before Socialism. Its chief doctrinal influence is that exerted 
 by Russian exiles in Western Europe. These have included 
 a surprising number of able men; but their ideas, conceived 
 with reference to a despotic and agrarian environment, are not 
 
 the Anti-Socialist Law) 311,961 ; in 1890 (the year of its repeal) 1,497,298 ; 
 in 1898 this rose to 2,107,076 ; and in 1903, to 3,008,000. 
 
 • There is a separate party in Hungary, of long standing, but restricted 
 by the small scale of urban industry. 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 always of service to industrial democracies. Lastly, we must 
 Spain. "°^^ Spain, the one country where Socialism seems 
 
 eclipsed by Anarchism among working men. It 
 would seem that an utterly corrupt Government blights Socialism 
 more than an utterly despotic one, because it discourages all 
 faith in political activity. Among middle-class parties, how- 
 ever, the Spanish Republicans go far in the Socialistic 
 direction. 
 
 Coming to the three States— Belgiumj Holland, and 
 Sweden — which we classed as " mixed," we find Socialism in 
 each with a strong hold on the urban proletariate, but held 
 back by favoured rural voters. Far the most remarkable of 
 Belgium, ^^^^^ parties is the Belgian, owing to the scale 
 of Belgian mining and manufacture, the old con- 
 nection of Brussels with the International Working Men's 
 Association, and the country's central situation between 
 French, German^, and English influences. Workmen of genius 
 and brilliant " intellectuals," co-operators, trade-unionists, 
 jvurists, economists, artists, and notable authors, all work 
 harmoniously in its ranks, and perhaps it is the one Socialist 
 party in which " reformists " and " revolutionaries " rather 
 complement than curtail each other. In Parliament, although 
 the weightiest opposition party, it can as yet take no part in 
 government ; but it has done a great constructive work outside 
 by focussing co-operation, trade-unionism, and Socialism into 
 a single movement. It tries to fight the worker's battle all 
 round — as consumer, producer, and citizen; its methods are 
 not unique, but their co-ordination is, and the effort at popular 
 training and culture which goes with them. In matters of 
 theory the Belgians have particularly pioneered the agrarian 
 question. They formulated an agrarian programme as long 
 ago as 1893, whereas neither the Germans nor the French 
 have yet done so. 
 
 Of the Continental situation generally it may be said that 
 Socialism has a party in every industrial country, which in all 
 except Spain is increasing, and in most at a phenomenal rate. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxv 
 
 In the democracies it already lays a hand upon government; 
 elsewhere it tends to be the backbone of the Opposition. At 
 present it seems almost the only force, outside the reaction, 
 which has new ideas ; the older Liberals mark time, and the 
 Radicals, who are coming to stand between them and the 
 Socialists, borrow their novelties from the latter. Its partisans 
 are still mainly urban, and the chief force against them is that 
 of a Conservatism relying on rural votes. In Roman Catholic 
 coimtries this force is commonly organized by the clergy. 
 
 Outside the Continent Socialism is practically confined to 
 certain of the English-speaking countries.* These aire the 
 United Kingdom, the United States, and the colonies of 
 Australia and New Zealand. The last have realized more 
 Socialistic measures than any other States in Australia 
 the world, ^ and their experiences are reacting and New 
 upon European theory. Every Australian colony 
 possesses a separate Labour party, but in New Zealand Labour 
 has amalgamated with a very advanced sort of Radicalism to 
 form a Progressive party. The Queensland Labour party is 
 the only one which has been Socialist in an orthodox sense ; it 
 was also until 1903 the least compromising, and has least in- 
 fluenced government. The others, which all grew up out of 
 defeated trade-unionism, have squeezed their SociaUstic legisla- 
 tion, as in France and Italy, out of non-Socialist allies. Its 
 effect has been to emphasize the value and possibilities of the 
 State-regulation of industry as against State-ownership in the 
 more obvious sense. Not only have factory and workshop 
 regulations been carried much further than in Europe, but two 
 quite new principles have been put into practice — the State- 
 enforcement of minimum wage-rates and the State-enforcement 
 of industrial peace. The former was reahzed by the system of 
 wage-boards, established in Victoria in 1896, and in South 
 Australia in 1900; while both have been attained by that of 
 
 1 There is also a party in Japan, which publishes several newspapers. 
 ? The standard account of them is State Experiments in Australia and 
 New Zealand, by the Hon. W. P. Reeves (London, 1902). 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 compulsory State-arbitration in trade disputes, first devised 
 in New Zealand in 1894 by the Hon. W. P. Reeves. Of these 
 systems Mr. Reeves's, as amended by experience, has pre- 
 vailed ; and not only does New Zealand persist in it, but New 
 South Wales (1901), West Australia (1902), and the Common- 
 wealth Government have paid it the compliment of imitation. 
 
 In the United States Socialism is, perhaps, less forward than 
 in any other democratic country. This seems due to the 
 The United extremely individualist tradition, descended with 
 States. the Constitution from the founders of the Republic, 
 
 and also to the corruption of politics, for which that tra- 
 dition may be partly responsible.' A Socialist vote is, how- 
 ever, growing in many centres, quickened by dislike of the 
 Trusts ; and outside it stretches a penumbra of semi-Socialist 
 conviction, which first won recognition at the St. Louis Con- 
 vention of the Democratic party in 1896. Already some of the 
 most widely read journals find it worth their while to exploit 
 the tendency. The high education of the American people, 
 their liability to epidemics of thought, the extreme concentra- 
 tion of their industry and inequality of their wealth-production, 
 all favour the possibility of Socialism coming to them in a flood.^ 
 
 There remains the Socialism of the United Kingdom. 
 How much is there of it? A superficial observer might say 
 The United none. Certainly there are few constituencies 
 Kingdom. ^hi^h will elect to Parliament a "Socialist" 
 candidate, and it may be doubted whether fifty thousand 
 electors call themselves "SociaUsts" in politics. Others, 
 again, looking at our old and far-advanced factory laws, the 
 strength of our trade-unions, the numbers of our co-operators, 
 the progress of our municipalities towards the appropriation 
 
 • Per contra, it seems that a policy of municipalization has tended to 
 purify municipal politics ; Chicago and New Yorlc are both instances. 
 
 ^ In 1900, at the Presidential Election, about 130,000 votes were cast 
 for the Socialist candidates. In that of 1904 some 441,000 Socialist votes 
 were cast. This, although through the absence of second ballot, every 
 vote given for a Socialist is in a sense thrown away. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxvii 
 
 of public services, towards direct employment, and even (by 
 wage clauses in public contracts) towards the fixing of a 
 standard of life, say that without knowing it we are among 
 the most Socialistic nations. So far as what we have achieved 
 goes, this is probably true, or was till a few years ago; 
 but as regards what we are, and what we are likely to 
 achieve fiirther, more doubt may be felt. All the develop- 
 ments mentioned dovetail into the Socialistic idea, and nearly 
 all have grown from Socialist seed. But it is precisely the 
 inner spiritual bond between them — now lacking — which is 
 Socialism, and without a re-birth of which no Socialist can feel 
 confidence in their future. 
 
 The reader of this volume will not require here a long 
 account of Socialistic theory. Summarily we may describe it 
 as the doctrine, that whereas the means of pro- Socialistic 
 duction (capital, with land and raw materials) are theory, 
 as indispensable to every man's existence as his own body, 
 society should secure for all its members an equally free 
 access to them, by disallowing private property in them (just 
 as it has secured for all the equally free disposition of their 
 bodies, by disallowing slavery). Private property, as it exists, 
 exists solely in virtue of social action, and the motive for 
 that action is social utility. Its aim is to secure for the 
 producer the means of production, so that he who will work 
 may work out his own salvation. Socialists believe this aim to 
 be unrealized by it, owing to the tendency of capital to con- 
 centration.i This tendency divides society into two classes— 
 a diminishing class who have capital and can work on their 
 
 » This tendency, or law, which seems valid for all industry except pos- 
 sibly farming, is that in adding capitals 2 -I- 2 do not = 4, but 4 + ^. *« 
 X representing a special advantage of concentration. Thus ;f 200 capital 
 will enable a man to do more than twice as much as ;^ioo would, or 
 /200,CXX) more than twice as much as ^f 100,000. * will not always be 
 realized, but will always tend to be. Its value was enormously raised by 
 the Industrial Revolution, and seems to be still rising. It operates mside 
 society as a continual handicap, increasing the amounts of capital owned, 
 and diminishing the relative number of owners. 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 own account, and an increasing class who have not^ but must 
 sell their services — "capitalists" and "proletarians." If the 
 right of private property in capital is secured in its absolute 
 form (the form taught to Europe by Roman law), the prole- 
 tarians are absolutely at the capitalists' mercy. They must 
 work for the capitalists, for otherwise they cannot work at all, 
 and would starve. The capitalists can make them do what 
 work they please, under what conditions they please, and need 
 only give even a subsistence wage so far as they fear a shortage 
 of labour. 
 
 Socialism then asserts, that unless the capitalists' right of 
 property is limited, the proletarian's degradation will be un- 
 limited. Even Roman law, when it forbade the creditor to 
 enslave his debtor, acknowledged that the State must fix some 
 minimum, below which the capitalist cannot bargain for the 
 proletarian to go. When Socialism advocates, e.g., a com- 
 pulsory eight hours' day, it proceeds on exactly parallel lines ; 
 a capitalist shall not force a proletarian to work nine hours, 
 any more than he can force him to become a slave. Broadly 
 this process may be termed the " expropriation " of capital. 
 The employers have been quite logical in protesting that " a 
 man can do what he likes with his own." As soon as the 
 State says, " You shall not do this or that with your capital," 
 expropriation has begun. 
 
 We should note here, though, that expropriation may take 
 one of two forms — the State may aboUsh the owner, or it may 
 abolish ownership. It does the former, whenever a railway 
 system is nationalized or a tramway system is municipalized. 
 It does the latter, partially, when it regulates the hours or 
 conditions of labour, and more completely, when (as by com- 
 pulsory arbitration) it fixes labour's wage. The two methods 
 sometimes compete. Land nationalization illustrates the 
 former, — the State becomes landlord ; while a policy of land 
 registry combines with a heavy progressive land-tax, restraints 
 on leasing, prohibition of mortgages, and regulation of landed 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxix 
 
 inheritance, illustrates the latter,— the State abolishes land- 
 lordism. Doubts will arise as to which method is the best in 
 particular cases; but as a rule the former only protects the 
 proletarian as consumer, and the latter only as producer. 
 Each, therefore, needs to be supplemented by the other. A 
 State railway may benefit the consuming community in any 
 case; but it only benefits railwaymen if it adopts a good 
 standard wage policy (which, e^., the Prussian State Railways 
 do not). A standard wage system benefits proletarian pro- 
 ducers in any case; but they can only realize its value in 
 consumption, if the State protects them against monopolies 
 by intelligently nationalizing and municipalizing them. 
 
 The moral claim from which SociaUsm starts is that for 
 equality of opportunity. This may be made clearer by a 
 single illustration. Elementary education in England is 
 Socialistic ; secondary is not. Observe that neither is possible 
 without capital — that is, proletarian children (say 90 per cent. 
 of those reared) must in default of State action or charity go 
 without education. The State has stepped in, and has said 
 to every proletarian child: "You shall have elementary 
 education ; you shall have at least the ' three R's ' to help you 
 in working and in bargaining for the means to work." Social- 
 ism demands ^ an identical poUcy for further education. It 
 asks that every child shall have an equal chance of it, and that 
 his capacity shall decide how far he shall go. But under a 
 strict operation of private property the proletarian children must 
 have no chance at all, and the amount of education which each 
 gets be proportioned not to his own capacity so much as to his 
 father's capital. 
 
 It is worth while in this place to give a brief glance at the 
 historical development of Socialism prior to that contained in 
 this volume. Modern SociaUsm originated about Genesis of 
 a century ago in the disillusionments following Socialism, 
 the industrial revolution, which emanated from England, 
 and the poUtical revolution, which emanated from France. 
 ' Cf. all the programmes. 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 The " great industry " and the whole cornucopia of machinery 
 suddenly increased wealth and poverty side by side in a 
 very puzzling fashion. There is no need to recapitulate here 
 the horrors of 1800-1850; how with the introduction of 
 " labour-saving " machinery, men, women, and small children 
 were worked to death, or how the textile operatives who pro- 
 duced a hundred times as much as the hand-loom weavers, 
 suffered hardship where the latter had enjoyed comfort.* A 
 parallel puzzle sprang out of the political revolution. This 
 was not so much the collapse of constitutional card-castles as 
 the failure of egalit'e—oi the abolition of privilege. Privilege 
 of wealth replaced privilege of birth, through the law of 
 property ; and through the law of inheritance restored it. 
 
 The medley of schools and parties and interested classes 
 who tried to answer these two puzzles may be divided into two 
 main groups — those who saw the good in the two revolutions, 
 and wanted them carried further ; and those who saw the evil, 
 and wanted them put back. The peculiarity of the Socialists 
 was that they saw both the good and the evil, and could not 
 therefore go whole-heartedly with either party. Tories of the 
 type illustrated in England by Southey or Lord Shaftesbury 
 were in sympathy with the Socialist policy of regulating the 
 factories. Radicals of the Utilitarian school were in sympathy 
 with their extreme democracy and with the faith which nearly 
 all Socialists have always had in the economic soundness 
 of the new methods of industry. But the Tories could not 
 accept what might have won the Radicals ; and the Radicals 
 could not accept what might have won the Tories. Hence 
 while the Socialists got some help from both parties, they were 
 generally viewed as Ishmaels by both — a curious fate for men 
 so incurably benevolent as their founders, Owen and St 
 Simon. 
 
 • That the hardship became starvation was referred by its sufferers to 
 taxation, Protection, and particularly the Corn Laws. The same sufferers 
 remained unanimous that their diagnosis had been correct after its remedy 
 Free Trade, was applied. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxxi 
 
 The effect of their finding themselves thus awkwardly 
 outside the political pale was that the early Utopian 
 Socialists became Utopians. They were not Socialism. 
 " unpractical " men in quite the ordinary sense ; Owen, 
 for instance, was the largest manufacturer of his time. But 
 in the existing party situation they almost despaired of 
 capturing, except for special objects, the State machinery ; and 
 easily fell into the error of thinking that they could act for 
 themselves. Their most obvious resource was to form co- 
 operative units of producers. Owen knew that, though cotton 
 operatives were paid very badly, cotton mills paid very well. 
 Why not work a mill by an association of men, who should 
 agree to share gains pretty equally, instead of making one man 
 a millionaire and the rest paupers? Better still, why not 
 form a settlement of many such associations working at 
 different industries and exchanging the products in propor- 
 tions measured by the labour-time spent on each? This 
 solution, in different forms, haunted Socialists for long. Some- 
 times the idea was to set up the co-operators in new lands as 
 fresh nations, sometimes to plant them in existing societies 
 which they should be in, but not of. Owen himself tried both 
 experiments. The constructive idea of Fourier— his " phalan- 
 stferes " — has the same root. Louis Blanc, noting that though 
 workmen might agree to do without an employer they could 
 not do without capital, proposed that the State should loan 
 them capital. This proposal (revived by Lassalle, in 1862-64) 
 shows Utopianism forced back, in spite of itself, upon 
 politics.^ The least Utopian of early Socialists was, in some 
 respects, St Simon. The importance of studying in history 
 the action of classes, the notion of changing the State itself 
 from a police State to a director of industry, and the idea of 
 Internationalism, are all to be found in his writing ; and if he 
 
 • It is the Utopianism of co-operation which has endeared it to the 
 " Christian SociaUsts " of dififerent countries, who otherwise have very few 
 points m common. Their leaders have welcomed it as a way of improving 
 society without disturbing politics. 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 did not found a party, he tried to found a church. Owen's 
 activity was, by contrast, fertile rather in its by-products. At 
 New Lanark he showed what a factory and a factory village 
 could be like. And he was the father of factory legislation as 
 well as of co-operation and trade-union federation. With the 
 passing of the first Factory Acts Socialism began to be 
 realized. As Marx said later, "The Ten Hours Bill was 
 not merely a great practical success; it was the victory of 
 a principle." ^ 
 
 The interest of the Utopians is now academic, and nothing 
 further will be found of them in this volume but an extract 
 from Bebel's Charles Fourier, indicating the differences 
 Marx and between their Socialism and that of modem poli- 
 Lassalle; ticians. The authors of the newer standpoint 
 making were Karl Marx (with Engels) and Lassalle; 
 Influence. through whose medium, rather than at first hand, 
 whatever now survives of their predecessors' influence, survives. 
 Their ideas made an epoch, because with them two decisive 
 qualities first came to the front in Socialism — the scientific 
 and the political. The change may be in large measure 
 traced to Hegel, from whom both Marx and Lassalle learned 
 the evolutionary view of history and the organic view of 
 society. Both were men of great learning, by whom the 
 immense work done by economists, historians, and jurists in 
 the first half of the nineteenth century was appreciated and 
 utilized. Both also were, though with differences, born 
 agitators. With "the white steel of science "^ they set 
 themselves to seek the naturnothwendig — what by the natural 
 laws of social development must be ^ — and to design a policy 
 
 ' The dictum has been taken by Bernstein as a motto for his DU 
 Vorausseizungen des Sozialismus, 
 
 ' Cp. infra, p. 45. 
 
 ' Both were Jews (like Ricardo), and have been reproached with 
 " Semitic logic "—Marx the oftener, Lassalle the more justly. Marx's'race 
 perhaps, comes out in the habit of expression, by which he continually 
 presents concrete for abstract, fact for tendency, symbol for thine 
 symbolized— a mere vividness of thought easily mistaken for crudity. Cp. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxxiii 
 
 as a modern engineer designs a breakwater, so that the 
 currents it breaks actually strengthen it by their pressure. 
 And with the agitator's political instinct they set themselves to 
 build a new party, by bringing into the political arena as a new 
 conscious element the proletarian class. 
 
 Socialism took several decades to come round to the 
 Lassalle-Marxian point of view, but for most European 
 countries the process was completed in the 'eighties. Since 
 then its internal history has been that of a bifurca- Revolu- 
 tion in each country into two schools. The one *'°5^r5^ 
 
 and Re- 
 is called " Revolutionary" or " Marxist," the other formist" 
 
 " Possibilist," " Opportunist," " Revisionist," Socialism. 
 " Fabian," " Ministerial," " Reformist," — the last term being 
 the most exact and comprehensive. Non-Socialists like to 
 emphasize the difference between them, but seldom under- 
 stand its bearings. "Revolutionary Socialism," one sees 
 newspapers say, "is becoming a party of peaceful reform." 
 The revolutionaries are supposed to be non-Parliamentary, to 
 wish to replace the methods of democratic constitutionalism 
 by some dimly conceived method of violence ; the reformists, 
 on the other hand, are said to be really mere Liberals, men 
 who have found Socialism worthless, and gone back on it 
 without having the courage to say so. Neither of these views 
 will survive an examination of the facts; the difference 
 between the two schools, although profoundly interesting, is 
 not so bald and elementary. 
 
 In the first place, the revolutionary Marxists are a constitu- 
 tional and Parliamentary party. The gospel of violence was 
 not Marx's but Blanqui's; and though Marx played with it, 
 notably at the time of the Communist Manifesto, it is one of 
 his great merits that he saw the indispensableness of consti- 
 tutionalism to democracy and to a constructive revolution. 
 Lassalle's splendid suffrage-agitation in Germany drove home 
 
 for a striking corroboration of this as a Semitic trait, Renan, Vie de Jisus, 
 c. xviii. (e.g. "des habitudes de style dont le caractJre essentiel est de 
 prSter i la metaphore, ou pour mieux dire i Tidfe, une pleine realite' ). 
 
 c 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 the idea, and after the tragedy of the Paris Commune in 1871, 
 the notion of promoting SociaUsm by violence yielded every- 
 where to that of capturing constitutional machinery — except in 
 countries like Russia, where no such machinery exists. Between 
 Kautsky and Bernstein, Guesde and Millerand, Ferri and 
 Turati, Mr. Hyndman and Mr, Sidney Webb, there is no 
 essential dispute as to the expediency of Socialists entering 
 Parliaments or other popularly elected bodies. Nothing is 
 more typical of the Marxist leaders in Germany than the almost 
 sacred importance which they teach the workers to attach to the 
 vote, and the tenacity with which they defend such Parliamen- 
 tary privileges as belong to the German Reichstag. The only 
 non-Parliamentary political method which survives is that of 
 the general strike. But its adoption has been practically con- 
 fined to countries where an undemocratic franchise or system 
 of constituencies renders the capture of elected bodies impracti- 
 cable, and in nearly all cases it has been adopted on purpose 
 to remove these restrictions, i.e. to render itself superfluous for 
 the future.^ The only country with a democratic machinery, 
 where further importance is attached to it, is France ; this is 
 perhaps because the memory of Napoleonic plebiscites still 
 weakens French confidence in the ballot-box. 
 
 In the second place, the reformists have not abandoned 
 Socialism, They have not come round to laisser-faire, because 
 their campaign against it has been worked out more in detail. 
 In principle they remain very close to Marx — ^how close may 
 be seen in this volume, if Mr. and Mrs. Webb's preface of 
 
 ' Its most successful employment was in Belgium in 1893, when it 
 secured the abolition of a narrow property franchise, and enabled thirty 
 Socialists to be at once elected to a Chamber which previously contained 
 none. In 1902 the Belgian Socialists again employed it in the cause of 
 franchise reform, but failed j an almost contemporary effort in Sweden was 
 rather more successful. On these latter occasions the orthodox organs of 
 German Social Democracy expressed themselves as very doubtful of the 
 method. The general strike in Holland in 1903, in which the Socialists 
 played a leading part, would scarcely have occuned had the Dutch 
 Parliament been representative. But see supra, pp. xiii.-xv. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxxv 
 
 1902, or M. Millerand's St. Mand^ speech, be compared with 
 Liebknecht's Marxian speech at the Erfurt Congress. Their 
 innovation is primarily in tactics, though it reacts intricately 
 upon theory. A party, whose programme comprises more than 
 one reform, may be impressed either with the value of doing 
 the many things simultaneously as a system,* so that by con- 
 currence they help each other's operation, or with that of doing 
 them successively piecemeal, so that each paves the way for 
 the other. Marxism, with its love of system, takes the former 
 view j the reformists take the latter. Again, as we have seen, 
 Socialism is essentially an appeal on behalf of the interests 
 of one class, the proletarians, against what the other, the 
 capitalists, conceive to be theirs. Socialists can either 
 emphasize this contrast, the Class-War, and rely wholly on 
 conscious proletarian support, or they can take the line rather 
 of reconciling the opposition in a higher unity, the Solidarity 
 of Classes, pleading with the capitalists that they have miscon- 
 ceived their interest and that the true interest of all the com- 
 munity is that of the workers. Obviously the Class-War is 
 adapted for leading up to the simultaneous method, and the 
 Solidarity of Classes for carrying out the successive. As 
 between the methods, each has pretty evident pitfalls. The 
 revolutionary may lead to a sterile propaganda of hate; the 
 reformist may dissipate itself in demoralizing compromises, 
 and find all its adherents either bought oflF or disgusted seriatim. 
 But as between the ideas, much can be pleaded for each, 
 English tradition, of course, is utterly in favour of successive- 
 ness. But the simultaneous idea has a growing importance, 
 the more complicated society becomes, and the more im- 
 possible it is to disturb one part without creating a need for 
 rectification in another. The greatest historical achievements 
 of English successiveness occurred at simpler stages of society 
 than to-day's. 
 
 ' This does not of course mean in a single "catastrophic" day or by a 
 stroke of the pen, but it does mean by a Socialist Government which has 
 definitely attained power and can handle its programme as a whole. 
 
xxxvi INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 It seemed desirable in this volume to give excerpts from 
 one of the many general discussions between revolutionaries and 
 reformists, which have occurred in the great European parties. 
 For this purpose the Millerand debate at the Bordeaux Con- 
 gress of the French Socialist party has been chosen. The 
 Hepp alternative would have been a Bernstein debate of 
 
 Bepnstein. j^e German party. But for several reasons Bern- 
 steinism has been kept out of this volume. In the first place, 
 Herr Bernstein, though a brilliant thinker, is not a brilliant 
 politician, and has hardly any " following " in the strict sense.^ 
 Secondly, his gospel is cast in the form, largely, of a criticism 
 upon Marxian details, which few English readers could appre- 
 ciate. Thirdly, most of its ideas are imported and adapted from 
 those of foreign democracies, by turning to which we can get 
 them more at first hand. The Bordeaux debates are pervaded 
 by a thoroughly French genius for seizing the essential; and 
 throw, too, into valuable prominence the particular 
 position of M. Jaurbs. He, though classed as a 
 reformist, is really a synthetizer, trying to combine adroitly the 
 best of both schools. With accepting a solidarity of classes, he 
 insists that the operation of a conscious organized proletarian 
 class is indispensable in politics. While pursuing reforms step 
 by step, he insists that the steps shall always be presented to 
 the electorate as part of a staircase. While defending alliances 
 with other parties, he has always insisted that the Socialist 
 party must remain a separate one. In these respects his 
 method differs from that of many kindred English progressives 
 more fundamentally than they are always aware. And it has 
 been more successful.^ 
 
 ' Those leaders of the German party, such as Von Vollmar and Auer 
 who, in greater or less degree, sympathize with him, are not disciples. The 
 germs of all Von Vollmar's reformism may be found in his own speeches 
 before Bemsteinism appeared. Bernstein may have fortified them by some 
 arguments, but he has weakened them by his lack of the tactical sense. 
 
 '^ At present the achievement and prospects of Socialism in France are 
 probably the best in Europe ; and this, although the episode of tlie Commune 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xxxvii 
 
 We will outline the theoretical differences between the two 
 schools, by comparing their attitudes towards the chief issues 
 — Nationalism (with whose aggressive aspect we may often 
 identify ImperiaUsm), Clericalism, Protectionism, and Agra- 
 rianism — opposed to Socialism, and towards its principal ally, 
 Trade-Unionism. 
 
 Marxian Socialism was in its genesis international, non- 
 religious, Free Trade, and urban. Its attitude towards national 
 and religious differences was purely negative; they were to 
 be ignored, lest they should divert attention from the all- 
 important issue between capitalists and proletarians g ^ ,, 
 as such. The Internationalism resulting from this andinter- 
 has often taken practical and very noble forms ; it national- 
 is sufficient to recall the protest of Liebknecht 
 and Bebel against Bismarck's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. 
 Outside the Socialist ranks Nationalism in one form and 
 another has meantime been growing, being evidenced particu- 
 larly by an unexampled increase in all national armaments 
 and an unexpected persistence of the militarist spirit. Against 
 armaments and against militarism the protest of the revolu- 
 tionary Socialists has everywhere been of the most strenuous. 
 It is in general echoed by the reformists, but with less 
 assurance. The concrete spirit of reformism, which is careful 
 of national peculiarities in its domestic poUtics, cannot over- 
 look them wholly in foreign affairs. Moreover, its insistence 
 on the Solidarity of Classes and the all-round interests of a 
 
 in 1871 almost annihilated it, and it has revived in face of an opposition 
 —from laisser-faire theorists and from Roman Catholics— to which none in 
 England is comparable. In the latter country a whole-hearted devotion to 
 opportunism and piecemeal reform has, since 189S, been virtually fruitless. 
 Reference, e.g., to the programme for the London County Council 
 formulated by the Fabian Society in 1895, shows that not one of the more 
 important of its nineteen desiderata have been secured, and many of the 
 most important have been decisively negatived. The majority of the 
 Council itself would at any time have endorsed them almost enbloe; but 
 the omission to educate the electorate into a systematic view made it easy 
 for Parliament, including the London members, to ignore them. 
 
xxxviii INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 community tends to substitute a national corollary for the 
 international one of the Class-War. Thus in Germany Herr 
 Bernstein has reminded the extreme anti-militarists^ that 
 national Germany is the vessel of a certain culture, which some 
 of her military rivals {e.g. the Slavs) do really threaten. An 
 analogous course has been taken in France by M. Millerand. 
 The furthest instance of this tendency was the argument of a 
 few leading English Fabians who supported the South African 
 War. They urged that Imperialism and Internationalism were 
 really the same, since both deprecated the separatism of small 
 nations. This was not unlike arguing that theft and voluntary 
 communism are the same, since both operate against private 
 property. Plainly such arguments only appreciate the negative 
 sides of Imperialism or of theft, and ignore the animus of the 
 agent. Nor does Imperialism become less Nationalist by 
 being pleaded as promoting Civilization. The essence of 
 Nationalism is that the members of each nation believe their 
 national civilization to be Civilization. Perhaps the sanest and 
 most central line on this, as on many other questions, has been 
 that inspired by M. Jaurbs. He has not ceased to profess a 
 warm French patriotism, while putting extreme pressure on 
 the French Government in the directions of international equity 
 and European disarmament. 
 
 A slighter divergence has occurred on the Clerical question. 
 The orthodox Socialist policy, that religion is a purely private 
 Socialism concern, is much strained by the anti-Socialist 
 andClerl- activity of the clergy in many, chiefly Roman 
 ca sm. Catholic, countries. It lets the Socialist insist on 
 secularizing education and stopping the State-salary which 
 many States give in one form or another to their clergy 
 but it forbids him to attack this or that religion as such. 
 It has tactical as well as theoretic advantages, and its 
 more rigid observance by German Socialists in recent 
 years has won for them at last a considerable number of 
 Roman Catholic voters. Whether the French Socialist party 
 has violated it by backing M. Combes must be matter of 
 
INTRODUCTION, ,903 xxxix 
 
 opinion. The stiffer Marxians incline to think that they 
 have.* 
 
 The attitude of Socialism to Protection has not been fully 
 theorized. The main argument of the classical economists 
 ag^st it— the economic waste and inefficiency socialism 
 which it mvolves— is one which disciples of Marx and Pro- 
 or Lassalle should, logically, appreciate, though it *«="°"- 
 is uncertain how many have taken the trouble to do so. 
 European SociaUsts are Free Traders largely for obsolescent 
 reasons. One is the historical influence of the English Anti- 
 Corn Law agitation, which for many generations of agitators 
 remained the model of a successful popular movement.^ 
 Another is the fact that Socialism, like Liberalism, sprang 
 from the towns, while the kernel of European Protection 
 has always been agrarian. A third, very powerful abroad, 
 has been the extreme theory of class war. If it overrides all 
 other wars, if the employing and employed classes can have 
 no soUdarity of interest against foreigners, no argument for 
 Protection is possible. Reformist Socialism, with its note 
 of the soUdarity of classes and " national interests," may be 
 expected to compromise on Free Trade as it does over 
 Internationalism. 
 
 On the other hand, practical Socialism at the Antipodes 
 is„fiercely Protectionist. Local circumstances partly explain 
 this ; but there are also some general affinities between Socialism 
 and Protection, as between laisser-faire and Free Trade. Both 
 the latter tend to take the standpoint of the individual con- 
 sumer, and ask for what is cheap to him. For Socialism the 
 consumer is the whole community, in whose life the lives of pro- 
 ducers as such are a great factor; and in measuring cheapness 
 
 ' An important symposium on the whole subject appeared in 1903 in 
 Le Mouvement Socialiste, much of it being afterwards Englished in the 
 Social Democrat. The course of events since has gone far (1906) towards 
 silencing the Marxian protests. 
 
 ' As such it dazzled Lassalle (cf. infra, p. 46), while upon Marx its 
 impression was deepened by his residence in England. 
 
xl INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 it takes account of the conditions of production. These 
 might in various ways turn its scale. It might be biassed 
 towards maintaining particular industries, e.g. agriculture, which 
 benefit national health and physique. It might object to seeing 
 industries, where it has established good wages and conditions 
 of work, undercut by foreign competitors, who reap the in- 
 dividual advantage of neglecting such things. Lastly, it might 
 object generally to the fluctuations of and changes in industries, 
 which Free Trade and its correlative, the world-market, might 
 be supposed to increase. The last point is one in which a 
 very characteristic opposition between the Socialists and the 
 laisser-faire school is involved. The latter have not always 
 recognized, that while in the abstract capital and labour are 
 infinitely plastic, in the concrete form of specialized machinery 
 and trained workers they are painfully the reverse. The 
 struggle for existence between industries is one aspect of the 
 larger struggle, which the laisser-faire school accepts as evolu- 
 tionary, but whose terrible cost leads the Socialists to ask, how 
 far the results justify the process. 
 
 Very few European Socialists have faced these difficulties. 
 They see that under present conditions the money advantages 
 of Protection, for which all pay, go mainly into the pockets of 
 the very few, as landlords or employers. This settles their 
 policy satisfactorily for present purposes. But where a Socialist 
 system of State-owned land and State-controlled industry 
 comes in, fresh thinking will be needed. Almost the only 
 
 Socialists — prior, at least, to the present English controversy 
 
 who have broken this further ground are Mr. and Mrs. Sidney 
 Webb. But their remarkable defence of Free Trade, which 
 will be found in this volume, is confined to the problem of 
 maintaining a standard of life, and does not go into that of 
 minimizing industrial dislocation. 
 
 Still, it would be a mistake to suppose that industrial dislo- 
 cation has not seriously engaged Socialist attention. Marxists 
 may feel a sort of triumph in seeing crises of unemployment 
 testify, as they think, to the failure of Individualism ; yet they 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xli 
 
 have to do their best for the unemployed. And in Germany, 
 where latterly the crises have been worst, scarcely any Socialists 
 have been tempted to seek their remedy in Protection. On 
 the contrary, the Social Democratic party has been the strongest 
 champion of the cheap loaf. They see that the Protective 
 tariff in raising prices has not equalized employment. On 
 the contrary, it seems, as in the German steel and iron indus- 
 tries, to have accentuated the crises, by encouraging a specu- 
 lative manufacture for export. So far as regards the industrial 
 equilibrium, a high and rising protective tariff has been 
 accompanied by greater instability than ever. In the face of 
 these stubborn historical facts the German Social Democrats 
 have maintained as their programme, " abolition of all indirect 
 taxes, customs, and other poUtico-economic measures which 
 sacrifice the interests of the whole community to the interests 
 of a favoured minority." 
 
 The nearest approach to a volte-face which Socialists have 
 attempted since Marx has been in relation to Agrarianism. 
 We have noted how largely the resistance to socialism 
 Socialism on the Continent depends, electorally andAgpari- 
 speaking, on the peasants. Marx thought that *"^™* 
 the advantage of concentrating capital would be felt in agri- 
 culture as in other industries ; but in spite of a temporary 
 confirmation of this view by the mammoth farms which 
 sprang up in Western America, it now appears very doubtful. 
 Figures for or against the persistence of peasantry are con- 
 flicting; but at any rate great numbers of peasants remain. 
 Two questions have been intertangled — that of owning land on 
 a small scale and that of cultivating it on a small scale. Per- 
 haps the matter of owning has been exaggerated by Socialists ; 
 for where there are freely ahenable peasant plots, economic 
 rent may be largely neutralized through the land being 
 divided, not into units of area with differing values, but into 
 units of value with differing areas. Unless, therefore, accumu- 
 lation and private landlordism come in, State-landlordism seems 
 no advantage. Cultivation, again, does seem to follow laws 
 
xlii INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 other than those of manufacturing industry, which lessen the 
 possibility of ordering things to be done by rote^ and enhance the 
 value of individual attention and skill.^ Recognition of this 
 has led reformists to substitute a policy of actively assisting the 
 peasants for the orthodox policy of leaving them to succumb 
 to capitalism. Their formula is : " Collectivize credit, transport, 
 exchange, and all subsidiary manufacture, but individuaUze 
 culture." What reinforces the last clause from another side 
 is the enormous difficulty of regulating employment in culture. 
 A regular eight-hours' day for cultivators in Europe scarcely 
 seems practicable ; and effective inspection would be very 
 hard. The " self-employment " of the peasant might help to 
 solve this. 
 
 The policy of championing the peasant has important 
 champions in France and Germany, though not the acknow- 
 ledged party policy in either.^ The lines which it would 
 follow have been largely indicated by practice in Denmark, 
 and in certain British colonies. In England it hardly seems 
 to have been heard of, and English Socialists, who are almost 
 exclusively urban, continue to view Irish land-purchase or 
 English small-holdings schemes with suspicion. Over against 
 it the more orthodox Socialist view still develops with great 
 vitality ; its most brilliant, up-to-date, and elastic exponent is, 
 perhaps, the Belgian leader, M. Vandervelde. 
 
 Most typical of the difference between revolutionaries and 
 reformists is their attitude to trade-unions. The Marxian view 
 came out well at the German party's Cologne Congress in 
 1893, and may be read in a speech made by Liebknecht on 
 its morrow at Bielefeld. It recognizes their achievement • 
 
 ' Manufacture is making things ; agriculture is watching and tending 
 things (plants and animals) which make themselves. The latter must 
 deal constantly with the unpredictable variations of organic growth and 
 the natural influences (weather, etc.) which react on it. 
 
 ' In Germany it was first brought to the front by Herr von Vollmar ; 
 for its subsequent history cp. ifi/ra, pp. 219-227. The French advocacy 
 of it may be well seen in some remarkable articles by G. Sorel, Hevue 
 Socialiste, March and April, 1901. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xliil 
 
 Liebknecht in the speech cited extolled the English coal- 
 strike then in progress, and not only brought out the miUtant 
 advantages of combining German political, and English trade- 
 unionist organization, but showed himself partly socialism 
 conscious that trade-unionism might not be super- and trade- 
 seded by Socialism even when victorious.^ But it "°'°"'^'"- 
 feels that trade-unions, as they exist, often supplant and delay 
 Socialism, and it only trusts them under reserves. Whereas 
 reformist SociaUsm thinks them stepping-stones, and is all for 
 them. It has theorized their function in Socialist society with 
 more care than the Marxians.'^ What it does not fully see, 
 or at least fully acknowledge, is that while the trade-union 
 which it desiderates is not the trade-union which in Europe 
 exists, the gulf between them can only be bridged by a 
 revolutionary alteration ^ of the very ideals which the existing 
 trade-union most strongly fosters. 
 
 England is the classical land of trade-unions, and the 
 absence of a working-class Socialism in it may be attributed 
 more to the course followed by them than to any other single 
 fact. They consolidated their power over the English working- 
 class in the middle third of the last century. At that time 
 they were non-political in the sense of having no preference as 
 between Tory landlords and Liberal capitalists ; but in much 
 they were political bodies. The Socialists on their side were 
 willing that trade-unionism should develop rather as a State 
 within the State than as a party within it. Germans, whose 
 existing undemocratic States seemed incapable of being ever 
 fitted for Socialist uses, hoped that the new working-class 
 
 ' By no means all revolutionary Socialists have yet advanced thus far. 
 For a much narrower view of trade-unions see Ferri, Associazioni opraie 
 i Socialismo (Rome, 1902). But see supra, p. xiv. 
 
 ^ The works of capital importance are Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb s 
 History of Trade Unionism and Industrial Dtmocracy. The last chapter 
 of the latter embodies perhaps the last point yet reached in speculation. 
 
 = In Australasia sensational union-smashing brought such a revolu- 
 tionary alteration about, while Socialism from Europe helped to shape its 
 issue. 
 
xliv INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 organizations might supplant rather than transform. Marx 
 inclined to this view at the end of the period, after a long 
 experience of trade-unionism in it.^ 
 
 But with the Trades-Union Acts of 1871 and 1875 came 
 a change. England legalized private collective bargaining, and 
 the unions had not to be political to be able to exist and 
 function freely. Their success now depended on their in- 
 cluding all possible fellow-workmen irrespective of politics, 
 and this was a motive for being non-political. Private col- 
 lective bargaining grew vastly, and was developed by trade- 
 unionists into a method, whereby they thought that the 
 working-class could satisfy most reasonable expectations. This 
 opinion, with a corresponding distrust of politics, still charac- 
 terizes the English workers. Temporarily there is a breach in 
 it. Legal decisions of the House of Lords in igoi restored 
 certain restrictions on private collective bargaining, which the 
 trade-unionists find they cannot remove without turning poli- 
 ticians. Hence the Labour Representation Committee.^ This 
 is now supported financially by over a million trade-unionists, 
 and has captured several Parliamentary seats. At present it has 
 no explicit common programme, except the restoration of that 
 state of the law under which its trade-unionist members thought 
 political action superfluous. But it will go further if they unlearn 
 their complete reliance upon private collective bargaining. 
 
 Socialists seldom apply the idea that " paUiatives postpone 
 Socialistic remedies " so as to belittle what the trade-unions 
 Ton * ri*-* have achieved. But to complacent estimates of it 
 vate coUec- they oppose three main criticisms : 
 galnfng^ (i) It is inconclusive and enormously costly. 
 
 All private bargaining means private economic 
 warfare. That the warfare is collective gives the workman a 
 chance of winning ; but it also vastly multiplies the sufferings 
 occasioned. As the author of the New Zealand Arbitration 
 
 ' Cp. his letter on the Gotha programme (written in 1875). 
 " The Committee was started before the decisions, but they admittedly 
 vitalized its action, 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xlv 
 
 Law puts it, there are three parties to every strike or lock-out 
 —the masters, the men, and the general community, and there 
 are always at least two losers.' 
 
 (2) The area of the working class benefited is very con- 
 fined — virtually confined to skilled male workers. 2,000,000 
 men and 120,000 women are the trade-unionists of a nation, 
 with perhaps 15,000,000 wage-earners. The residue do not 
 lose only as part of the public during strikes. Most indus- 
 tries employ both skilled and unskilled labour. The better- 
 paid skilled workmen are organized, and demand advances of 
 wages collectively. If they win without fighting, the improve- 
 ment in their wage will tend to keep the unskilled labourers' 
 down. If, however, they fight and work ceases, the unskilled 
 labourers are thrown willy-nilly into an unemployment which 
 they can less afford to endure, and which it is not in their 
 power to terminate, on behalf of interests which are not 
 theirs. 
 
 (3) The area of working-class interests benefited is small. 
 Non-political unionism has marshalled the skilled workers, the 
 natural leaders of their class, almost solely against the em- 
 ployers. It has withdrawn attention from the pre-eminent 
 land question, and been a godsend to railway companies and 
 other monopolists exploiting the consumer. It may have 
 made Lancashire wages among the best in the world; it has 
 left Lancashire towns among the worst. 
 
 Socialism must regard these criticisms as insurmountable 
 by any method short of abolishing private collective bargains. 
 Criticism (2) might be got over by introducing alongside of 
 trade-unionism the Victorian system of wage-boards for the 
 earners of low wages. But the more thorough way is that 
 pointed by New Zealand— compulsory State arbitration 
 between employers and employees. By this trade-unions 
 would cease to be fighting bodies and become representative ; 
 
 1 The strongest unions now avoid fighting wherever possible, and have 
 learned greatly to increase such possibilities. But upon fighting they 
 always rest, and their strength is their fighting capacity. 
 
xlvi INTRODUCTION, 1903 
 
 rich and poor workers could all alike be organized, and the 
 former would have no motive for forming unrepresentative 
 knots by themselves. Sweating could be stamped out, and 
 unskilled labour be paid the living wage which our social 
 investigators are convinced that it does not get. The passage 
 from trade-unionism to Socialism is bridged. This idea is 
 heartily welcomed by the Socialist historians of trade-unionism, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, and in France, M. Millerand's 
 tireless work for trade-unionism evidently contemplates some 
 such end. Trade-unionists outside Australasia are still gene- 
 rally against it, but in part for temporary reasons. The 
 system's effect in transferring the "fighting" of the workers 
 from trade-unionist to the political sphere is the essence of 
 Socialism ; but where, as in England and America, the workers 
 have strong unions and weak parties, they naturally do not 
 jump at it. To overcome this hesitation should be a principal 
 aim of Socialist trade-unionists j but they have not all yet 
 realized it as such.^ 
 
 The movement of the Labour Representation Committee 
 is therefore still only a hope for the English Socialists; but it 
 is their main hope. All experience except in New Zealand 
 (where an abnormally democratic Radicalism made an excep- 
 tion more apparent than real) goes to show that a separate 
 Labour party, allying but not fusing with other parties, is 
 indispensable for a persistent Socialist policy. Mere "per- 
 meation " of the bourgeoisie and its parties has not suflficed ; 
 it seems, indeed, almost a spent force. In municipal govern- 
 ment, where the governed are relatively near to the eye and 
 conscience of the governing, it has achieved something; the 
 wage-clauses of our municipalities are indubitable Socialism. 
 Their " municipalization " only is so when done in the same 
 spirit; the likeUhood is great that, pursued as much of it is 
 
 ' At the English Trade Union Congress in 1906 a resolution in favour 
 of compulsory arbitration was defeated by 938,000 votes to 541,000. Its 
 principal opponents were the Miners' Federation, who stand outside the 
 Labour Party. But for their vote it would have been carried. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 1903 xlvii 
 
 " unconsciously " by uninspired men, it may go the way of the 
 British co-operative movement, and harden into a merely 
 mechanical device, slightly benefiting the pockets of con- 
 sumers. But all municipal Socialism is controlled by national 
 government, upon which "permeation" has made httle im- 
 pression. It was when, on Pamell's death, the Irish question 
 lapsed, that Socialism had its best chance of capturing English 
 politics. It tried permeation, and for a few years almost 
 fancied itself successful. But the first live interest after the 
 Irish — Imperialism — ^knocked it easily out; and now that 
 after eight years that is flagging, the Protectionist controversy 
 has intervened, perhaps for an equal period. 
 
 By affiliating two Socialist bodies besides its trade-unionists, 
 the Labour Representation Committee has left open a way 
 for non-manual workers to join it But the great politicians, 
 without whom no political movement can live, are still to 
 seek. The theorists of English Socialism, though few, may 
 compare with those of other nations; the English Labour 
 leaders, though they do not number a Bebel or an Anseele, 
 compare well with the leaders of the other English classes. 
 But men like Jaurfes or Vandervelde, who each are first-rate 
 thinkers, writers, Parliamentarians, wire-pullers, and mob- 
 orators, all rolled into one, — such men simply do not exist in 
 English SociaUsm, nor indeed in English politics ; and perhaps 
 they never will until members of Parliament are paid. Nor 
 can Socialists look with full confidence upon the English 
 electorate. It is hardly disputable that millions of electors in 
 the greater British cities have reached a point of personal deca- 
 dence — physical, mental and moral — to which no Continental 
 country furnishes a parallel on any comparable scale. Time is 
 steadily multiplying these millions ; and for English Socialism 
 there is therefore a race against time which it is very likely not 
 to win. 
 
MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 I 
 
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MODERN 
 AND UTOPIAN SOCIALISM 
 
 By a. Bebel 
 
 This is an excerpt from Bebel's Charles Fourier (pp. 287-9). 
 
 August Bebel was bom in 1840 ; apprenticed to a wood-turner at 
 fourteen ; entered politics at Leipzig, and in 1864 was President of 
 the Deutacher Arbeiterbildungsverein (a Radical organization) ; in 
 1865 was brought to Socialism by Liebknecht ; in 1871 protested 
 with Liebknecht against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, whose 
 neutralization he still advocates ; has, since Liebknecht's death, been 
 leader of the Social Democratic party in the German Reichstag. 
 
 All Socialistic experiments which are attempted inside the 
 bourgeois world, and aimed naturally at the reconciliation of 
 mutually exclusive opposites, must come of necessity to grief. 
 While such experiments last some time, as in some small 
 communistically organized communities in the United States, 
 they are able to do so only through almost perfect isolation 
 from the rest of the world, and only under an economic system 
 which constrains their adherents to Spartan simplicity, and 
 necessitates patriarchal conditions. This is not the developed 
 civilization for which mankind strives. That requires a free, 
 unimpeded unfolding of all men's talents and capacities, and 
 a full enjoyment of all the attainments of civilization, which is 
 only to be won if the means of civilization are more and more 
 
 I B 
 
2 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 multiplied up to the highest technical and scientific levels. A 
 small isolated community, limited in its powers and means, 
 cannot achieve this, be it never so artistically organized. It 
 is disturbed by every foreign influence which acts on it from 
 outside; and this effect will be the more present the more 
 vital are the relations which the part conceives to be necessary 
 towards the whole. Either it must go with the whole and 
 develop with it, or it must remain isolated and ossify ; there 
 is no third alternative. 
 
 Ii;, the bourgeois world men can only be conceived as 
 acting in bourgeois fashion. The individual plays towards the 
 whole the part of a tiny cog on a monstrous mechanism, whose 
 many dozens of wheels clash with their thousands of cogs and 
 little cogs in a prescribed order. The effect of the individual 
 is seen in his effect on the whole, and reversely in the effect 
 of the whole on individuals. Both complete and condition 
 each other. Whoever strives as an individual against the 
 whole, and thinks he can go his particular way; whoever 
 thinks he can arbitrarily break trough the social mechanism 
 in which all are confined j whoever fancies he can found his 
 own particular Kingdom of Heaven, will speedily learn by 
 hard facts to take another view of his own impotence and 
 incapacity. Hence all Socialistic experimenting inside the 
 bourgeois world, whether it proceeds from an individual who 
 imagines he can produce and distribute Sociahstically as a 
 bourgeois entrepreneur, or from a small aggregate who endeavour 
 to do so for and among themselves, is Utopian fancy-mongering. 
 Every such attempt indicates an immature spirit which can 
 only have the effect of provoking disillusionments, discrediting 
 the ideas among undiscerning persons, and giving the adver- 
 sary the weapons he wants against the efforts of which he is 
 afraid. 
 
 The great progress of our age is, that the Utopians have 
 died, or are dying, out. Among the masses they find no foot- 
 hold — find one less to-day than ever. Even the simplest 
 workman feels that nothing can be set up artificially, that what 
 
A. BEBEL 3 
 
 is to be must develop, and must develop with and through the 
 whole — not separated and isolated from it. The thing is to 
 clear the course for development, to remove all that is old or 
 has died out, to ease the ending of what is dying out, and with 
 this object to direct the search of criticism to every point at 
 which evils appear. People who apply criticism must trace 
 out the causes which produced evil. When the causes are 
 ascertained, the remedies spontaneously follow. 
 
II 
 
 MARXIAN SOCIALISM IN POLITICS 
 By W, Liebknecht 
 
 This is an extract from the speech made by Liebknecht at the 
 Erfurt Cong^ress of the German party in 1891, when moving the final 
 adoption of the programme there drawn up. 
 
 Wilhelnj- Liebknecht (1826-1900) was the leader of the German 
 Social- Democratic party throughout the most critical period of its 
 growth. Himself a Marxist, he was largely responsible for the 
 union of the Marxists and Lassalleans, and their concentration upon 
 a common programme at Gotha in 1875. His tactical ability in 
 subsequently enabling his party to parry Bismarck's Anti-Socialist 
 Law was acknowledged by Bismarck himself. Like Marx, Engels, 
 and Lassalle, he belonged by birth to the bourgeoisie ; and he received 
 a University education at Berlin and Marburg. 
 
 I WILL now go into the main principles of the programme. Of 
 course, you will not expect me to explain here and now every 
 single point ; I must confine myself to exhibiting the thought 
 of the general portion broadly and as a whole. Among the 
 detailed demands I will only note what really requires notice, 
 because it has been insufficiently discussed or because it varies 
 from the earlier formulae. The leading thought which was 
 equally apparent in all the draft-programmes submitted to the 
 Congress was to indicate clearly the causes whence the 
 embarrassments of contemporary society proceed — to exhibit 
 the process of economic development which divides the 
 capitalistic world, the society of to-day, into two hostile camps, 
 and to make plain the necessity of the class-war in capitalistic 
 
 4 
 
W. LIEBKNECHT 5 
 
 society— to make plain how, by the necessity of Nature, as 
 long as bourgeois society exists, the system of exploitation and 
 oppression must exist too. As the cause of the division of 
 society into two hostile camps we had to assign the fact that 
 the means of production — i.e. land, raw materials, tools, 
 machines, mines, and means of transport — have passed from 
 the possession of the community, of collective society, into 
 the private possession of individuals. If we imagine a state 
 of things in which the necessary means of production are in 
 every individual's possession, so that every one can work 
 independently of others, then there is no production of 
 commodities ; every one really produces for himself; there is 
 no dependence of one upon another, no exploitation and 
 enslavement. Whither and how far such a state of things has 
 existed, we leave commentators to say. It is only possible 
 and conceivable in a form of society such that the means of 
 production — notably the chiefest of them. Mother Earth — are 
 in the possession of the real producers, the workers. As soon 
 as ever private property in the means of production is started, 
 there begins exploitation and the splitting of society into two 
 classes whose interests make them each other's enemies. 
 This process does not accomplish itself suddenly, but it in- 
 cessantly goes on, and it may be traced back through the 
 Middle Ages into the most hoary antiquity. In the bourgeois 
 society, with which we have to concern ourselves and the 
 programme is concerned, it accomplishes itself with increasing 
 rapidity and momentum, according to the degree in which the 
 means of work are concentrated and become the monopoly or 
 property of a small minority, and according to the increased 
 productivity of the means of production, which constantly 
 grow more perfect. Simple tools become machines ; machines 
 themselves keep on being improved; aggregates of capital, 
 and with them the intensity of production, grow continuously. 
 Out of the small industry develops the great industry ; out of 
 that, as known to us at the beginning of wholesale capitalistic 
 production, develops the modern giant industry. Even this 
 
6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 no longer sufificesj the giant concerns coalesce into trusts, 
 cartels, federations, etc. And with this concentration of 
 capital, of the means of production, there increases similarly, 
 on the one hand, the intensity of production, which grows 
 unUmitedly, and on the other the intensity of exploitation, the 
 suckirig-up of the intermediate classes, the precariousness of 
 the proletariate's existence, the degree of misery, of oppression, 
 of enslavement. 
 
 This historical process of the development of society and 
 the laws, according to which it accomplishes itself, had to be 
 set out in the programme. It had to be shown how the 
 conditions of to-day originate in this separation of the workers 
 from the means of production ; how with the growing con- 
 centration of the means of production exploitation has grown 
 and must grow ; how the root of the evil lies precisely in the 
 fact that the means of production become private property ; 
 how from this fact exploitation naturally and necessarily results. 
 For whoever has the strength to work but lacks the means 
 which would enable him to exert it, to turn it to account, to 
 bring it into the " economic play of forces '' — such a man 
 cannot live ; he is inseparable from his power of work, and if 
 he is not to starve he must give himself into the service of 
 another who is a private owner of means of production. 
 Hence arises and is developed economic dependence, economic 
 exploitation, and from it political dependence and enslave- 
 ment in every form — a process which, as stated, goes on with 
 increasing rapidity. The division of society grows ever deeper 
 and more complete; what is between the capitalist and 
 proletarian extremes, the so-called intermediate strata of the 
 population, which still, on a small scale, own the means of 
 production but must work themselves even if they also employ 
 others — these intermediate " strata " (to avoid the vague word 
 " ranks ") disappear more and more, and the whole process 
 of development of contemporary society proceeds naturally 
 and necessarily, whither the essential being of that society 
 drives it, to the concentration of the means of production in 
 
W. LIEBKNECHT 7 
 
 a few hands, and the expropriation, the spoliation, of those 
 who have not the means of production by the monopoUsts 
 who have. Thus^gie whole history of bourgeois ^ocis|x.is a 
 history of expropriation — exproj^riatig^j^deaJermamntjysUm. 
 "The' possessor of the rneans of production expropriates the 
 man whojias none and must work for him for a wage j he 
 pays UnT the wage only a part of the work performed ; the 
 svrplus-value, the unpaid performance, becomes in,, his Jiand 
 (the hand of the possessor of the means of work) capital, and 
 enables him to draw tighter and firmer the worker's chains, 
 to complete his enslavement and exploitation. Thus the 
 worker, as he works and creates wealth, forges the fetters of 
 ms own bondage. Nothing in the process can be altered by 
 pious wishes. All criticisms of capitalism, which do not go 
 to the core, are fruitless ; all attempts to remove the " excresr 
 cences " of capitalism, while maintaining its bases, are Utopian. 
 These "excrescences" are the logical results, the inevitable 
 consequence of the capitalistic system; whoever wants to 
 remove them must remove it, their cause. By this demand 
 the Social Democracy distinguishes itself from all other parties 
 and stamps itself a revolutionary party, while all other parties, 
 without exception, take their stand upon private ownership of 
 the means of production. This point, because of its out- 
 standing importance, we have formulated in the programme 
 now submitted to you more fully and precisely than was done 
 in the first draft. In the latter it was stated that all other 
 parties took their stand in common upon capitalism, and, 
 therefore, were collectively hostile to the working classes. 
 Against this it could be urged that in Germany we have 
 movements which, though politically unimportant do aim, like 
 us, at clipping the wings of capitalism so far as it manifests 
 itself on the large scale— I mean movements like those in 
 favour of guilds and corporations, or the Anti-Semitic. These 
 we cannot easily designate as capitalistic, but they do, as our 
 draft puts it, take their stand on private ownership of the 
 means of production, and they do so in common with all 
 
8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 other parties. And against all parties standing there in 
 
 common we Social Democrats close our ranks. There are 
 
 no compacts^ no compromises; between us and the army of 
 
 our allied opponents is a great gulf, a gulf growing wider and 
 
 deeper every day, across which the economic leap may be 
 
 made from their side to ours, because theirs is the higher ; 
 
 and every day and hour the pressure and logic of the economic 
 
 development throws across into the proletariate from the 
 
 ranks of our adversaries regiments who previously fought 
 
 there, and thousands, yes, hundreds of thousands, are hurled 
 
 into the abyss of misery. But this bottomless gulf is not filled 
 
 up by their bodies ; it exists, it is the boundary separating us 
 
 from all other parties, and every one who wants to cross it, 
 
 who resigns himself to petty-bourgeois Utopianisms, who does 
 
 not at every moment keep clearly before his eyes, that only 
 
 the removal of the causes, only the abolition of private property 
 
 in the means of production, only the abolition of the entire 
 
 present method of producing commodities, can bring misery, 
 
 exploitation, and enslavement to an end, who mistakenly 
 
 believes that gradually, by way of compromise, by petty 
 
 bourgeois salves and palliatives the evils of contemporary 
 
 society may be so mitigated as to be at least for some time 
 
 bearable — every one who subscribes to such views deserts the 
 
 revolutionary ground of the party. We have to consider that 
 
 when we ask, " Are you one of us or not ? " The finest phrase 
 
 about improving the lot of the workers profits nothing, we get 
 
 no help thence. 
 
 Is it of the essence of the present society and production, 
 that exploitation grows ever more intense ? Can we, by the 
 legislation of the State, be it never so powerful, be screwed 
 back into mediasvalism ? Can the great industry be sacrificed 
 to the small industry, as the guild party desire? No; it is 
 simply impossible. In the very simple question of the law 
 for protecting workers the class-State of to-day, which must 
 serve capitalism, has never had the power to free itself from 
 the dominating class— that same State which dreamers have 
 
W. LIEBKNECHT 9 
 
 called a " social " kingdom or empire ! Society does not 
 let itself be forced back into earlier forms of production 
 inferior for business purposes; and the new forms lead 
 naturally and necessarily to ever greater concentration of the 
 means of production, ever greater exploitatioa and enslave- 
 ment, ever more general proletarization of the members of 
 society. Therefore the,;Social Democracy demands that this 
 be attacked at the base, at the root, that the causes of these 
 conditions be removed. Its demand is not a capricious, but 
 fully conscious demand ; it has risen to that view of the world 
 which conceives society as an organism whose growth and 
 development are natural and necessary. It sees that con- 
 temporary society has created conditions which must destroy 
 it; it sees — what is expressed in all our draft programmes — 
 that the society of to-day is driven onwards with brazen logic 
 to a catastrophe, to its own " world-ruin," which is not to be 
 averted. Socialism is not an arbitrary invention. The so-called 
 " State of the Future," with which we are derided and whose 
 bases we can of course only indicate in general outlines, is the 
 necessary, inevitable consequence of the capitalistic State of 
 the Present, as Sociahstic production is the necessary result 
 and consequence of to-day's capitalistic production. Thus 
 capitalism, while ever expanding further and piling up gigan- 
 tically the means of its power, is at the same time creating the 
 eneniy and the powers to which it must succumb — creating, as 
 the Communist Manifesto says, its own grave-digger — digging 
 its own grave. Capit alism makes the proletariate, which it 
 produces, its own heir, "prepares its lierifage/fofges its weapons, 
 enables it to realize what we are striving after, creates for it 
 the material conditions for the realization of our ideal, — in 
 short, the Capitalistic State of the Present begets against its will j 
 the State of the Future. In a condition of bourgeois industry 
 jon the small scale, of dwarf economics, a philanthropic 
 Utopianism, self-styled Socialism, was possible; but revolu- 
 tionary scientific SociaUsm, which has grasped the laws of the 
 development, and regards itself as that development's last 
 
10 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 consequence, was simply inconceivable. Socialism is the result 
 of modern capitalism ; the Socialist State is the successor and 
 heir of the Capitalist State. 
 
 Therefore in our draft-programme we have nowhere in- 
 troduced a misty, airy end to be aimed at. We have stated 
 iwhat is and what is coming. We have said : Society is thus ; 
 its laws are these ; we can no more alter them than the State 
 of to-day can ; they lead necessarily to the Socialistic society, 
 and since Socialism is a social necessity, we strive after it, 
 and call on the workers to range themselves under the banner 
 of the Social Democracy, and to " step into the ring " — as of 
 old the revolutionary peasants said — into the ring of the Social 
 Democratic programme. 
 
 We have declared that the movement accomplishes itself 
 on the basis of the class-war. This word, which was first im- 
 ported into German from English by Marx, forms the best 
 refutation of the supposition that the Marxian doctrine, 
 scientific Socialism, excludes personal interference with the 
 process of economic development, and favours a certain 
 fatalism, an inactive expectancy. That supposition is false; 
 the exact opposite is true. Itjyas preciseljr^Marx whq exhibited 
 the whole development of bourgeois socigjy as ihe result of a 
 seriej of class-'^rs, which fulfil themselves in ever higher forms, 
 with an ever deeper and further content, corresponding to the 
 uninterrupted onward development of economic conditions. 
 And the class-war is a war of living men, a real, personally 
 fought, genuine war ; and no one has expressed this nature of 
 the war more precisely than Marx. 
 
 If we say we wish to abolish the class-State of to-day, we 
 must also declare, to break the point off our opponents' objec- 
 tions, that the Social Democracy, while it fights the class-State, 
 will by abolishing the present form of production abolish the 
 class-war itself. When the means of production have passed 
 into the community's possession, then the proletariate is no 
 longer a class, any more than the bourgeoisie; the classes 
 cease; there only remains society, the society of equals — 
 
W. LIEBKNECHT ii 
 
 genuine human society, humane humanity. Hence it has 
 been, and had to be, declared most distinctly^jjiat^ w^ do not 
 £2^ *? J^P^'^L"*^^ clmi-jominaHon b;^ another. Only malice 
 and thoughtlessness can currently foist such a thought upon 
 us, for in order to rule, in order to be able to exercise a 
 domination, I must personally possess means of production — 
 my owning means of production is the indispensable condition 
 of domination — and personal, private ownership of the means 
 of production is just what Socialism abolishes. Domination 
 and ex ploitation in every form are to^e abolished ; men are 
 tobeffee" andTequaP^ot masters and slaves, only comrades, 
 only brothers and sisters. 
 
 Next to this general thought, we had to emphasize the 
 injlet tiational cha racter of the party. Since the foundation of 
 the "International" in the middle of the sixties, the inter- 
 nationalism of the worker's movement has been recognized and 
 practically observed by the German workers on every occasion. 
 In the new programme we have expressed this thought very 
 definitely on two sides : firstly, on the economic side — in that 
 the economic development of its own nature bears an inter- 
 national character; and secondly, on the political side, 
 because the international character of the economic develop- 
 ment makes it impossible to solve social questions nationally 
 in one land, and hence the international co-operation of the 
 working-class is necessary. Further we had — and in view 
 of the misinterpretations and perverse conclusions to which 
 certain proceedings abroad have given rise, this was doubly 
 our duty — ^to declare with special emphasis and in words which 
 admit of no doubt, that we " feel and declare ourselves one 
 with the class-conscious workers of all other lands." The 
 international Social Democracy is for us not a phantom, not 
 merely a fine phrase ; it is an end, without whose attainment 
 the emancipation of the working-class cannot be accomplished. 
 We are internationalists in deadly earnest . We are fully 
 aware "of the consequences of "our declaration and the 
 obligations which it lays upon us; and if we do not state 
 
12 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 this in so many words, as the old programme did, that is 
 merely because, after our present declaration that we " declare 
 ourselves one with " the Social Democracy of all other lands, 
 we held it superfluous, indeed weakening. What we here 
 solemnly resolve will, like everything else in this programme, 
 be realized ui his life by every one of us, and translated into 
 his acts and affairs. In the international alliance of the 
 proletariate the German Social Democracy will always do its 
 duty, and shrink from nothing which duty bids. 
 
 I draw your attention, further, to the clause in the seventh 
 section: "The battle of the. working-class a,gainst capitalistic 
 exploitation Is necessarily a political battle. The working- 
 class* cannot carry on their economic battles -and develop 
 their economic organization without political rights." There 
 we express the political nature of our party, and separate 
 ourselves from those who preach the so-called "propaganda 
 by action ; " who in reality erect inaction into a programme, 
 and practise the propaganda of do-nothing with a flood of 
 revolutionary phrases. We must act, must influence politics, 
 must use every tool and handle at our disposal, apply every 
 lever to further our work. There is much to do, and the 
 more force we expend, the greater the sum-total of force 
 that we put into the work, the sooner will the work be done. 
 To expect that without our intervening in the political battle 
 the transformation of society, the social revolution, will be 
 achieved, is childish folly. Whoever thinks so has no idea of 
 the difficulty and magnitude of our war of emancipation. In 
 Halle I spoke of " how the society of to-day grows into the 
 Socialistic society." I have often been taken to task for the 
 word. I meant to indicate by it merely the organic character 
 of the development of society, which is not a machine, but 
 a collective living being j but on every occasion, including 
 that one, I have clearly insisted that men are not the toy of 
 destiny, and may not stand inactive, expecting blessings to 
 descend on them ; that circumstances determine men, but that 
 they are also determined by men ; and that as the class-war 
 
W. LIEBKNECHT 13 
 
 is a constant human wrestle, so the attainment of our end can 
 only be the fruit of a ceaseless war, in which all fight together, 
 and each throws his whole self, his existence, recklessly into 
 the balance, joyfully staking life and property. 
 
 " It cannot effect the passing of the means of production 
 into the ownership of the community without acquiring political 
 power," says this section, further on; that is, we^ fight for 
 power in the State, for " the latch of legislation," which is now 
 monopolized* "By^oiir opponents in their class-interest. "To 
 shape this battle of the working-class into a conscious and 
 united effort^ and to show it its naturally necessary end is the 
 object of the Social Democratic party." So it is not our 
 object to conjure up before the workers the phantasm of 
 the State of the Future, but to enlighten them upon the 
 process of development and the laws of the movement, 
 of the society of to-day; to show them what is necessary 
 to make an end of exploitation and enslavement, to show 
 them how bourgeois society itself in its further development 
 more and more puts into our hands the means of aholishr 
 ing it. Here the double^haracter of our party is clearly 
 expressed : the scientific character which refuses, after the 
 Bismarckian recipe of blood and iron, to conceive the his- 
 torical movement as an arbitrary one which you can lead as 
 you like to revolution or reaction, and which recognizes that 
 the movement has fixed, unal terable laws; and the practical 
 character of our party, which manifests itself in that the workers 
 are shown the way to the end, are shown that they can only 
 attain their end by obtaining .political power, only by our 
 hastening as much as possible the process of dissolution of 
 contemporary society, only by our organizing ourselves for 
 power more and more. 
 
Ill 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF MARX'S THEORY 
 By F. Engels 
 
 This is part iii. § 2 of Engel's Herrn Eugen Diihringa Umwdlzung 
 der Wissensohaft. 
 
 F. Engels (1820-1895) was the son of a wealthy Bremen cotton- 
 spinner. In 1844 he met Karl Marx in Paris, and for the rest of his 
 life was Marx's alter ego. The two last volumes of Marx's Capital 
 were edited by him after Marx's death. 
 
 His book, Herrn Eugen Duhringa Umwdlzung der Wissensohaft, 
 was published in 1878, towards the close of Marx's life. Few books 
 are cited oftener or with more authority in the discussions of the 
 German party. 
 
 The materialist conception of history starts from the principle 
 that production;, and next to production the exchange of its 
 Th "m - products, is the basis of every so c ial sy stem ; that 
 topiaiist in every society arising in history the allotment 
 
 eoneeption qJ products, and with it the division of society 
 of history." . ^ '^ , ,, , , ^ . '' 
 
 mto classes or ranks, depends upon what is pro- 
 duced, how it is produced, and how when produced it is 
 exchanged. Accordingly the ultimate causes of all social 
 changes and political revolutions are not to be looked for in 
 the heads of men, in their growing insight into eternal truth 
 and justice, but in changes of the methods of production and 
 ,exchange ; they are to be looked for not in the philosophy, 
 [but in the economv of the epoch in question. The awakening 
 perception that existing social arrangements are unreasonable 
 and unjust, that reason has become nonsense and goodness 
 a scourge, is only a symptom of the fact that in the methods 
 
 14 
 
F. ENGELS ,5 
 
 of production and forms of exchange alterations have 
 silently gone on to which the social system fitted for earlier 
 economic conditions no longer corresponds. That amounts 
 to saying that the means for removing the evils revealed must 
 itself, more or less developed, be present in the altered 
 conditions of production. This means is not something to be 
 invented out of the head, but something to be discovered 
 by means of the head in the material facts of production lying 
 before us. 
 
 How does modern Socialism accord with this conception ? 
 
 The present social system has been, as is now pretty 
 gene'rally conceded, created by the now dominant class, the 
 bourgeoisie. The method of production proper to the bour- 
 geoisie, designated, since Marx, as the capitalistic method of 
 production, was incompatible with the local and fixed privi- 
 leges and the reciprocal personal ties of the feudal system; 
 the bourgeoisie shattered the feudal system and erected on 
 its ruins the bourgeois conception of society, the empire of 
 free competition, of free locomotion, of equal rights for the 
 possessors of commodities, and of all the other bourgeois fine 
 things. The capitalistic method of production The rise of 
 could now unfold itself freely. The productive the "great 
 forces elaborated under the direction of the hour- ''"^"^''■y" 
 geoisie developed, after steam and the new machinery had 
 transformed the old manufacture into the great industry, with 
 hitherto unheard-of rapidity on a hitherto unheard-of scale. 
 But as in its time manufacture and the handicraft developed, 
 under its influence came into conflict with the feudal fetters of 
 the guilds, so the great industry in its fuller development 
 comes into conflict with the limitations in which the 
 capitalistic method of production has confined it. under eon- 
 The new productive forces have already quite <ntions de- 
 outgrown the bourgeois form of their utilization ; petty 
 and this conflict between productive forces and industry, 
 methods of production is not a conflict which has originated 
 in the heads of men, like the conflict between human original > 
 
1 6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 sin and divine righteousness, but it exists in facts, is objective, 
 i outside of us, independent of the will or the course even of 
 ithose human beings who have brought it about. Modern 
 Socialism is nothing more than, the mirroring in thought of 
 this conflict in fact, its ideal reflection in the heads of the 
 class, primarily, which directly suffers by it, the working- 
 class. 
 
 In what does this conflict consist ? 
 
 Before capitaUstic production — that is, in the Middle Ages 
 
 — there everywhere existed petty industry, on the basis of 
 
 the workers owning privately their means of production : the 
 
 Origins of agriculture of the small free or subject peasants, 
 
 the present the handicraft of the towns. The means of work 
 
 ownership — 1^^^, agricultural implements, workshop, manual 
 
 and ex- tools — were means of work for the individual, 
 
 change, ^^^y calculated for individual use, so necessarily 
 
 upon a small, pigmy, restricted scale. But for that very 
 
 reason they belonged as a rule to the producer himself. To 
 
 concentrate these fragmentary, cramped means of production, 
 
 to expand them, to transform them into the powerfully 
 
 operative lever of the production of to-day, was just the 
 
 rdk in history of the capitalistic method of production and 
 
 its agent, the bourgeoisie. How it carried this out historically 
 
 after the fifteenth century in the three stages of simple 
 
 co-operation, manufacture, and the great industry, Marx 
 
 has depicted expressly in the fourth section of Capital. 
 
 But the bourgeoisie, as is there proved, could 
 
 obsoies- not change those limited means of production 
 
 thr^u h the '^°''° ™^Shty productive forces, without changing 
 
 Pise of socio! Ithem from means of production of the individual 
 
 methods of into social means of production only to be utilized 
 production. , „ ^- -^ e t i ^. , . 
 
 by a collectivity of men. In place of the spmning- 
 
 wheel, the hand-loom, and the smith's hammer, came the 
 
 spinning-mule, the power-loom, and the steam-hammer; 
 
 in place of the individual workshop, the factory enabling 
 
 hundreds and thousands to work together. And along with 
 
F. ENGELS ,7 
 
 the means of production, production itself changed from a"" 
 series of individual performances into a series of social acts, 
 and the products from products of individuals into social 
 products. The yarn, the cloth, the hardware, which now 
 came from the factory, were the common product of many 
 workers, through whose hands they had to go in order before 
 they were ready. No individual can say of them : " I made 
 that ; that is my product." 
 
 Where, however, the natural division of labour within society 
 is the basic form of production, it stamps on the products the 
 form of commodities, whose reciprocal exchange, purchase and 
 sale, puts the individual producers in a position to satisfy their 
 manifold needs. And in the Middle Ages this was the case. 
 The peasant, e.g., sold farm-produce to the handicraftsman, and 
 bought from him in return the products of handicraft. Upon 
 this society of individual producers, producers of commodities, 
 intruded the new method of production. In the midst of the 
 natural undesigned , division of labour prevailing all through 
 jociety, it set up the designed division of labour as organized 
 iaJhe individual factory ; by the side of individual production 
 aggeared social production. The products of both were sold 
 on the same market, therefore at prices at least approximately 
 equal. But the designed organization was more powerful than 
 the natural division of labour ; the factories with their social 
 labour got out their products more cheaply than the small 
 individual producers. Individual production failed in one 
 sphere after another ; social production revolutionized the 
 entire former method of production. But this its revolutionary 
 character' was so little recognized, that on the contrary it was 
 introduced as a means for augmenting and advancing the 
 production of commodities. It arose in immediate connection 
 with definite machinery, already discovered for the production 
 and exchange of commodities : merchant's capital, handicraft, 
 wage-labour. While it appeared itself as a new form of the pro- 
 duction of commodities, the forms of appropriation in force for 
 the production of commodities remained also in full force for it. 
 
 c 
 
1 8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 In the production of commodities, as developed in the 
 Middle" Ages" there could arise no question as to whose should 
 be the product of labour. As a rule, the individual producer 
 had made it out of raw material belonging to him, and often 
 Incompati- produced by him, with his own instruments of 
 bUityofthe ^grk, and his own manual labour or that of his 
 of apppopri- family. There was absolutely no need for him 
 ationand first to appropriate itj it belonged to him entirely 
 method'of of i'self. A man's ownership of the product rested, 
 production, therefore, on his own "work. Even where outside 
 assistance was used, this as a rule remained secondary, and 
 commonly involved some other benefit besides wages; the 
 guild apprentice and companion worked less for the money 
 and the wage than for their own training to be masters. Then 
 came the concentration of the means of production in great 
 workshops and factories, and its alteration into a really social 
 means of production. But the social means of production and 
 products were treated as though they were still, as they had 
 been, the means of production, and products, of individuals. 
 As the possessor of the means of production had hitherto 
 appropriated the product, because it as a rule was his own 
 product and the labour of outside assistants was the exception, 
 so now the possessor of the means of production continued to 
 appropriate the product, although it was no longer his product, 
 but exclusively the product of outside labour. Thus the 
 products now made socially were ijat appropriated by those 
 who had really set the means of production in motion and 
 really made the products, but by the caj^italists. Production, 
 and the means of it;' Have really become social. But they are 
 subject to a form of appropriation, which presupposes the 
 private production of individuals, in which every one possesses 
 and brings to market his own product. The method of pro- 
 duction is subject to this form of appropriation, although 
 it does away with what this form presupposes.' In this 
 
 ' It need not here be explained, that although the form of appro- 
 priation remains the same, its character is no less revolutionized by the 
 
F. ENGELS 19 
 
 contradiction, which lends to the new method of production 
 its capitalistic character, the whole discord of the present lies 
 already in germ. The more the new method of production 
 came to dominate all important fields of production and all 
 important countries, the more glaringly came perforce to 
 light th e incompatibil ity of social production and capitalistic 
 aptJ^oprt(^n. ' 
 
 The first capitalists found, as we said, the form of wage- 
 labour already to hand. But wage-labour as an exception, 
 a side occupation, a supplement, a transitional 
 stage. The country labourer, who from time to the wage- 
 time went to earn day -wages, had his few acres earning pro- 
 of his own land, from which alone he could if 
 necessary live. The guild ordinances provided that the com- 
 panion of to-day should pass on to be the master of to-morrow. 
 But as soon as the means of production were changed and 
 became social, and were concentrated into the hands of 
 capitalists, this was altered. The means of production, as 
 well as the product, of the small individual producer became 
 more and more valueless; nothing was left for him but to 
 go to the capitalist for wages. Wage-labour, previously an 
 exception and a supplement, became the rule and the funda- 
 mental form of all production; formerly a side occupation, 
 it became now the exclusive activity of the worker. The 
 temporary wage-worker turned into the lifelong wage-worker. 
 The multitude of lifelong wage-workers was, besides, colossally 
 increased through the simultaneous collapse of the feudal 
 system, dissolution of the retinues of the feudal lords, dismissal 
 of peasants from their court posts, etc. The cleavage was 
 
 process described above than is production. If I appropriate my own 
 product, or if I appropriate some one else's, those are naturally two very 
 different sorts of appropriation. Note too, that wage-labour, in which the 
 whole capitalistic method of production is contained in germ, is very old ; 
 in an individualized and scattered form it subsisted for centuries beside 
 slavery. But the germ could not develop into the capitalistic method of 
 production, until the historical conditions for it had come about. [Engels' 
 Note.] 
 
20 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 complete between the means of production concentrated in 
 
 the hands of the capitaUsts on the one side, and the producers 
 
 reduced to possessing nothing but their labour power on the 
 
 other. The contradiction between social production and 
 
 capitalistic appropriation appeared as an opposition between 
 
 proletariate and bourgeoisie. 
 
 We saw that the capitalistic method of production intruded 
 
 itself upon a society of individual producers producing com- 
 
 _ . modities, the means of whose social connection 
 
 Tyranny of , ' , ^ , . , -r. 
 
 competition was the exchange of their products. But every 
 
 *" 'f^ "t^" society resting on production of commodities has 
 the peculiarity, that in it the producers have lost 
 the control over their own social relations. Every one produces 
 for himself with his means of production, whatever it may be, 
 and for his individual exchange requirements. No one knows 
 how much of his article comes to the market, or how much of 
 it is needed; no one knows whether his individual product 
 meets a real need, whether he will be able to balance his 
 expenses, or to sell it at all. There is a prevailing anarchy of 
 social production. But production of commodities, like every 
 other form of production, has its peculiar, inherent laws, 
 inseparable from it ; and these laws are fixed, in spite of the 
 anarchy, in it and through it. They appear in the single per- 
 sistent form of social connection, in exchange, and they assert 
 themselves against the individual producers as the coercive laws 
 of competition. They are therefore at the outset imknown 
 to these producers themselveSj and have first to be gradually 
 discovered by them through long experience. They are fixed 
 not by the producers nor in the producers' interest, but as the 
 blindly-operative natural laws of their form of production. The 
 product governs the producer. 
 
 In mediaeval society, that is, in the first centuries, produc- 
 tion was essentially directed to producers' uses. It in the 
 main satisfied only the needs of the producer and his family. 
 Where, as in the country, there existed relations of personal 
 dependence, it contributed also to satisfy the needs of the 
 
F. ENGELS 21 
 
 feudal lord. In this case no exchange took place, and the 
 products did not acquire the character of commodities from it 
 either. The peasant's family produced nearly everything that 
 it needed, furniture and clothing no less than food. Only 
 when it went so far as to produce a surplus over and above its 
 own requirements and the tribute in kind due to the feudal 
 lord, did it also produce commodities; this surplus, thrown 
 into the social exchange, exposed for sale, became a com- 
 modity. The town handicraftsmen had of course from the 
 beginning to produce for exchange. But they, too, worked 
 principally to satisfy their own requirements ; they had gardens 
 and small fields ; they sent their cattle into the common forest, 
 which at the same time supplied them with timber and fire- 
 wood; the women spun flax, wool, etc. Production for the 
 purpose of exchange, production of commodities, was only 
 beginning. Hence a restricted exchange, a restricted market^ 
 a stable method of production, local exclusiveness against 
 outsiders, local unity within : the manor in the country, the 
 guild in the town. 
 
 But with the extension of production, and in particular 
 with the rise of the capitalistic method of production, the 
 hitherto dormant laws of the production of commodities be- 
 came more openly and powerfully realized. The old associa- 
 tions were relaxed, the old exclusive limits broken through, the 
 producers converted more and more into independent, isolated 
 
 producers of commodities. The anarchy of social Contrast 
 *^ , . , , , between 
 
 production became apparent, and was more and theorgani- 
 
 more accentuated. But the main instrument, by zation of 
 
 . ,. , , , ,. 1 • ppoduetlon 
 
 which the capitahsts method of production en- inthein- 
 
 hanced this anarchy in social production, was the dividual 
 
 - , , . . . factory ana 
 
 exact opposite of anarchy : the increasing orgam- the anarchy 
 
 zation of production on social lines in every ofproduc- 
 
 separate producing establishment. With this in- society as a 
 
 strument it put an end to the old peaceful stability, whole. 
 
 Where it was introduced into a branch of industry, it 
 
 suffered no older industrial methods to remain beside it. 
 
22 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Where it took hold of handicraft, it annihilated the old handi- 
 craft. The field of labour became a battle-field. The great 
 geographical discoveries, and the colonizations which followed 
 them, multiplied many times over the area of the market, and 
 emphasized the change from handicraft to manufacture. Not 
 only did the struggle break out between the separate local pro- 
 ducers ; the local struggles grew on their side to national ones, 
 the commercial wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 
 Finally, the great industry and the establishment of the world- 
 market made the struggle universal and at the same time gave 
 it an unheard-of severity. Between single capitalists as between 
 whole industries, and whole countries, the favour of natural or 
 artificial conditions of production decided the question of 
 existence. The weaker was mercilessly eliminated. It is 
 Darwin's struggle for individual existence, transferred with 
 heightened ferocity from nature to society. The natural 
 standpoint of the beast appears as the summit of human 
 development. The contradiction between social produc- 
 tion and capitalistic appropriation, reproduces itself as an 
 opposition between the organization of production in the 
 individual factory and the anarchy of production in the entire 
 society. 
 
 In these two manifestations of the contradiction imminent 
 in it by reason of its origin, the capitalistic method of pro- 
 duction moves, describing without any way out that vicious 
 circle, which already Fourier discovered it in. What Fourier, 
 of course, could not see in his time, is that this circle gradually 
 contracts, that the movement rather describes a spiral, and must 
 reach its end, like the movement of the planets, by a collision 
 with the centre. It is the driving force of the social anarchy 
 of production, which converts the great majority of human 
 beings more and more into proletarians, and again it is the 
 masses of proletarians which finally will put a stop to the 
 anarchy of production. It is the driving force of the social 
 anarchy of production, which converts the infinite perfectibility 
 of the machines of the great industry into an imperative 
 
F. ENGELS 23 
 
 command that every individual industrial capitalist shall perfect 
 his machinery more and more, on pain of ruin. But to perfect 
 machinery means to render superfluous human labour. If the 
 introduction and increase of machinery means the crushing out 
 
 of millions of manual workers by a few machine- ^ 
 
 . 1 • ^ :. , The new -^ 
 
 workers, the improvement of machmery means the " reserve- 
 crushing out of more and more of the machine- f-rmy"of 
 
 industry, 
 workers themselves j and, in the last instance, the 
 
 production of a number of available wage-workers exceeding 
 the average demand of capital for employees, — a regular reserve- 
 army of industry, as I called it as far back as 1845,' — available 
 for the times when industry is working at high pressure, thrown 
 on the pavement by the collapse which necessarily follows, at 
 all times a lead weight tied round the feet of the working-class 
 in its struggle for existence against capital, a regulator for 
 depressing the wage of labour to the low level set by the 
 capitalist demand. So it comes about that machinery, as 
 Marx puts it, is the most powerful weapon of capital against 
 the working-class, that the means of work is continually dashing 
 the means of subsistence out of the worker's hand, that the 
 worker's own product turns into a tool for the worker's enslave- 
 ment. Thus it happens that the economizing of the means of 
 work leads to most reckless squandering of labour-force and 
 robbery of what the labour-function should normally start 
 from ; that machinery, the strongest instrument for shortening 
 work-time, is transformed into the surest instrument for con- 
 verting the wEble lifetime of the worker and his family into 
 ayaiiable work-time for capital to profit ^by; that the over- 
 employment of one man comes to imply the unemployment of 
 another, and that the great industry, which hunts the whole 
 world over for fresh consumers, limits the consumption of the 
 masses at home to a starvation minimum, and undermines 
 thereby its own domestic market. " The law which keeps the 
 relative surplus population or reserve army of industry, con- 
 tinually balancing the extent and energy of the accumulation of 
 
 ' Lageder arbeitenden Klasse in England, p. 109, 
 
24 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 capital, rivets the worker more firmly to capital than Hephaestus' 
 wedges riveted Prometheus to the rocks. It causes an ac- 
 cumulation of misery corresponding to the accumulation of 
 capital. The accumulation of wealth at the one pole is there- 
 fore at the same time an accumulation of misery, hard work, 
 slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation at the 
 opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class, which produces its 
 own product in the form of capital."^ And to expect any 
 other division of the products from the capitahstic method of 
 production, is hke wanting the electrodes of a battery, while 
 remaining connected with it, to leave water undecomposed, 
 instead of developing oxygen at the positive pole and hydrogen 
 at the negative. 
 
 We saw that the maximized capacity for improvement of 
 modern machinery turns, through the anarchy of production 
 in society, into an imperative command that the individual 
 industrial capitalist shall continually improve his machinery, 
 continually raise its productive power. Into a similar imperative 
 command turns the mere de facto possibility of his extending 
 
 „ his sphere of production. The enormous power 
 
 The demand ^ ■ 5 „ . • •, . •, 
 
 fopexpan- of expansion of the great mdustry, compared to 
 
 sionof which that of gases is simply child's play, now 
 
 manifests itself to us as a qualitative and quanti- 
 tative demand for expansion, which laughs at every opposing 
 check. Such a check is formed by the consumption, the 
 outlet, the markets, for the products of the great industry. 
 But the capacity of expansion of markets, extensive and 
 intensive alike, is governed immediately by quite other laws, 
 with a far less energetic operation. The expansion of markets 
 cannot keep pace with the expansion of production. The 
 clash becomes inevitable, and as it can give rise to no solution 
 as long as it does not explode the capitalistic method of pro- 
 duction itself, it becomes periodic. Capitalistic production 
 gives rise to a new " vicious circle." 
 
 In fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, 
 ' Marx, Capital ; English translation by Moore and Aveling, p. 661. 
 
F. ENGELS 25 
 
 the whole industrial and commercial world, the production 
 and exchange of all the civilized nations and their more or 
 less barbarous dependencies, gets out of joint just jheopy of 
 about once every ten years. Transport comes to commercial 
 a standstill, the markets are glutted, products Ue •''"'^^s- 
 unremoved, as abundant as they are impossible to get rid of, 
 ready money goes out of sight, credit disappears, factories are 
 idle, the working masses lack the means of subsistence because 
 they have produced too much of it, bankruptcy follows bank- 
 ruptcy, and bankrupt after bankrupt is sold up. The standstill 
 lasts for years, productive forces as well as products are 
 squandered and destroyed wholesale, till the accumulated 
 masses of commodities are finally disposed of more or less 
 below value, and production and exchange gradually resume 
 their course. After a while the pace becomes marked j it falls 
 into a trot ; the trot of industry passes into a gallop, and this 
 again increases to the unbridled career of a complete industrial, 
 commercial, banking, and speculative steeplechase, so at last 
 to attain once more the breakneck leap into the grave of the 
 crisis. And so all over again and again. Since 1825 we have 
 now experienced this five times, and at the present moment 
 (1877) are experiencing it for the sixth. And the character 
 of these crises is so sharply marked out that Fourier named 
 them all when he named the first one : " crise plithorique " — 
 crisis from over-supply.^ 
 
 '"'In the crises the contradiction between social production 
 and capitalistic appropriation breaks out violently. The 
 circulation of commodities is for the moment annihilated; 
 the medium of circulation, money, becomes a hindrance to 
 circulation ; all the laws of the production and circulation of 
 commodities are turned upside down. The economic clashing 
 
 ' This theory, and its premiss that the workers only get a small fraction 
 of the value of their work, was advanced also by the theoretic Socialist 
 Rodbertus. Unchecked capitalism, in this view, minimizes the purchasing- 
 power of the majority, while maximizing their producing-power ; hence 
 the crises. 
 
26 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 has reached its maximum; the method of production is in 
 revolt against the method of exchange, the productive forces 
 are in revolt against the method of production, out of which 
 they have grown. 
 
 The fact that the social organization of production inside 
 the factory has developed itself to the point at which it is 
 incompatible with the anarchy of production existing beside 
 and beyond it in society; this fact is made obvious to the 
 capitalists themselves, by the powerful concentration of capitals, 
 which, during crises, is achieved by means of the ruin of many 
 great, and still more small, capitalists. The whole mechanism 
 of the capitalistic method of production gives out under the 
 pressure of the productive forces which it has itself created. 
 It can no longer convert all these masses of the means of 
 production into capital; they lie fallow, and for that very 
 reason, the reserve army of industry must lie fallow also. 
 Means of production, means of subsistence, available workers, 
 all elements of production and of the general wealth, are present 
 in superfluity. But "superfluity is the source of want and 
 need" (Fourier), because it is just it which impedes the 
 conversion of the means of production and subsistence into 
 capital. For in capitalist society the means of production 
 cannot come into action, unless they have previously been 
 converted into capital, into means for the exploitation of 
 human labour-force. Between them and the workers stands, 
 like a spectre, the necessity for them and the means of sub- 
 sistence to take the character of capital It alone prevents 
 the harmonious working of the material and personal factors 
 in production; it alone forbids the means of production to 
 function, and the workers to work and live. On the one hand, 
 therefore, the capitalistic method of production becomes con- 
 vinced of its own incapacity to control further these productive 
 forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves bring 
 increasing pressure to bear for the removal of the contradiction, 
 for their release from their character as capital, for actual 
 recognition of their character as social productive forces. 
 
F. ENGELS 27 
 
 It is this opposition of the powerfully growing productive 
 
 forces to their character as capital, this increasing pressure 
 
 for the recognition of their social character, which Tendency 
 
 compels the capitalist class itself more and more, *''"^?'*y '" 
 
 so far as this is at all possible, inside the capitalistic soeiaiiza- 
 
 conditions, to treat them as social productive forces. *''°",°^^, 
 ' . ^ proouetive 
 
 Both the high-pressure penods of mdustry, with their forces, 
 limitless inflation of credit, and the crisis itself by the collapse 
 of great capitalist firms, lead to that form of the socialization 
 of larger quantities of the means of production, which confronts 
 us in the different sorts of joint-stock companies. Many of 
 these means of production and traffic are from the first so 
 colossal, that, like the railways, they exclude every other form 
 of capitalist exploitation. At a certain stage of development, 
 this form also ceases to suffice ; the ofiScial representative of 
 capitalist society, the State, must take over their management.^ 
 This need for conversion into State property appears first in 
 
 • I say "must." For only in case the means of production or traffic 
 have really outgrown management by joint -stock companies, and therefore 
 nationalization has become economically irrefutable, only in this case does it 
 signify, even though achieved by the present State, an economic progress, 
 the attainment of a new step forward to the appropriation of all productive 
 forces by society itself. Recently, however, since Bismarck turned to 
 nationalization, a certain sham Socialism has appeared, and here and 
 there degenerated into mere servility, which pronounces all nationalization, 
 even Bismarck's, to be Socialistic without more ado. Of course if the 
 nationalization of the tobacco trade were Socialistic, Napoleon and 
 Mettemich would be numbered among the founders of Socialism. If 
 the Belgian State, for quite everyday reasons of politics and finance, built 
 its main railways itself; if Bismarck, without any economic necessity, 
 nationalized the main lines in Prussia, simply to be better able to manage 
 and utilize them in case of war, to train up railway servants as govern- 
 ment voters, and above all to get a new source of revenue independent 
 of Parliamentary votes — those were in no way Socialistic steps, neither 
 directly nor indirectly, consciously nor unconsciously. Otherwise the royal 
 sea-trade, the royal porcelain manufacture, and the company-tailors in the 
 army, would be Socialistic arrangements. [Note of Engels. Reformist 
 Socialists would probably describe all such arrangements as Socialistic, 
 although " indirectly and unconsciously " so.] 
 
28 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the case of the great traflSc concerns ; the post, telegraphs, and 
 railways. 
 
 If the crises revealed the inability of the bourgeoisie to 
 control further the modem productive forces, the conversion 
 of the great producing and traffic concerns into joint-stock 
 companies and State property shows that the bourgeoisie can 
 be dispensed with for that purpose. Every social function 
 of capitalists is now discharged by salaried servants. The 
 capitaUst has no social activity left, except to pocket incomes, 
 to cut off coupons, and to gamble on the Stock Exchange, 
 where the different capitalists relieve each other of their capital. 
 If the capitalistic method of production at first crashed out the 
 workers, so now it crashes out the capitalists, and rejects them, 
 just like the workers, into the surplus population, though not 
 immediately into the reserve-army of industry. 
 
 But neither the conversion into joint-stock companies, nor 
 that into State property, takes away the character of capital 
 from the productive forces. In the case of joint-stock com- 
 panies this is palpable. And the modem State, again, is only 
 the organization, which bourgeois society gives itself in order 
 Capitalist J ^° uphold the imiversal outward conditions of 
 eiass-cha- the capitalistic method of production against the 
 the existing encroachments, not only of the workers, but of 
 modem individual capitalists. The modem State, as indeed 
 its form shows, is an essentially capitalist machine, 
 a State of the capitalists, the ideal of capitahst aggregate. The 
 more productive forces it takes over into its ownership, the 
 more does it become a real capitalist aggregate, the more does 
 it exploit its citizens. The workers remain wage-workers, pro- 
 letarians. The relationship of capital is not removed ; rather 
 it culminates. But at the culmination comes transformation. 
 State-ownership of productive forces is not the solution of the 
 conflict ; but it contains in itself the formal means of the 
 solution, the handle to it. 
 
 This solution can only be found in the actual recognition of 
 the social nature of the modem productive forces, so that the 
 
F. ENGELS 29 
 
 methods of production, appropriation, and exchange shall be 
 harmonized with the social character of the means of pro- 
 duction. This can only take place, if society, jj-g.., y 
 openly and without beating round the bush, seizes 
 hold of the productive forces, which have outgrown every 
 management but its own. Thereby the social character of 
 the means of production and products, — which to-day turns 
 against the producers themselves, breaks down periodically the 
 methods of production and exchange, and only accompUshes 
 itself in violence and destruction, as a blindly working natural 
 law, — ^will be brought to its full effect by the producers acting 
 with their eyes open, and will transform itself from a cause of 
 disturbance and periodical collapse into the most powerful 
 lever of production itself. 
 
 The forces operative in society operate just like natural 
 forces — blindly, violently, destructively, so long as we do not 
 recognize them and reckon with them. But when once we 
 have recognized them and grasped their activity,- their direc- 
 tion, and their workings, it only depends upon ourselves to 
 _,5u]jject them more and_ more^^Jto pur..i5ill and to attain our 
 'objecte'Eytheir^ans. " And this holds particularly true of 
 the powerful productive forces of to-day. So long as we 
 obstinately refuse to understand their nature and their cha- 
 racter — and to thwart thrTunaerstanding the whole capitalistic 
 method of production and its defenders strive, — so long do 
 these forces work themselves out in spite of us, against us, 
 so long do they dominate us, as we have in detail described. 
 But once they are apprehended in their nature, they can, in 
 the hands of the associated producers, be Goov-erted-fiom 
 demonic masters jnto willing jervants. It is the difference 
 KtweenThe'destructive' lorce'of electricity in the lightning of 
 the storm, and the fettered electricity of the telegraph and the 
 arc-light; the difference between a fiery conflagration, and fire 
 working in the service of man. With this treatment of the 
 modem productive forces in accordance with their ultimately 
 recognized nature, the social anarchy of production is replaced 
 
30 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 by a socially designed regulation of production according to 
 the acquirements of the collectivity and of every individual ; 
 the capitalistic method of appropriation, in which the product 
 enslaves first the producer and afterwards the appropriator 
 too, is replaced by that method of appropriating the products 
 which is founded in the very nature of the modern means of 
 production : on the one hand, direct social appropriation as a 
 means for the maintenance and extension of production ; on 
 the other hand, direct individual appropriation as a means of 
 subsistence and enjoyment. 
 
 While the capitalistic method of production more and 
 more converts the great majority of the population into pro- 
 Theroleof letarians, it is creating the power which is com- 
 thepFoie- pelled, on pain of perishing, to achieve this 
 tapiate. revolution. While it more and more forces the 
 great socialized means of production to be converted into 
 State property, it is itself pointing the path for this revolution's 
 achievement. The proletariate seizes the power of the State, 
 and converts the means of production into State property at once. 
 But it thereby abolishes itself as a proletariate, aboHshes all 
 class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes the 
 State as State. Society, hitherto, stirred by class antagonisms, 
 needed the State, i.e. an organization of the exploiting class 
 in each period to maintain their external conditions of pro- 
 duction, and especially, therefore, to hold down by force the 
 exploited classes in the conditions of oppression afforded by 
 the existing methods of production (slavery, serfdom or 
 bondage, and wage-labour). The State was the official repre- 
 sentative of the whole of society, its embodiment in a visible 
 corporation ; but it was this only in so far as it was the State 
 of that class which itself for its period represented the whole 
 of society — in antiquity the State of the slave-holding burgesses 
 in the Middle Ages that of the feudal nobility, in our time 
 that of the bourgeoisie. When at last it really becomes 
 representative of the whole of society, it renders itself super- 
 fluous. As soon as there is no longer a class in society to be 
 
F. ENGELS 31 
 
 held in subjection, as soon as, along with the class-domination 
 and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy 
 of production hitherto, the resultant clashings and excesses 
 disappear — there is no longer anything to be repressed, which 
 might necessitate a special repressive force, a State. The first 
 act in which the State really appears as representative of the 
 whole of society — the appropriation of the means of production 
 in the name of society — is at the same time its last independent 
 act as a State. The interference of a State authority in social 
 relations grows superfluous in one sphere after another, and 
 then of its own accord becomes dormant. For government 
 of persons is substituted control of things and management 
 of the processes of production. The State is not " abolished," 
 it dies out. In this context should be considered the phrase 
 " free popular State," both in its temporary rightness for 
 purposes of agitation, and in its ultimate scientific inadequacy ; 
 so, too, should the demand of the so-called Anarchists, that 
 the State should be abolished in twenty-four hours. 
 
 The appropriation of all the means of production by society 
 has, ever since the appearance in history of the capitalistic 
 method of production, hovered often more or less hazily as 
 the future ideal before the eyes of individuals and of whole 
 sects. But it could not become possible, co5i3| Material ' - 
 not be historically necessary, imtil the material facts con- 
 conditions were present for it to be carried oujl origin and 
 Neither it nor any other social advance becomes abolition of 
 realizable through the acquired perception that 
 the existence of classes is contrary to justice, equality, etc. ; 
 nor through mere willingness to abolish these classes, but 
 through certain new economic conditions. The spUtting of 
 society into an exploiting and an exploited, a ruling and a 
 subject class, was the necessary result of the former slight 
 development of production. As long as the aggregate labour 
 of society gives a yield only slightly in excess of what was 
 needed for the bare existence of everybody, as long, therefore, 
 as labour claims all, or nearly all, the time of the great majority 
 
32 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 of the members of society, so long does society necessarily 
 divide itself into classes. Beside this great majority, which 
 drudges exclusively at labour, is formed a class freed from 
 directly productive work, which looks after the common con- 
 cerns of society — management of labour, State affairs, justice, 
 science, the arts, etc. The law of the division of labour, 
 therefore, is what lies at the base of the division of classes. 
 But that does not prevent this division of classes from having 
 been established through violence and robbery, guile and 
 fraud, nor the ruling class from having, when once in the 
 saddle, secured their domination at the expense of the working- 
 class, and transformed the management of society into an 
 exploitation of the masses. 
 
 But if on this view the division into classes has a certain 
 historical justification, it has it only for a given period of time, 
 for given social conditions. It was based on the insufficiency 
 of production ; it will be swept away by the full unfolding of 
 the modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of 
 classes in society presupposes a degree of historical develop- 
 ment, at which the existence, not merely of this or that 
 particular ruling class, but of a ruling class at all, and there- 
 fore of the class-distinction itself, has become an obsolete 
 anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, a high degree of the 
 development of production, at which for a special class in 
 society to appropriate the means of production and products, 
 and with them pohtical supremacy and the monopoly of 
 education and intellectual management, is not only superfluous, 
 but economically, politically, and intellectually a hindrance 
 to development. This point is now reached. While the 
 bourgeoisie itself is hardly unaware any longer of its political 
 and intellectual bankruptcy, its economic bankruptcy is re- 
 peated regularly every ten years. In every crisis society is 
 suffocated under the weight of its own productive forces and 
 products, which it cannot utilize ; and stands helpless before 
 the absurd contradiction, that the producers have nothing to 
 consume because there is a dearth of consumers. The 
 
F. ENGELS 
 
 33 
 
 expansive power of the means of production is bursting the 
 bonds which the capitalistic method of production puts upon it. 
 Its emancipation from these bonds is the sole condition to be 
 fulfilled for an iminterrupted, ever rapidly advancing develop- 
 ment of productive forces, and with it a practically unlimited 
 increase of production itself. Nor is that all. Social appro- 
 priation of the means of production removes not only the 
 present artificial check on production, but also the positive 
 squandering and spoiling of productive forces and products, 
 which at present is the inevitable accompaniment of production 
 and culminates in the crisis. Moreover, it sets free for the 
 community a mass of the means of production and products, 
 by doing away with the imbecile expenditure upon luxuries 
 which the now ruling classes and their political representatives 
 practise. The possibility of securing for all members of 
 society, by means of social production, an existence, which 
 not only is in a material sense perfectly adequate and daily 
 growing wealthier, but also guarantees to them the perfectly 
 free training and exercise of their physical and mental faculties 
 — this possibility was never ours until now, but ours it now is.^ 
 When society takes possession of the means of production, 
 there is no more production of commodities, and therefore no 
 more subjection of the producer to the product. The anarchy 
 inside social production is replaced by systematic conscious 
 
 ' A few figures might give an approximate idea of tlie enormous ex- 
 pansive force of the modern means of production, even under the pressure 
 of capitalism. According to Giifen's latest calculation, the total wealth of 
 Great Britain and Ireland was, in round figures : — 
 
 1814 2,200 million ^. 
 
 i86j 6,100 „ „ 
 
 187s 8,Soo „ „ 
 
 As to the amount of waste of the means of production and products in 
 crises at the second congress of German manufacturers, at Berlin, February 
 21, 1878, the aggregate loss of the German iron industry alone in the recent 
 crisis was put at j£'22,75o,ooo. [Engels' note. In a paper read to the 
 British Association on September II, 1903, Sir R. Giffen estimated the 
 capital wealth of the United Kingdom at 15,000 million pounds,] 
 
 D 
 
34 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 organization. The struggle for individual existence ceases. 
 In a certain sense this marks the final separation of man from 
 the animal kingdom, and his passage from animal conditions 
 of existence to really human ones. The circle of conditions of 
 life environing men, which hitherto dominated them, now 
 passes under their domination and control ; they now for the 
 first time become real, conscious masters of nature, because, 
 and in that, they are masters of their own association. The 
 laws of their own social action, which previously withstood 
 ^ them as external overmastering laws of nature, are now applied, 
 and so mastered, by men, with full practical knowledge. The 
 peculiar association of men, which hitherto confronted them as 
 something doled out by nature and history, now becomes their 
 own free act. The objective external powers, which controlled 
 history, come under the control of men themselves. Hence- 
 forth for the first time men will make their own history _ quite 
 consciously; henceforth the social causes which they set in 
 motion will predominantly and in a steadily increasing 
 measure have the results which they wish them to have. Man- 
 kind leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of 
 freedom. 
 
 To perform this act of world-emancipation is the mission 
 in history of the modern proletariate. To investigate its 
 historical conditions, and so its very nature, and to make the 
 class which is called upon to act — the oppressed class of to-day 
 — aware of the conditions and the nature of its own action, is 
 the object of the theoretic expression of the proletarian move- 
 ment — scientific Socialism. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PROGRAMME OF THE "COMMUNIST 
 MANIFESTO" 
 
 By Karl Marx and F. Engels 
 
 The Manifesto was the first great deliverance of Marx and Engels. 
 It dates from Nov. 1847 — ^Jan. 1848. A German revolution on a scale 
 greater than the French of 1789 was then generally anticipated, and 
 the thought of the writers took a "catastrophic" tinge, which it 
 afterwards outgrew. The idea that Marx hoped less from labour 
 organization than from labour pauperism and despair, has chieily been 
 derived from the Manifesto ; which was written when the latter were 
 everywhere, the former nowhere. 
 
 Nevertheless, with its strong sketch of the Class War, and its 
 appeal "Proletarians of all lands, unite 1" it is an epoch-marking 
 document. In a German preface of 1872, the authors justified their 
 reprinting it on this ground, while observing, " This programme has 
 in some details become antiquated. One thing especially was proved 
 by the (Paris) Commune, viz. that ' the working class cannot simply 
 lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own 
 purposes.'" 
 
 We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by 
 the working-class, is to raise the proletariate to the position of 
 ruling class, to win the battle of democracy. 
 
 The proletariate will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by 
 degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all 
 instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the 
 proletariate organized as the ruling class ; and to increase the 
 total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. 
 
 Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except 
 bjr means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on 
 
 35 
 
36 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the conditions of bourgeois production ; by means of measures, 
 therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, 
 but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, 
 necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are 
 unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of 
 production. 
 
 These measures will of course be different in different 
 countries. 
 
 Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following 
 will be pretty generally applicable. 
 
 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents 
 of land to public purposes. 
 
 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 
 
 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 
 
 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 
 
 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by 
 means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive 
 monopoly. 
 
 6. Centralization of the means of communication and trans- 
 port in the hands of the State. 
 
 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production 
 owned by the State : the bringing into cultivation of waste 
 lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance 
 with a common plan. 
 
 8. Equal liabiUty of all to labour. Establishment of 
 industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 
 
 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing in- 
 dustries : gradual abohtion of the distinction between town and 
 country, by a more equable distribution of the population 
 over the country. 
 
 10. Free education for all children in public schools. 
 Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. 
 Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc. 
 
 When in the course of development, class distinctions have 
 disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the 
 hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public 
 
KARL MARX AND F. ENGELS 37 
 
 power will lose its political character. Political power, properly 
 so called, is merely the organized power of one class for 
 oppressing another. If the proletariate during its contest with 
 the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to 
 organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes 
 i tself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the 
 old conditions of production, then it will, along with these 
 conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence 
 of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby 
 have abolished its own supremacy as a class. 
 
 In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and 
 class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the 
 free development of each is the condition for the free develop- 
 ment of all. 
 
V 
 THE STANDPOINT OF LASSALLE 
 
 The following two extracts are from Lassalle's classical Offenes 
 Antwort-Schreiben, addressed in March, 1863, to the Central Com- 
 mittee for summoning a general congress of German workers at 
 Leipzig. The portions of the letter not here given consist mainly 
 of an argument that co-operation of the Rochdale sort could not 
 solve the social problem, and a plea for co-operative (producing) 
 associations of workmen, to whom the State should loan capital 
 (Louis Blanc's plan). The Offenes Antwort-Schreiben was the basis 
 of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, the first central German 
 Socialist party (founded May 23, 1863). 
 
 Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) received a university education at 
 Breslau and Berlin. In 1848 he wrote for Marx's paper, the Neue 
 Rheinische Zeitung. In 1849 he was tried and sentenced to six months' 
 imprisonment. Later, he resided at Berlin, publishing literary and 
 scientific work, including (in 1861) his System der erworbenen Rechte. 
 In 1862 his Socialistic address, the Arbeiterprogramm, raised a storm ; 
 he was prosecuted, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment, 
 which was commuted. Thenceforward his activity as an agitator 
 was incessant till his sudden death, which occurred in a duel. 
 
 Thk brazen economic law * which fixes wages under the con- 
 dition of to-day, under the control of the supply of and 
 demand for labour, is this : that the average wage always 
 remains reduced to the necessary substance which national 
 custom demands for the continuance of life and propagation. 
 
 ' As a brazen law, this is now quite discredited ; it was a valid inference 
 from premisses of Malthus and Ricardo, which have been upset. Never- 
 theless it may still throw a certain light on the case of unskilled labourers, 
 who form a large numerical percentage in all modern industrial com- 
 munities. 
 
 38 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF LASSALLE 39 
 
 This is the point around which the actual daily wage gravitates 
 like, a pendulum, without ever being able much to exceed it 
 or to fall far short of it. It cannot permanently The brazen 
 exceed this average, because, in consequence of law of 
 the easier and better condition of the workers, the wages, 
 ranks of the workers would increase, their propagation would 
 increase, and with the increase of the working population 
 would go a corresponding increase in the supply of hands, 
 which would quickly send the wage of labour down to and 
 below its former level. Wages can also never for long fall 
 below this necessary subsistence; for there would result in 
 that case emigration, celibacy, and decrease of the birth-rate, 
 and finally a decrease, due to misery, in the number of workers, 
 which by diminishing the supply of working hands would bring 
 back the wage of labour to its former level. 
 
 The actual average wage of labour moves round that centre 
 of gravity, about which it must continually fluctuate, and to 
 which it must continually revert, sometimes exceeding it 
 (in a period of prosperity in all or single branches of trade), 
 sometimes not reaching it (in a period of more or less general 
 misery and crises). 
 
 The limitation of the average wage to that which national 
 custom deems absolutely necessary for the continuance of life 
 and propagation — that is, I repeat, the brazen and cruel law, 
 which controls the wage of labour under the conditions of 
 to-day. 
 
 This law is indisputable. To back it I might cite every 
 great and famous name in the science of political economy. I 
 might cite them from the Liberal school itself, for it is precisely 
 this school which has discovered and demonstrated the law. 
 
 This brazen and cruel law you must before all stamp deep, 
 deep in your souls, and take it as the starting-point for all 
 your thoughts. 
 
 Here I can give you and the whole working-class an 
 unfailing method whereby once for all you can avoid being 
 duped and led astray. 
 
40 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 When any one speaks to you of improving the position 
 of the workers, ask him first — Does he acknowledge this law 
 or not? 
 
 If he does not, then you must infer, that this man either 
 wants to dupe you, or is pitifully ignorant of political economy. 
 For, as I have already observed, there is not one economist of 
 note, even in the Liberal school, who contradicted the law. 
 Adam Smith and Say, Ricardo and Malthus, Bastiat and John 
 Stuart Mill, are unanimous in acknowledging it. Agreement 
 prevails among all men of science. 
 
 And if the person who is speaking about the condition of 
 the workers, acknowledges this law when you question him, 
 then ask him further — How he wants to abolish it ? And if 
 he cannot answer, quietly turn your back on him. He is an 
 empty babbler, who wants to dupe and dazzle with vain phrases 
 either you or himself. 
 
 Let us for a moment regard more closely the effect and 
 nature of this law. Otherwise worded, it is as follows : From 
 the yield of labour (production) there is deducted and divided 
 among the workers as much as they require to continue life 
 (wage of labour). The whole surplus of production — of the 
 yield of labour — falls to the employers' share. It therefore 
 follows from this brazen and cruel law, that you (and for that 
 reason I called you, in my labour pamphlet to which you 
 appeal in your letter, "the class of the disinherited") are 
 necessarily shut out from the increased productivity due to 
 the progress of civilization, i.e. from the increased yield of 
 labour, from the increased yielding capacity of your own 
 labour. Your portion is for ever the bare necessaries of 
 life j to your employers goes everything that is ever produced 
 by labour over and above that. 
 
 But since the very great progress of productivity (the 
 yielding power of labour) renders many manufactured products 
 extremely cheap, it may happen that this cheapness gives you, 
 not as producers, but as consumers, a certain indirect advantage 
 from the increased productivity of labour. This advantage 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF LASSALLE 41 
 
 does not affect you in your activity as producers ; it does not 
 affect or alter the quota allotted to you from the yield of 
 labour; it affects your position as consumers. It similarly 
 — indeed much more considerably — improves the position, as 
 consumers, of the employers and of all the people who take no 
 part in labour. 
 
 Even this advantage, which affects you as men and not as 
 workers, is again effaced by that brazen and cruel law which 
 in the long run always depresses the wage of labour back to 
 the level of consumption necessary to support life. Only it 
 may happen, that if such an increased productivity of labour 
 and consequent extreme cheapness of many products inter- 
 vene quite suddenly, and if they coincide with a long period 
 of increasing demand for manual workers, then these dis- 
 proportionately cheapened products are taken up into the sum 
 of things which national custom deems necessary to support life. 
 The fact, therefore, that the worker and his wage perpetually 
 oscillate on the extremest verge of what the needs of any given 
 age render necessary to support life, now just overstepping it, 
 now somewhat within it, — this fact is unchanged. But the 
 extremest verge itself may at different times have been altered 
 by a coincidence of the circumstances mentioned; and so it 
 may come about that, if you compare different ages from one 
 another, the position of the working-class in a later century or a 
 later generation shows some improvement on that in an earlier 
 one, in so far as the minimum which custom demands for the 
 absolute needs of life is somewhat higher. 
 
 This little digression I had to make, though it lies far from 
 my own objective, because just this trifling improvement in the 
 course of centuries and generations is the invariable point to 
 which all those who want to throw dust in your eyes, like 
 Bastiat, make their cheap and empty declamations revert. 
 
 Mark well what I say. For the reasons given, the 
 necessary minimum livelihood, and with it the position of 
 the working-class, may, comparing one generation with 
 another, have somewhat risen. Whether that really is so. 
 
4-2 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 whether really the all-round position of the working-class has 
 improved, and improved continuously, in the different centuries, 
 is a very difficult and complicated problem — a problem far too 
 learned to be anywhere within or near the competence of those 
 who keep amusing you with disquisitions on the deamess of 
 cotton last century, and the amount of cotton clothes you now 
 use, and similar commonplaces which can be copied out of any 
 compendium. It is not my purpose to investigate this problem 
 here. I must confine myself to giving you what is not only 
 absolutely certain but easy to demonstrate. Let us suppose, 
 then, that such an improvement in the lowest needs of life, 
 and therefore in the position of the working-class, does con- 
 tinuously occur in the different generations and centuries. 
 
 Yet I must show you that, all the same, these commonplaces 
 make away with and utterly distort the really relevant question. 
 The true ^°" ^^^ cheated behind your backs. If you refer 
 ground for to the position of the workers and its improvement, 
 
 the workers you mean your position compared with that of 
 discontent. ■' ,,, .. , ,•,. 
 
 your fellow-citizens to-day, compared with the 
 
 contemporary standard of living. And then they amuse you 
 by pretending to compare your position with that of the 
 workers in earlier centuries ! But the question whether, 
 because the minimum which custom deems necessary for hfe 
 has risen (in case it has done so), you are better off to-day than 
 the workers of 80, 200, or 300 years ago, is a question of no 
 value for you, and can afford you no satisfaction; no more 
 than can the, of course, admitted fact, that you are better off 
 now than the Botokudians and the cannibal savages. 
 
 Every human satisfaction depends always on the relation 
 of the means of satisfaction to what the custom of the period 
 demands already as bare necessaries for existence, or, which is 
 the same thing, on the excess of the means of satisfaction 
 beyond the lowest limit of what the custom of the period 
 demands as bare necessaries for existence. Raising the mini- 
 mum of the lowest necessaries for existence makes people 
 suffer and miss things of which earlier ages knew nothing. 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF LASSALLE 43 
 
 What does the Botokudian miss if he cannot buy soap, or the 
 cannibal savage, if he has no proper coat to wear? What did 
 the worker miss before the discovery of America, if he could 
 not smoke tobacco, or what before the discovery of printing, 
 if he could not procure a useful book ? 
 
 All that human beings suffer and miss depends, therefore, on 
 the relation between the means of satisfaction and the cus- 
 tomary necessaries of life already recognized at the time. All 
 human suflferings and privation, and all human satisfaction — 
 consequently every human condition — is measured only by 
 comparing one's situation with that in which other men of the 
 same time find themselves in reference to what the custom of 
 the time deems necessary for existence. The position of any 
 class is always measured solely by its relation to that of other 
 classes at the same time. If, therefore, it were ever so certain 
 that the level of the necessary conditions for existence had 
 risen in different ages, that satisfactions formerly unknown had 
 been recognized by custom as necessaries, and that with them 
 had intervened in consequence privations and sufferings 
 formerly unknown, yet your position as men has in these 
 different ages always remained the same — oscillating on the 
 lowest margin of what custom at any time demands as necessary 
 for existence, now going a little beyond it, now receding a little 
 below it. Your position as men has thus remained the same, 
 for it is measured not by its relation to that of beasts in prime- 
 val forests, or that of African negroes, or that of serfs in the 
 Middle Ages, or of workers 200 or 80 years ago, but solely by 
 its relation to that of your fellow-men, to that of the other 
 contemporary classes. 
 
 And instead of considering this, and thinking how to 
 improve this relation and to alter that cruel law, which keeps 
 you continually at the lowest margin of the necessaries for 
 existence at any period, people amuse themselves by confusing 
 the question under your very noses unnoticed by you, and 
 entertaining you with problems in the history of civilization 
 and retrospective glances at the position of the working-class 
 
44 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 at former epochs — retrospects which are the more problematical 
 because the manufactured products, which are constantly 
 being cheapened so very much, are only consumed by the 
 workers on a far smaller scale, while the staples of life, which 
 they consume principally, are not 'controlled by any similar 
 tendency to ever-growing cheapness. These are retrospects, 
 which could only be valuable, if the all-round position of the 
 worker in the different ages were brought within their in- 
 vestigation; they are investigations of the most difficult 
 nature, and only to be conducted with extreme circumspection. 
 Those who dissert upon them to you have not at all the 
 material for them ; and they might the rather, therefore, leave 
 them to the specialists. 
 
 « « jK « * 
 
 Your see, therefore, that it is just a mathematical impossi- 
 bility to emancipate the working-class in this way,^ by the 
 
 „ .. _ efforts of its members as merely isolated indi- 
 
 Neeessity of . , , , , r 
 
 taking viduals ; that these illusions only result from vague 
 
 political uncritical ideas: and that the sole way to it, the 
 action and <- t 
 
 agitating sole way to abolish the cruel law which fixes the 
 
 fopuniver- yyage of labour, to which the working-class is 
 chained as to a martyr's stake, is the furtherance 
 and development for free private labour associations by the 
 helping hand of the State. ^ The labour-association move- 
 ment founded on the mere atomically-isolated powers of 
 individual workers has only been valuable — and in this has 
 been immensely valuable — in showing obviously the way, the 
 practical way, in which emancipation may proceed, in pro- 
 viding brilliant practical proofs for the removal of all real or 
 
 ' By private co-operative societies, whether distributive or productive, 
 unassisted by the State. 
 
 'J^assallc^s^onomic panacea was the foundation of the co-operative 
 associations of produSrs," towhom capital should be lent by the State. It 
 was suggested by llomrBlnTiz (Organization du'TraVat/, iS^g).-' After the 
 union of the Lassallean party with the Marxists at Gotha in 1875, this idea 
 gradually disappeared from German Socialism. 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF LASSALLE 45 
 
 pretended doubt as to its practicability, and in thereby making 
 it the State's imperative duty to lend its supporting hand to 
 this highest interest of human civilization. 
 
 I have likewise proved to you, that the State is really 
 nothing else than the great organization, the great association 
 of the working-classes j and that therefore the help and 
 furtherance, whereby the State should make smaller associa- 
 tions possible, would be nothing but the perfectly natural, 
 right, and legitimate social self-help which the working-classes 
 in their great association render to themselves, to their members 
 as separate individuals. 
 
 Once more, then, free private association of workers, but 
 free private association made possible by the supporting and 
 furthering hand of the State, is the sole way out of the desert 
 vouchsafed to the working-class. 
 
 _But how enable the State to intervene thus ? The answer 
 to this will blaze^duTat once T)er6re the eyes of you all like 
 the sun : universal and di rect suffrage will alone enable it. 
 If the legislative bodies of Germany proceed Troni universal 
 and direct suffrage, then and then only will j^ou be able to 
 decide the State fo~uii3eiFtak'eThis, Its duty. Then will this 
 demand be made In" the legislative bodies; then may the 
 limits and forms and means of this intervention be reasonably 
 and scientifically discussed; then, depend upon it, will the 
 men who understand your position and are devoted to your 
 cause, stand beside you armed with the white steel of science, 
 and be able to guard your interests. And then you, the 
 fortuneless classes of society, will anyhow have only to blame 
 yourselves and your bad votes, if, and as long as, the repre- 
 sentatives of your cause remain in the minority. Therefore, 
 as now appears. uniyersal_ direct sufiiaaeis the bottom principle 
 not only for your politics but for your society, the bottom 
 fonditinn of all social ai d. It is the sole means of improving 
 the material position of the working-class. 
 
 But how effect the introduction of universal direct suffrage ? 
 Look at England. The great agitation of the English people 
 
46 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 against the Com Laws lasted for over five years. And then 
 the laws had to go ; a Tory Ministry itself had to abolish 
 them. 
 
 Organize yourselves as a Universal Union of German 
 Workers for the purpose of a legal and peaceful but un- 
 wearying, unceasing agitation for the introduction of universal 
 direct suffrage in every German State. As soon as ever the 
 Union includes but 100,000 German workers, it will be a 
 power with which every one must reckon. Propagate this 
 cry in every workshop, every village, every hut. May the 
 workers of the towns let their higher intelligence and education 
 overflow on to the workers of the country. Debate, discuss, 
 everywhere, every day, without pausing, without ending, as 
 in the great English agitation against the Corn Laws, now 
 in peaceful public assemblies, now in private conferences, the 
 necessity of universal direct suffrage. The more the miUions 
 who echo your voice, the more irresistible will be its 
 influence. 
 
 Start clubs with funds, to which every member of the 
 German Workers' Union must contribute, and at which projects 
 for organization can be submitted to you. 
 
 Found with these funds, which, in spite of the smallness of 
 subscriptions, can form a powerful financial force for purposes 
 of agitation (a weekly contribution of only one silver penny 
 would, if the Union had 100,000 members, provide over 
 160,000 thalers a year) — found public newspapers, to make 
 this demand daily and prove the reasons for it from the state 
 of society. With the same funds circulate pamphlets for the 
 same purpose. Pay agents out of the Union's funds to carry 
 this intelligence into every corner of the country, to thrill the 
 heart of every worker, every house-servant, every farm-labourer, 
 with this cry. Indemnify out of the Union's funds all workers 
 who have been injured or prosecuted for their activity. Repeat 
 daily, unwearyingly, the same thing, agab the same thing, always 
 the same thing. The more it is repeated, the more hold it 
 takes, the stronger its power grows; 
 
THE STANDPOINT OF LASSALLE 47 
 
 The whole art of practical success consists in concentrating 
 one's whole force at any time upon one point — the most 
 important point, and looking neither to the right nor to the 
 left. Do not you look either to the right or to the left ; be 
 deaf to everything which is not luiiversal direct suffrage or is 
 not connected with it and capable of leading up to it. 
 
 If you have — as in a few years you can — really propagated 
 this cry among the 89 or even the 96 per cent, of the whole 
 population, which as I have shown you form the poor and 
 property-less classes of society, then you may be sure your 
 wishes will not long be withstood. Governments can sulk and 
 squabble with the bourgeoisie about political rights, universal 
 suffrage included, so long as political rights are regarded with 
 Indifference. But universal suffrage regarded by from 89 to 
 96 per cent, of the population as a bread-and-butter question 
 and diffused with the heat of bodily appetite through the whole 
 frame of the nation — that, you may be well assured, no power 
 whatever will withstand for long. 
 
 That is the sign which you must set up. That is the sign 
 in which you shall conquer. There is no other sign for you. 
 
VI 
 
 THE SAINT-MANDE PROGRAMME 
 By a. Millerand 
 
 From a speech delivered by A. Millerand on May 30, 1896, to 
 representatives of all the larger groups of French Socialists. Three 
 circumstances give this programme historical importance — the 
 occasion, the audience, and the sequel. Unity was then germinating 
 among French Socialists, and the princjiJal groups made an agree- 
 ment on the basis, that while any might put up a candidate at the 
 first ballots, all should support at the second ballots whichever 
 Socialist had at the first polled most votes. The question then arose 
 — what, for this purpose, is a Socialist ? In the following excerpt 
 may be seen the answer offered by Millerand, in the presence of 
 Jaur&s, Jules Guesde, and ^douard Vaillant, the principal leaders of . 
 groups, and also of Dr. Flaissieres, the Socialist Mayor of Marseilles, 
 and Delory, Mayor of Lille, provincial leaders of the greatest local 
 influence in South and North France respectively. This audience, 
 so representative of the most contrasted spirits in French Socialism, 
 expressed unanimous approval of the programme, by the mouths of 
 the leaders mentioned. 
 
 After this date the fuller unity of the groups was achieved, only 
 to be soon shattered again by a number of incidents, of which that 
 of most public importance was Millerand's own entrance into M. 
 Waldeck- Rousseau's Coalition Cabinet Gune, 1899). While in ofiice 
 Millerand made a point of publicly asserting his fidelity to the Saint- 
 Mand6 Programme, and connecting his policy at the Ministry of 
 Commerce and Industry with it. (Cp. his speech at Lens, Oct 7, 
 1900.) As a " broad-bottom " programme it would probably be still 
 accepted by most French Socialists. 
 
 It may be compared with the Report on Fabian policy, which was 
 presented to the London International Congress of June, 1896, and is 
 therefore very closely contemporary (Fabian Tract, No. 70). 
 
 48 
 
A. MILLERAND 49 
 
 What is the minimum ' programme, whose acceptance is 
 binding upon whoever claims the title of Socialist ? . . . With- 
 out at all assuming to solve the question by my private 
 authority, I ask your leave to express quite freely my purely 
 personal opinion on it. At the stage of development which 
 the Socialist party has reached, I consider it to be its interest 
 as well as its duty to define its frontiers with all possible pre- 
 cision. Whither is it going ? By what paths does it propose 
 to attain its end? Is it true that it has for its 
 aim the suppression of liberty and confiscation property; 
 of private property, for its means the recourse eonstitu- 
 to force? These are the traits with which our 
 opponents of every kind usually agree in delineating the 
 Socialist party. Yet does it not appear on the face of it 
 that all the points of this pretended definition — suppression of 
 property, recourse to force — form the crudest antithesis, the 
 most brutal contradiction, to our doctrines as well as our 
 facts? 
 
 Isnot the Socialistic idea completely summed up in the 
 earnest desTre to secure^Tor^ eYery"B^iHg," tn' the bosoSTof 
 society, the unimpaired developm ent of his personality ? That 
 necessarily implies two condiHonsTof wHicE^ne^'is "a factor of 
 the other : first, individual appropriation of thmgs necessary for 
 the security and development of the individual, i.e. property ; 
 secondly J^grty, which is only a sounding and hollow word if 
 it is not based on and safeguarded by property. 
 
 On the other hand, is not this evening's banquet, in which 
 representatives of every shade of opinion in the Socialist party 
 join, the clearest definition of its tactics, and has ever any 
 party in this country more than our own respectecTand trusted 
 m'muversai suffiage ? 
 
 ""-nBuflhese two observations, however decisive in the eyes of 
 all sincere judges, cannot suffice for us. We must have it out 
 with our opponents ; we must come to close quarters with the 
 doubt which they try to keep up. We must see what lies be- 
 hind the declamations, and what definitely are the interests 
 
 £ 
 
so MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 which are sought to be safeguarded against us by those who 
 
 have constantly on their lips the words "liberty" and 
 
 " property." 
 
 The anarchy of capitalism has often been described. You 
 
 may characterize it in one sentence, by stating that under it 
 
 TheeoUee- there is no security for any one. Farmers, mer- 
 
 tlvlstview chants, manufacturers, intellectual as well as 
 of the ' , ', . , 
 
 capitalist manual workers, are the prey of every chance. 
 
 system. gut it is this very excess of ill, whence collectivism 
 holds that salvation will spring " Collectivism ! " I have 
 uttered the dreadful word whose magic incantation should 
 arouse against us the millions of urban and rural workers 
 whom " Socialism," certainly, no longer avails to terrify. Of 
 the coUectivist idea I will say but one thing ; ^ it is not the 
 product of a dreamer's imagination, nor the outcome of a 
 philosopher's conceptions, but the statement, pure and simple, 
 of phenomena being unrolled before our eyes. J|en do not 
 and will not set up collectivism ; it is setting itself up daily ; 
 it is, if I may be allowed the phrase, being secreted By the 
 capitalist rigime. Under the double influence of the progress 
 of science, of which the development of machinery is only 
 the translation into practice, and of the concentration of 
 capital, we see the small proprietors being expropriated, labour 
 and property being dissociated, and a new feudal class being 
 set up, which is accumulating in its hands the ownership of 
 the instruments of production, to become by a slow but 
 implacable progress the absolute master of the economic, 
 political, and moral life of the whole people, reduced by it to 
 the modern form of slavery called the wages system. Collectiv- 
 ism declares that the wages system will be no more everlasting 
 than were those previous modes of servitude and human 
 exploitation called slavery and serfdom. Collectivism observes 
 that the normal development of capitalistic society replaces 
 individual property, the condition and safeguard of liberty, by 
 the tyrannous monopoly of a minority. It does not rebel 
 ' The following passage is extremely Marxian. 
 
A. MILLERAND 51 
 
 against this observed fact; it bows before it. It does not 
 pretend to retrace the course of the centuries, nor decree the 
 transformation of mankind ; on the contrary, it adapts itself to 
 its rules. Since it is a law of sociological evolution that all the 
 means of production and exchange pass from the form of 
 individual property to that of capitaUstic property, it merely 
 claims that in proportion as these vast capitalistic properties 
 are formed beneath whose rays small property, individual 
 property, withers and dies, in that proportion social property 
 should replace capitalistic. 
 
 Here I seem to have my finger on the characteristic feature 
 of the Socialist programme. IlLiQSLXiew,_^oever^ does not 
 admit_tiie__necessary and progressive replacement jhesinegua 
 _^_ca2italistic property by social property, is not a. nmota. 
 Socialist. That is, it cannot merely be a matter of ^oeiallst. 
 transforming those three categories of the means of production 
 and exchange which may be termed classical ones — credit or 
 banking, transport by rail, and mining enterprises. Here is 
 besides these — I take an instance which discussion cannot 
 damage — an industry incontestably ripe now for social appro- 
 priation, because, monopolized in a few hands, yielding its 
 managers vast profits, characterized at once by the perfecting 
 of its machinery and the intense concentration of its capital, it 
 is thoroughly fitted to supply a fertile and easy subject for 
 social management : I mean the sugar-refining industry. It is 
 an instance, and only one ; but really, is there anything very 
 novel about this national monopoly, which to-morrow shall 
 restore to all the gain unduly monopolized by a few ? Surely, 
 as the representatives of Socialist municipalities in my audience 
 know — only yesterday I had an instance of it in a by no 
 means Socialist commune in one of our Eastern departments — 
 surely already, in taking over the distribution of water, light, 
 motor-power, the organization of transport, the use in common 
 of agricultural machines, numerous small communities in town 
 and country have in their sphere replaced capitalistic property 
 by social. This progressive socialization of different categories 
 
52 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 of the means of production can only inspire hope and joy in 
 the millions of human beings destined thus to rise, by a pro- 
 gress governed not by men's caprice, but by the nature of 
 things, from the condition of wage-workers to that of co- 
 partners in social wealth ; and it would be vain to try rousing 
 against the Socialist party the alarms of the fortunate few who 
 still have in their hands both the means of production and the 
 whole product of their labour. The latter, the small pro- 
 prietors, not only are not threatened by the change which the 
 Socialist party pursues — since their fragments of property 
 could not be the object of social appropriation — but they will 
 benefit proportionally with every other member of society by 
 the incorporation of the great industries, one after another, in 
 the body of socialized property. 
 
 I say " one after another." No Socialist has ever dream ed 
 of transf orming the capitalistic f'egime instantaneously by a 
 Elasticity magic^ .^E'^' "°'- °^ building up on a tabula rasa 
 
 and adapta- ^n entirely new society. Vandervelde, the eminent 
 
 bllityofthe ,., ■', ' ._,.' ... 
 
 Socialist thinker and great orator of Belgium, warned his 
 
 hypothesis, friends in an article on the coUectivist evolution 
 against the risk of constructing too hastily and too rigidly at a 
 time when science may upset in a moment the very elements 
 of life — perhaps, as our great chemist, Berthelot, once sug- 
 gested, by utterly altering our ways of taking food, or, perhaps, 
 by profoundly modifying the conditions of industry through 
 unexpected applications of the transmission of energy. In 
 speaking thus our friend only brought out the two aspects of 
 Socialism — what forms at once its ideal power and its practical 
 greatness. Our philosophers, our ideologues (a fine and a 
 right word — in its proper place) construct systems ; collectivism 
 is an ideal and complete plan of society. But if we look 
 upwards, higher and higher, we do not for that lose our foot- 
 hold ; we keep in touch with the firm, resisting ground. We 
 do not substitute our imaginations for the realities amid which 
 we move ; and everything we realize is meant to be, and 
 must be, the consequence and result of phenomena already 
 
A. MILLERAND 53 
 
 accomplished. But hypothesis is one of the needful means 
 to progress in every kind of knowledge j and it would be a 
 strange representation, or rather misrepresentation, of the 
 teaching of the geniuses, like Claude Bernard, who have insti- 
 tuted the experimental method, to pretend to compel sociologist 
 or scientist to erase from his papers the fruitful hypothesis. 
 
 One of our opponents, I fancy M. M^line himself, once 
 found no better way of taxing our friend Jaurfes with the 
 boldness of his views than to call him "the poet 
 of Socialism." Doubtless M. M^line scarcely tiondepends 
 
 fancied, as he flung this trait at our friend, that he "" *'s broad 
 . , . ° , ^ J ^ . synthesis of 
 
 was paymg him the best and most precious com- human life 
 
 pliment ever received either by Taurus or by the and in- 
 party which is proud of including him. Certainly 
 he is a " poet " in the grandest sense of the word — the supreme 
 orator who has thrilled the soul of the artisan and peasant 
 democracy with the most moving accents heard by a French 
 audience for a hundred years. But it is not given to every 
 party to. arouse poets and be defended thus. A lost cause 
 wrapped in the double prestige of tradition and misfortune 
 may know a Berryer. A people arisen to claim its rights or 
 defend its soil may borrow the voice of a Mirabeau or a 
 Danton, or, a century later, a Gambetta; but the capitalist 
 class, wholly tied to the defence of its material interests, with- 
 out ideals or beliefs, cannot with all its gold purchase an 
 advocate whose voice can win for it the hearts of the people 
 whom it exploits. If Socialism to-day dominates and over- 
 shadows every party, if it attracts and retains the passionate 
 interest of every cultivated mind, if it thrills every generous 
 heart, it is because in its large synthesis it embraces every 
 manifestation of life, because nothing human is alien to it, 
 because it alone offers to-day to our hunger for justice and 
 happiness an ideal purely human and apart from all dogma — 
 separating itself thus unmistakably from the "Christian 
 Socialism," which is only a wretched sham Socialism,^ since, 
 ' It is necessary to remind the reader that " Christian Socialism " has 
 
54 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 far from working to set men free, it works only for the rule and 
 
 dominance of a threatened theocracy. 
 
 Socialism does aha at securing for every human being, by 
 
 a beneSceht "andT quite natural ^transformation, these two 
 
 ,. . twin blessings, liberty and property, of which the 
 The metnoas •>«•»«- . -, - * . . — ,rv~i-; , , . t>,,4. ;- tVmc 
 
 of Socialism capitalistic regime inevitably robs him. ±!ut m tnus 
 
 must be eon- indicating the end which our party pursues, I have 
 stitutionai. g^jjg^gj.g^ beforehand the ridiculous charge, so often 
 made, that it expects its ideas to triumph only by violent 
 revolution. Our eminent friend, Gabriel Deville, whom the 
 Fourth Constituency will send next Sunday to sit with us in the 
 Socialist group at the Chamber, said some days ago, strongly 
 and definitely, that we could get the social transformation 
 from no rebel minority, but from a majority with a purpose. 
 Resort to force?— for whom and against whom? Republicans 
 before everything, we do not indulge the crazy idea of appeal- 
 ing to a pretender's sham prestige or a dictator's sword to secure 
 the triumph of our doctrines. We appeal only to universal 
 suffrage. It is the voter whom we wantlo'ierecohomically 
 and "politically free. We claim only the right of persuading 
 him. I do not suppose any one will credit us with the absurd 
 intention of taking revolutionary steps against the Senate; 
 which a Radical Ministry, had it vacillated less, would have 
 sufficed to reduce to reason. No, to realize the immediate 
 reforms capable of relieving the lot of the working-class, and 
 thus fitting it to win its own freedom, and to begin, as con- 
 ditioned by the nature of things, the socialization of the means 
 of production, it is necessary and sufficient for the Socialist 
 party to endeavour to capture the Government through 
 universal suffrage. 
 
 But while in the commune, the department, and the nation 
 Socialism works to replace capitalistic by social property, it 
 cannot lose sight of the general international character, which 
 the development of knowledge, and consequently of human 
 
 an utterly different meaning in nearly every different country, and that M. 
 Millerand refers to the Christian Socialism of his own. 
 
A. MILLERAND 
 
 55 
 
 relations, has stamped upon the social problem. I know how 
 insincerely our opponents have tried to exploit against us the 
 international understanding between the workers, socialist 
 Men who know no frontiers when they want to con- internatlon- 
 cert profitable agreements between speculators of 
 any race, cry out for shame and horror at the thought that workers 
 who do not speak the same language can meet to discuss their 
 common interests. These patriots have not feared to fling the 
 fatherland into our domestic quarrels as a handy argument 
 to help their cause. But the good sense of the people haS| 
 done justice to these shameless manoeuvres. At this meeting,, 
 where our country's single mind, as also her various aspects, 
 is so strongly asserted, I need not repeat that we have never 
 had the unnatural and insane idea of breaking and throwing 
 away that unique instrument of material and moral progress, I 
 forged by the centuries, which is called the French fatherland-^ 
 No, never ; not when, in a few days' time, we receive with all 
 due sympathy and respect Liebknecht, the unfailing champion 
 of the Socialistic idea, the brave defender of right, who in 
 187 1 sacrificed his freedom for his admirable protest against 
 the crime of annexing Alsace-Lorraine which the Iron Chan- 
 cellor was preparing ; not when we receive the German deputy, 
 nor when in a few weeks' time we go to the international 
 Congress at London, shall we ever forget that, while inter- 
 nationalists, we are Frenchmen and patriots. " Patriots " andN 
 " intemationaUsts " are two titles that our ancestors of the / 
 French Revolution were able nobly to combine. ^^ ^ 
 
 Such, citizens, are m my opbion the three essential points 
 which are necessary and sufficient to characterize a Socialistic 
 programme— 4ntervention^,of_ the State^ to convert g^^j^g^yy 
 from capitalistic info national property the different 
 categories of the means of production and exchange in propor- 
 tion as they become ripe for social appropriation j capture of 
 Government through universal suffrage; internatiolgal under- 
 standing between the workers. 
 
VII 
 
 FRENCH REFORMIST SOCIALISM 
 By a. Millerand 
 
 The following is a preface to a collection of speeches published 
 by Millerand under the above title in 1903. The reformist method as 
 opposed to the revolutionary, the national interest as beside the 
 internationalism of the Marxists, the " solidarity of classes " as 
 beside the Marxian class-v7ar, and the expediency of Socialists 
 participating in Governments not wholly Socialistic, are the main 
 points of controversy handled. The ideas here expressed found not 
 a little echo three and a half years later (October, 1906) in the pro- 
 gramme adopted by M. Clemenceau as the head of a Ministry, in 
 which three reformist Socialists (MM. Millerand, Briand, and Viviani) 
 were included. 
 
 I HAVE collected a few of the speeches which I have delivered 
 in the past ten years, partly by the wish of friends, partly to 
 indicate once more the leading characteristics of a policy to 
 which at least the merit of continuity will be conceded. 
 
 A party which is not content with ambitions at short range, 
 which fixes its gaze high and far, requires an ideal; the 
 Socialist party proclaims its own. I once tried to formulate 
 it; I was then fortunate enough to secure the assent of all 
 fractions of the party, voiced by their accredited representa- 
 tives. Some of those who approved me in 1896 have since 
 withdrawn their approval. One of their complaints against 
 the programme, which they had applauded, is that it won over 
 too quickly too many new adherents. I feel this fault to be 
 a creditable one. Perhaps the programme only fell into it 
 because it was equally removed from vague generalities 
 
 56 
 
A. MILLERAND 57 
 
 admitting of every construction, and from false definiteness 
 which events may soon belie. 
 
 It is important to determine with the utmost precision the 
 direction which we wish to follow. Where are we going? 
 What dream of justice, freedom^ and happiness is ours? 
 By what means and in what shape do we hope to realize it ? 
 These questions must be answered, and the answer which we 
 give is, I think, unequivocal and unambiguous. 
 
 ***** 
 
 In transforming the material world science has simultane- 
 ously, by a parallel effect which cannot be escaped, overturned 
 the economic conditions of mankind. A chasm has opened 
 between the lot of the worker of industry, serf no longer of the 
 soil but of the machine, and that of the employer, often an 
 impersonal company, whom he serves without knowing him. 
 In spite of the progress of philosophy, legislation, and morals, 
 there have appeared two opposing classes with economic 
 interests which can only he reconciled by the absorption of 
 the one in the other. Vyggfiialism aims, in the social system, 
 at abolishing the classes, as the French Revojution, in the 
 political system, resulted in abolishing the ordersr> It wishes 
 the wage-earner to rise to the dignity of a partner. It wishes, 
 not that individual property should be abolished in the new 
 humanity — which is an incomprehensible proposal — but, on 
 the contrary, that it should be so transformed and enlarged as 
 to be for every man a sort of natural and necessary extension 
 of himself over things, the indispensable instrument of life and 
 development. 
 
 Socialism does not, any more than did the French RevoTu^ 
 tion, propose to legislate for Frenchmen, or Germans, or 
 Englishmen, but for men. Everywhere where the same stage 
 of civilization has brought with the same greatness the same 
 misery, the same transformations seem to it to be rendered 
 necessary. Thus, in spite of differences of race and language, 
 the sentiment of a common ideal unites across space the 
 Socialist proletariate of the two worlds. 
 
58 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Alflunigh it is sketdbed in large strokes, tbis ideal cannot 
 therefore witfaoat rmhiiaess be reproadied as obscure or 
 equivocal. Its two essential diaiacteristics, on tihe contrary, 
 are quite clearly marked. It pursues, tiirongh an international 
 agreemait of the workers, the radical transformation of the 
 conditions of property, whidi should cease to be the appanage 
 of a certain number of men, and become the lot of alL 
 
 Some Socialists, in every country, have not withstood the 
 too natural temptation to grasp the problem more closely, and, 
 forestalling time, to buBd up the whole structure of the fiiture 
 city. These Utopias are unembarrassing, and may even be 
 usefid, if people do not forget to take them for what they are 
 — works of imagination, whose shifting shapes are daily 
 modified by reality. They would be dangerous, tiiey mig|it 
 even be fatal, if people were drawn on to claim to crystallize 
 in them Socialist acdon and diou^. 'Experience has shown, 
 how inevitably errors become manifest, after a relatively short 
 time, even in the constructions of a man of genius. 
 
 If it is, I do not say legitimate, but inherent in the progress 
 of all knowledge, that one should use hypotiieses, and if the 
 collectivist hypothesis, which we use, derives from the veiy 
 development of the cajiitalistic rigiTne a singular value, still 
 its Intimate employment must never blind us into mistaking 
 the means for the end. We must beware of becoming the 
 {Hisoners of necessarily variable formulae which must change 
 as men progress. Our end is not to erect an immovable 
 edifice on a fixed plan according to a prescribed ritual ; it is 
 not to buUd a church for a sect, but to make the world more 
 habitable for everybody by efi^cing in succession the social 
 injustices, and by educating a humanity emancipated step by 
 step from internal tyrannies as well as external constiaintSL 
 » * « » * 
 
 EdiuaUon : these few syllables enclose the whole fiitnre 
 (rf mankind . It is true, profoundly true, that the emandpation 
 of the workers will be the task of the workers themselves ; we 
 ^KRild understand by that, that diey must look only to 
 
A. MILLERAND 59 
 
 themselves for their Uberation, and especially must make them- 
 selves able and worthy to work it out. But how ? And this 
 question surely has a cruel irony under a social rigime, where all 
 the strength of the worker is daily spent in his master's service 
 without his retaining any leisure beyond what repairs for 
 to-morrow's effort the organism worn out by to-day's. So 
 society, which has the greatest interest in the regular and 
 normal march of progress, is compelled to intervene with 
 a view to securing for all its members humane conditions 
 of work. 
 
 This position is no longer debated as regards children 
 and women. The regulation of the working day, so far as 
 concerns them, no longer arouses even theoretical opposition. 
 The force of logic has led legislation to adopt the same rule 
 for men working with them. The time is at hand, when by a 
 fortunate necessity the same law will apply to all workers, 
 whatever their age or sex, setting them free to be men and 
 citizens as well as producers. 
 
 Equally beyond dispute now is the need of regulating 
 labour so as to secure health and prevent accidents. Per- 
 ceptible improvements have been made in this respect, 
 particularly in the great industry; much is left to be won. 
 It is no mean advantage to have reached a point where only 
 the fects of cases are disputed, and one does not collide with 
 the barrier of a pretended principle. 
 
 Thus there has been embodied and moulded the concep- 
 tion of a legislation protecting the individual, careful of his 
 development, directed towards the defence and the setting in 
 operation of every power and all the wealth contained in germ 
 in the human being. 
 
 From this higher idea proceed the laws on education of 
 every grade, whether they are concerned to furnish every 
 child with tie small primary capital without which a man 
 will live among his fellows like a foreigner to them, or 
 whether to organize technical education and apprenticeship, 
 or whether to swell the reservoir of superior knowledge 
 
6o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 whence every people draws the elements of its prosperity 
 and power. 
 
 It is not enough to arm the individual for the struggle, 
 and to take care that the very need of living does not reduce 
 him to a machine's part and rob him of all that makes life 
 valuable or joyous. Man is an organism no less ftagile than 
 admirable, beset every yard of the way by accidents and 
 failings, whether they come from conflicts with things, from 
 imperfections of the social system, or from hereditary taints. 
 A whole set of laws is being worked out to prevent or 
 minimize the effects of unemployment, illness, infirmity, 
 accidents, and old age. At the head of this new code of 
 Social Insurance and Prevision might fittingly be inscribed the 
 proclamation of the first of the rights of man — the right to 
 live. On each of its pages it is inspired and vitalized by the 
 feeling of solidarity, which makes easy for collective humanity 
 steps forward which the isolated individual would be powerless 
 even to conceive. 
 
 Association, organization : these two fruitfiil ideas go side 
 by side. A predominant and decisive part must be played by 
 them in social evolution. Through them the weak things 
 of the proletariate will be joined together, and become aware 
 of their strength. Along with power will come knowledge of 
 duties and responsibilities. 
 
 Trade-imions, co-operative societies : under these two 
 principal forms, which the proletariate employs with more 
 or less ease and success according to its degree of education, 
 the first grouping takes place. 
 
 But the time is, I feel confident, not far off when people 
 will account it in the general interest that the world of workers 
 should not be organized solely outside the factory. The Bill 
 on the friendly r^ulation of labour disputes, which I introduced, 
 aims precisely at replacing the inorganic mass of workers of the 
 middle-sized and the great industry — exposed in war (I mean 
 strikes), as in peace, to every impulsive influence — ^by a methodi- 
 cal organization making the workers of every factory into an 
 
A. MILLERAND 61 
 
 ordered group, represented by regular delegates, having 
 habitual and normal relations with the management, fitted for 
 taking deliberate and reflective resolutions. The adoption 
 of its principle will save at once the special interests of the 
 workers and those, inseparable from them, of national 
 production. 
 
 * « » » » 
 
 I touch here a subject which does not fail to excite and 
 even to scandalize a certain number of our friends. The 
 national interest, the solidarity of classes — are these questions 
 about which a Socialist has a right to be anxious without 
 betraying the ideal which he claims to serve, the triumph of a 
 humanity freed from class-wars and from wars of nations ? _^=. 
 
 History is made up of elements too numerous and complex 
 for any one to be able, without vanity, to claim to fix a hard- 
 and-fast date for the triumph of his ideas. We fulfil our whole 
 duty if we work in our station, within the limits of our strength, 
 following the law of our nature, to prepare its victory. I 
 have said how high the Socialist ideal is, and how it is not 
 enclosed in the narrow bounds which time and circumstances 
 have fixed for any given nation. All the same, it spreads 
 from men to their neighbours, and no bad way of working for 
 its extension is to take pains first to ^in -over one^sJiellew- 
 citi zens. 
 
 How, then, can this propaganda be determined irrespectively 
 of the environment wherein it is carried on? Can method 
 and tactics be the same under different or even opposite 
 rigimesi If it is true that the Republic is the political 
 formula of Socialism, it follows, of course, that in a country 
 where Socialism has achieved the immense step forward of 
 realizing its political formula, its action and procedure, once it 
 possesses republican forms and universal suffrage, will assume 
 quite a special aspect and character. This means that it is not 
 only the right but the imperative duty of Social Democracy in 
 France to adapt its method to the conditions of the poUtical 
 ri^me in which it moves. It would betray the first of its 
 
62 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 duties if it took refuge in mere phrases of revolution in order 
 to be saved the responsibilities and burdens implied by the 
 reformist method and the pursuit of immediate results. It 
 would, by the same act, sacrifice the primordial interests of 
 the proletariate by declining the effort which should, little by 
 little, realize the aggregate of improvements which I tried to 
 resume in an exact summary. 
 
 But how will the French Socialist party have the right to 
 call the republican regime its own, how will it handle practi- 
 cally that incomparable instrument of reforms, if it affects 
 keeping outside of the Republican party's life and means to 
 isolate itself in the barren part of a systematic critic ? It will 
 jonly win that authority over the nation without which our 
 j views cannot be realized, on condition that it remains neither 
 ' alien nor indifferent to any of its emotions and aspirations. 
 In domestic affairs it must take sides in the battle in which 
 the Republic is engaged, and formulate its opinion, inspiring 
 itself — as how should it else ? — by its own ideal, but also by 
 the needs, the thoughts, and the traditions of the Republican 
 , democracy, which it continues and from which it inherits. It 
 will not neglect either the good order and prosperity of the 
 public finances, first condition of all social reform, or the 
 maintenance and development of the national production. 
 PubUc works, improvements destined to promote industry, 
 commerce, and agriculture, judicious management and utiliza- 
 tion of our colonial domain, — all these are questions which 
 will claim its scrutiny and retain its attention. It will be the 
 attentive and zealous servant of the nation's greatness and 
 prosperity. 
 
 , '' Its patriotism — the more sincere because it hates the noisy 
 declamations of Chauvinist politicians — has nothing to fear 
 from its ardent love of peace and of mankind. Until that 
 unknown date when the Governments agree to lay aside in 
 concert the heavy burden of military expenses, isolated dis- 
 armament would be worse than a folly ; it would be a crime 
 against the very ideal whose foremost soldier the Socialists see 
 
A. MILLERAND 63 
 
 France to be. While applying themselves to uphold and 
 strengthen our diplomacy in the ways of peace, to draw from 
 past conventions every effect of union and concord which they 
 admit, and to get new treaties concluded tightening the bonds 
 of friendship and solidarity between nations, they will watch 
 no less carefully to preserve the country's independence un- 
 endangered by any aggression, through the power of its arms 
 and the security of its alliances. While preparing for the 
 future, they will not forget either the duties created for them 
 by the past or the obligations imposed by the present. 
 ***** 
 
 To pursue successfully this realistic and ideal policy, to 
 make it yield all its fruits, the Socialist party must clearly 
 acknowledge its responsibilities. 
 
 I have not dissimulated the end towards which it marches, 
 and I am acquainted with the argument that Socialism can, 
 and indeed should, call itself " revolutionary," since in fact the 
 disappearance of the wage-system will be the most real and 
 radical of revolutions. Words do not frighten me; but I 
 dread equivocations. And what equivocation could be more 
 unfortunate than that of a party masked by a title which 
 contradicts formally its spirit and its method ? If we reckon 
 violence reprehensible as well as useless, if legal reforms 
 appear to us at once as ovu: immediate objective and as the 
 sole practical procedure to bring us nearer our distant goal, let 
 us, then, have the courage, not a difficult courage, to call our- 
 selves by our own name, " reformists,'' since reformists we are. 
 Let us take our courage the whole way ; and having declared 
 for the reformist method, let us dare to accept its conditions 
 and consequences. Long before yesterday the French Socialist 
 party gave the first place in its programme to the capture of 
 government; long before to-day it passed from theories to 
 acts, and sent its campaigners into town-halls, into depart- 
 mental assemblies, into Parliament; it did not do so without 
 resigning itself to the daily compromises which are the price 
 of action, and allying itself with the parties near to it. Having 
 
64 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 gone so far, being persuaded more than ever of the utiUty and 
 necessity of a method which has proved its value in experience, 
 by what aberration should it desert that method at the very 
 momept when it is becoming most effective ? iBy what incon- 
 sistency should it consent to canvass every mandate, and yet 
 rigorously forbid itself to join in the Government, and take, 
 along with the highest responsibilities, the most certain power ? 
 
 Such an illogical course, if possible to continue, would soon 
 ruin the credit and influence of the party weak enough and 
 sufEciently uncertain of itself to commit it. To put the people 
 off to the mysterious date when a sudden miracle will change 
 the face of the world, or day by day, reform by reform, by a 
 patient and stubborn effort to win step by step all progress — 
 those are the two methods which we must choose between. 
 
 Faithful to its principles and to the method which is its 
 own, equally careful not to arouse chimerical hopes, and not 
 to break its promises, French reformist Socialism will be able 
 to assume every responsibility ; it will not decline any of the 
 burdens imposed on it by its deep feeling of duty towards its 
 ideal and towards its country. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE LABOUR QUESTION FROM THE 
 SOCIALIST STANDPOINT 
 
 By William Morris 
 
 This lecture was one of a series delivered in Scotland in the 
 summer of 1886, in which the Secretary of the Amalgamated Society 
 of Engineers, the London Manager of the Co-operative Wholesale 
 Society, Professor Foxwell, Professor Patrick Geddes, and Dr. 
 Alfred Russell Wallace, also took part. 
 
 William Morris's definite accession to Socialism may be dated 
 from the beginning of 1883. He then joined the Social Democratic 
 Federation ; but in December, 1885, founded the Socialist League, 
 whose organ, the " Commonweal," he edited till 1889. In 1890 he 
 left the League, which soon afterwards collapsed. 
 
 His work represents the first revival of Socialism in England 
 through the importation of the Marxist doctrine. It also derives a 
 large element from his personal genius, which, while missing the 
 mass of workers at which it was aimed, has left its mark upon 
 nearly all the leaders. 
 
 I HAVE been asked to give you the Socialist view on the 
 Labour Question. Now, in some ways that is a difficult matter 
 to deal with — far beyond my individual capacities — and would 
 also be a long business ; yet in another way, as a matter of 
 principle, it is not difficult to understand or long to tell of, and 
 it does not need previous study or acquaintance with the works 
 of specialists or philosophers. Indeed, if it did, it would not 
 be a political subject, and I hope to show you that it is pre- 
 eminently political in the sense in which I should use the word ; 
 
 65 F 
 
66 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 that is to say, that it is a matter which concerns every one, and 
 has to do with the practical everyday relations of his life, and 
 that not only as an individual, but as a member of a body 
 corporate, nay, as a member of that great corporation — 
 humanity. Thus considered it would be hard indeed if it 
 could not be understood readily by a person of ordinary intelli- 
 gence who can bring his mind to bear upon prejudice. Such 
 a person can learn the basis of the opinion in even an hour's 
 talk, if the matter be clearly put before him : it is my task to 
 attempt this; and whether I fail or succeed, I can at least 
 promise you to use no technical phrases which would require 
 explanation ; nor will I, as far as I can help, go into any specu- 
 lative matter, but will be as plain and practical as I can be. 
 
 Yet I must warn you that you may be disappointed when 
 you find that I have no elaborate plan, no details of a new 
 society to_laxJa£f ore you,T:hat"to iny mind to attenipttbls would 
 be putting before you a mere delusion. What I ask you to 
 consider is in the main the clearing awa^of certain obstacles 
 that stand in the way of the due and un wasteful use of labour 
 — a task not light, indeed, nor to be accomplished without the 
 most strenuous effort in the teeth of violent resistance, but yet 
 not impossible for humanity as we know it, and, as I firmly 
 believe, not only necessary, but as things now are, the one 
 thing essential to be undertaken. 
 
 Now, you all know that, taking mankind as a whole, it 
 is necessary for man to labour in order to live. Certainly 
 not all things that we enjoy are the works of man's labour; 
 the beauty of the earth, and the action of Nature on our 
 sensations, are always here for us to enjoy, but we can only do 
 so on the terms of our keeping ourselves alive and in good 
 case by means of labour, and no inventions can set aside that 
 necessity. The merest savage has to pluck the berry from the 
 tree, or dig up the root from the ground before he can enjoy 
 his dog-like sleep in sun or shade ; and there are no savages 
 who have not got beyond that stage, while the progressive races 
 of mankind have for many ages got a very long way beyond it, so 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 6-] 
 
 that we have no record of any time when they had not formed 
 some sort of society, whose aim was to make the struggle with 
 Nature for subsistence less hard than it otherwise would have 
 been, to win a more abundant livelihood from her. 
 
 We cannot deal at any length with the historical develop- 
 ment of society ; our object is simply to inquire into the con- 
 stitution of that final development of society under which we 
 live. But one may first ask a few questions : — ist. Since the 
 community generally must labour in order that the individuals 
 composing it may subsist, and labour harder in order that they 
 may attain further advantages, ought not a reall y successful 
 community so to arrange that labour that each capable person 
 should do a fair share of it^and Fo more ? 2nd, Should not a 
 really successful community — established surely for the benefit 
 of all its members — arrange that every one who did his due 
 share of labour should have his due share of the wealth earned 
 by that labour? 3rd, If any labour was wasted, such waste 
 would throw an additional burden on those who produced 
 what was necessary and pleasant to existence. Should not a 
 successful community, therefore, so organize its labour that it 
 should not be wasted ? You must surely answer " Yes " to each 
 of these three questions. I will assert, then, that a successful 
 society — a society which fulfilled its true functions — would take 
 care that each did his due share of labour, that each had his 
 due share of wealth resulting from that labour, and that the 
 labour of persons generally was not wasted. I ask you to re- 
 member those three essentials of a successful society through- 
 out all that follows, and now to let me apply them as a test of 
 success to that society in which we live, the latest development 
 of so many ages of the struggle with Nature, our elaborate and 
 highly organized civilization. 
 
 In our society, does each capable person do his fair share 
 of labour? Is his share of the wealth produced proportionate 
 to his labour ? Is the waste of labour avoided in our society ? 
 
 You may, perhaps, hesitate in your answer to the third 
 question ; you cannot hesitate to say " No " to the two first. I 
 
68 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 think, however, I shall be able to show you that much labour 
 is wasted, and that, therefore, our society fails in the three 
 essentials necessary for a successful society. Our civilization, 
 therefore, though elaborate and highly organized, is a failure ; 
 that is, supposing it to be the final development of society, as 
 some people, nay, most people, suppose it to be. 
 
 Now a few words as to the course of events which have 
 brought us to the society of the present day. In periods 
 almost before the dawn of continuous history, the early pro- 
 gressive races from which we are descended were divided into 
 clans or families, who held their wealth, such as it was, in 
 common within the clan, while all outside the clan was hostile, 
 and wealth not belonging to the clan was looked upon as prize 
 of war. There was consequently continual fighting of clan 
 with clan, and at first all enemies taken in war were slain j but 
 after a while, as man progressed and got defter with his hands, 
 and learned how to make more effective tools, it began to be 
 found out that, so working, each man could do more than 
 merely sustain himself; and then some of the prisoners of war, 
 instead of being slain on the field, were made slaves of; they 
 had become valuable for work, like horses. Out of the wealth 
 they produced their masters or owners gave them sustenance 
 enough to live on and took the rest for themselves. Time 
 passed, and the complexity of society grew, the early barbarism 
 passed through many stages into the ancient civilizations, of 
 which Greece and Rome were the great representatives ; but 
 this civilization was still founded on slave labour; most of its 
 wealth was created by men who could be sold in the market 
 like cattle. But as the old civilizations began to decay, this 
 slave labour became unprofitable; the countries comprised 
 in the Roman Empire were disturbed by constant war; the 
 Governments, both central and provincial, became mere tax- 
 gathering machines, and grew so greedy that things became 
 unbearable. Society became a mere pretext for tax-gathering, 
 and fell to pieces, and chattel slavery fell with it, since under 
 all these circumstances slaves were no longer valuable. 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 69 
 
 Then came another change. A new society was formed, 
 partly out of the tribes of barbarians who had invaded the 
 Roman Empire, and partly out of the fragments of that empire 
 itself; the feudal system arose, bearing with it new ideas, 
 which I have not time to deal with here and now. Suffice it 
 to say, that in its early days mere chattel slavery gave place to 
 serfdom. Powerful men, privileged men, had not forgotten 
 that men can produce more by a day's labour than will keep 
 them alive for a day ; so now they settled their labourers on 
 certain portions of land, stocked their land with them, in fact, 
 and on these lands they had leave to live as well as they might 
 on the condition that they should work a certain part of their 
 time on the land which belonged to their lords. The average 
 condition of these serfs was better than that of the chattel 
 slaves. They could not be bought and sold personally, they 
 were a part of the manor on which they lived, and they had as a 
 class a tendency to become tenants by various processes. In 
 one way or another these serfs got gradually emancipated, 
 and during a transitional period, lasting through the two last 
 centuries of the Middle Ages, the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, the labour classes were in a far better position than 
 they had been before, and in some ways than they have been 
 since, suffering more from spasmodic arbitrary violence than 
 from chronic legal oppression. The transition from this period 
 to our own days is one of the most interesting chapters of 
 history ; but it is impossible for me to touch on it here. All I 
 can say is, that the emancipated serfs formed one of the 
 elements that went to make up our present middle class, and 
 that a new class of workers grew up beneath them — men who 
 were not owned by any one, who were bound by no legal ties 
 to such and such a manor, who might earn what livelihood 
 they could for themselves under certain conditions, which I 
 will presently try to lay before you, and which are most 
 important to be considered, for this new class of so-called 
 free labourers has become our modern working-class. 
 
 Now it will be clear to you, surely, how much and how 
 
70 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 grievously both the classical period, with its chattel slavery, 
 and the feudal system, with its serfdom, fell short of the 
 society which we have set before us as reasonably successful. 
 In each of them there was a class obviously freed from the 
 necessity of labour, by means of the degradation of another 
 class which laboured excessively and reaped but a small 
 reward for its excessive labour. Surely there was something 
 radically wrong in these two societies. Prom the fact that 
 labour is necessary for man's life on the earth, and that 
 Nature yields her abundance to labour only, one would be 
 inclined to deduce the probability that he who worked most 
 would be the best off; but in these slave and serf societies 
 the reverse was the case : the man of leisureless toil lived 
 miserably, the man who did nothing useful Uved abundantly. 
 Then, again, as to our thurd test, was there no waste of labour? 
 Yes, indeed, there was waste most grievous. I have said that 
 the slave-owner or the lord of the manor did nothing useful, 
 and yet he did something — he was bound to do something, 
 for he was often energetic, gifted, and full of character — he 
 made war ceaselessly, consuming thereby the wealth which his 
 slaves or his serfs created, and forcing them to work the more 
 grievously. Here was waste enough, and lack of organization 
 of labour. 
 
 Well, all this people found no great difficulty in seeing, and 
 few would like, publicly at least, to confess a regret for these 
 conditions of labour, although in private some men, less 
 hypocritical or more logical than the bulk of reactionists, 
 admit that they consider the society of cultivated men and 
 chattel slaves the best possible for weak human nature. Yet 
 though we can see what has been, we cannot so easily see 
 what is ; and I admit that it is especially hard for people in 
 our civilization, with its general freedom from the ruder 
 forms of violence, its orderly routine life, and, in short all, that 
 tremendous organization whose very perfection of continuity 
 prevents us from noticing it, — I say it is hard for people under 
 the quiet order and external stability of modem society to note 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 71 
 
 that much the same thing is going on in the relations of 
 employers to the employed, as went on under the slave 
 society of Athens, or under the serf-sustained baronage of 
 the thirteenth century. 
 
 For I assert that with us, as with the older societies, those 
 who work hardest fare the worst, those who produce the least 
 get the most ; while as to the waste of labour that goes on, 
 the waste of times past is as nothing compared with what is 
 wasted to-day. 
 
 I must now justify this view of mine, and if possible get 
 you to agree with it, by pointing out to you how society at the 
 present day is constituted. 
 
 Now, as always, there are only two things essential to the 
 production of wealth — labour and raw material ; every one can 
 labour who is not sick or in nonage, therefore every one, 
 except those, if he can get at raw material, can produce 
 wealth ; but without that raw material he cannot produce any- 
 thing — anything, that is, that man can live upon; and if he 
 does not labour he must live at the expense of those that do ; 
 unless, therefore, every one can get at the raw material and 
 instruments of production, the community in general will be 
 burdened by the expense of so many useless mouths, and the 
 sum of its wealth will be less than it ought to be. But in our 
 civilized society of to-day the raw material and the instruments 
 of production are monopolized by a comparatively small 
 number of persons, who will not allow the general population 
 to use them for production of wealth unless they pay them 
 tribute for doing so; and since they are able to exact this 
 tribute they themselves are able to live without producing, 
 and consequently are a burden on the community. Nor are 
 these monopolists content with exacting a bare livelihood from 
 the producers, as mere vagabonds and petty thieves do ; they 
 are able to get from the producers in all cases an abundant 
 livelihood, including most of the enjoyments and advantages 
 of civilization, and in many cases a position of such power 
 that they are practically independent of the community, and 
 
72 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 almost out of reach of its laws— although, indeed, the greater 
 part of those laws were made for the purpose of upholding this 
 monopoly — and wherever necessary they do now use the 
 physical force, which by one means or another they have 
 under their control, for such upholding. 
 
 These monopolists, or capitalists, as one may call them 
 broadly (for I will not at present distinguish the land capitalists 
 from the money capitalists), are in much the same position as 
 the slave-owners of ancient Greece and Rome, or the serf- 
 masters of the thirteenth century; but they have this advantage 
 over them, that though really they sustain their position by 
 mere compulsion, just as the earlier masters did, that com- 
 pulsion is not visible as the compulsion of the earlier 
 times was, and it is very much their business to prevent 
 it becoming visible, as may be well imagined. But as I 
 am against monopoly and in favour of freedom, I must 
 try to get you to see it; since seeing it is the first step 
 towards feeling it, which in its turn is sure to lead to your 
 refusing to bear it. 
 
 I have spoken of the tribute which the capitaUsts exact as 
 the price of the use of those means of production which ought 
 to be as free to all as the air we breathe is, since they are as 
 necessary to our existence as it is. How do they exact the 
 tribute ? They are, to start with, in a good position, you see, 
 because, even without any one's help, they could use the labour- 
 power in their own bodies on the raw material they have, and 
 so earn their livelihood ; but they are not content with that, 
 as I hinted above — they aire not likely to be, because their 
 position, legalized and supported by the whole physical force 
 of the State, enables them "to do better for themselves," 
 as the phrase goes — they can use the labour-power of the 
 disinherited, and force them to keep them without working 
 for production. Those disinherited, however, they must keep 
 alive to labour, and they must allow them also opportunity for 
 breeding — these are necessities that pressed equally on the 
 ancient slave-owner or the mediaeval lord of the manor, or. 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 73 
 
 indeed, on the owner of draught cattle ; they must at least 
 do for the workers as much as for a machine, supply them 
 with fuel to enable them to work; nor need they do more 
 if they are dealing with men who have no power of resistance. 
 But these machines are human ones, instinct with desires 
 and passions, and therefore they cannot help trying to better 
 themselves; and they cannot better themselves except at 
 the expense of the masters, because whatever they produce 
 more than the bare necessaries of life the masters will at once 
 take from them if they can ; therefore they have always 
 resisted the full exercise of the privilege of the masters, and 
 have tried to raise their standard of livehhood above the 
 mere subsistence limit. Their resistance has taken various 
 forms, from peaceful strikes to open war, but it has always 
 been going on, and the masters, when not driven into a corner, 
 have often yielded to it, although unwillingly enough; but 
 it must be said that mostly the workers have claimed Uttle 
 more than mere slaves would, who might mutiny for a bigger 
 ration. For, in fact, this wage paid by our modern masters is 
 nothing more than the ration of the slave in another form ; and 
 when the masters have paid it, they are free to use all the rest 
 that the workers produce, just as the slave-owner takes all that 
 the slave produces. Remember at this point, therefore, that 
 everything more than bare subsistence which the workers 
 make to-day, they make by carrying on constant war with their 
 masters. I must add that their success in this war is often 
 more apparent than real, and too often it means little more 
 than shifting the burden of extreme poverty from one group 
 of the workers to another ; the unskilled labourers, of whom 
 the supply is unlimited, do not gain by it, and their numbers 
 have a tendency to increase, as the masters, driven to their 
 shifts, use more and more elaborate machines in order to dis- 
 pense with the skilled labour, and also use the auxiliary labour 
 of women and children, to whom they do not pay subsistence 
 wages, thereby keeping down the wages of the head of the 
 family, and depriving him and them of the mutual help and 
 
74 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 comfort in the household, which would otherwise be gained 
 from them. 
 
 Thus, then, the capitalists, by means of their monopoly of 
 the means of production, compel the worker to work for less 
 than his due share of the wealth which he produces, — that is, 
 for less than he produces ; he must work, he will die else, and 
 as they are in possession of the raw material, he must agree to 
 the terms they enforce upon him. This is the " free contract " 
 of which we hear so much, and which, to speak plainly, is a 
 capitalist lie. There is no way out of this freedom save rebellion 
 of some kind or other — strike-rebellion, which impoverishes 
 the workers for the time, whether they win the strike or lose it ; 
 or the rebellion of open revolt, which will be put down always, 
 until it is organized for a complete change in the basis of 
 society. 
 
 Now to show you another link or two of the chain which 
 binds the workers. There is one thing which hampers this 
 constant struggle of the workers towards bettering their con- 
 dition at the expense of their masters, and that is competition 
 for livelihood amongst them. I have told you that unskilled 
 labour is practically unlimited ; and machines, the employ- 
 ment of women and children, long hours of work, and all 
 that cheapening of production so much bepraised now, bring 
 about this state of things, that even in ordinary years there are 
 more hands than there is work to give them. This is the 
 great instrument of compulsion of modern monopoly ; people 
 undersell one another in our modern slave-market, so that the 
 employers have no need to use any visible instrument of com- 
 pulsion in driving them towards work ; and the invisibility of 
 this whip — the fear of death by starvation — has so muddled 
 people's brains, that you may hear men, otherwise intelligent, 
 e.g., answering objections to the uselessness of some occupa- 
 tion by saying, " But, you see, it gives people employment," 
 although they would be able to see that if three of them had 
 to dig a piece of ground, and one of them knocked off, and 
 was "employed" in throwing chuckie stones into the water, the 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 75 
 
 other two would have to do his share "of the work as well as 
 their own. 
 
 Another invisible link of the chain is this, that the workman 
 does not really know his own master j the individual employer 
 may be, and often is, on good terms with his men, and really 
 unconscious of the war between them, although he cannot 
 fail to know that if he pays more wages to his men than other 
 employers in the same line of business as himself do, he will 
 be beaten by them. But the workman's real master is not his 
 immediate employer, but his class, which will not allow even 
 the best-intentioned employer to treat his men otherwise than 
 as profit-grinding machines. By his profit, made out of the 
 impaid labour of his men, the manufacturer must live, unless he 
 gives up his position and learns to work like one of his own 
 men, which, indeed, as a rule he could not do, as he has usually 
 not been taught to do any useful work ; therefore, as I have 
 said, he must reduce his wages to the lowest point he can, 
 since it is on the margin between his men's production and 
 their wages that his profit depends ; his class, therefore, com- 
 pels him to compel his workmen to accept as little as possible. 
 But further, the workman is a consumer as well as a producer ; 
 and in that character he has not only to pay rent to a landlord 
 (and far heavier proportionately than rich people have to pay), 
 and also a tribute to the middleman who lives without pro- 
 ducing and without doing service to the community, by passing 
 money from one pocket to another, but he also has to pay (as 
 consumer) the profits of the other manufacturers who super- 
 intend the production of the goods he uses. Again, as a mere 
 member of society, a should-be citizen, he has to pay taxes, and 
 a great deal more than he thinks ; he has to pay for wars, past, 
 present, and future, that are never meant to benefit him, but 
 to force markets for his masters, nay, to keep him from 
 rebellion, from taking his own at some date ; he has also to 
 pay for the thousand and one idiocies of parliamentary 
 government, and ridiculous monarchical and official state — for 
 the mountain of precedent, nonsense, and chicanery, with 
 
76 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Us set of officials, whose business it is, under the name of 
 law, to prevent justice being done to any one. In short, in 
 one way or another, when he has by dint of constant labour 
 got his wages into his pocket, he has them taken away 
 from him again by various occult methods, till it comes to 
 this at last, that he really works an hour for one-third of an 
 hour's pay; while the two-thirds go to those who have not 
 produced the wealth which they consume. 
 
 Here, then, as to the first and second conditions of a 
 reasonable society : (i) That the labour should be duly appor- 
 tioned ; (2) that the wealth should be duly apportioned. Our 
 society does not merely fail in them, but positively inverts 
 them ; with us, those who consume most produce least, those 
 who produce most consume least. 
 
 There yet remains something to be said on the third con- 
 dition of a fair state of society : that it should look to it that 
 labour be not wasted. How does civilization fare in this 
 respect? I have told you what was the occupation of the 
 ancient slave-holders, set free by slave-labour from the necessity 
 of producing — it was fighting with each other for the aggran- 
 disement, in earlier times of their special city, in later of their 
 own selves ; similarly, the mediaeval baron, set free from the 
 necessity of producing by the labour of the serfs who tilled 
 his lands for him, occupied himself with fighting for more 
 serf-tilled land either for himself or for his suzerain. In our 
 own days we see that there is a class freed from the necessity 
 of producing by the tribute paid by the wage-earner. What 
 does our free class do ? how does it occupy the lifelong leisure 
 which it forces toil to yield to it ? 
 
 Well, it chiefly occupies itself in war, like those earlier 
 non-producing classes, and very busy it is over it. I know, 
 indeed, that there is a certain portion of the dominant class 
 that does not pretend to do anything at all, except perhaps 
 a little amateur reactionary legislation, yet even of that group 
 I have heard that some of them are very busy in their estate 
 offices trying to make the most of their special privilege, the 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 77 
 
 monopoly of the land ; and, taking them altogether, they are 
 not a very large class. Of the rest some are busy in taxing us 
 and repressing our liberties directly, as officers in the army and 
 navy, magistrates^ judges, barristers, and lawyers ; they are the 
 salaried officers on the part of the masters in the great class 
 struggle. Other groups there are, as artists and literary men, 
 doctors, schoolmasters, etc., who occupy a middle position 
 between the producers and the non-producers ; they are doing 
 useful service, and ought to be doing it for the community at 
 large, but practically they are only working for a class, and in 
 their present position are little better than hangers-on of the non- 
 producing class, from whom they receive a share of their privi- 
 lege, together with a kind of contemptuous recognition of their 
 position as gentlemen — heaven save the mark ! But the great 
 mass of the non-producing classes are certainly not idle in the 
 ordinary sense of the word ; they could not be, for they include 
 men of great energy and force of character, who would, 
 as all reasonable men do, insist on some serious or exciting 
 occupation ; and I say once again their occupation is war, 
 though it is "writ large," and called competition. They 
 are, it is true, called organizers of labour j and sometimes 
 they do organize it, but when they do they expect an extra 
 reward for so doing outside their special privilege, A great 
 many of them, though they are engaged in the war, sit at home 
 at ease, and let their generals, their salaried managers to 
 wit, wage it for them — I am meaning here shareholders, or 
 sleeping-partners — but whenever they are active in business 
 they are really engaged in organizing the war with their com- 
 petitors, the capitalists in the same line of business as them- 
 selves ; and if they are to be successful in that war they must 
 not be sparing of destruction, either of their own or of other 
 people's goods ; nay, they not unseldom are prepared to further 
 the war of sudden, as opposed to that of lingering, death, and 
 of late years they have involved pretty neariy the whole of 
 Europe in attacks on barbarian or savage peoples, which are 
 only distinguishable from sheer piracy by their being carried 
 
78 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 on by nations instead of individuals. But all that is only by 
 the way J it is the ordinary and necessary outcome of their 
 operations that there should be periodical slackness of trade 
 following on times of uiflation, from the fact that every one 
 tries to get as much as he can of the market to himself at the 
 expense of every one else, so that sooner or later the market is 
 sure to be overstocked, so that wares are sold sometimes at 
 less than the cost of production, which means that so much 
 labour has been wasted on them by misdirection. Nor is that 
 all j for they are obliged to keep an army of clerks and such- 
 like people, who are not necessary either for the production of 
 goods or their distribution, but are employed in safeguarding 
 their master's interests against their master's competitors. The 
 waste is further increased by the necessity of these organizers 
 of the commercial war for playing on the ignorance and 
 gullibility of the customers by two processes, which in their 
 perfection are specialities of the present century, and even, it 
 may be said, of this latter half of it — to wit, adulteration and 
 puffery. It would be hard to say how much ingenuity and pains- 
 taking have been wasted on these incidents in the war of 
 commerce, and I am wholly unable to get any statistics of 
 them J but we all know that an enormous amount of labour is 
 spent on them, which is at the very best as much wasted as if 
 those engaged on it were employed in digging a hole and fiUing 
 it up again. 
 
 But, further, there is yet another source of waste involved 
 in our present society. The grossly unequal distribution of 
 wealth forces the rich to get rid of their surplus money by 
 means of various forms of folly and luxury, which means 
 further waste of labour. Do not think I am advocating 
 asceticism. I wish us all to make the utmost of what we can 
 obtain from Nature to make us happier and more contented 
 while we live; but, apart from reasonable comfort and real 
 refinement, there is, as I am sure no one can deny, a vast 
 amount of sham wealth and sham service created by our 
 miserable system of rich and poor, which makes no human 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 79 
 
 being the happier on the one hand, while on the other it 
 withdraws vast numbers of workers from the production of 
 real utilities, and so casts a heavy additional burden of labour 
 on those who are producmg them. I have been speaking 
 hitherto of a producing and a non-producing class, but I have 
 been quite conscious all the time that though the first class 
 produces whatever wealth is created, a very great many of 
 them are prevented from producing wealth at all, are being 
 set to nothing better than turning a wheel that grinds nothing 
 — save their own Uves. Nay, worse than nothing, I hold 
 that this sham wealth is not merely a negative evil (I mean in 
 itself), but a positive one. It seems to me that the refined 
 society of to-day is distinguished from all others by a kind of 
 gloomy cowardice — a stolid but timorous incapacity of enjoy- 
 ment. He who runs may read the record of the unhappy 
 rich not less than that of the unhappy poor, in the futility 
 of their amusements and the degradation of their art and 
 literature. 
 
 Well, then, the third condition of a reasonable society is 
 violated by our present so-called society j the tremendous 
 activity, energy, and invention of modem times is to a great 
 extent wasted; the monopolists force the workers to waste 
 a great part of their labour-power, while they waste almost 
 the whole of theirs. Our society, therefore, does not fulfil 
 the true fimctions of society. Now, the constitution of all 
 society requires that each individual member of it should yield 
 up a part of his liberty in return for the advantages of mutual 
 help and defence; yet at bottom that surrender should be 
 part of the liberty itself; it should be voluntary in essence. 
 But if society does not fulfil its duties towards the individual, 
 it wrongs him; and no man voluntarily submits to wrong — 
 nay, no man ought to. The society, therefore, that has 
 violated the essential conditions of its existence must be 
 sustained by mere brute force; and that is the case of our 
 modem society, no less than that of the ancient slave-holding 
 and the mediaeval serf-hoUing societies. As a practical 
 
8o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 deduction, I ask you to agree with me that such a society 
 should be changed from its base up, if it be possible. And, 
 further, I must ask how, by what, and by whom, such a revolu- 
 tion can be accomplished? But before I set myself to deal 
 with these questions, I will ask you to believe that, though I 
 have tried to argue the matter on first principles, I do not 
 approach the subject from a pedantic point of view. If I 
 could believe that, however wrong it may be in theory, our 
 present system works well in practice, I should be silenced. 
 If I thought that its wrongs and anomalies were so capable of 
 palliation, that people generally were not only contented but 
 were capable of developing their human faculties duly under 
 it, and that we were on the road to progress without a great 
 change, I for one would not ask any one to meddle with it. 
 But I do not believe that, nor do I know of any thoughtful 
 person that does. In thoughtful persons I can see but two 
 attitudes ; on the one hand the despair of pessimism, which I 
 admit is common, and on the other a desire and hope of 
 change. Indeed, in a year like the present, when one hears 
 on all sides and from all classes of what people call depression 
 of trade, which, as we too well know, means misery at least 
 as great as that which a big war bears with it ; and when on 
 all sides there is ominous grumbling of the coming storm, the 
 workers unable to bear the extra burden laid upon them by 
 the "bad times," — in such a year there is, I do not say no 
 hope, but at least no hope except in those changes, the tokens 
 of which are all around us. 
 
 Therefore, again I ask how, or by what, or by whom, the 
 necessary revolution can be brought about? What I have 
 been saying hitherto has been intended to show you that 
 there has always been a great class struggle going on, which 
 is still sustained by our class of monopoly and our class of 
 disinheritance. It is true that in former times no sooner was 
 one form of that class struggle over than another took its 
 place; but in our days it has become much simplified, and 
 has cleared itself by progress through its various stages of 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 8i 
 
 mere accidental circumstances. The struggle for political 
 equality has come to an end, or nearly so ; all men are (by a 
 fiction, it is true) declared to be equal before the law, and 
 compulsion to labour for another's benefit has taken the 
 simple form of the power of the possessor of money, who is 
 all-powerful ; therefore if, as we Socialists believe, it is certain 
 that the class struggle must one day come to an end, we are 
 so much nearer to that end by the passing through of some of 
 its necessary stages ; history never returns on itself. 
 
 Now, you must not suppose, therefore^ that the revolutionary 
 struggle of to-day, though it may be accompanied (and neces- 
 sarily) by violent insurrection, is paralleled by the insurrections 
 of past times. A rising of the slaves of the ancient period, 
 or of the serfs of the mediaeval times, could not have been 
 permanently successful, because the time was not ripe for such 
 success, because the growth of the new order of things was 
 not sufficiently developed. It is indeed a terrible thought 
 that, although the burden of injustice and suffering was almost 
 too heavy to be borne in such insurrectionary times, and 
 although all popular uprisings have right on their side, they 
 could not be successful at the time, because there was nothing 
 to put in the place of the unjust system against which men 
 were revolting. And yet it is true, and it explains the fact 
 that the class antagonism is generally more felt when the 
 oppressed class is bettering its condition than when it is at 
 its worst. The consciousness of oppression then takes the 
 form of hope, and leads to action, and is, indeed, the token of 
 the gradual formation of a new order of things underneath the 
 old decaying order. 
 
 Most thoughtful people are conscious of the fact that the 
 tendency of the times is to make the labour classes the great 
 power of the epoch, in the teeth of the other fact that labour 
 is at least as directly under the domination of a privileged 
 class as ever it was. Now these two facts taken together : the 
 obvious uprising of the workers in the scale, and their being 
 face to face with a class that lives by exploiting their labour,— 
 
 G 
 
82 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 these two facts seem to us Socialists to show that one of these 
 classes must give way, and that this giving way must mean 
 that one of those classes must be absorbed in the other, and 
 so the class-war be ended. If that position be accepted, it is 
 clear that the class that must come alive out of the struggle 
 must be the producing class, the useful class; therefore the 
 Socialist's view of the labour question is that a new society 
 is in course of development from the working-classes — the 
 producing classes, more properly — and that the other classes 
 which now live on their labour will melt into that class. The 
 result of that will be, that^ so far as society has any conscious 
 organization, it will be an instrument for the arrangement of 
 labour so as to produce wealth from natural material, and to 
 distribute the wealth when produced without waste of labour ; 
 that is to say, it will satisfy those ideal conditions of its reason 
 for existence which I began by putting before you, 
 
 I told you that I was not prepared to give you any details 
 of the arrangement of a new state of society ; but I am pre- 
 pared to state the principles on which it would be founded, 
 and the recognition of which would make it easy for serious 
 men to deal with the details of arrangement. Socialism asserts 
 that every one should have free access to the means of pro- 
 duction of wealth — the raw material and the stored-up force 
 produced by labour; in other words, the land, plant, and 
 stock of the community, which are now monopolized by certain 
 privileged persons, who force others to pay for their use. This 
 claim is founded on the principle which lies at the bottom of 
 Socialism, that the right to the possession of wealth is conferred 
 by the possessor having worked towards its production, and 
 being able to use it for the satisfaction of his personal needs. 
 The recognition of this right will be enough to guard against 
 mere confusion and violence. The claim to property on any 
 other grounds must lead to what is in plain terms robbery; 
 which will be no less robbery because it is organized by a 
 sham society, and must be no less supported by violence 
 because it is carried on under the sanction of the law. 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 83 
 
 Let me put this with somewhat more of detail. No man 
 has made the land of the country, nor can he use more than a 
 small portion of it for his personal needs j no man has made 
 more than a small portion of its fertihty, nor can use personally 
 more than a small part of the results of the labour of countless 
 persons, living and dead, which has gone to produce that 
 fertility. No man can build a factory with his own hands, or 
 make the machinery in it, nor can he use it, except in combi- 
 nation with others. He may call it his, but he cannot make 
 any use of it as his alone, unless he is able to compel other 
 people to use it for his benefit ; this he does not do personally, 
 but our sham society has so organized itself that by its means 
 he can compel this unpaid service from others. The magis- 
 trate, the judge, the policeman, and the soldier, are the sword 
 and pistol of this modern highwayman, and I may add that he 
 is also furnished with what he can use as a mask under the 
 name of morals and religion. 
 
 Now, if these means of production — the land, plant, and 
 stock — were really used for their primary uses, and not as 
 means for extracting unpaid labour from others, they would 
 be used by men working in combination with each other, each 
 of whom would receive his due share of the results of that 
 combined labour; the only difficulty would then be what 
 would be his due share, because it must be admitted on all 
 hands that it is impossible to know how much each individual 
 has contributed towards the production of a piece of co-opera- 
 tive labour; but the principle once granted that each man 
 should have his due share of what he has created by his labour, 
 the solution of the difficulty would be attempted, nay, is now 
 hypothetically attempted, in various ways, in two ways mainly. 
 One view is that the State — that is, society organized for the 
 production and distribution of wealth — would hold all the 
 means of the production of wealth in its hands, allowing 
 the use of them to whomsoever it thought could use them, 
 charging rent, perhaps, for their use, but which rent would be 
 used again only for the benefit of the whole community, and 
 
8+ MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 therefore would return to the worker in another form. It 
 would also take on itself the organization of labour in detail, 
 arranging the how, when, and where, for the benefit of the 
 public, — doing all this, one must hope, with as little centraliza- 
 tion as possible; in short, the State, according to this view, 
 would be the only employer of labour. No individual would 
 be able to employ a workman to work for him at a profit, i.e. 
 to work for less than the value of his labour (roughly esti- 
 mated), because the State would pay him the full value of it ; 
 nor could any man let land or machinery at a profit, because 
 the State would let it without the profit. It is clear that if 
 this could be carried out, no one could live without working. 
 ^Vhen a man had spent the wealth he had earned personally, 
 he would have to work for more, as there would be no tribute 
 coming to him from the labour of past generations ; on these 
 terms he could not accumulate wealth, nor would he desire to, 
 for he could do nothing with it except satisfy his personal 
 needs with it, whereas at present he can turn the superfluity 
 of his wealth into capital, i.e. wealth used for the extraction of 
 profit. Thus society would be changed. Every one would 
 have to work for his livelihood, and everybody would be able 
 to do so ; whereas at present there are people who refuse to 
 work for their livelihood, and forbid others to do so. Labour 
 would not be wasted, as there would be no competing em- 
 ployers, gambling in the market, and using the real producer 
 and the consumer as their milch cows. The limit of price 
 would be the cost of production, so that buying and selling 
 would be simply the exchange of equivalent values, and there 
 would be no loss on either side in the transaction. Thus 
 there would be a society in which every one would have an 
 equal chance for well-doing, for, as a matter of course, 
 arrangements would be made for the sustaining of people in 
 their nonage, for keeping them in comfort if they were physi- 
 cally incapacitated from working, and also for educating every 
 one according to his capacities. This would at the least be a 
 society which would try to perform those functions of seeing 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 85 
 
 that every one did his due share of work and no more, and 
 had his due share of wealth and no less, and that no labour 
 was wasted, which I have said were the real functions of a 
 true society. 
 
 But there is another view of the solution of the difficulty as 
 to what constitutes the due share of the wealth created by 
 labour. Those who take it say, since it is not really possible 
 to find out what proportion of combined labour each man 
 contributes, why profess to try to do so? In a properly 
 ordered community all work that is done is necessary on 
 the one hand, and on the other there would be plenty of 
 wealth in such a community to satisfy all reasonable needs. 
 The community holds all wealth in common, but has the 
 same right to holding wealth that the individual has, namely, 
 the fact that it has created it and uses it ; but as a community 
 it can only use wealth by satisfying with it the needs of every 
 one of its members — it is not a true community if it does less 
 than this — but their needs are not necessarily determined by 
 the kind or amount of work which each man does, though, of 
 course, when they are that must be taken into account. To 
 say the least of it, men's needs are much more equal than 
 their mental or bodily capacities are; their ordinary needs, 
 granting similar conditions of climate and the like, are pretty 
 much the same, and could, as above said, be easily satisfied. 
 As for special needs for wealth of a more special kind, 
 reasonable men would be contented to sacrifice the thing 
 which they needed less for that which they needed more; 
 and for the rest, the varieties of temperament would get over 
 the difficulties of this sort. As to the incentives to work, it 
 must be remembered that even in our own sham society 
 most men are not disinclined to work, so only that their 
 work is not that which they are compelled to do ; and the 
 higher and more intellectual the work is, the more men are 
 resolved to do it even in spite of obstacles. In fact, the ideas 
 on the subject of the reward of labour in the future are 
 founded on its position in the present. Life is such a terrible 
 
86 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 struggle for the majority, that we are all apt to think that a 
 specially gifted person should be endowed with more of that 
 which we are all compelled to struggle for— money, to wit — 
 and to value his services simply by that standard. But in a 
 state of society in which all were well-to-do, how could you 
 reward extra services to the community? Give your good 
 worker immunity from work? The question carries with it 
 the condemnation of the idea, and moreover, that will be 
 the last thing he will thank you for. Provide for his children ? 
 The fact that they are human beings with a capacity for work 
 is enough; they are provided for in being members of a 
 community which will see that they neither lack work nor 
 wealth. Give him more wealth ? Nay ; what for ? What can 
 he do with more than he can use? He cannot eat three 
 dinners a day, or sleep in four beds. Give him domination 
 over other men ? Nay, if he be more excellent than they are 
 in any art, he must influence them for his good and theirs, 
 if they are worth anything ; but if you make him their arbitrary 
 master, he will govern them, but he will not influence them ; 
 he and they will be enemies, and harm each other mutually. 
 One reward you can give him, that is, opportunity for 
 developing his special capacity, but that you will do for 
 everybody and not the excellent only. Indeed, I suppose he 
 will not, if he be excellent, lack the admiration — or perhaps 
 it is better to say the affection — of his fellow-men, and he 
 will be all the more likely to get that when the relations 
 between him and them are no longer clouded by the fatal gift 
 of mastership. 
 
 In short, in a duly ordered community, everybody would 
 do what he could do best, and therefore easiest, and with 
 most pleasure. He who could do the higher work would 
 do it as easily as the man whose capacity was less would do 
 the lower work; there would be no more wear and tear to 
 him in it, or if there were, it would mean simply that his needs 
 were greater, and would have to be considered accordingly. 
 
 Moreover, those who see this view of the new society 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 87 
 
 believe that dece ntralization in it would have to be complete. 
 The political unit with them is not a Nation, but a CommuneV 
 the whole of reasonable society would be a great federation of 
 such communes, federated for definite purposes of the organi- 
 zation of livelihood and exchange. For a mere nation is the 
 historical deduction from the ancient tribal family, in which 
 there was peace between the individuals composing it, and 
 war with the rest of the world. A nation is a body of people 
 kept together for purposes of rivalry and war with other similar 
 bodies, and when competition shall have given place to 
 combination the function of the nation wiU be gone. 
 
 I wilTrecapitulate, then, the two views taken among 
 Socialists as to the future of society. According to the first, 
 the St^te — that is, the nation organized for unwasteful produc- 
 tion and exchange of wealth — wiU be the sole possessor of the 
 national plant and stock, the sole employer of labour,' which 
 she will so regulate in the general interest that no man will 
 ever need to fear lack of employment and due earnings there- 
 from. Everybody will have an equal chance of livelihood, and, 
 except as a rare disease, there would be no hoarding of money 
 or other wealth. This view points to an attempt to give every- 
 body the full worth of the productive work done by him, after 
 having ensured the necessary preliminary that he shall always 
 be free to work. 
 
 According to the other view, the centralized nation would 
 give place to a federation of communities who would hold all 
 wealth in common, and would use that wealth for satisfying 
 the needs of each member, only exacting from each that he 
 should do his best according to his capacity towards the 
 production of the common wealth. Of course, it is to be 
 understood that each member is absolutely free to use his share 
 of wealth as he pleases without interference from any, so long 
 as he really uses it, that is, does not turn it into an instrument 
 for the oppression of others. This view intends complete 
 equality of condition for every one, though life would be, as 
 always, varied by the differences of capacity and disposition ; 
 
88 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and emulation in working for the common good would supply 
 the place of competition as an incentive. 
 
 These two views of the future of society are sometimes 
 opposed to each other as Socialism and Communism ; but 
 to my mind the latter is simply the necessary development of 
 the former, which implies a transition period, during which 
 people would be getting rid of the habits of mind bred by the 
 long ages of tyranny and commercial competition, and be 
 learning that it is to the interest of each that all should 
 thrive. 
 
 When men had lost the fear of each other engendered by 
 our system of artificial famine, they would feel that the best 
 way of avoiding the waste of labour would be to allow every 
 man to take what he needed from the common store, since 
 he would have no temptation or opportunity of doing any- 
 thing with a greater portion than he really needed for his 
 personal use. Thus would be minimized the danger of the 
 community falling into bureaucracy, the multiplication of 
 boards and offices, and all the paraphernalia of official 
 authority, which is after all a burden, even when it is exercised 
 by the delegation of the whole people and in accordance with 
 their wishes. 
 
 Thus I have laid before you, necessarily briefly, a Socialist's 
 view of the present condition of labour, and its hopes for 
 the future. If the indictment against the present society 
 seems to you to be of undue proportions compared with the 
 view of that which is to come, I must again remind you that 
 we Socialists never dream of building up by our own efforts in 
 one generation a society altogether new. All I have been 
 attacking has been the exercise of arbitrary authority for the 
 supposed benefit of a privileged class. When we have got 
 rid of that authority and are free once more, we ourselves shall 
 do whatever may be necessary in organizing the real society 
 which even now exists under the authority which usurps that 
 title. That true society of loved and lover, parent and child, 
 friend and friend, the society of well-wishers, of reasonable 
 
WILLIAM MORRIS 89 
 
 people conscious of the aspirations of humanity and the 
 duties we owe to it through one another, — this society, I 
 say, is held together and exists by his own inherent right 
 and reason, in spite of what is usually thought to be the 
 cement of societyr-arbitrary authority to wit — that is to say, 
 the expression of brute force under the influence of unreason- 
 ing habit. Unhappily though society exists, it is in an enslaved ■ 
 and miserable condition, because that same arbitrary authority 
 says to us practically : " You may be happy if you can afford 
 it, but unless you have a certain amount of money, you shall 
 not be allowed the exercise of the social virtues j sentiment, 
 affection, good manners, intelligence even, to you shall be 
 mere words; you shall be less than men, because you are 
 needed as machines to grind on in a system which has come 
 upon us, we scarce know how, and which compels us, as well 
 as you." This is the real, continuously repeated proclamation 
 of law and order to the most part of men who are under the 
 burden of that hierarchy of compulsion which governs us under 
 the usurped and false title of society, and which all true 
 Socialists or supporters of real society are bound to do their 
 best to get rid of, so as to leave us free to realize to the full 
 that true society which means well-being and well-doing for 
 one and all. 
 
IX 
 
 PROBLEMS OF MODERN INDUSTRY 
 
 By Sidney and Beatrice Webb 
 
 This is from the introduction to the second edition Qulj, 1902) of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Webb's collection of essays entitled Problems of Modern 
 Industry. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Webb's principal joint works are, A History of Trade 
 Unionism (1894) i Industrial Democracy (1897 '■ the last chapter con- 
 tains the fullest account of their views on the development and future 
 constitution of society) ; and A History of English Local Government 
 from 1688 to 1834 (1st vol., 1906). Mr. Webb has been a leadingf 
 member of the Fabian Society since its inception, a London County 
 Councillor since 1892, and has played a chief part in creating^ and 
 shaping the London School of Economics. Mrs. Webb is the 
 authoress of The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain, by Beatrice 
 Potter. 
 
 The opening of the twentieth century finds both England 
 and the United States in a state of acute self-consciousness 
 with regard to the organization of industry and commerce, and 
 the influence of financial considerations in national politics. 
 The last decade has witnessed important and even dramatic 
 changes in the economic organization of the civilized world. 
 These changes have, both in the United Kingdom and the 
 United States, produced a marked effect on the public imagi- 
 nation. PubUc opinion learns, it is to be feared, little from 
 books, and only occasionally absorbs a discovery in the realm 
 of thought. Its most effective teacher is always some objective 
 happening in the world of things. The English municipalities 
 learned the elements of sanitation, not from the physiologists, 
 but from three successive visitations of Asiatic cholera. The 
 economic changes of the last few years— the scramble for 
 
 90 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 91 
 
 Africa, the territorial expansion of the United States, the 
 enormous development of individual fortunes, the "inter- 
 nationalization" of every branch of industry, and, above all, 
 the startling multiplication of syndicates, trusts, and giant 
 amalgamations — all these have worked a great change in the 
 mind of the electorate. In the new Introductions to the 
 current editions of the History of Trade Unionism and 
 Industrial Democracy we have described some of these 
 developments of public opinion, with special reference to 
 trade-unions and strikes. We now add a few suggestions 
 with regard to Trusts, and the public alarm concerning them. 
 
 It is curious to notice with what a start the ordinary 
 citizen has all of a sudden realized how entirely both England 
 and the United States have departed from the industrial 
 organization described by the classic economists. Adam 
 Smith's Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence were given to the world in the same year. We need not 
 here inquire to what extent the argument and philosophy of 
 both these masterpieces may have been influenced by the 
 industrial organization then common to England and New 
 England. What is brought vividly and dramatically to our 
 minds by the formation of the so-called " Billion Dollar Steel 
 Trust " and the " Atlantic Shipping Combine " is the extent of 
 the change which has come over the economic status of the 
 mass of the nation. A century and a quarter ago, when 
 Jefferson and Adam Smith were writing, it could be taken for 
 granted that the normal state of things was for every man to 
 become, in due course, " his own master ; " it could be 
 assumed that the work of the world was, for the most part, 
 done by men who were moved by the stimulus of making 
 " profit " as distinguished from wages or salary ; it seemed a 
 scientific fact that values were determined by the mutual 
 exchange of the commodities and services of independent 
 producers. It was on these assumptions that the classic 
 political economy was based. What is more important to us 
 to-day is that, both in England and in the United States, the 
 
92 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 public opinion of the educated and prosperous classes still 
 makes, with regard to half its judgments, much the same 
 assumptions. Neither the prosperous Englishman nor the 
 prosperous American can rid himself of the feeling that it is 
 open to every one to become a profit-maker, that no one need 
 long remain a mere wage-earner, and that it is therefore not 
 really of vital consequence to the nation how those members 
 of the community who happen temporarily to be wage-earners 
 are actually living. The opening of the twentieth century 
 sees, perhaps, some weakening of this assumption. England 
 pays more and more attention to its factory legislation. The 
 prosperous American still believes, however, that at any rate 
 every native-born American can rise to a higher place, and 
 that the status of the hired labourer is therefore, on the 
 American continent, still something transient, exceptional, 
 and relatively unimportant. He is still revolted by any 
 glimpse of American democracy as a "democracy of the 
 ' hired man.' " Yet surely nothing is more certain than that 
 in the United States, as in Western Europe and Australia, the 
 hired men form, and must necessarily continue to form, at least 
 three-fourths of the population. This is a fact which the advent 
 of the Trust, the supremacy of business conducted on a large 
 scale, the rapidly increasing concentration of nearly every kind 
 of industry, can hardly fail to drive home to the mind of the 
 American, as to that of the English citizen. He will, for the 
 first time, become aware of himself as one of a democracy of 
 hired men. 
 
 We shall be conscious, too, by whom we are hired. It has 
 long been a fond dream, both in England and in the United 
 States, to prove, by some mysterious juggling with wage and 
 price statistics, that wealth is getting more equally distributed, 
 that the proportion of small competences is increasing, and 
 that the number is growing of those who, as shareholders or 
 interest receivers, share in industrial profits. This has, for forty 
 or fifty years, been an amiable delusion of the statistical philan- 
 thropist. It is now dispelled. The dramatic concentrations 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 93 
 
 of capiul exhibited by the Rockefellers and Pierpont Morgans, 
 like the visible accumulations of some English ducal ground- 
 landlords, have forced upon everybody's notice the indis- 
 putable testimony of death-duty statistics. The only point 
 in dispute is whether wealth-concentration has as yet gone 
 further in England or in the United States. This is, of course, 
 not to deny that some or all of the property-less masses have, 
 during the past fifty years, found their conditions of life 
 improved. But the advent of the Trust is making both 
 England and America realize, as they have never realized 
 before, that in both countries nine-tenths of all the realized 
 property belongs to-day to a class that comprises only one- 
 tenth of the population, — that ninety per cent, of the citizens, 
 the great mass of the people, share among them, even including 
 their little homes and furniture, and all their much-vaunted 
 hoards, the ownership of not more than ten per cent, of the 
 capital wealth. 
 
 But if the advent of the trust makes us conscious of our- 
 selves as nations of hired men, it necessarily compels us to 
 realize that the conditions of our hiring are all-important, not 
 only to ourselves individually, but to the community as a 
 whole. " Every society is judged," as Mr. Asquith, the late 
 Home Secretary, said the other day, " and survives, according 
 to the material and moral minimum which it prescribes to 
 its members." Note that word " prescribes." As hired men, 
 we find ourselves graded in elaborate hierarchies, from the 
 sweated trouser-hand or day-labourer, right up to Mr. Schwab 
 or Mr. Clinton Dawkins at fabulous salaries. But the census 
 shows four-fifths of us to be manual-working wage-earners, 
 keeping our families out of earnings which may be anything 
 from ten shillings to ten pounds a week. These earnings 
 depend on our successful bargaining with our employers — 
 employers who used to be men like ourselves, but who, as we 
 now realize, are, for the majority of us, gigantic capitalist cor- 
 porations, huge joint-stock mills, railways, shipping combines, 
 and " Billion Dollar Steel Trusts." Between these employers 
 
94 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and the individual workmen there has hitherto been assumed 
 to be "freedom of contract," secured to us by the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States or by the contemporary general 
 principles of the law in the United Kingdom ; and this 
 freedom of contract was inaugurated, and is to-day still usually 
 defended, as being in the highest interests of the wage-earner 
 himself. " The patrimony of a poor man," says Adam Smith, 
 " lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands ; and to hinder 
 him from employing that strength and dexterity in what 
 manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is 
 a plain violation of this most sacred property." But the con- 
 ditions of industry have somewhat changed since 1776, and 
 the " Billion Dollar Steel Trust," though it does not appreciably 
 alter the circumstances, is opening our eyes to them. We see 
 now, what the professors of political economy have gradually 
 become conscious of, that freedom of contract in the hiring of 
 labour may mean something very like the compulsion of one 
 party to serve the other, on terms nominally contractual, but 
 virtually fixed by overwhelming superiority in strength. When 
 the conditions of the workman's life are settled, without inter- 
 ference by law or trade-unionism, by absolutely free contract 
 between man and man, the workman's freedom is delusive. 
 Where he bargains, he bargains at a hopeless disadvantage; 
 and with regard to many of the terms most important to his 
 health, comfort, and industrial efficiency, he cannot bargain 
 at all.' 
 
 This conclusion will carry with it such momentous con- 
 sequences, and is as yet so imperfectly reaUzed, that it is 
 worth while to think it over. Let us consider how the wage- 
 contract is actually entered into. Leave out of account, to 
 
 • The whole argument on this point, with the facts on which it is based, 
 will be found more fully set forth in our Industrial Democracy, part iii. 
 chap, ii., " The Higgling of the Market ;" and chap, iii., "The Economic 
 Characteristics of Trade Unionism." See, for a more popular presentation, 
 The Case for the Factojy Acts, edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb (London, 1902). 
 [Authors' Note.] 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 95 
 
 begin with, any period of bad trade, when mills are shutting 
 down or running only short time, and armies of unemployed 
 are looking for work. Assume that things are in equilibrium, 
 — that there is only one "hand" applying for it. Watch 
 carefully the play of motives acting on the two minds, that of 
 the " man with the dinner-pail " seeking employment, and that 
 of the employer or foreman with a place to fill. Suppose the 
 workman to demur to the wage offered by the employer. 
 There is, we assume, absolutely no other spare hand in sight. 
 To leave the vacancy unfilled may cause some inconvenience 
 in the mill. To complete the orders in hand, some of the 
 other men may have to work more overtime. The delivery of 
 the goods may even have to be delayed, the year's output may 
 be diminished, and tlie year's profits may be fractionally less 
 than they would have been. But in the mean time the capitalist 
 or his agent is not actually affected in his daily life. He and 
 his family go on eating and drinking as they did before. At 
 most, the matter is a trifling one to them. Thus, the capitalist 
 can afford to wait until the workman returns in a humbler 
 frame of mind. And this is just what the workman must do. 
 What is only a trifling matter to the capitalist is to the work- 
 man his whole livelihood. Moreover, he cannot wait. Even 
 if he stands out one day, he has thereby lost that day. His 
 very subsistence depends on his quickly coming to an agree- 
 ment. If he is obstinate, consumption of his little hoard or 
 the sale of his furniture may delay the catastrophe. Sooner or 
 later slow starvation forces him to come to terms. And, since 
 success in the " higgling of the market " is largely dependent 
 on the relative eagerness of the parties to come to terms 
 — conspicuously so if this eagerness cannot be concealed 
 from the antagonist, — capitalist and workman always meet, 
 in the absence of law or effective trade-unionism, on unequal 
 terms. Further, the capitalist knows the cards, and the 
 workman does not. Even in the rare cases in which the 
 absence of a single workman is of any real consequence to the 
 employer, this is usually unknown to any one but himself. 
 
96 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 He, too, knows the state of the market, and can judge 
 whether it might not even suit him better to slacken production 
 for the moment. The isolated individual workman bargains 
 in the dark. Add to this the fact that the workman is not 
 trained in the art of bargaining, which is the daily business of 
 the employer, or the constant task of an expert specially 
 trained for the particular work of hiring men. Thus, in the 
 bargaining between a capitahst corporation and the individual 
 labourers whom it hires, the labourers stand to lose at every 
 point. 
 
 So far we have been assuming that the labour-market is in 
 equilibrium, and that only one hand apphes for one vacant 
 place. But at what periods and in what trades is so perfect 
 an equilibrium to be found? When wealthy companies are 
 concentrating their works and shutting down urmecessary 
 mills; when new processes or new machines are displacing 
 labour j when industrial crises, changes of fashion, or the 
 mere shifts and gusts of international commerce cause our 
 production to wane, now in this branch, now in that, — what 
 freedom has the hired man ? When the unemployed are 
 crowding round the factory gates, it is plain to each one 
 among them that, unless he can induce the foreman to choose 
 him rather than another, his chance of subsistence for weeks 
 to come may be irretrievably lost. Bargaining, in any genuine 
 sense, there can be none. The foreman has but to pick his 
 man and name the price — even if he does so much as name 
 the price. Once inside the gates, the lucky workman knows 
 that if he grumbles at any of the surroundings, however 
 intolerable ; if he demurs to any speeding up, lengthening of 
 the hours, or arbitrary deductions j or if he hesitates to obey 
 any orders, however unreasonable, he condemns himself once 
 more to the semi-starvation and misery of unemployment. 
 The alternative to the foreman or ganger is merely to pick 
 another labourer out of the eager crowd at the gate. The 
 difference to the joint-stock company is nil. 
 
 But much more remains to be said. To the capitalist 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 97 
 
 corporation the wage-contract is simply a question of so much 
 money to be paid. To the workman it is a matter of placing, 
 for ten or twelve hours out of every twenty-four, his whole life 
 at the disposal of his hirer. What hours he shall work, when 
 and where he shall get his food, the sanitary conditions of his 
 employment, the safety of the machinery, the temperature and 
 atmosphere to which he is subjected, the fatigue or strains that 
 he endures, the risks of disease or accident that he incurs, — 
 all these are involved in the workman's contract, and not in 
 his employer's. These are matters of as vital importance to 
 the wage-earner as are his wages. Yet about these matters 
 he cannot, in practice, bargain at all. Imagine a weaver, be- 
 fore accepting employment in a cotton-mill, examining the 
 proportion of steam in the atmosphere of the shed, testing the 
 strength of the shuttle-guards, and criticizing the soundness of 
 the shafting-belts ; a mechanic prying into the security of the 
 hoists and cranes or the safety of the lathes and steam- 
 hammers among which he must move ; a work-girl in a sweat- 
 ing den computing the cubic space which will be her share of 
 the work-room, discussing the ventilation, warmth, and lighting 
 of the place in which she will spend nearly all her working life, 
 or examining disapprovingly the sanitary accommodation pro- 
 vided; think of the man who wants a job in a white lead 
 works testing the poisonous influence of the particular process 
 employed, and reckoning in terms of weekly wages the exact 
 degree of injury to his health which he is consenting to under- 
 go. On all these matters, at any rate, we must at once give 
 up the notion of freedom of contract. In the absence of any 
 restraint of law, the conditions of sanitation, decency, and 
 security from accident in the various enterprises of the United 
 States Steel Corporation or the Standard Oil Company are 
 really at the mercy of the rulers of these great undertakings. 
 They decide these conditions of life for the millions of work- 
 men whom they employ — and thus, to this extent, for the 
 nation— as arbitrarily (and, it is to be hoped, as humanely) as 
 they do for their horses. " In the general course of human 
 
98 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 nature," remarked the shrewd founders of the American Con- 
 stitution, " power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power 
 over his will." ' 
 
 These features of the lot of the hired man are common to 
 England and America, and, indeed, to every country in which 
 capitalist industry and production are found on a large scale. 
 We must, in intellectual honesty, recognize the fact. But this 
 is not to say that the condition of the hired man is either good 
 or badj or better or worse than in bygone times. It is different 
 from what it was when industry was carried on by the village 
 blacksmith, different from that described by Adam Smith, 
 different from that which Jefferson knew. The dinner-pail 
 may be fuller — as regards whole sections of the community 
 it can certainly be proved to be fuller — but there has been a 
 change of relative status. Meanwhile, let us accept the result 
 in the great wage-earning class as we now know it — a com- 
 munity of hired men ; a relatively small proportion of skilled 
 artisans earning " good money ; " the great mass living on 
 wages, in England of five and twenty or thirty shillings, in the 
 United States of ten or twelve dollars, per fully employed 
 week j while below these come the unskilled labourers and 
 most women workers, existing, in greater or smaller numbers, 
 under conditions of " sweating "—authoritatively defined as 
 " earnings barely sufficient to sustain existence, hours of labour 
 such as to make the lives of the workers periods of almost 
 ceaseless toil, sanitary conditions injurious to the health of the 
 persons employed, and dangerous to the public." " Into one 
 or another of these three categories come seventy or eighty per 
 cent, of the whole population. Such are the loyal subjects of 
 Edward the Seventh of England ; such are the free citizens of 
 the United States. We hate to think about it, but it is so ; 
 and the advent of the Trust is going to make us realize that 
 it is so. 
 
 ' Federalist, No. Ixxix. 
 
 ^ Final Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the 
 Sweating System, 1890. 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 
 
 99 
 
 What effect will this growing consciousness of industrial 
 subordination have upon public opinion ? England developed 
 its capitalist industry a couple of generations earlier than did 
 the United States. Though the time for trusts and great 
 railway combinations had not yet come, the new mills and 
 mines which, at the end of the eighteenth century, spread over 
 the northern and midland counties, were the leviathans of their 
 day, and great was the power which they wielded in the labour- 
 market. Complete " freedom of contract " prevailed. The re- 
 sult, as every one knows, was the terrible " white slavery " of 
 the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when generation after 
 generation of workers in the factories and coal-mines were 
 stunted and maimed, brutalized and degraded, and hurried 
 into early graves, by the long hours, low wages, and insanitary 
 conditions of those halcyon days, in which^ as has been said, 
 ''it was not five per cent., or ten per cent., but thousands per 
 cent., that made the fortunes of Lancashire." But England 
 grew alarmed, amid all its profit, at the rapid degeneration of 
 whole sections of its people. By the untiring efforts of the phi- 
 lanthropists. Factory Act after Factory Act was passed, setting 
 limits to freedom of contract, and substituting, for individual 
 bargaining between man and man, definite " common rules " 
 on every point deemed of prime importance to the welfare of 
 the operatives. These common rules, securing a reasonable 
 minimum of leisure, safety, and sanitation, applied at first only 
 to the textile and mining industries, and are, to this day, not 
 yet coextensive with the English wage-earning class. Nor do 
 they apply to wages. But they grew up, after 1824, in all the 
 principal English industries, strong trade-unions, which en- 
 forced, by the instrument of collective bargaining, new common 
 rules supplementing those laid down by law. The employers 
 in each trade were numerous and divided. Differing among 
 themselves in wealth and magnitude of business, as well as in 
 personal character, they proved unable to present a solid front 
 to the trade-unions. The result is that, in the course of the last 
 half century, some of the principal and most successful branches 
 
100 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 of English industry — notably cotton manufacture, coal-mining, 
 ship-building, engineering, and the building trades — have 
 come to be regulated by codes of common rules, enforced 
 partly by law and partly by collective agreement. The rate 
 of wages, like the hours of work and the fundamental condi- 
 tions of safety and sanitation, are therefore no longer at the 
 mercy of individual capitalists. There exists in each trade a 
 sort of minimum standard, fixed practically by general agree- 
 ment among the whole body of employers on the one hand and 
 the whole body of workmen on the other, below which it is 
 found impossible for any employer to descend. He may break 
 away, but he discovers presently that it no more pays him to 
 outrage the public opinion of his trade than to infringe the 
 factory law. The general opinion of the community acts, in all 
 well-organized trades, as a real though curiously intangible 
 check upon the capitalist. Public sympathy is always on the 
 side of a stable and highly organized trade-union defending 
 itself against any encroachment on the common rules or reduc- 
 tion in rates. Great corporations like the London and North- 
 Western Railway find themselves pulled up sharp by the 
 peremptory interference of the Board of Trade when they are 
 guilty of any unconscious tyranny over their employees. Even 
 in the late engineers' strike, where the men lost sympathy be- 
 cause they were believed to be resisting machinery, and the 
 employers won all along the line, the final agreement formally 
 recognized the right of collective bargaining and the need for 
 common rules, while the result has been the establishment of 
 a new tribunal of the trade to maintain these rules — a joint 
 tribunal, in which, for the moment, the associated employers 
 doubtless have a larger influence than the associated workmen, 
 but one to which every individual employer, no less than every 
 individual workman, finds himself practically subject. This 
 collective rule of the whole trade over every individual em- 
 ployer in it, as well as over every individual workman, is 
 typical of most of the industries in England in which there are 
 great employers or strong capitalist corporations. Moreover, 
 
S. AND B. WEBB loi 
 
 the law, where it purports to control, really does control, even 
 the greatest corporation. Hence neither our philanthropists 
 nor our workmen fear the Trust. England's industrial peril 
 lies in quite another direction. 
 
 The worst conditions of employment in the United Kingdom 
 occur in those industries carried on by small employers, or 
 desolated by home work, which have either escaped as yet 
 from the ever-widening scope of the factory laws, or in which 
 such laws are not yet effectively enforced. Here philanthropic 
 sentiment has hitherto been evoked by the spectacle of the 
 small master struggling to rise in the world, and unable to 
 afford to his sweated employees either wholesome workshops, 
 decent sanitation, or a living wage. These unfortunate 
 workers, incapable of effective organization, have hitherto 
 failed to obtain the same help from public opinion or the same 
 measure of protective legislation that Parliament concedes to 
 the politically active cotton-operatives or coal-miners, who need 
 it far less. Unfortunately, too, the efforts to secure effective 
 factory laws for these workers are at present balked by the 
 doctrinaire resistance of many of the leaders of the movement 
 for "women's rights." Thus, the sweated trades, in spite of 
 their disastrous effects on the community as a whole, are given 
 at present a positive advantage in the competition for the 
 world-market. The absence of any collective regulation enables 
 the employers so to use their superiority in bargaining for the 
 hire of their labour as to reduce its condition even below sub- 
 sistence level. These trades are, in fact, parasites on the rest 
 of the community, drawing from the more prosperous sections, 
 in one form or another, a continual " bounty " with which to 
 eke out their starvation wages. Fortunately, the great staple 
 industries of the kingdom, in which relatively good conditions 
 prevail, gain so much in efficiency by their very regulation 
 that they go on, notwithstanding this virtual bounty to the 
 sweated trades, increasing in extent and prosperity year after 
 year. What loses ground in England is any industry which 
 escapes the beneficial effect of collective regulation, but which 
 
102 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 for some reason fails to get the bounty implied in industrial 
 parasitism. The most conspicuous example in English agri- 
 culture, which is constantly falling more and more behind not 
 only the great regulated trades such as cotton and coal, but 
 also behind the miserably inefficient sweated trades, fed by 
 parasitic bounty. Thus, what is most urgently needed in the 
 United Kingdom, and what is most likely to spring from our 
 growing consciousness of the weakness of the hired man, is 
 not any interference with the great employers or their capitalist 
 combinations, — which are at present the least uncontrolled of 
 our industrial forces, — but an extension of the strong arm of 
 the law on behalf of the oppressed workers in the sweated 
 trades. 
 
 Models for such action are afforded both by New Zealand 
 and by Victoria. The time is not far distant when we shall 
 see in London, as already in Melbourne, wage-boards for all 
 the sweated trades, formed partly of employers and partly of 
 wage-earners, and empowered to fix minimum rates of piece- 
 work wages, below which it will be illegal for any employer to 
 hire a hand. We shall, in fact, begin at the bottom of the 
 industrial army, which suffers, not from great capitalists, but 
 from small masters, — not from the newest methods of industrial 
 organization, but from the belated survival of the old-fashioned 
 ones. These wage-boards, beginning, as in Victoria, in the 
 sweated trades, will, also as in Victoria, not rest there. New 
 Zealand points the way. More and more nearly do we 
 approach the stage at which the conditions of employment — 
 wages as well as hours, sanitation as well as protection from 
 accident, — if not fixed by authoritative decision of joint com- 
 mittees representing all the workmen and all the employers, 
 are settled by an arbitrator's decree to which both parties find 
 themselves compelled to submit. This will long be veiled in 
 the United Kingdom, where reforms usually arrive in substance 
 before they are called by their names. Yet English public 
 opinion is already much impressed by the fact that in Victoria 
 and in New Zealand the standard minimum conditions of 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 103 
 
 employment— rates of wages as well as hours and sanitation— 
 which the community thinks fit to require from time to time 
 in each particular trade, are promulgated as law, and enforced 
 by the criminal courts. The nmeteenth century in the United 
 Kingdom has seen the extension of the factory law to sanitation 
 and decency, hours of labour, and protection against accident, 
 in a select set of trades. The result of our growing conscious- 
 ness of the weakness of the wage-earner in his bargaining with 
 the great capitalist employer is to bring us, at the opening of 
 the twentieth century, to the threshold of the Legal Minimum 
 Wage for every branch of industry. Note again Mr. Asquith's 
 word " prescribes." 
 
 But the result in the United States may possibly be quite 
 otherwise. The great capitalist corporations of the United 
 States differ as widely from those of the United Kingdom as 
 do the laws and the trade-unions of the two countries. In 
 England, as I have said^ the great capitalist is, and feels 
 himself to be, effectively under control. The trade-unions, if 
 inferior in strength on a fight to a finish, are in a position to 
 offer him stubborn resistance. The law is unquestionably his 
 master. And public opinion, not altogether on either side in 
 the conflict, passes with great rapidity, and with irresistible 
 force, into opposition to any serious attack on the current 
 Standard of Life. The American capitalist corporation is, 
 and feels itself to be, in a very different position. American 
 philanthropy has never been stirred by the sensational evils in 
 cotton and coal which brought about the English factory and 
 mining laws. Legal regulation of the conditions of labour, 
 where it exists at all, has been, and continues to be, an alien 
 element in the American system, doubtfully constitutional 
 and hesitatingly enforced. The indispensable administrative 
 organization for any real enforcement of standard conditions 
 is nearly everywhere lacking. Nor does public opinion wish 
 it otherwise. Throughout the whole century, and right down 
 to our own day, it has been possible to retain the complacent 
 assurance, not too obviously contradicted by fact, that the 
 
104 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 native-bom American, of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic descent, 
 was always able to rise to a position of command, and to 
 earn a relatively good living. There is no evidence that the 
 concentration of industry in great capitalistic corporations, or 
 the vast accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small class, 
 has yet had any injurious effect on wages or on the other 
 conditions of employment. On the contrary, there is some 
 reason to think that so far, at any rate, as foremen and skilled 
 workers are concerned, the change in industrial organization 
 may be to their pecuniary advantage. In the comparatively 
 few sections of labour in which the workmen's organizations 
 have any real strength — these being usually the higher grades, 
 with some approach to a monopoly of skill or high technique, 
 — it may well suit the capitalist corporations to buy off opposi- 
 tion by increased wages, which could not in any case make an 
 appreciable difference in the total cost of production. Public 
 opinion, moreover, keenly interested in the greatest possible 
 development of the national industry, and strongly prejudiced 
 against the interference of "labour unions,'' will continue to 
 operate against any effective strike. Thus, the rulers of the 
 great capitalist corporations are, within the industrial sphere, 
 really able to do what they Uke with their own. When all 
 the employers in a single industry from California to Maine 
 combine into a single corporation, this leviathan is, indeed, 
 perhaps the most perfect example of freedom that the world 
 has ever seen. In the employment of labour, especially of a 
 low grade, such a giant corporation may impose very nearly 
 whatever conditions it chooses. Its power of " disciplining " 
 any recalcitrant hand, or even a whole community, is terribly 
 potent. It can shut down here and build up there, without 
 let or hindrance ; it can maintain whatever brutalizing or 
 deteriorating conditions of labour that it thinks profitable to 
 itself; it can disregard with impunity all precautions against 
 disease or accident ; it can exact whatever degree of speed at 
 work it pleases j it can, in short, dispose of the lives of its 
 myriads of workers exactly as it does of those of its horses. 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 105 
 
 The workers may "kick;" there may be labour unions and 
 strikes ; but against such industrial omnipotence the weapons 
 of the wage-earners are as arrows against ironclads. This will 
 be all the more certainly the case because it will suit the 
 leviathian, as a matter of convenience, to come to terms with 
 the small minority of skilled and well-paid workmen, who 
 might have stififened the rest. This is the condition of 
 monopolist autocracy into which every great industry in the 
 United States seems fated to pass, and to pass with great 
 rapidity. A few thousands of millionaire capitaUst "kings," 
 uniting the means of a few hundreds of thousands of passive 
 stockholders, and served by perhaps an equal number of well- 
 salaried managers, foremen, inventors, designers, chemists, 
 engineers, and skilled mechanics, will absolutely control an 
 army of ten or fifteen millions of practically property-less 
 wage-labourers, largely Slavonic, Latin, or Negro in race. 
 
 Now, we can hardly seriously predict, as a leading 
 American economist is said to have done, that this freedom 
 in autocracy will, within twenty-five years, produce an Emperor 
 of America. But it is not difficult to see that, imless the 
 United States learns a new lesson from the advent of the Trust, 
 it is preparing for itself a twentieth century such as Washington 
 would have shuddered to think of From the purely "busi- 
 ness " point of view, even when reinforced by all the scientific 
 economics of the college professor, there seems nothing to 
 stop the triumphant progress of this capitalist autocracy. The 
 great capitalists have no doubt thought this out, and are 
 confident of their future profits. But what American capitalists 
 always seem to undervalue is the influence exercised upon 
 their profits by wide pohtical movements. How Uttle the 
 Pierpont Morgans and Rockefellers of 1850 and 1856 thought 
 about the Abohtionists ! Yet the outcome of the Abohtionist 
 agitation upset a great many capitalist schemes. Even the 
 Bryan presidential campaign of 1896 cost the capitaUsts many 
 millions in diminished trade, slackened output, and diverted 
 energy. And so, the outsider ventures to predict, the advent 
 
io6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 of the Trast will lead to quite unforeseen hindrances to 
 industrial development and quite unexpected deductions from 
 capitalist profits, arising from the kind of civilization which it 
 will produce and the political reactions which it will set up. 
 Let us, therefore, examine more closely what America has to 
 fear from the rule of the Trusts. 
 
 Notice, to begin with, that the advent of the Trust almost 
 necessarily implies an improvement in industrial organization, 
 measured, that is to say, by the diminution of the efforts and 
 sacrifices involved in production. Just as it was a gain to the 
 community, from this point of view, for the myriad small 
 masters to be merged in the relatively few capitalist employers, 
 so it is a further gain to merge these capitalist employers into 
 great Trusts or Corporations. The Standard Oil Company 
 and the United States Steel Corporation represent, in fact, an 
 improvement in industrial technique. So far as their organiza- 
 tions prevail, the production of commodities is carried on with 
 less labour, less friction, less waste, than it was under the 
 arrangements which they have superseded. There may be 
 other disadvantages, just as there were other disadvantages 
 when the hand-loom was superseded by the power-loom. 
 But we must not let the drawbacks obscure the element of 
 real progress. The rule of the great capitalist corporations 
 secures the organization of the work of the world in a way 
 which enables it to be done with a smaller expenditure of 
 labour. 
 
 But will the public be allowed to get the benefit of this 
 industrial improvement? Is it not to be expected that the 
 Trusts will put up prices against the consumer, and so levy 
 a tax upon the world compared with which the exactions of 
 Government sink into insignificance? This danger seems to 
 me exaggerated and comparatively unimportant. It must 
 be remembered that anything like absolute monopoly of 
 production in the staple needs of the mass of the people is 
 unknown, and practically impossible. The main products of 
 the world are produced in too many different countries, under 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 107 
 
 too many diflferent industrial systems, standing at too varying 
 grades of civilization, for any absolute combination into a 
 single hand. A Trust may, indeed, easily come to dominate 
 a single market. But even then, so great is the potential 
 expansion of demand for the articles of common consumption, 
 that it will probably pay the Trust better to reduce prices than 
 to raise them. As regards America, indeed, the remedy for 
 any oppressive raising of prices is to abolish the customs tariff, 
 and to call in the foreign producer. The monopolist Trust, 
 even in countries that freely open their ports to foreign pro- 
 ducts, can no doubt make large profits. But its profits will 
 represent chiefly the economies in production brought about 
 by its own formation. The consumer will not have to pay 
 more than the consumer of the same article in countries not 
 subject to the Trust, except by the amount of the freight, and 
 probably, as we shall see, not even by so much as that. 
 Hence we may expect the increasing dominance of the Trust 
 to make for the abolition of protective duties. It is, indeed, 
 not the consumer, as consumer, who need particularly fear the 
 Trusts. If, however, this conclusion proves erroneous, the 
 consumer, as citizen, has another remedy, to which we shall 
 refer at the end of this introduction. 
 
 The competent, "pushful," native-born American will get 
 on all right under this capitalist autocracy. He will, indeed, 
 have to give up the chance of becoming his own master, and, 
 practically, that of " making a pile." But what will be virtually 
 the civil service of industry, the great salaried hierarchy of the 
 Trusts, will offer a safer and, on the average, a better paid 
 career for industrial talent than the old chances of the market. 
 Every man of skill and energy, competence and " go," will be 
 wanted in the gigantic organization of the new industry. 
 Brains will be at a premium. From the skilled mechanic 
 right up to the highest engineering genius, from the competent 
 foreman up to the brightest railway organizer, from the merely 
 practised chemist up to the heaven-born inventor or designer, 
 — and will find, not merely employment, but scope for their 
 
io8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 whole talent; not merely remuneration, but salaries such as 
 the world has seldom seen. And in serving their employers 
 they will be at least as directly serving the community as they 
 are at present. 
 
 It is when we come to the great mass of wage-earners — the 
 ten or fifteen millions of day-labourers and ordinary artisans 
 — that we see the really grave consequences of industrial 
 autocracy. These men, with their wives and families, must 
 necessarily constitute the great bulk of the population, the 
 " common lump of men." It is in their lives that the civiliza- 
 tion of a nation consists, and it is by their condition that it 
 will be judged. And, though the great ones never believe it, 
 it is upon the status, the culture, the upward progress of these 
 ordinary men that the prosperity of the nation, and even the 
 profits of the capitalists, ultimately depend. What is likely 
 to be the Standard of Life of the ordinary labourer or 
 artisan under the great industrial corporations of the United 
 States ? 
 
 Now one thing is definitely proved, both by economic 
 science and business experience. If the wages of common 
 labour are left to " supply and demand," and are not interfered 
 with by factory law or effective trade-unionism, we shall 
 witness no improvement in the present conditions of life 
 of the Pennsylvania miner, the Chicago sweat-shop hand, 
 the day-labourer on the railroad, or the girl seamstresses 
 sewing for dear life in New York tenement garrets. On the 
 contrary, we shall see these conditions of life generalized over 
 the whole range of common labour, male or female. We 
 shall find wages everywhere forced down, for the ordinary, 
 common skilled worker, to their " natural level " — that is, to 
 the barest subsistence of the human animal from day to day. 
 With this state of things will necessarily go the corresponding 
 life, such as we see it already in the Pittsburg or Chicago slum. 
 It is, however, needless to amplify the picture. To what 
 awful depths of misery and demoraUzation, brutality and 
 degradation, humanity can, under " perfect freedom," descend, 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 109 
 
 we are scarcely yet in a position to say. Is this to be the 
 contribution to economics, in the twentieth century, of the 
 country of Jefferson and Washington ? 
 
 Fortunately for the world, the United States is not likely 
 to make this experiment. The millions of common labourers, 
 however poor and degraded they may be, or may become, are 
 yet citizens and voters, — are, moreover, the inheritors, even 
 if of alien race, of glorious traditions of manhood and freedom. 
 That uncontrolled personal power which several centuries of 
 struggle have displaced from the throne, the castle, and the 
 altar, is not Ukely to be allowed to rule in the farm, the 
 factory, and the mine. As yet, the American citizen still 
 believes himself to be free, and sees not the industrial sub- 
 jection into which he is rapidly passing. But it is not to 
 be supposed that he will witness unmoved the successive 
 failures of trade-unions and strikes, the general reductions in 
 wages which will mark the first spell of bad trade, the manifold 
 dismissals and " shuttings down," the progressive degradation 
 of his class. He will take up every wild dream and every 
 mad panacea. He will be tricked and outvoted again and 
 again ; but if so, the result will be a " class war " more 
 terrible than any the world has seen, and one in which, though 
 the ultimate victory will be with the common people, American 
 civilization may go back several generations. 
 
 Yet America ought to avoid this catastrophe. The ex- 
 periment has already been tried, and the remedy is known. 
 If the people of the United States will but do that most 
 difi&cult of all things — learn by the experience of other nations 
 — they may get out of the Trusts all the advantages which 
 these offer, without suffering the terrible calamity in which 
 they unwittingly threaten to overwhelm American civilization. 
 The remedy lies in what we, in our Industrial Democracy, 
 have ventured to call the " Policy of the National Minimum." 
 We must give up the idea of individual freedom of competi- 
 tion, which the combinations of capital have proved to be 
 illusory, and take up, instead, the higher freedom of collective 
 
no MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 life. We must get back as a community what we have lost as 
 individuals. 
 
 The Policy of the National Minimum translates itself into 
 four main branches of legislative and executive activity. 
 There will have to be a national minimum of wages. The 
 Trusts, or the other employers, will be under no legal obhga- 
 tion to employ any person whatsoever. But if they do employ 
 him or her, it will be a condition of every contract, not to 
 be waived or ignored, that its terms shall not be such as will 
 impair the efficiency of the citizen or diminish the vitality of 
 the race. To engage labour at wages insufficient to repair 
 the waste of tissue caused by the employment is demonstrably 
 to injure the community as a whole, and will be prosecuted as 
 such in the criminal courts. Those whose labour is not 
 worth the national minimum — the aged, the crippled, and the 
 blind ; the mentally or morally deficient ; the epileptic ; and 
 the chronically feckless and feeble-minded — will be maintained 
 by the community, as indeed they are now. But of all the 
 ways of maintaining those unable to earn a full livelihood, by 
 far the most costly and injurious is to allow them to compete 
 in the labour market, and thus to drag down by their infirmity 
 those who are whole. There are still people, of course, who 
 simply cannot imagine how a legal minimum wage could 
 possibly be enforced, just as there were, sixty years ago, 
 economists who demonstrated the impossibility of factory 
 laws. We have dealt fully with their difficulties and objec- 
 tions in our Industrial Democracy. As a matter of fact, 
 the legal minimum wage can be seen in force to-day in 
 Victoria and New Zealand, South Austraha and New South 
 Wales. 
 
 There will be a national minimum of leisure and recreation 
 secured by law to every citizen. It will be an implied con- 
 dition of every contract of employment, rigidly enforced by 
 law, that it shall leave untouched sixteen hours out of each 
 twenty-four for needful sleep, recreation, exercise of mind or 
 body, and the duties of citizenship and family life. Any 
 
S. AND B. WEBB m 
 
 attempt by man or woman to sell for wages any part of the 
 sixteen sacred hours will be blamed as virtual embezzle- 
 ment, since this part of the twenty-four hours' day must 
 be regarded as necessarily reserved for the purpose of 
 maintaining unimpaired the efficiency of the race. Any 
 employer purchasing them, or allowing them to be spent in 
 his mill or mine, will be prosecuted and punished, as if 
 he had incited to embezzlement or had received stolen 
 goods. 
 
 There will be a national minimum of sanitation, enforced 
 not merely on land or house owners or occupiers, but also 
 on local governing authorities. The nation will find it pre- 
 posterous that any city, merely out of stupidity or incapacity 
 or parsimony, should foster disease, or bring up its quota of 
 citizens in a condition of impaired vitality. The power of 
 the community as a whole, will, somehow or other, be brought 
 to bear upon every backward district, compelling it to lay on 
 pure waterj to improve its drainage, and to take such action, 
 even by municipal building if need be, that no family in the 
 land shall have less than " three rooms and a scullery," as the 
 minimum required for health and decency. Along with this 
 must go the adequate provision of medical attendance, skilled 
 nursing, and hospital accommodation for the sick. Within a 
 generation of the adoption of such a poUcy, the death-rate 
 and sickness experience would show a reduction of one-third 
 of what is at present endured as if it were the decree of 
 Providence. 
 
 There will be a national minimum of education— not 
 merely in the provision of schools, but in genuinely com- 
 pulsory attendance at them. Besides schools and colleges 
 of every grade, there will have to be an adequate " scholar- 
 ship ladder," securing maintenance as well as free tuition, 
 right up to the post-graduate course, for every scholar proving 
 himself or herself fitted for anything beyond common school- 
 ing. And this provision will be enforced by the national 
 power upon local school authorities as well as upon parents 
 
112 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and employers. What right has any part of the com- 
 munity to allow any part of its quota of citizens to be 
 reared in ignorance or to suffer even one potential genius 
 to be lost to the community? The next few years will see 
 not only a great improvement in common schooling but 
 also the doubling or trebUng of our expenditure on higher 
 education. 
 
 Only by the enforcement of some such national minimum 
 of subsistence, leisure, sanitation, and education will modern 
 industrial communities escape degeneration and decay. 
 Where life is abandoned to unfettered competition, what is 
 known as " Gresham's Law " applies— the bad drives out the 
 good. To prevent this evil result is, as both Europe and 
 America are discovering in the twentieth century, the main 
 function of Government. To enforce the national minimum 
 willj moreover, not interfere either with the profits or with 
 the freedom of development of the exceptional man, while it 
 will enormously increase the prosperity of the community. 
 Nor does it abolish competition. What it does is to transfer 
 the competitive pressure from the actual means of subsistence 
 of the masses (where it works little but harm), to the intellect 
 of every one who has any, in the degree that he has it (where 
 it sharpens the wits). 
 
 This remedy for the dangers of modern industrialism — the 
 Policy of the National Minimum — involves, it will be seen, a 
 great extension of Government activity, a great advance in the 
 efificiency of both legislative and executive machinery, and 
 no little change in constitutional forms. All this will be 
 difficult enough. Moreover, the consumer, as a consumer, 
 remains unprotected. Hence, whilst the mere enforcement 
 of the national minimum adequately solves the problem 
 presented by the sweated trades, it may be found not com- 
 pletely to answer for those at the other end of the scale, in 
 which great Trusts have been organized. It may, therefore, 
 well be easier, in one industry after another, to take over the 
 Trust into direct public ownership, as one nation or another 
 
S. AND B. WEBB 113 
 
 has already done in the case of railways, telegraphs, telephones, 
 ocean cables, steamboat lines, water, gas, electric and hydrauUc 
 plants, and what not. One way or another the people must 
 collectively control the industry by which they live, or, for large 
 masses of the community, every hope of genuine freedom and 
 civilization will disappear. 
 
X 
 
 WHETHER CLASS ANTAGONISM IS 
 SOFTENING DOWN 
 
 By Karl Kautsky 
 
 This is § S of Kautsky 's Sozialteform und soziale Revolution, 
 which, with its sequel Am Tage naoh der socialen Revolution, has 
 been translated into English by J. B. Askew.' Together they form 
 the best existing presentation of the Marxian standpoint to-day ; on 
 account, not only of their ability, but of their Continental vogue, which 
 amounts to a vast popular ratification. 
 
 Perhaps no Continental sociologist anything like as interesting 
 as Kautsky is so little known or appreciated in England. In the 
 German paxty, of whose official review, Die Neue Zeit, he is editor, he 
 has long exercised a unique influence. Among his other typical works 
 may be mentioned Das Erfurter Progmmm in seinem grunds'dtzlichen 
 Theil and Die Agrarfrage. 
 
 Let us examine in the first place the objection ; The social 
 antagonism between the middle classes and the proletariat 
 tends to diminish. I will here pass over the question of com- 
 mercial crises, of which it was predicted some years ago that 
 they would become weaker. This view has since then been 
 so emphatically refuted by undisputed facts, that I am in the 
 position to forego on that head all further discussion, which 
 otherwise would have taken us too far out of our way. Nor 
 am I going to make any further contribution to the debate on 
 the already ad nauseam discussed theory of the progressive 
 increase of misery, which, with a little ingenuity, could be 
 
 ' The Social Revolution. London : Twentieth Century Press. 
 114 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 115 
 
 debated for ever, and in which the debate turns more on 
 interpretation of the word " misery " than on the recognition 
 of certain facts. We Socialists are unanimous in this, that the 
 capitalist mode of production, when left to itself, has for its 
 result an increase of physical misery ; equally unanimous, 
 however, are we in the opinion, that even in the present 
 society the organization of the working-class and the interfer- 
 ence of the State are in a position to check this misery ; finally, 
 we all agree that the emancipation of the proletariat is to be 
 expected not from its increasing decadence, but from its growing 
 strength. 
 
 Another question, however, is that of the growing antagonism 
 between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This is, in the first 
 place, a question of the increasing exploitation. 
 
 That this does increase has already been shown by Marx a 
 generation ago, and has, so far as I know, never been refuted 
 by anybody. Those who deny the fact of the increasing ex- 
 ploitation of the proletariat must in the first place be able to 
 back their words by a refutation of Marx's Capital. 
 
 Now, certainly, it will be said in objection to this that all 
 this is but so much theory ; we only recognize as true and 
 demonstrated what we can grasp for ourselves. We do not 
 want economic laws, but statistical figures. These are not 
 easily found. It has not yet occurred to any one to demon- 
 strate statistically, not only the wages but also the profits, for 
 the very simple reason that the safe is like a castle to the 
 bourgeois which, be he even the most cowardly and weak- 
 spirited of the lot, he is ever ready to defend like a lion against 
 the encroachments of the authorities. 
 
 Nevertheless, we can find some figures as to the increase of 
 wages and other incomes. Some of these, the latest which we 
 know, shall be given here. They were computed by Mr. A. 
 L. Bowley, who read a paper on the question in March, 1895, 
 before the London Royal Statistical Society (printed in the 
 journal of the Society, June, 1895, pp. 224-285). We take the 
 following table : — 
 
ii6 
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 
 
 
 Incomes not arising from wages. 
 
 
 wage-income. 
 
 Subject to income 
 
 Not subject to 
 
 
 
 
 tax. 
 
 income tax. 
 
 
 Amount 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Amount 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Amount 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Year. 
 
 in million 
 
 of total 
 
 in million 
 
 of total 
 
 in million 
 
 of total 
 
 pounds 
 
 national 
 
 pounds 
 
 national 
 
 pounds 
 
 national 
 
 
 sterling. 
 
 income. 
 
 sterling. 
 
 income. 
 
 sterling. 
 
 income. 
 
 i860 
 
 392 
 
 47 
 
 376 
 
 453 
 
 64 
 
 l^ 
 
 1866 
 
 464 
 
 45 
 
 48s 
 
 47 
 
 81 
 
 8 
 
 1870 
 
 486 
 
 44 
 
 521 
 
 48 
 
 8s 
 
 7| 
 
 1874 
 
 609 
 
 45S 
 
 635 
 
 475 
 
 100 
 
 A 
 
 1877 
 
 S9I 
 
 43 
 
 652 
 
 47J 
 
 130 
 
 9h 
 
 1880 
 
 567 
 
 42 
 
 652 
 
 48J 
 
 126 
 
 
 1883 
 
 609 
 
 42i 
 
 696 
 
 49 
 
 122 
 
 8g 
 
 1886 
 
 605 
 
 42 
 
 715 
 
 494 
 
 125 
 
 ^ 
 
 1891 
 
 699 
 
 43^ 
 
 782 
 
 48J 
 
 130 
 
 8 
 
 Against this picture many objections may be raised. It 
 seems to me too optimistic, and makes the sum of the wages 
 come out much bigger than it is or was in reality. 
 
 In reckoning the wages the author did not allow for un- 
 employment. He, moreover, took for granted that a number 
 of important factors bearing on the conditions of the working- 
 classes remained the same wherever the alterations could not 
 exactly be determined. As a statistician he had naturally the 
 right to do so, but these are precisely the factors which alter 
 more and more in a direction unfavourable to the workers. 
 Thus, for example, the proportion between male and female, 
 skilled and unskilled labour, etc. 
 
 The greatest objection, however, is that the computation is 
 limited to but a few trades, all of which, with the exception of 
 agriculture, are very well organized, and that the author takes 
 for granted that the condition of the entire working-class has, 
 on the average, improved in the same proportion as that of the 
 organized workers, who, even in England, form a fifth of the 
 workers of all trades. It is not uninteresting to consider 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 
 
 117 
 
 the alterations in the wages of this class of workers. The 
 rates, in comparison with those of i860 (the latter taken as 
 100), were : — 
 
 
 i860 
 
 1866 
 
 1870 
 
 1874 
 
 1877 
 
 i88o 
 
 1883 
 
 1886 
 
 1891 
 
 Agricultural labourers 
 
 100 
 
 lof, 
 
 107 
 
 no 
 
 n2. 
 
 122 
 
 117 
 
 III 
 
 u8 
 
 Building trades . 
 
 100 
 
 116 
 
 116 
 
 126 
 
 128 
 
 I2S 
 
 12'? 
 
 126 
 
 128 
 
 Cotton manufacture 
 
 100 
 
 I2S 
 
 12s 
 
 148 
 
 148 
 
 13'^ 
 
 146 
 
 MS 
 
 176 
 
 Woollen industry . 
 
 100 
 
 106 
 
 112 
 
 121 
 
 I, so 
 
 126 
 
 120 
 
 II') 
 
 "■J 
 
 Iron industry 
 
 100 
 
 127 
 
 127 
 
 143 
 
 112 
 
 112 
 
 no 
 
 100 
 
 124 
 
 Engineering .... 
 
 100 
 
 108 
 
 no 
 
 124 
 
 123 
 
 1 20 
 
 127 
 
 126 
 
 126 
 
 Gasworkers .... 
 
 100 
 
 I IS 
 
 120 
 
 I2S 
 
 128 
 
 128 
 
 130 
 
 130 
 
 149 
 
 Seamen 
 
 100 
 
 "3 
 
 103 
 
 ISO 
 
 129 
 
 123 
 
 118 
 
 no 
 
 143 
 
 Miners 
 
 100 
 
 10 
 
 100 
 
 ISO 
 
 "5 
 132 
 
 100 
 
 "5 
 
 100 
 
 150 
 
 Average . 
 
 100 
 
 "3 
 
 "3 
 
 138 
 
 124 
 
 130 
 
 I2S 
 
 140 
 
 We see that the increase of wages by 40 per cent, from 
 i860 to 1891, which Bowley calculates for the whole of the 
 English working-classes, does not even hold good for the entire 
 labour aristocracy. With the exception of the cotton-spinners, 
 who in England are not without reason conservative and the 
 patterns for all dreamers of " social peace," the average is only 
 exceeded by the gasworkers, the sailors, and the miners. The 
 gasworkers owe their rise partly to the influence of political 
 action, which in larger towns has brought to the municipal 
 employees some improvements. In the case of the gasworkers, 
 considerations of competition and exploitation through private 
 enterprise enter least into account. Partly also the rise in 189 1 
 must be 'accounted for by the sudden advent of the " new 
 unionism " which aroused so many hopes, but soon fizzled out. 
 Still more, even than in the case of the gasworkers, does the 
 rise of wages in 1891 appear sudden, almost accidental, in 
 the case of the seamen and the miners. With the miners the 
 wages were in 1886 on a level with i860, and in 1891 they 
 were 50 per cent, higher ! This cannot be called an assured 
 advance. In the case of the workers in the building trade, 
 
ii8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and the woollen and the iron industries, the increase of wages 
 since i860 falls far below the average. Bowley, therefore, 
 wishes us to believe that the wages of all the unorganized 
 workers of England rose 40 per cent, in the same period in 
 which those of the excellently-organized iron workers only 
 rose 25 per cent. ! 
 
 But let us take the figures as they stand. What do they 
 prove ? Even according to this quite exceptionally optimistic 
 view, wages form an ever-diminishing portion of the national 
 income. In the period 1860-74 they form on the average 
 45 per cent, of the national income; in the period 1877-gi, 
 only 43§ per cent. Let us assume, for lack of more reliable 
 figures, the sum-total of the incomes subject to income tax 
 and not arising from wages to be equal to the total amount of 
 surplus value. Thus the latter was in i860 less than the total 
 amount of the wages by 16 miUion pounds; in i8gi, however, 
 the sum-total of the surplus value was greater than that of the 
 wages by 80 million pounds. 
 
 That shows a very palpable increase of exploitation. The 
 rate of surplus value, i.e. the rate of exploitation of the worker, 
 would, according to this, have risen from 96 per cent, to 112 
 per cent. As a matter of fact, according to Bowley's figures, 
 that is the extent to which exploitation has risen in the 
 organized trades. The exploitation of the mass of the un- 
 organized must have increased to an even greater extent. 
 
 We do not attach any very great importance to these 
 figures. But as far as they prove anything at all, they do not 
 speak against the assumption of the increasing exploitation of 
 labour, which Marx, by another method, and by an inquiry 
 into the laws of the capitalist mode of production, has proved 
 in a manner not yet confuted. Now it may be said : Granted 
 that exploitation increases, but the wages rise as well, if not at 
 the same rate as surplus value, how is, then, the worker going 
 to feel the increasing exploitation, if it is not patent to his eye, 
 but must be discovered by means of a lengthened inquiry? 
 The mass of the workers neither carry on statistical researches, 
 nor ponder over the theory of value and surplus value. 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 119 
 
 That may easily be so. And yet there are means by which 
 the increase of their exploitation is made evident to them. 
 To the same extent as the profits rise, does the mode of living 
 of the bourgeoisie improve. But the classes are not divided by 
 Chinese walls. The increasing luxury of the upper classes 
 trickles gradually through into the lower, awakes in them new 
 needs and new demands, to the satisfaction of which, however, 
 the slow rise in the wages is inadequate. The bourgeoisie 
 bewails the disappearance of unpretentiousness on the part of 
 the lower orders, their increasing covetousness, and forgets 
 that the increasing pretentiousness in the lower classes is only 
 a reflex of the rising standard of life in the upper, that it is 
 their own example which has inflamed the covetousness of the 
 workers. 
 
 That the standard of life in the bourgeoisie rises faster 
 than among the workers, can be seen at every step. The 
 working-class dwellings have, during the last fifty years, not 
 improved to any great extent, whilst the dwellings of the 
 bourgeoisie to-day are magnificent in comparison with an 
 average bourgeois house of fifty years ago. A third-class rail- 
 way carriage of to-day and one of fifty years ago are not so 
 very different in their internal appointments. But compare a 
 first-class carriage of the middle of last century with the modern 
 Pullman cars.^ I do not believe that the seaman in an ocean 
 steamer is to-day much better off than fifty years ago. But 
 certainly the luxury of a saloon of a modern passenger-boat 
 was a thing undreamt of even in royal yachts fifty years ago. 
 
 So much about the increasing exploitation of the worker. 
 But is not this economic factor neutralized by the two classes 
 drawing increasingly nearer to each other on the political field ? 
 
 ' This can hardly be said to apply to England — e.g. the G.N.R. or the 
 L. and N.W.R., with their third-class dining cars, etc. Of course, that is 
 in consequence of the tendency which was so strongly noticeable on our 
 railways in the direction of a single class, or, at the most, two classes. 
 Prussia still has four, and of the fourth it is quite safe to say that, short of 
 having no roof, it could not be worse. — Translator. 
 
I20 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Is not the worker more and more recognized by the bourgeois 
 as equal to himself? 
 
 Undoubtedly the proletariat gains rapidly in political and 
 social respect. 
 
 If its economic advancement has been outdistanced by that 
 of the bourgeoisie, and must in consequence necessarily give 
 rise to an increasing covetousness and dissatisfaction^ the most 
 remarkable feature of the last fifty years has, on the contrary, 
 been the steady and uninterrupted advancement of the proletariat 
 in moral and intellectual respects. 
 
 Only a few decades ago the proletariat stood at such a low 
 level, that there were even Socialists who expected from a 
 victory of the proletariat the worst results for civilization. 
 After 1850 Rodbertus wrote: "There is a very great danger 
 at hand lest a new barbarism, this time arising from the midst 
 of society itself, lays waste the abodes of civilization and of 
 wealth." 
 
 At the same time Heinrich Heine declared that the future 
 belonged to the Communists. " This admission — that the future 
 belongs to the Communists — I made in a spirit of uneasiness 
 and greatest anxiety, and ugh ! that was by no means dissimu- 
 lation on my part. I actually could only think with fear and 
 horror of the time, when those dark iconoclasts would attain 
 to power; with their horny hands they will break all the 
 marble statues of beauty," etc. 
 
 As is well known, things have become quite different. It 
 is not the proletariat that threatens modern civilization ; on the 
 contrary, it is the Communists who have become to-day the 
 surest guardians of art and science, and have often stepped 
 forward on their behalf in a most decided manner. 
 
 In the same way the fear which possessed the whole bour- 
 geois world after the Paris commune, lest the victorious prole- 
 tariat would behave in the midst of our civilization like the 
 Vandals of the great tribal migration, and establish on heaps 
 of ruins an empire of barbaric asceticism, has practically 
 disappeared. 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 121 
 
 It is partly due to the disappearance of this fear that among 
 the bourgeois Intellectuals there is a visibly growing sympathy 
 with the proletariat and Socialism. 
 
 Like the Proletariat, the Intellectuals as a class are also a 
 peculiar feature of the capitalist mode of production. I have 
 already pointed out that the ruling classes need and make use 
 of them in so far as they, the ruling classes, have neither the 
 interest nor the leisure to attend to the business of the adminis- 
 tration of the State, or to apply themselves to art and science, 
 as the aristocracy of Athens or the clergy at the best period of 
 the Catholic Church did. The whole of the higher intellectual 
 activity, which was formerly a privilege of the ruling classes, 
 they leave to-day to paid workers, and the number of these 
 professional scholars, artists, engineers, officials, etc., is rapidly 
 increasing. 
 
 These make up the class of the so-called " Intellectuals," 
 the " new middle-class ; " but they differ essentially from the 
 old middle-class in that they have no separate class conscious- 
 ness. Particular sections of them have a separate conscious- 
 ness of their order, very frequently a conceit of their order ; 
 but the interests of each of these sections is too particular to 
 allow of a common class consciousness to develop. Their 
 members ally themselves with the most different classes and 
 parties'; the Intellectuals provide each of these with its intel- 
 lectual champions. Some champion the interests of the ruling 
 classes, whom many of them have to serve in their professional 
 capacity. Others have made the cause of the proletariat their 
 own. The majority, however, have remained up till now hide- 
 bound by the petty bourgeois way of thinking. Not only have 
 they often come from a petty bourgeois stock, but their social 
 position as a "middle class" is very similar to that of the 
 petty bourgeois, namely, a cross between the proletariat and 
 the ruling classes. 
 
 These sections of the Intellectuals it is who, as said above, 
 evince more and more sympathy with the proletariat and 
 Socialism. As they have no particular class interests, and are. 
 
122 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 thanks to their professional activity, the most accessible to 
 scientific insight, they are the most easily won through scientific 
 considerations for particular parties. The theoretical bank- 
 ruptcy of the bourgeois political economy and the theoretical 
 superiority of Socialism must have become patent to them. 
 In addition, they found that the other classes strive more and 
 more to hold art and science in subjection. Many^ finally, are 
 also impressed by the success, by the continual rise, of Social 
 Democracy, especially when it is compared with the continual 
 decay of Liberalism. In this way, sympathy with Labour and 
 Socialism become popular among the educated ; there is hardly 
 a drawing-room where one does not tumble across one or more 
 " Socialists." 
 
 Were these circles of the educated identical with the 
 bourgeoisie, then certainly we should have had the day won, 
 and all Social Revolution would have been superfluous. With 
 these classes one could discuss the matter peaceably; from 
 them the slow, quiet development has no violent intervention 
 to fear. 
 
 Unfortunately^ however, they form only one section of 
 the bourgeoisie, and that the one which, though writing and 
 speaking in the name of the bourgeoisie, does not determine 
 its action. And classes, like individuals, are to be known not 
 by their words but their deeds. 
 
 Also it is the least energetic and militant section of the 
 bourgeoisie which evinces a sympathy with the proletariat. 
 
 Formerly, of course, when Socialism, even in the ranks of 
 the educated, passed for almost a crime or lunacy, bourgeois 
 elements could only join the Socialist movement when com- 
 pletely breaking with the bourgeois world. Whosoever at that 
 time passed from bourgeois circles to Socialism, required much 
 greater energy, revolutionary enthusiasm, and force of con- 
 viction than a member of the proletariat. In the Socialist 
 movement, therefore, these elements belonged as a rule to the 
 most Radical and revolutionary. 
 
 Quite different is it to-day, when Socialism has become 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 123 
 
 fashionable with the drawing-rooms. It requires no particular 
 energy, no break with the bourgeois society, for any one to call 
 himself a Socialist. No wonder that an ever-growing number 
 of new Socialists remain stuck in the traditional modes of 
 thihking and feeling of their class. But the methods of war- 
 fare of the Intellectuals are different to those of the proletariat. 
 The latter can only bring against wealth and the force of arms 
 its superior numbers and the soUdarity of its class organiza- 
 tions. The Intellectuals, on the other hand, are insignificant 
 in numbers and without class organization. Their only weapon 
 is that of persuasion by word of mouth and by pen ; they fight 
 with " intellectual weapons " and " moral superiority," and with 
 these weapons the drawing-room Socialists would also wish to 
 decide the proletarian class war. They declare themselves 
 ready to lend the proletariat their moral support, but on con- 
 dition that it gives up all idea of using force, and that not 
 only where it has no prospect of success — there even the 
 proletariat gives it up — but even where it has. Hence they 
 try to bring into discredit the idea of revolution, and to 
 represent it as a worthless method. They endeavour to 
 detach from the revolutionary proletariat a Social Reform 
 wing, and help thereby to divide and weaken it. 
 
 This, so far, has been the sole result of the commencing 
 conversion of the Intellectuals to Socialism. 
 
 By the side of the "new middle-class,'' the old one, the 
 petty bourgeoisie, is still dragging on its existence. This 
 species of middle-class was formerly the backbone of all 
 Revolution; vigorous and militant, it readily, when circum- 
 stances were favourable, rose against any and every kind of 
 oppression and exploitation from above, against bureaucracy 
 and militarism, against feudal and priestly privileges. It 
 formed the advance-guard of the bourgeois democracy. Just 
 as a portion of the new middle-class to-day, too, the old one 
 was at various times inspired with sympathy for the proletariat, 
 co-operated with it, and gave to and received from it intel- 
 lectual inspiration and material support. But just as the new, 
 
124 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 so the old one, too, always was an untrustworthy ally, precisely 
 because of its intermediate position between the exploited and 
 the exploiting classes. As already said by Marx, the petty 
 bourgeois is neither a thorough proletarian nor yet fully a 
 bourgeois, and feels himself, according to circumstances, now 
 the one, then the other. 
 
 From this double situation there arises a split in the ranks 
 of the petty bourgeoisie. One position of it identifies itself 
 with the proletariat, the other with its opponents. 
 
 The fate of the petty industry is sealed and its decay is 
 irresistible. But this shows itself but slowly in the reduction 
 of small undertakings, although very rapidly in their ruin. 
 Some of the petty owners become entirely dependent on the 
 large capital, and turn into mere home-workers, wage-slaves, 
 who instead of working in a factory, work for the employer at 
 home. Others, especially small dealers and small publicans, 
 remain independent, but find their only customers among the 
 working-class, so that their existence is entirely bound up with 
 the fortunes of the workers. These sections draw more and 
 more closely to the fighting proletariat. 
 
 Quite different it is with those sections of the petty bour- 
 geoisie which have not yet become completely subjected to 
 the large capital, but stand on the verge of ruin, as well as with 
 those who look for their customers in other than proletarian 
 circles. They doubt their ability to raise themselves by their 
 own efforts, and expect everything from above, from the upper 
 classes and the State. And, since all progress is a source of 
 danger to them, they are bitterly opposed to it in any and 
 every sphere of life. Servility and the need for reaction 
 makes them ready accomplices and fanatical defenders of the 
 Monarchy, the Church, and the nobility. With all that, they 
 remain democratic, because only under democratic forms of 
 Government can they exercise political influence and secure 
 through it the support of the State. 
 
 It is to this division in the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie 
 that the decline of the bourgeois democracy is due. A portion 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 125 
 
 of it joins the proletarian Social Democracy, others the re- 
 actionary democracy, which, though flying different colours of 
 anti-Semitism, Nationalism, Christian Socialism, of certain 
 sections of the Conservative and Centre parties, are never- 
 theless always, essentially and socially, the same. 
 
 Many of their phrases and arguments this reactionary 
 democracy have borrowed from the Social-Democratic mode 
 of thinking, and some at the beginning believed that they 
 formed but a special transitional stage from Liberalism to 
 Social Democracy. To-day this view is manifestly no longer 
 tenable. Social Democracy has no more bitter enemy than 
 the reactionary democracy. If it has devolved on Social 
 Democracy to champion every and any kind of progress, 
 whether it directly advances the class interests of the pro- 
 letariat or not, the reactionary democracy is by its whole being 
 driven to oppose all progress, even where it does not directly 
 threaten to petty bourgeoisie. If Social Democracy is the 
 most progressive, the reactionary democracy is the most re- 
 actionary of all parties, since over and above the hatred which 
 all reactionary classes feel towards progress, it is yet inspired 
 by the recklessness which comes from crass ignorance of every- 
 thing lying outside its narrow mental horizon. To this must 
 be added that the petty bourgeoisie succeeds in dragging on 
 its existence, thanks only to the merciless exploitation of the 
 weaker and most defenceless human labour, that of women 
 and children. In this it naturally meets, first and foremost, 
 with the opposition of the Social Democracy, which tries by 
 organization and compulsory laws to prevent such a wastage of 
 human life. 
 
 Thus the petty bourgeoisie, so far as it does not come 
 over to Social Democracy, turns from an ally and an inter- 
 mediary element between the upper classes and the proletariat 
 into a bitter foe of the latter. Instead, therefore, of softening 
 down, the class antagonism becomes here as accentuated as 
 can be ; indeed, it increases very rapidly, since it is but recently 
 that it has become clearly noticeable at all. 
 
126 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 What is true of the petty bourgeoisie, is also — with but 
 a few qualifications — true of the peasantry. This also splits 
 into two camps, one of proletarian (peasant owners of tiny 
 plots) and another of propertied elements. It is our task to 
 accelerate this process by enlightening the former as to the 
 solidarity of their interests with those o/ the proletariat, and by 
 thus winning them over for Social Democracy. We hinder it, 
 however, if we ignore it and appeal to the entire agricultural 
 population without distinction of class. The reactionary 
 democracy in the country, though, perhaps, not always fully 
 conscious of this antagonism, is, in its essence, just as hostile 
 to us as that in the towns. Those, therefore, who believed 
 that the peasant association movement is for the peasants but 
 a stage of transition from the old parties, viz. the Centre 
 (Clerical) party to the Social-Democratic party, were just as 
 mistaken as those who expected the same from anti-Semitism 
 in the towns. The middle and large peasant proprietors hate 
 the Social Democracy, if but for the reason that it champions 
 shorter hours and higher wages for the worker, and constitutes 
 thereby an important factor which draws the labourer from the 
 land and leaves the peasant in the lurch. 
 
 Thus, in the country districts, too, the class antagonisms 
 between the propertied class and the proletariat grow ever 
 more acute. 
 
 But even more than the antagonism between peasant and 
 wage-worker does this hold good of the antagonism between 
 the cotter and the large landed proprietor. 
 
 In the system of farming on a large scale the wage-labourer 
 plays a far more important part than in the small peasant 
 economy. At the same time high prices of the necessaries of 
 life are, too, of quite a different value to the former system 
 than to the peasant, who consumes the greater part of his pro- 
 duce himself. Of course, the opposition between the producer 
 and the consumer of the necessaries of life is not that between 
 the worker and his exploiter, but between town and country. 
 But in town the proletariat forms the most numerous, the 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 
 
 127 
 
 best organized, and the most militant class ; and so the seller 
 of the necessaries of life comes here again into direct conflict 
 with the proletariat as his most energetic opponent. 
 
 No wonder the big ground landlord thinks of the industrial 
 worker nowadays differently to what he did formerly. In former 
 times the struggle between the industrial capitalist and his 
 workers left him indifferent — nay, he watched often with an 
 unconcealed malicious pleasure, even with a certain sympathy 
 for the proletariat. It was not the latter who then stood in 
 his way, but the capitalist, who demanded protective tariffs 
 where he, the ground landlord, wanted free trade, and, vice versA, 
 looked on ground rent as reducing his profits, and wished to 
 snatch from him the monopoly of the better-class positions in 
 the army and bureaucracy. 
 
 To-day, all that has changed. The times when there were 
 friends of labour among the Tories and the Junkers, the 
 Disraelis, Rodbertus, Vogelsangs, are long gone. Like the 
 petty bourgeoisie and the class of the middle and large peasant 
 proprietors, the big ground landlords, too, have become more 
 and more hostile to the labour movement. 
 
 But the capitalist class? This is to-day the paramount 
 class. Does not it at least become more friendly to labour, 
 like the Intellectuals ? 
 
 I am sorry to say I have not noticed anything of the sort. 
 
 Certainly, even the capitaUst class changes; it does not 
 remain always the same. But what are the most important of 
 its changes within the last decades ? 
 
 On one hand we find a softening down — nay, sometimes 
 even a complete cessation — of the competition in which the 
 capitalists of a single branch of industry are engaged throughout 
 their particular country, by means of employers' associations, 
 trusts, etc. On the other hand, we see the accentuation of 
 international competition through the rise of new capitaUst 
 countries, especially of Germany and the United States. 
 
 The employers' associations abolish competition among 
 the masters, not only as against the buyers of their products, 
 
128 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 but also as against their workers. Instead of being confronted 
 with numerous purchasers of their labour-power, the workers 
 have now only to deal with a single master. How much the 
 advantages of the employers are thereby increased, and also 
 to what extent their opposition to the workers is thus accen- 
 tuated, needs no further elucidation. 
 
 According to the last census of the United States, the 
 wages of the workers in American industry have, during the 
 decade 1890-1900, suffered an absolute decrease. If that is 
 so, we cannot be far wrong in attributing it to the work of the 
 syndicates and trusts. 
 
 In the same direction, moreover, works the growth of 
 foreign competition. Here, too, in addition to the consumers, 
 it is the workers against whose interests this development 
 proceeds. Over and above the raising of prices by means of 
 protective tariffs, which in their turn favour the formation 
 of employers' associations, it is the increased exploitation 
 of labour by which the capitalists seek to meet foreign com- 
 petition. Hence the accentuation of their struggle against 
 the militant organizations of the workers, political and trade- 
 union, which stand in their way. 
 
 Thus here, too, there is no softening down, but, on the 
 contrary, an intensification of the class war. 
 
 To this may be added, as a third factor, the increasing 
 fusion of the industrial capital with the money capital, with 
 the haute finance. The industrial capitalist is an employer in 
 the domain of production (this taken in the widest sense and 
 including transport) in which he exploits hired wage labour 
 and extracts a profit out of it. The money capitalist is, on 
 the other hand, the modern form of the ancient usurer. He 
 draws an income from his money, which he nowadays lends 
 on interest, not simply to needy private individuals as formerly, 
 but also to capitalist employers, local authorities. States, etc. 
 
 Between the industrial capitalist and the money capitalist 
 there is a great antagonism, similar to that between the former 
 and the landowner. Like the ground rent, the interest on 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 129 
 
 borrowed capital is a deduction from the profit. The interests 
 of both kinds of capital are thus on that point antagonistic. 
 Nor do they agree politically. Just as the great landowners 
 are to-day in favour of a strong, preferably a monarchical form 
 of Government, because so far as they are a court nobility 
 they are in a position to bring personal influence to bear on 
 the monarch and thereby on the Government ; just as they, 
 further, are enthusiastic for militarism, which provides their 
 progeny with an officer's career, for which the bourgeois youth 
 is less fitted, and always therefore advocate a policy of brute 
 force at home and abroad, so in the same way is the high 
 finance enamoured of militarism and a strong spirited policy 
 both home and foreign. The lords of the money capital need 
 not fear a strong State power, independent of the people and 
 Parliament, since they can always dominate it as creditors 
 and often, too, through personal court influences. They have, 
 moreover, an interest in militarism, in wars and national debts, 
 both as creditors and Government contractors, because the 
 sphere of their influence, their power and wealth, is thereby 
 enhanced. 
 
 It is different with the industrial capitalist. MiUtarism, 
 wars, national debts imply increased taxation, in which it has 
 to bear a considerable share, or which increase for it the costs 
 of production. War implies over and above this a slump in 
 the production and sale of goods, business difficulties, often 
 bankruptcy. If the financier is rash, extravagant, and a 
 supporter of brute force, the industrial capitalist is, on the 
 contrary, economical, prudent, and peaceful. A strong 
 Government arouses his suspicions, all the more as he cannot 
 directly influence it. Not a strong Government, but a strong 
 Parliament, answers to his interests. In opposition to the big 
 landowners and the high finance he is inclined to LiberaUsm . 
 Its half-and-halfness is his too. Do ground rents, interest, 
 taxes, limit his profit on one hand, then the rise of the pro- 
 letariat threatens on the other the whole profit system. But 
 even in his relations to the proletariat, where the latter does 
 
 K 
 
130 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 not appear to him too menacing, he prefers the peaceful 
 methods of " divide and rule," of corruption and attraction 
 by means of philanthropic institutions, etc., to violent means 
 of suppression. Where the proletariat has not yet struck out 
 a line of political action of its own, there the industrial capital 
 is only too ready to use it as a battering-ram and as a voting 
 machine to increase its own political power. To the petty 
 bourgeois the opposition between the industrial capitalist and 
 the worker appears of less moment than that between the 
 employer's profit on the one hand and the ground rent as 
 well as the interest on capital on the other. The abolition of 
 interest and the ground rent he looks upon as the solution of 
 the social question. 
 
 The opposition, however, between finance and industry 
 ceases now more and more, since with the advance in the 
 concentration of capital finance gets an ever-increasing hold 
 of industry. An important means thereto is the increasing 
 supersession of the private employer by the joint stock 
 companies. Well-meaning optimists see in this a means to 
 " democratize " capital, and thus gradually, and in a peaceful 
 manner, without exciting attention, to change it into national 
 property. As a matter of fact, it is a means to transform all 
 the money of the middle and lower classes, which they do not 
 require for immediate consumption, into money capital, and 
 to place it as such at the disposal of the big financial money 
 capitaUsts in order to buy out the industrial capitaHsts. It 
 thus increases the means whereby finance can concentrate 
 industry in the hands of a few money lords. Without the 
 joint-stock company system the big financiers could only 
 control those businesses which they had bought with their 
 own money. Thanks to the company system, they can make 
 numerous businesses dependent on themselves, and thus acquire 
 such of them which they would not otherwise be able to 
 purchase for lack of cash. The whole fabulous power of 
 Pierpont Morgan and Co., who, within the space of a few 
 years, have concentrated railways, mines, the greater part of 
 
KARL KAUTSKY ,3, 
 
 the ironworks, in one hand, and have already monopolized the 
 most important ocean lines of steamers — this sudden capture 
 of supremacy in industry and transport of the most important 
 civilized nations would have been impossible without the 
 joint-stock company system. 
 
 According to the London Economist, five men, J. D. Rocke- 
 feller, E, H. Harriman, J. Pierpont Morgan, W. R. Vanderbilt, 
 and G. D. Gould, possess together over ^^150,000,000. They, 
 however, control more than ^f 1,500,000,000, while the entire 
 capital which is deposited in the banks, railways, and industrial 
 companies of the United States amounts to but ;^3,5oo,ooo,ooo. 
 Thus, thanks to the company system, they control nearly one- 
 half of this capital on which the entire economic life of the 
 United States depends. 
 
 Now, as always, moreover, the crisis which will not fail to 
 reach America will expropriate the small holders, and increase 
 and strengthen the property of the bigger ones. 
 
 The more, however, money capital gains control over 
 industry, the more does the industrial capital, too, take on 
 the methods of the money capital. To the private employer, 
 who lives side by side with his workers, the latter are still 
 human; beings, whose welfare or the reverse can hardly remain 
 quite a matter of indifference to him, if he is not totally 
 hardened. But to the shareholder there only exists the 
 dividend. The workers are to him nothing but so many 
 figures in a computation, in whose result, only, he is interested 
 to the highest degree, since it can bring him increased comfort, 
 increased power, or a diminution of them and social degrada- 
 tion. The rest of the consideration for the worker, which the 
 private employers could still preserve, is in his case non- 
 existent. 
 
 Money capital is that species of capital which is the most 
 favourably inclined towards the use of violent means; that 
 which easiest combines into monopolies, and thereby acquires 
 unlimited power over the working class ; that which is farthest 
 removed from the workers : it is that which drives out the 
 
132 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 capital of the private industrial employer and gains an ever- 
 increasing control over the entire capitaUst production. 
 
 The necessary consequence of all this is here, too, the 
 accentuation of the social conflict. 
 
 But England will be quoted against me. Do we not find 
 in England an increasing toning down of the class antagonisms ? 
 And has not Marx indeed said, England is the classic land of 
 the capitalist mode of production, which shows us our own 
 future? Is not, therefore, the present condition of England 
 the one to which we are coming ? 
 
 It is always England which the enthusiasts for social peace 
 point out to us, and, curious to say, it is the very same people 
 who make us, the " orthodox " Marxists, the loudest reproaches 
 for clinging blindly to Marx's formulas, that think of demolish- 
 ing us in the most decisive manner by the above formula of 
 Marx. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, the circumstances since 
 Capital was written have altered enormously. England has 
 ceased to be the classic land of capitalism. Its development 
 approaches ever nearer and nearer its culmination ; it is being 
 overtaken by other nations, especially Germany and America, 
 and now the relation between them begins to change. England 
 ceases to give us a picture of our future, while our conditions 
 begin to show England's future as regards the capitalist mode 
 of production. This it is which an examination of the actual 
 circumstances shows to those " orthodox " Marxists, who do 
 not blindly repeat Marx, but apply his method in order to 
 understand the present. 
 
 England was the classic land of capitalism, that in which 
 individual capital first attained supremacy. It came to 
 supremacy, overpowering economically not only the other 
 classes of its own country, but also the foreign countries. 
 Thus it was able to develop those peculiarities which I have 
 described above as its own, in the freest way. It gave up the 
 holding down of the working class by force, and applied itself 
 far more to the task of "peaceably" dividing them, by bestowing 
 
KARL KAUTSKY 133 
 
 on their stronger and better organized sections political 
 privileges, and seeking to buy and to corrupt their leaders by 
 friendly compromise — a policy which too often succeeded. 
 It gave up force and violence abroad, and peace and free trade 
 became its motto. It lived peacefully with the Boers, and 
 even finally put on the air of wishing to expiate the centuries 
 of wrongs inflicted on Ireland by granting to it Home Rule. 
 
 But in the mean time foreign competition has become 
 stronger, in many ways too strong, and this forces the capitalists 
 to try to get rid of all resistance to their exploitation at home, 
 and at the same time to secure markets by force. Hand-in- 
 hand with this, the high finance steadily gets more and more 
 powerful in the domain of production, England has conse- 
 quently become of a different complexion. " The spirit of the 
 time," states Mr. and Mrs. Webb in the Soziak Praxis (March 
 20, 1902), " has in the last ten years become adverse to the 
 'collective self-help' in the relations between employers and 
 employed, which distinguished a previous generation. Nay, 
 public opinion in the propertied and professional classes is, 
 in fact, more hostile to trade-unionism and strikes than was 
 the case a generation ago." 
 
 As a consequence of this change the trade-unions are now 
 most seriously limited in their efficiency by the English courts 
 of law. In place of free trade there is now a tendency to raise 
 the price of the necessaries of life by a customs tariff; the 
 policy of colonial conquest begins afresh, and with it coercion 
 in Ireland. Only the remodelling of the army on Prussian 
 lines remains to be done, and then England will follow in the 
 train of Germany in her Polish policy, her customs policy, her 
 social policy, her foreign policy, her miUtary policy. 
 
 Does not that show clearly that it is possible to study the 
 future of England in Germany (and also in America), that 
 English conditions have ceased to paint our future? The 
 stage of the " softening down of the class antagonisms " and 
 of the opening of the era of " social peace " was confined to 
 England, and is even there a thing of the past. Gladstone 
 
134 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 was the most prominent representative of that policy of con- 
 ciliating antagonisms by concessions, which corresponded to 
 the mode of thinking of the industrial capital of England then 
 dominating economically all other classes and countries. The 
 most prominent representative of the new methods of money 
 capital now fighting for supremacy is Mr. Chamberlain. It is 
 among the strangest ironies of history that the Gladstone 
 stage of social development is held up for our admiration in 
 Germany as our future and as England's achievement never 
 to be lost, at the very time when the Gladstone heritage 
 crumbles into dust, and Chamberlain is the hero of the 
 English people. 
 
 I will openly confess that I, too, formerly had laid great 
 hopes on England. Though I did not expect that the Glad- 
 stone era would ever pass to Germany, I did, however, hope 
 that in England, in consequence of its peculiar conditions, the 
 evolution from capitalism to Socialism would proceed not by 
 means of a social revolution, but peacefully by a series of 
 progressive concessions to the proletariat on the part of the 
 ruling classes. The experience of the last few years has 
 destroyed my hopes for England too. The English home 
 policy now commences to shape itself on the lines of their 
 German rivals. May this, also, have a corresponding effect 
 on the English proletariat. 
 
 We now see how far the assumption of a gradual softening 
 down of the class antagonism, of an approach between the 
 bourgeoisie and the proletariat, is justified. It turns out to 
 have been not wholly without foundation in fact, but its 
 mistake lay in that it generalized facts which were limited to 
 a narrow area. It substituted a small section of the Intel- 
 lectuals for the entire bourgeoisie, and represented a particular 
 social tendency of England, and that already belonging to the 
 past, as the general and ever-growing tendency of the entire 
 capitalist mode of production. 
 
XI 
 
 SOCIAL REFORM IN GERMANY AND 
 IN FRANCE 
 
 By G. von Vollmar 
 
 An address delivered at Dresden, Feb. 7, 1901. 
 
 Georg von Vollmar is the leader of the reformist Socialists in 
 the German Reichstag, and of the Socialists generally in Bavaria. 
 He is by birth an aristocrat ; and is an ex-officer of cavalry. After 
 the dismissal of Bismarck, when the Imperial Government showed 
 signs of embracing reform, he exerted himself to render its co-opera- 
 tion with the Socialists easier. At the Erfurt Congress (1891) he 
 championed reformism against the Marxism of his colleagues in a 
 set of remarkable speeches. 
 
 Of Millerand's Ministerial activity, here outlined, a fully docu- 
 mented account, by an intimate friend, is given in L'CEuvre de Millerand, 
 par A. Lavy (Piiris, 1902). 
 
 In political life few words are so much in use to-day as 
 the words " social policy " and " social reform." They are 
 on the lips of all ; Governments, Parliaments and p 
 parties, Science and the Church, acknowledge popularity 
 them. A regular rivalry goes on over the disin- of social 
 herited classes. No one desires anything but the 
 good of the workers. Industry, as only lately again a great head 
 of industry explained in the Reichstag, pursues its task not for 
 the sake of profit, but chiefly in the interests of its workmen. 
 The Agrarians assert that they demand higher duties on 
 bread-stuffs and other country products, not from ordinary 
 self-interest, but especially that they may pay the agricultural 
 
 13s 
 
136 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 labourers better wages. Societies are formed on a greater or 
 less scale, with a more or less mixed membership, which 
 indicate the furthering of social reform and social policy as 
 their particular object. With loud flourishes of trumpets upon 
 every occasion people proclaim the " social monarchy," and 
 remind us, that in Germany the princes, particularly the Kings 
 of Prussia, have always been princes of the poor, and have 
 treated the welfare of the destitute classes as the first object of 
 their rule. 
 
 All this has not always been so. When the Social 
 Democratic party arose at the beginning of the 'sixties and 
 began its activity, the words " social policy " and 
 with the " social reform " were as yet very little known and 
 laisser-faire jjffig understood. Rather, with the exception of 
 this party arising out of the working-class, and of a 
 small number of far-sighted men of scientific or philanthropic 
 bent, people were then pretty generally of opinion that many 
 things in politics and economics might be altered, but certainly 
 the State had not to " socially reform " anything. 
 
 Liberalism in economics was then busy demolishing the 
 crumbling ruins of the older economic conditions, bursting the 
 bonds of long obsolete systems which cramped Germany's 
 economic life, and liberating the economic forces in order to 
 enUst them in the service of the wholesale production by 
 capitalists which was being developed. That new politico- 
 economic institutions and organizations had to replace the 
 old, that a new edifice had to replace the one which was 
 demolished, was such a flat contradiction of the then dominant 
 Manchester School, that, with the exception of the Social 
 Democracy, and the solitary wayfarers already mentioned, 
 hardly any one thought such a thing possible. According to 
 the conception of that time, the sole rule of economic life was 
 to be the " free play of forces," which must regulate the pro- 
 duction and consumption of goods, the relation between 
 capital and labour, and the distribution of the national wealth, 
 in the only way possible and the best way conceivable. The 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 137 
 
 economic sphere belonged exclusively to private activity, and 
 the State with its legislation and government had nothing, or 
 virtually nothing, to do with it — nothing more than to get 
 rid of the obstacles checking the free development of eco- 
 nomic forces, to smooth the way for the unimpeded turning 
 to account of capital and labour, to promote transport and 
 trade, to safeguard acquired wealth and its enjoyment, and to 
 keep the masses of the working people nicely in order. In 
 this scheme the relation between employers and workers was 
 quite a private concern, and the labour contract purely a 
 subject of private law. Buying and selling of labour was a 
 simple market proceeding, which, like the sale of any other 
 wares, was determined exclusively by the economic laws of 
 supply and demand. To wish to interfere and disturb this 
 proceeding on behalf of the State seemed then a wrong to the 
 national welfare, and just as senseless as resistance to any 
 other natural law — so that at that time people treated the 
 Social Democrats much less as enemies of the civil and divine 
 order of things than as poor fools, who wished in their in- 
 fatuation to mutiny against the eternal laws of capitalistic 
 production. 
 
 Since then, in spite of all which we may otherwise deplore, 
 a far-reaching change has been accomplished in public 
 opinion. For, though plenty of relics and traces laUser- 
 of the conception IJiave sketched are still with us, ^^^ll^l\^ 
 and continue operative under altered names and Germany by 
 shapes, yet to-day the actual Manchester doctrine *g^jgj^,^*^ 
 is in principle vanquished. Under the pressure, state inter- 
 on the one hand, of the economic development, ferenee. 
 which, along with the gigantic rise of the capitalistic form of 
 production, exhibited more and more clearly those sides of it 
 which injure society ; and, on the other hand, under the rapidly 
 and unceasingly augmented influence of the Social Democracy, 
 which from a small sect developed into the largest party in 
 the Empire, and penetrated all relations — legislation and 
 government, and political life as a whole have been impelled 
 
138 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 upon quite another path. To-day, however far its execution 
 may lag behind in practice, in principle, at least, the Socialistic 
 conception has prevailed, that economic life is not a sacred 
 preserve for purely private interests, but rather the first, funda- 
 mental, and therefore most important factor in the Ufe of 
 society, and that consequently the State, as the organ of 
 society^ has the right and the duty to interfere and regulate 
 economic enterprises wherever the interest of society makes it 
 seem needful and requisite. People had with this to acknow- 
 ledge the principle, that the regulation of relations between 
 employers and workmen for the protection of the working 
 classes, who at once form the chief class in society and as 
 against the great power of capital are at a disadvantage, is 
 among the most essential objects of the State. 
 
 No doubt it has cost much work and severe straggles for 
 things to reach this point, for this conception to vindicate itself 
 in the face of the united opposition of the employers, the 
 The Anti- ruling classes, and the power of the State. When 
 Socialist the Social Democracy, in the later 'seventies, began, 
 ^^' contrary to their opponents' expectation, to grow 
 
 quickly and to assume a size which seemed to menace the 
 raling classes, the well-known attempt was made to suppress 
 this party and its social and politico-economic doctrines by 
 force. The exceptional law was passed against the Social 
 Democracy. It burdened us twelve years, and demanded 
 numberless sacrifices, but effected the exact opposite of what 
 was desired. At its close the party had grown many times the 
 stronger for it. Cfertainly the authors of that law showed a 
 great amount of infatuation and shortsightedness. But its 
 prime author, the then Imperial Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, 
 by the side of his whole failure to understand the working-class, 
 its life and straggles, and the entire tendency of the economic 
 development, nevertheless grasped this much, that nothing 
 was to be accomplished by the use of violent suppression only. 
 Accordingly he declared that certain "positive" measures of 
 social reform must go hand-in-hand with it. 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 139 
 
 Thus originated in Germany the Workmen's Insurance 
 legislation. The reproach has often been made against the 
 Social Democracy that it voted against the several Bismarck's 
 insurance laws; and even now there are anti-Socialist social policy, 
 orators of the lower sort, who, for want of better arguments, try 
 to make out the Social Democrats to be " workmen's enemies " 
 on account of this attitude. But for whoever considers this 
 matter thoughtfully, the necessity of our attitude at that period 
 is as clear as daylight. The Workmen's Insurance legislation 
 came in at the time of the most severe, reckless Attitude of 
 persecution of the Social Democracy ; that time of the Soeiai- 
 the "white terror," when not merely the Social *='*'S *•>'*• 
 Democracy incurred the repression, but the burden of the 
 exceptional law in the interest of the employers was applied 
 against every effort of the working-class, however organized; 
 when the smallest trade-union occupying itself with the 
 narrowest professional interests was dissolved; when no 
 workmen's newspaper was tolerated, however moderate ; when 
 the Government, in the words of the then Prussian Minister, 
 Von Puttkamer, saw " behind every strike the lowering hydra 
 of revolution " — in brief, when there no longer existed a 
 public working-class movement. Against a Government pro- 
 ceeding in that way ours could only be war to the knife, 
 and everything must then resolve itself into the question of 
 strength. There was another thing besides, Bismarck in- 
 stituted workmen's insurance with the avowed intention, not 
 of satisfying urgent demands of the workers, but of furthering 
 the interests of his own domination. He thought that when 
 he converted millions of workmen into small income-receivers, 
 he would succeed in interesting them in the State as he 
 conceived it {i.e. in the State as it was at the moment, and 
 the Government then in power), in detaching them from the 
 life of their class, and in making them props of what is called 
 "civil and social order." The result could only be an un- 
 limited distrust on our side. And so the many and mis- 
 chievous defects in those laws, of which no small part are 
 
140 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 still unremoved to-day, had all the greater weight, and 
 necessarily impelled us to vote against them. 
 
 Since then affairs have gradually altered. It is true there 
 is still a state of war between us and the Government and the 
 ruling parties. But even war has its degrees ; you may carry 
 it on in modern-European style — somewhat as happened in 
 Possibility ^^7° between Germany and France — or in the 
 of a less style which the English now adopt in South Africa, 
 fule now."" °^ *^* which, together with the other Powers, 
 Germany is at this moment adopting in China. 
 To-day, then, a state of war within rules has replaced the 
 purely barbaric war of annihilation. Moreover, thanks to the 
 force of economic facts and our own strength, we have 
 succeeded in frustrating the object pursued by the Govern- 
 ment in the insurance laws. The German working-class has 
 not let itself be tamed and made subservient by receiving 
 little insurance annuities, but asserts its just demands with all 
 the greater vigour and with growing certainty of success 
 Thereby the Workmen's Insurance legislation has] lost for us 
 the character of a question of strength. We can treat it 
 quite practically, and recognize the useful element which in 
 it is mixed up with the bad. Thus last year we were able, 
 though after much consideration, to vote for the latest 
 additional laws on insurance against accidents and disable- 
 ment ; which, as it was, contained some not unreal ameliora- 
 tions for the workers, and if the parties of the majority had 
 been well disposed might easily have contained more. We 
 did not, and do not, let ourselves be deterred by our opposi- 
 tion to the Government from examining quite practically such 
 measures affecting the life of the working-class. And just as 
 often enough already we have had to be the defenders and 
 special supporters of these laws, which are now so inseparably 
 bound up with our working-class life, against their supposed 
 inspired authors, so we shall always most decidedly insist on 
 this legislation securing increased benefits for the workers 
 through its necessary extension. 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 141 
 
 But even if one were willing to assign to the Workmen's 
 Insurance legislation more actual significance than in its 
 present defective state it possesses, only ignorance 
 or wilful deception can pronounce it the most attitude of 
 essential thing which the workers demand, and Socialism to 
 act therefore as if Germany's insurance laws refopms- 
 placed her in the front rank of social reform, insurance. 
 No, insurance against illness, accidents, and old ^ "'^'^ °' 
 age, important as it is in itself, can as little be the main thing 
 as, for instance, can the provision for housing, latterly becoming 
 more and more urgent — no matter how high the importance 
 of the housing question must rightly be appraised. Of late 
 people are recognizing, even in some quarters that are opposed 
 to us, how deplorable the housing conditions of the working- 
 class mostly are, so that the joy of Ufe, the sense of family, 
 morality, health, and even existence are buried beneath them. 
 All the same, and although in this question also we are ready 
 to collaborate practically if it is seriously taken in hand, it 
 can never claim more than the significance of a question of 
 economic detail. 
 
 The essential, the core of the right social policy is — and 
 thither the effort of every worthy social reform must tend — ^to 
 enable the jvorking-class increasingly to influence Socialistic 
 riie shaping of Ae wage cohtractyan J with it the essentials, 
 process of production itself. That is secured first by a genuine 
 State protection of the workers, and next, hand-in-hand with it, 
 by the organization of the working-class. 
 
 Among us, it must be admitted, protection of the workers 
 is talked about a wonderful deal. Any one willing to believe 
 the employers, who treat even the faintest State protection 
 interference as a theft of their hereditary rights, of workers, 
 or to believe the boasts of the Government, might perhaps 
 think already that nowhere in the whole world were the 
 workers as well off as with us. Recently in the Reichstag, 
 Herr von Kardorff — who, of course, is the deputed repre- 
 sentative of Herr von Stumm — stated in a somewhat exalted 
 
142 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 metaphor, that in Germany the car of social reform is now 
 rushing on "at a frantic gallop," and the time when the 
 proletarians shall manage the world's business seems at 
 hand ! Unfortunately, things are really quite otherwise. 
 
 Eleven years ago there was once a time, when it seemed 
 as if in Germany, too, people wanted to take a full stride 
 The present forward. At that time thoughts like these were 
 Emperor's proclaimed by an influential personage : ^ " The 
 th^'sTasm workers have the natural right to improve their 
 for social position as far as they can, and to secure them- 
 refopm. selves the greatest possible gain out of the gain 
 accruing to industry from circumstances. The complaints 
 and wishes of the workers are to be examined from the 
 standpoint that it is the object of the State authority so to 
 regulate the times and types of work as to assure the 
 conservation of health, the requirements of morals, the 
 economic needs of the workers, and their claim to equality 
 with the employers before the law. The workers should 
 share in the regulation of the common interests of industry 
 through representatives who enjoy their confidence, and should 
 be made capable of safeguarding their interests against the 
 employers and the authorities. The State businesses should 
 be developed into model businesses genuinely solicitous for 
 their workers. International conferences should be promoted, 
 to discuss the protection of the workers," etc. Now, for us, of 
 course, these matters were nothing new ; for decades we Social 
 Democrats had proclaimed these and similar principles, and 
 were constantly denounced and resisted by the Government 
 and the employers for doing so. But it was given to be under- 
 stood that these principles were now at last acknowledged by 
 others, and we were ready — obviously without in any way 
 renouncing our further aims — loyally to help in the advance, 
 and to further it according to our power. 
 
 But it only too soon appeared how well founded were the 
 doubts, which had at once forced themselves on us in reference 
 
 ' The present Emperor, William II., is of course meant. 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 143 
 
 to the realization of these beautiful programme principles. 
 Prince Bismarck, when he shortly afterwards was dismissed 
 from office, and sat sulking in his Saxon forest, 
 is known to have expressed the opinion that all theEm- 
 these announcements were only intended to peror's 
 influence the votes of the electors. Others, *"'" ' 
 again, have maintained that the words were meant seriously 
 at the time of their utterance, but that the working-class was 
 expected to be unable to contain itself for rapture, and the 
 Social Democracy to wheel round a temjio into the ranks of 
 the parties of order.* However that may have been, this 
 much is certain, that the inspiration of the moment was soon 
 much diluted. When eventually the very employers, who 
 otherwise pose so strongly against the Social Democracy as 
 props of authority and the throne, mutinied in public, and did 
 not hesitate, in case some check was not put on the influen- 
 tial personage's leanings towards the Social Democracy, to 
 threaten point blank a " revision of the monarchical senti- 
 ment," — then the taste for a serious social reform soon 
 perished. And when the travailing mountain at last gave 
 birth, quite a tiny little mouse came to light — though a mouse 
 which even so was far too big for the employers. Once for 
 
 all to take from Government the liking for such „, ^ 
 
 Vletopy of 
 vagaries, the gentlemen who now knew themselves the reac- 
 
 to be completely uppermost — in the way which tionaryem- 
 
 we have had strikingly illustrated these last few 
 
 weeks dr-propos oi the discussion of the famous 12,000 marks 
 
 affair ^ — got rid of the extremely tame social-reform Minister, 
 
 Von Berlepsch. Then came in for Prussia Herr Von Brefeld, 
 
 and for the Empire, Count Posadowsky, and the latter made 
 
 ' Staatserhaltendeti Parteien — the phrase still regularly used to denote 
 the non-revolutionary parties, as opposed to the Social Democrats. 
 
 ' Certain officials in the Imperial Department of the Interior accepted 
 12,000 marks (;^6oo) from the Central Federation of German Manufacturers, 
 in order with it to promote agitation on behalf of the Labour Bill introduced 
 May 26, 1899. 
 
144 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 a right-about declaration in his very first speech : that hence- 
 forward progress in social policy must be slow and con- 
 siderate, and that it did not do to institute social reforms 
 without first being assured of the assent of the employers, i.e. 
 the sheepfold should in future be " protected " in concert with 
 the wolves. 
 
 With that ensued a time of complete stagnation in social 
 policy. The coercionists of the great industry set the fashion ; 
 Consequent their interest was most completely impersonated 
 stagnation \,y Herr von Stumm; and the Junkers, always 
 of social -^ , , J , . J A 
 
 reform in ready for any reactionary busmess, supported 
 
 Germany. them. By their open and occult lobby influence 
 — in the Reichstag as well as with the Government and at the 
 Court — they were able to impede every detail of progress. 
 Not content with that, they sought, in order to subjugate the 
 workers still further, to deprive them even of their few rights ; 
 this was the object of the " Revolution " Law, and later on, 
 of the " Prison-house " Law ; not forgetting the constantly 
 renewed demands for the removal of universal, direct, equal, 
 and secret suffrage which could only be carried through by 
 a direct violation of the constitution. Fortunately, the coer- 
 cionists of the great industry have at present not proved strong 
 enough to realize these plans. But, far as I am from wishing 
 to draw needless spectres on the wall, and to threaten dangers 
 without foundation, I must point out that the demands for 
 laws of coercion and exception are by no means silenced yet j 
 only recently the old craving for them was again expressed in 
 the Prussian Lower House. Repression is the last resort of 
 the wise and the one help of the coercionists, Junkers, and 
 violent politicians of every sort, who have learned nothing 
 from the Anti-Socialist Law. The acts and impulses of these 
 people will, therefore, have to be watched, if we are not to be 
 taken by surprise some day. 
 
 After years of a complete standstill the protection of the 
 workers began gradually to be mooted again ; but only started 
 moving on the one-inch scale, under countless checks and 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 145 
 
 hindrances, by very tiny strides. The results were merely 
 petty work, details of execution. The best that we have got 
 from this period still is the slow extension of factory inspection 
 and the law on industrial tribunals, though there are great 
 defects in the latter which have since been accentuated by the 
 extension of the arbitration courts for corporations. Nothing 
 has been said of introducing new elements into social legisla- 
 tion. That effort of the workers which, next to organization, is 
 the most important of all, the regulation of the hours of labour 
 by law, has so far made no progress. As little have we 
 succeeded in obtaining our old demand, seemingly so obviously, 
 for the introduction of a legal representation of the working- 
 class in Chambers of Labour, So, again, as to parity of treatment 
 for manual and industrial workers; as to the extension of 
 workmen's protection to home-work, shop employment, inn 
 employment, domestic service, and other categories of work ; 
 more than all, as to the equalization before the law of public 
 employees and those of private businesses. As for the right 
 of combination, no doubt it exists on paper; but of its effec- 
 tive realization and its urgently needed safeguarding against 
 capitalistic mastery nothing is yet said. 
 
 Things are no better, as regards the attitude of legislation 
 and Government towards the organization of the working- 
 class, which is primary and of such fundamental Hostility of 
 importance, that if needful it can make good a theCovern- 
 series of otherwise defective conditions, forming ^/ganlza-*** 
 both the means of securing all sorts of protection tion of the 
 for the workers, and the necessary preliminary ^°'"''®''^' 
 for turning it to good accoimt. For imless the working-class 
 acquires the framework of powerful organizations, and unless 
 these exercise vigilance, initiative, and active strength, even 
 relatively useful ordinances of law remain for their largest and 
 best part dead letters. Now that the opposition of interests 
 and the war between capital and labour are with iis and are 
 no longer to be banished from the world, it is to the public 
 interest, over and above the aims of the working-class, that 
 
 L 
 
146 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 this war should as far as possible assume regulated forms. 
 
 To enable economic and social struggles to be carried out 
 
 e ,. fruitfully and without needless expenditure of 
 
 suen organ- / , .... , 
 
 izattonlsln Strength and sacrifice, it is necessary to replace 
 
 the public inexperienced, incoherent masses blindly stagger- 
 ing from passion and excitement to despair, by an 
 aggregate of workers who know what they want, who have a 
 common mind, education, and self-discipline, as well as the 
 insight into the whole situation requisite in order to estimate 
 accurately the strain entailed upon their strength and the 
 prospects of gain from it. From this point of view an en- 
 lightened Government should itself further the trade-unionist 
 organization of the workers, or at least secure to it a minimum 
 of disturbance. Instead, our governing circles in Germany 
 regularly evince extreme distrust, and generally even public 
 hostility, towards the trade-unions. Every possible hindrance 
 is put in the way of their activity, while the quite inadequate 
 right of association and combination is worn out in opposing 
 them: juristic personality is withheld from them, and their 
 members are excluded from public employments. 
 
 To be fair, I will point out that the situation is not wholly 
 the same over the whole empire, but that in some of the allied 
 Greater States may be noticed definite, though modest, 
 ^pessin""" beginnings for the better. While in Prussia, Saxony, 
 South; etc., the trade-unions are systematically ignored 
 
 Germany, by the inspectors of industry, in South Germany 
 the inspecting officials are officially in touch with the workers' 
 Co-opera- organizations — trade-unions, grievance committees, 
 tion of and especially workmen's secretariates ; they claim 
 
 inspectors their collaboration in carrying out the protection 
 
 with trade- ,. ^, , . . . , 
 
 unions in Of the workers, executing statistical work, etc.; 
 
 iavaria"* ^^^^ ^"^"^ workmen's meetings, sometimes even 
 
 address them, and testify publicly to the utility and 
 
 indispensability of organizations for the social elevation and 
 
 culture of the working-class. The remarkable activity of the 
 
 Baden inspector, Worrishofer, is known to you, and some other 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 147 
 
 inspecting officials display an activity in social policy which 
 deserves recognition ; in Bavaria we have now a disposition to 
 centralize the industrial inspectorate, and form a real depart- 
 ment of social policy in the Ministry. We have 
 further carried the point,' that the appointment of eias^s "^ 
 assistant inspectors out of the working-class, as assistant 
 well as the workmen's right to participate in the "'"^^ '"'^' 
 inspection of building and mining, is at least recognized in 
 principle, though its execution still leaves much to be desired. 
 At any rate, in various larger cities a number of workmen are 
 already acting as official building-inspectors, among whom, 
 for instance, in Munich there are men enjoying the con- 
 fidence of the masons' organization ; and people seem willing 
 to let mining-inspectors be elected by the workmen's com- 
 mittees. Notoriously, the inferiority of workmen before the 
 law is shown with peculiar suggestiveness by the fact that, 
 while otherwise the introduction of drastic rules is preceded 
 by a consultation of all possibly interested parties — Agrarians, 
 men on the Stock Exchange, heads of industry, consuita- 
 
 master mechanics — only the workmen are regu- "on of the 
 
 workers 
 larly not invited. This bad custom we have at before 
 
 last succeeded in breakmg through; both before legislation, 
 the issue of the new Bavarian building regulations and before 
 that of the new mining regulations, conferences were called by 
 the Ministry, to which, besides officials, representatives both of 
 workmen and employers were invited. We have formulated 
 the further demand, that they should proceed systematically 
 in this direction and establish a special ministerial department 
 for labour questions, which should not consist merely of 
 professional officials, but should have among its members an 
 equal number of workmen and employers, to take part in the 
 preparation of laws and ordinances. Although the Govern- 
 ment thought that this was too much all at once, and that they 
 could not proceed " so far," no contradiction of the principle 
 was advanced. In Hesse the demand mentioned has already in 
 part been granted, while a number of workmen's representatives 
 
148 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 have for definite objects been called into the Ministry. In 
 Bavaria the hours of work in the workshops of the railway and 
 Hours of military department have been reduced to 9I — no 
 State doubt, I admit, an insufficient reduction, but any- 
 
 employees. j^^^ ^j ^^^^ ^ beginning; the eight hours' day for 
 miners, which was already voted by the Lower Chamber, was 
 unfortunately lost again through the opposition of the First 
 Chamber and the weakness of the Centre Party. The right of 
 State eon- combination for workmen in firms in whose work 
 raets the State is concerned, has (besides through resolu- 
 
 ciauses. jj^^^^ ^^ g^^^g Parhaments) obtained a practical 
 recognition in the fact, among others, that in Hesse and 
 Bavaria (I do not know whether elsewhere) the Government 
 gives out its printing only to firms which pay the Printers' 
 rates. Further, in regard to public gratuitous employment 
 agencies something has been donej the labour 
 ment bureaux in Stuttgart and Munich -in connection 
 
 agencies. ^j{ij ^ committee of workmen's and employers' 
 representatives work for the removal of harmful private 
 employment agencies ; and latterly more attention is paid to 
 the extension and centralization of labour intelligence over the 
 country; with cheap travelling tickets for men seeking work. 
 And there are other things of the same kind. 
 
 But in the greatest part of Germany, especially in the 
 leading coimtry of Prussia, httle or nothing is to be observed 
 of such dispositions for the better. And thereby those States, 
 which show more insight into social policy, and whose proceed- 
 ings are denounced as " a bad example," are hindered from 
 proceeding faster and more vigorously with their improvements. 
 
 At present — that is, in the last few years — in spite of all 
 Oreaniza- opposing difficulties, trade-unionism has expanded 
 Uon of in a powerful and extremely welcome way ; though 
 
 its recent °"^ should beware of exaggerating it, for there 
 growth in is Still only a small percentage of workers pro- 
 State°* fessionally organized, and the division of their 
 hsotillty. forces through the introduction of party-political 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 149 
 
 and religious points of view robs the movement of a great 
 part of its strength. But to the improvements which trade- 
 unions have been able to secure in the situation of the 
 workers, not only has the State contributed absolutely nothing, 
 but every inch of progress has had to be wrung by constant 
 fighting from the political as well as the economic potentates. 
 We have not yet realized the legal equality of the workers, 
 which exists on paper, but is more or less openly disputed 
 by most employers. Employers great and small still regard 
 themselves as "bread-givers," and want to be "masters in 
 their own house," i.e. to settle conditions of labour dicta- 
 torially, and treat the workers as subjects, or rather as mere 
 chattels. The private rights of the employer still infringe 
 the public rights of the worker, who to keep his wage has 
 to sell the political rights which the laws of the State give 
 him ; people of the type of Herr von Stumm assume the right, 
 because they let " their " workmen live, of lecturing them on 
 their most private concerns, telling the worker what he may 
 read, what public-houses he is to visit, when he may marry, 
 and so on. In this respect we stand in Germany to-day where 
 the English workers stood many decades ago — with, I admit, 
 one important exception, namely, that in spite of, perhaps 
 rather because of, these conditions, we have in the Social 
 Democracy a political organization of the working-class such 
 as no other land so far possesses, which forms for Germany 
 the first stimulus and the first starting-point for all economic, 
 social, and political improvement. 
 
 All this backwardness in social policy which I have 
 described occurred precisely while Germany stood beneath 
 the star of an unparalleled industrial prosperity, gtagnatlon 
 while the great industry expanded on a really in social 
 gigantic scale, while Germany competed success- ["^ef^™!*"" 
 fully with England in the world-market, and the witheom- 
 national wealth grew enormously. Moreover, our ^gspg^ty. 
 backwardness occurred at the very time, when in 
 various countries, whose economic development is in some 
 
150 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 ways behind ours, more or less considerable progress was 
 made in the sphere of social reform. I will not to-day 
 speak of Switzerland, or England, or North America and 
 the Australian colonies, interesting and instructive as some of 
 their steps in social reform are, and greatly as they 
 formln^" deserve our attention. I will confine myself to 
 France one country, which, in size, is not far behind 
 
 compared, q^^^^^^^ ^nd in regard to industrial development 
 has only lately been overtaken by us, so that it forms a good 
 point of comparison. 
 
 In France the anti-Socialistic Manchester School of 
 hostility to State interference in the economic sphere exer- 
 cised longer a decisive influence, extending indeed to the 
 working-class. Pohtical freedom did little — with the excep- 
 tion of the trade-union law of 1884 — to improve working- 
 class conditions. For this the traditional schism of the 
 Social Democracy into warring sects, and the consequently 
 desultory and erratic action of the trade-unions were respon- 
 sible. Then came the well-known movement for the revision 
 of the Dreyfus case, which gradually developed to a severe 
 crisis in the State. The stability of the Republic and its 
 
 n.1. ir. . liberal institutions was (as I have elsewhere de- 
 
 ThelDpeyfus ^ 
 
 ease, and scnbed m detail) most gravely imperilled by the 
 
 ».?,®°*''^°^ coalition of the generals, the Clericals, and the 
 
 Millepand ^^ . ,. ^ ° , . . . , 
 
 Into the Nationalists. In this situation the progressive 
 
 French bourgeois Republicans recognized that only an 
 
 alliance with the living force of the working-class 
 
 could save the country from the threatened coup cHitat. And 
 
 so, for the first time in the history of modem Social Democracy, 
 
 the Socialists participated in the supreme government, 
 
 in the well-understood interest of the country and with 
 
 the special object; and Alexandre Millerand entered the 
 
 Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet as Minister of Commerce and 
 
 Industry. 
 
 It is not to-day my intention to go into the important 
 
 political consequences of this event, which would require a 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 151 
 
 special treatment. I will confine myself entirely to the sphere 
 of social policy, sind show you how Fr ance, previously back- 
 ward in this sphere, has, thanks to the activity~drtKe"repre- 
 
 sentative of Social UemgpiasX-JfltJae ^BlElEXj J^^t^''^^ o" ^^ 
 era of. energetic prote ction gf , the W-OikeirSj, and, p l aced .her self 
 q uite at the head of social refor m- 
 As to the legal regulation of the hours of labour, there 
 were several ordinances in France, but they remained dead 
 
 letters, and were not enforced. For this, not only „,„ 
 
 ' , , , MUlerand's 
 
 the Government and the employers, but also the jawupon 
 
 workers were to blame ; the latter were very badly ?°^'"^ °* 
 educated in respect of social policy, and often 
 blindly co-operated with the employers in deceiving the 
 inspectors and hindering the enforcement of the laws on 
 hours of labour. Thus there was in France practically no 
 State-limitation of the working-day, which frequently was of 
 twelve, fourteen, sixteen, or more hours, not only for men, 
 but for women, and even children. This state of things the 
 Socialist Minister soon ended by elaborating a law which was 
 speedily adopted by the Chamber and came into force. This 
 law introducies. a..similar^ normal working-day for all businesses 
 in which men, women, and children'are 'employed together ; a 
 day fixed at eleven hours for 1899-1901, sinking to ten and 
 a half in 1901, and remaining at ten from 1903 onwards. 
 Similarly, you know, we German Social Democrats have pro- 
 posed in the Reichstag, that the normal working-day be fixed 
 immediately at ten hours and then gradually shortened to eight. 
 Highly important as is every reduction in the hours of labour 
 in the workers' interest and in reference to culture generally, 
 opinions may vary as to what number of hours is fitted and 
 adapted as a universal standard for a particular country and a 
 particular time, in short, for a given stage of development. 
 The main thing is for a statutory regulation of the hours of 
 labour to gain its ground and be carried out in practice. In 
 the works of the post and telegraphs, which were under his 
 own department, the French Minister of Commerce at once 
 
152 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 introduced the eight hours' day ; and the miners have prospects 
 of obtaining it shortly.' 
 
 Millerand took a not unimportant step in a decree about 
 the conditions under which in future contractors would be 
 Miiierand's assigned public works or might purvey for State 
 public eon- purposes. According to these rules, which are 
 eiau*"' binding on the State and optional for departments 
 
 and communes, the contracting employers must 
 satisfy a series of conditions in favour of the workers whom 
 they employ. These are : guarantee of no work on Sunday ; 
 drawing up of a percentage of the foreign workmen to be 
 permitted ; fixing of the normal working-day and the minimum 
 wage for every category of workers ; prohibition of piece-work. 
 The normal wage and working-day are agreed upon by the 
 organizations of workers and employers; where such do not 
 exist, a committee composed of workers and employers decides. 
 Conditions of work are altered according to locality ; and sup- 
 posing, for instance, the local rate of wages in the trade rises, 
 the conditions of contracting change correspondingly. If the 
 employer for any reason does not pay the wages agreed upon, 
 Jil6L§tate makes short work of it, and indemnifies the workers 
 by corresponding deductions from the payment due to the em- 
 ployer for the job. Further, the Minister has the right to exclude 
 contractors who do not observe the labour conditions from 
 taking any further part in public works and supplies. 
 
 Insurance of workmen against accidents has in France been 
 
 but lately introduced, and organized quite differently from 
 
 Millerand '^^^^- Although the law expressly ordains that 
 
 and work- the cost of the insurance shall be borne by the 
 
 anco " employers, they have in great measure thrown this 
 
 against off upon the workmen by simply deducting the 
 accidents. • ■ r n^-n j l 
 
 insurance premmm from wages. Millerand has 
 
 now provided by a circular to the authorities, that this mal- 
 
 ' The French Chamber voted the eight-hours' day for miners on 
 February S, 1902, but it is not yet law. Under M. Combes' Cabinet the 
 eight-hours' day has been introduced by M. Pelletan in all docltyards and 
 naval arsenals. 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR ,53 
 
 practice shall cease, and th e costs of the insurance, which 
 belong, like the wages of lahourTto the cost of production, 
 shall t^ e boi^ e p.xrhisivpl y ^by thq emElojers. In regard to 
 provision for old age, the Government have very recently 
 promised to propose a law securing this up to 600 or 700 
 francs.* 
 
 Regarding industrial tribunals a law has for some time been 
 in preparation, through which a real constructive improvement 
 of these institutions should be effected. In future, 
 jMustrkl^ tribunals are Jto have a final jurisdiction aildtadus- 
 ug^^ "to 2000 francs, instead of 206; and their trial tribu- 
 jurisdiction is ""to be extended to shopkeepers' "*'*" 
 assistants, railway servants, and all workmen and employees 
 of the State, the departments, and the communes, excepting 
 the oflScials proper. The right to vote begins at twenty-one, 
 capacity to be elected at twenty-five j and they extend to 
 women. The law having been shaped thus in the Chamber, 
 the conclusion of the Senate is still awaited. 
 
 Millerand has given his especial care to the trade organiza- 
 tion of the workers. He has striven to further trade-unions 
 in every way, and to make them representatives of Miiierand's 
 the working-class, recognized by the State, and encourage- 
 invested with administrative powers. While the trade- 
 already mentioned trade-union law of 1884 still unionism, 
 limited the proprietory and busmess capacity of trade-unions, 
 and completely withheld that of federations, a Bill now 
 before the Chamber gives full legal personality both to 
 trade-unions and to federations of them, and with it the 
 unrestricted right to acquire movable and immovable pro- 
 perty, and to carry on business; so that they are in a 
 position to initiate business undertakings, and above all to 
 tender for public contracts as independent firms. To diminish 
 a danger for the free exercise of the right of combination, 
 the dismissal of a workman for belonging to a trade-union 
 is made ground for damages at civil law ; as conversely 
 ' This problem is still unsolved (1903). 
 
154 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 is the boycotting of an employer for employing non-union 
 men. 
 
 The French workers have long fought hard against private 
 employment-agencies, who mostly abuse their position, extor- 
 tionately and otherwise, to, the injury of those seek- 
 and mploy- ing work. The Chamber has voted a law — which, 
 ment however, still needs the assent of the Senate, who 
 
 agenees. ^^^ recalcitrant on this very question— gradually 
 abolishing private employment-agencies for industry. After 
 the promulgation""of the law no more licences will be granted 
 for setting up such agencies. Existing hcences may be at 
 once called in by the communes, though in this case compen- 
 sation must be paid. After five years all private agencies are 
 closed without compensation. They are replaced by com- 
 munal labour bureaux, which make no charges, and must 
 be established by all communes of over 10,000 inhabitants; 
 smaller communes have at least to keep a register for entering 
 offers and applications. The labour registers of the trade- 
 unions and Bourses du Travail are to be on an equal footing 
 with the communal establishments. The Bourses du Travail 
 are a pecuhar French institution, a species of local trade- 
 unionist alliances, which receive considerable support from 
 public funds ; thus the one in Paris, besides about 3,000,000 
 francs for its foundation, receives an annual subsidy of 115,000 
 francs, while the 57 existing to-day receive altogether 354,180 
 francs in subsidies from communes, and 20,400 francs from 
 departments. These Bourses du Travail, to which at least a 
 third of the organized workmen in France belong, already 
 exert quite a considerable influence on the labour market. 
 With the collaboration of the trade-union federations and the 
 Bourses du Travail a State labour bureau is at last to be 
 formed in Paris to centralize labour intelligence. All public 
 labour registers are to notify weekly their situations vacant; 
 these are then to be systematically collected in lists, and 
 placarded all over the country. 
 
 Over the protection of workers trade-unions have obtained 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 155 
 
 an immediate influence, in that Millerand has ministerially 
 
 recommended the inspectors to attend to every information 
 
 iaid^y^a traS^unfonTahT at once investigate the „,. , ., 
 
 <«_, , . »»..■. ,-.-. -<. v"t -~ ^. m stimulation 
 
 ^eged improper condition of labour. Through ofinspee- 
 
 this, and through the importance nOw attached to *"'"?• *""* 
 ' ° *■ . tnelp eon- 
 
 inspection, the inspectors get quite a new zeal and neetionwith 
 
 an authority as against employers which they never fade- 
 had before. Previously the officials were often 
 hindered on entering works ; at night they mostly found them 
 closed. When recently something of this sort happened to an 
 inspector, he did not go into long explanations, but curtly 
 informed the head of the firm that he had freedom of access to 
 all places used industrially, at all hours of the day and night, 
 and that if necessary he would force an entrance. 
 
 A very important measure is thej;reation of a regular 
 lega!^" recogiuzed,"^ economic r^esentation of JKe working- 
 '(dass'on~'fi5e ne w Labour Councils. This institu- MiUerand's 
 lion, introduced by Millerand by way of an official ^reation of 
 decree, corresponds to what the Social Democratic councils " 
 group in the German Reichstag has long been (Comeflsda 
 vainly demanding in their well-known Bill for the 
 introduction of Chambers of Labour. The labour councils, 
 which are composed equally of representatives of employers 
 and workers, advise, at the request of those concerned or of 
 the Government, on all questions regarding conditions of 
 work, and take part in inquiries ordered into them. For 
 every district and the branches of industry that they represent, 
 they fix the standard of wages and hours, and this fixing at 
 once governs contracts of work or supplies for the State, or, 
 in certain cases, for other public authorities. They make 
 suggestions for the allotment and expenditure of the public 
 grants to trade organizations. They investigate the causes of 
 prevailing unemployment, and suggest remedies to the 
 authorities. They report annually on the state of the pro- 
 tection of workers, and the execution of laws, decrees, and 
 instructions concerning labour j and suggest improvements. 
 
156 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Lastly, the sections of the industrial councils, which are 
 formed according to trades, and in given cases are reinforced 
 by the industrial tribunals of the same trade, have, under 
 conditions to be mentioned later, to act as courts of arbitration 
 in disputes between workers and employers. A substantial 
 deviation from our German project is, that the French labour 
 councils are not elected by all workers or employers, but only 
 by those who are organized ; all French men and women over 
 twenty-five being capable of voting, without distinction of sex. 
 This limitation proceeded from the view, that workers or 
 employers, who have not yet recognized the need for organiza- 
 tion, lack intelligence for the fulfilment of rights and duties 
 presumed by the institution of the labour councils. Doubtless 
 it forms a strong stimulus to organization. Millerand's 
 opponents are really not so far wrong in talking of an " obliga- 
 tion to organize;" at least the present institution paves the 
 way to one. Finally, be it expressly noted, that inside the 
 State's own concerns, the postal department, railways, etc., 
 these labour councils are constituted; while these and all 
 public employees are subject, like the rest of the workers, to 
 industrial tribunals, and have full freedom of combination and 
 trade-union organization — all the exact opposite of our 
 conditions in Germany. 
 
 An assistant council and advisory body in labour matters 
 to the Minister of Industry there is the Supreme Labour 
 
 _ „ Council, which dates from 1891. Hitherto it had 
 
 The Su- ... ' . 
 
 ppeme quite a mmor importance, as its members were 
 
 Labour wholly the Minister's nominees and possessed no 
 sort of authority. Here also Millerand made a 
 change. Now the larger part are elected directly by the 
 organizations of workers and employers, and a further part, 
 taken from the industrial tribunals, indirectly. To these are 
 added a number of members of Parliament, oiBcials, econo- 
 mists, jurists, the presidents of the Communal Council, the 
 Chamber of Commerce, the Bourse du Travail, and the Work- . 
 men's Co-operative Societies, of Paris, while the Minister only- 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 157 
 
 retains four representatives, among whom Millerand nominated 
 a well-known woman Socialist. A standing committee has for 
 its function to disclose evils in social poUcy, to arrange 
 investigations, to report on necessary reforms^ and to prepare 
 legislation accordingly. 
 
 None of Millerand's measures has attracted so much notice 
 as his Bill to regulate industrial disputes, generally called the 
 Strike Law for short. In whatever from this Bill Millerand's 
 becomes law, it is anyhow interesting , enough BUltopegu- 
 to deserve being examined and appraised in industrial 
 detail by the workers of Germany and of every disputes, 
 country. There is not time for more detail upon it to-day, 
 and I must confine myself to characterizing a few points 
 in it. The Bill describes its own object as the creation of 
 a " permanent organization of labour," the " establishment 
 of solidarity among all workers," and the development of 
 "industrial democracy j" others have described it as the 
 introduction of constitutionalism and the parliamentary 
 system into the workshop. The law is to apply to every 
 industrial and commercial concern with more than fifty work- 
 men or employees, so far as they contract to come How far 
 under the law. This limitation is a concession, optional, 
 which the Government thought it must make to that spirit of 
 hostility to all State interference in economic machinery, 
 which I have noted, and which is stronger in France than 
 elsewhere. It was expected to facilitate the acceptance of the 
 proposal by the Chamber. If, however, the law is once made 
 by contract to apply to a firm, from its own choice or in 
 consequence of the pressure of the workers, then this " contract " 
 is binding at law on the work and all engaged on it. How 
 anxious the Government is, that the law may be made 
 applicable as widely as possible, is shown not only by their 
 efforts at promoting the workers' organizations in every way, 
 and strengthening their influence, but also in the further fact, 
 that they at once put the State itself under the law as regards 
 its own works, contracts, and concessions. So though in 
 
158 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 form the law is optional, the example of the State and the will 
 of the organized workers will force it more and more on the 
 employers. 
 
 The Bill is based on workshop-representation. Repre- 
 sentative bodies are elected by the universal, direct, and 
 
 , secret suffrage of the workmen and employees in 
 New auasi- °. ^i.- 
 
 Papiiaments the firms subject to the law. Ihey are to he m 
 
 of the em- constant touch with the employers, and in the 
 
 any one labour regulations definite times are fixed, at which 
 
 establish- {j^g v^orkers' representatives are to be received by 
 
 the employers. . If a serious dispute breaks out, and 
 
 cannot be settled by oral negotiation, the representatives have 
 
 to formulate the demands of the workers in writing and 
 
 transmit them to the employer, who must reply in writing 
 
 within two days. If he does not accept the demands, the 
 
 two parties to the dispute choose their conciliators, who meet 
 
 and try to settle the affair. If the employer omits to appoint 
 
 his conciliators, or the assembled conciliators do not agree 
 
 within six days, the workers have the right to decide about 
 
 declaring work suspended. The workers or employees meet 
 
 _. ., . . and vote by secret ballot "yes" or "no." The 
 strike by , . . , , . . ., , , . . 
 
 referen- decision of the majority prevails, and the minority 
 
 dum. jjjyg(. submit to it. If the strike is thus voted, no 
 
 more work may be done, and the place of work must be closed ; 
 
 in the contrary event work must be continued. The vote 
 
 must be repeated at least once a week. If there appears no 
 
 prospect of the strike being ended by the surrender of one 
 
 side or the other, then at the instance of one of those con- 
 
 The apbitra- cerned, or the authorities, the labour council, the 
 
 tion court, convened representation of the organized workers 
 
 and employers, takes action. The appropriate section of the 
 
 labour council forms the court of arbitration ; its decision is 
 
 valid for six months, and both sides must conform to it. 
 
 This Bill, whatever one's attitude to its proposals in detail, 
 means undoubtedly a bold step in social policy.^ The scientific 
 
 ' The Bill's reception by the French trade-unions was, on the whole, 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR 159 
 
 spokesman of the French Manchester School, Leroy-Beaulieu, 
 has called it "the most colossal revolution that France has 
 made smce the great Revolution." That, I admit, is exag- 
 gerated; but a Socialistic author has justly insisted, that 
 Millerand's work makes for fundamental and revolutionary 
 change, and denotes an infraction of the bourgeois idea of 
 law by Socialistic thought. In Europe there is nowhere 
 anything like it ; on the other hand, a law of the colony of 
 New Zealand, of 1894, served Millerand as a model in 
 many respects, while, generally, the social legislation of 
 Australia is very advanced, and deserves much more con- 
 sideration by the working-class than hitherto has been given 
 to it. 
 
 Every German reader will at once be led to compare the 
 Bill with our vanished "Prison-house" Law. Only, the 
 French Government pursues precisely the opposite 
 tendency. In the "Prison-house" Law the "free fftitu^/of 
 labourers," the strike-breakers, were proclaimed German and 
 
 the ideal workmen, the " element of value " for r^f""'' 
 , . Govern- 
 
 the State and society, which should be efficaciously ments to 
 
 protected against the " revolutionaries." In France „^^o„,'s^ 
 they proceed from the opposite standpoint, that 
 the fights of the workers with capital have not an individual 
 but a collective character, and so cannot be decided by the 
 will of the single individual ; since the worker who disowns 
 or betrays solidarity and does not incorporate himself in an 
 organization is the less estimable for that, and it is therefore 
 the interest and object of the State in wage-conflicts to make 
 the majority decide and the minority obey. While the Bill 
 makes striking under some circumstances obligatory, it recog- 
 nizes and legalizes the strike as a very exceptional weapon, 
 to be used with all prudence, though not to be dispensed with 
 under the present system of production. Further, it recognizes 
 the workers' right to a voice in the determination of labour 
 
 distinctly hostile. It therefore has not been proceeded with, but remains 
 in suspense, as French Bills often do for long periods. 
 
i6o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 conditions. The preamble of the Bill says expressly : " Labour 
 is the fellow-worker with Capital. But it is a fellow-worker 
 who cannot without injustice and unwisdom be treated as 
 under age. If its sudden onsets disturb the best-planned 
 business operations, because nothing has been done to initiate 
 it into the difficulties of enterprise, it is perverse to reproach 
 it with its ignorance of the situation." That signifies the 
 affirmation in principle of the practical legal equality of labour 
 with capital, of the workers' share in determining the process 
 of production. 
 
 Further, the effort towards furthering organization in every 
 way and thereby enabling the workers to introduce further 
 social improvements and innovations by themselves, comes 
 out clearly again in this Bill. I have already pointed out, 
 that in all its own relations to the workers the State submits 
 to the Strike Law and sets a good example; and also — what 
 in France is regarded as a matter of course — how the workmen 
 and employees of the State and other public undertakings 
 enjoy to their full extent the advantages of all other labour 
 laws, and in particular the right of combination. In the 
 preamble to Millerand's Bill the Government expressly indicate 
 as their aim : " To develop the natural community of interest 
 between the workers, to pave the way for trade organizations, 
 and so to found a strong organization of labour." And the 
 preamble closes with words which show so much social insight, 
 that we in Germany have a difficulty in imagining that they 
 proceed from a Government's lips. They run : " The Govern- 
 ment of the Republic in proposing the present Bill pursues, 
 as in the recent creation of labour councils, a task of social 
 education and organization. It proclaims its confidence in 
 the organized workers and the educative power of organiza- 
 tion. It shows that it finds the security for social progress 
 in reason, in loyal negotiations between representatives of the 
 mutually opposed interests, in the scientific method, and in 
 the realization of gradual advances. These are conditioned 
 by economic transformations, whose final end no one can 
 
G. VON VOLLMAR i6i 
 
 flatter himself that he foresees, but for which every far-sighted 
 man must open up peaceful and fruitful paths." 
 
 One further observation I should Uke to make, because it 
 best marks the spirit which inspires Millerand in his whole 
 activity. L have tried to show you, that the number 
 of reforms carried by the Socialist Minister is an principle 
 imposing one, and that their importance for the °""i'.'®Jh 
 workers is extreme. But Millerand himself is far wopkers 
 from exaggerating his achievements, and he knows '""^* °^" 
 well enough that the main work must be done better 
 by the organized workers themselves. When themselves. 
 Millerand appeared last year before a meeting of workers at 
 Lille, he closed his speech with the following words : " No 
 doubt the measures I have introduced may secure for the 
 workers an improvement in their condition. But their moral 
 value is much greater. They appeal to the self-help of the 
 workers, they give to the organizations of the workers as well 
 as of the employers an influence on the fixing of wages, hours, 
 and other conditions of work. What I aimed at especially 
 was to stimulate the trade-unions to hew activity" and indlice 
 workers nbf yet belonging to them to rally to them— in short, 
 to strengthen the trade-unions. In this manner we help to 
 show the right way to workers willing to free themselves. We 
 cry aloud to them, ' Organize ! Singly, you are nothing ; 
 organized, you will be such an economic and moral force as 
 this country has never known.' " 
 
 What these words express is — whatever be the special 
 
 demands of place and time — the view of every Socialist. 
 
 Organization is the essence of the workers' move- j^g^yj ^^ 
 
 ment, the bottom condition of the emancipation thisprin- 
 
 of labour and of the new social order. Just fi^'f ^'*? 
 
 . that at the 
 for that reason, though a Government may thmk base of 
 
 itself, and be thought by its friends, ever so friendly Democracy. 
 
 to the workers, though in detail it may even 
 
 pass this or that relatively useful measure of social policy, 
 
 yet it will always encounter the greatest distrust and the 
 
 M 
 
1 62 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 keenest opposition from the workers, so long as it ignores 
 that truth and hinders the organization of the workers instead 
 of furthering it. Such a short-sighted proceeding can only 
 aggravate, and embitter, and complicate itself, without being 
 able to effect any real change. The irresistible rise of the 
 working-class, which characterizes our time, no force can 
 impede ; sooner or later it will succeed in acquiring the power 
 which is needed to carry out the economic, social, and spiritual 
 emancipation of humanity. 
 
XII 
 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY AND REFORMIST 
 CONTROVERSY, AS ILLUSTRATED AT 
 THE BORDEAUX CONGRESS OF THE 
 FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 
 
 This Congress occurred on April 12-14, i903i ^'^^ ^^^ solely 
 occupied in discussing M. Millerand's Reformist policy. 
 
 Millerand was attacked for dissociating his vote from his party's 
 on three occasions : (i) on a resolution to abolish the State-grants for 
 public -worship, (2) on a resolution to prosecute Socialists who had 
 issued a book held subversive of military discipline, (3) on a resolution 
 inviting the Foreign Minister to make proposals regarding inter- 
 national disarmament. 
 
 The following extracts omit the long controversies over these 
 votes, which Millerand defended, but promised not to repeat. The 
 text of the main debate was provided by two questions — whether 
 Millerand should be censured, and whether he should be excluded. 
 
 From the Speech of M. Herve (Anti-Millerand). 
 
 In the federation of the Yonne it is not our idea to take sides 
 as between the reformist method and the revolutionary. In 
 our federation there are partisans of both methods. But the 
 majority, like myself, are reformists and revolutionaries at the 
 same time. We are reformists in the sense that we do not 
 believe, with the old Marxists, that our societies are split 
 sharply into proletariate on one side, and great capitalists on 
 the other; and it is in this sense that I said at the Tours 
 Congress that the class-war does not seem to us as rigid a 
 
 163 
 
164. MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 dogma as it seemed to Karl Marx. I know that beside the 
 proletariate there are small country landowners who substantially 
 are much nearer to us than to the capitalist class. And I 
 believe, moreover, with the reformists, that we should endeavour, 
 by moderation of form and language, to bring over to our 
 side all the really democratic groups in the nation. Thus, 
 like all the Socialists of the Yonne, we applauded the defenders 
 of the Republic at the outset of the Dreyfus affair and at the 
 height of the crisis. That is the sense in which we are 
 reformers. 
 
 But we are, at the same time, revolutionaries, because we 
 are strongly imbued with the idea that the economic situation 
 does really create hostile and antagonistic classes in our 
 societies. We are revolutionaries, because we know that the 
 bourgeoisie possesses such powers, and the masses of capital 
 which it holds give it such means of falsifying universal suffrage, 
 that we are not at all sure, Citizen Millerand, of attaining our 
 desired solution by the reformist method. Our weapon has 
 two edges— one the spirit of gradual reform, the other that of 
 revolution j you wish, for your part, to blunt one edge of our 
 weapon, while we, for our part, wish loyally to join hands with 
 the group of the Radical party which resolves to go forward and 
 take the turn to the Left. Yet^ should that group some day 
 turn its back on us, I want us not to emasculate the working- 
 class ; I want us, after having been able to join hands, to be 
 able on occasion to clench fists. We admit that by legal 
 methods radical reforms may be attained ; but we know, too, 
 that it is force that for long past has presided at the birth of a 
 new society, and probably, alas ! will preside again. 
 
 From the Speech of M. Sarraute (Pro-Millerand). 
 
 It is an entire policy which you are to judge. This policy 
 is the policy of democratic Socialism, which gains ground daily 
 on that of revolutionary Socialism — I will ask you to let me 
 briefly explain why— a policy which Citizen Millerand did not 
 
J. SARRAUTE 165 
 
 start, which he has merely developed and defined, and which 
 forces itself upon us more and more in our Republican 
 country. 
 
 I say " in our Republican country," and I would not, indeed, 
 frame light-hearted generalizations or lay down fixed absolute 
 rules independent of time and place. Historical and social 
 environment does not square with these doctrinaire fancies, 
 and it is quite futile to try inferring rules of action and conduct 
 from a general idea or an absolute abstract principle. That 
 is, however, what has been done, and is still done to-day, by 
 some Socialistic theorists, who, starting from the evident, irre- 
 futable, incontestable fact which is the very root and ground 
 of Socialism — the class-war — have, without taking environment 
 and institutions into account, given this fact a bearing and an 
 effect which cannot be unreservedly admitted. For them, in 
 fact, the class-war is not merely the conflict carried on through 
 the ages between the Haves and the Have-nots — the conflict 
 which in our modern societies pits capitalists against pro- 
 letarians. For them the notion of the class-war is ampler and 
 more comprehensive. It absorbs the whole life of society; 
 administrative, political, and judicial institutions are merely 
 the swords and sceptres of the possessing class. The State is 
 a class-State. 
 
 From this conception, citizens, are derived in practice two 
 sets of consequences, all the importance of which you shall 
 grasp briefly. Firstly, the State and political institutions, being 
 by essence and definition an instrument subserving the possess- 
 ing class, cannot be expected to contribute anything to the 
 emancipation of the workers; they are not to be won over, 
 but to be broken in pieces, and the one issue open to the 
 proletariate labouring for emancipation is the revolutionary 
 issue. Secondly, as soon as the class-war absorbs the whole 
 life of society, and political and social institutions are only 
 different manifestations of this war, there cannot logically be 
 any interests in common between the capitalist and proletarian 
 classes, and the supposed general interests — order, economic 
 
1 66 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 prosperity, national independence — are only private interests 
 in disguise, interests of the possessing class, which the pro- 
 letariate, therefore, should not take into account. That is how, 
 citizens, the principle of the class-war has been interpreted by 
 some Socialistic theorists, whose high moral and intellectual 
 worth I hasten to recognize. That is how, in abstraction 
 from the conditions of time and environment, there has been 
 developed this notion of the class-State, with the two conse- 
 quences which I have just emphasized: firstly, revolutionary 
 action; and secondly, the denial of the general interests of 
 society. 
 
 But, you quite understand, that was theory, abstract 
 theory; and as soon as the Socialist party came down from 
 the heights of speculation and took part directly in action ; as 
 soon as it clashed against the reality which it wished to trans- 
 form, its practice at once ceased to be anything but a perpetual 
 permanent violation of the rules of action laid down by that 
 uncompromising hard-and-fast doctrine. Fact avenged itself. 
 These deviations and compromises, for which some of our 
 comrades are so bitterly and passionately reproached, do not 
 date from to-day or from yesterday. They date from the first 
 contact of theory with facts ; they go back to the very origins 
 of the Socialist party, to the day when it took shape as a 
 political party and would fain exert a serious influence on the 
 course of events, the day when by its first most crying contra- 
 diction, having laid down as a principle, as an axiom beyond 
 discussion, the class character of the State and the impossibility 
 of reformist action, it elaborated the articles of a minimum 
 programme, a programme of immediate demands, and applied 
 to the public power, to the State, for its realization. The 
 explanation, citizens, of this deviation from the absolute 
 abstract principle of the class-war, of this rapid and decisive 
 evolution which leads to legal and reformist action, is not to 
 be found in the weakness of individuals, nor in the fascination 
 or the corrupting effect of power ; it is to be found entirely 
 in the great fact which dominates our modern society — 
 
J. JAURES 167 
 
 Democracy. Democracy is, indeed, the denial of the class- 
 State. The class-State only has a meaning so far as the possess- 
 ing class is by the very fact of possession the governing class, 
 and the monopoly of property is reinforced by the monopoly 
 of public power. On the contrary, as soon as the State is 
 democratizedj and equal rights are admitted for all, whether 
 capitalists or proletarians, as soon as the regime of majorities 
 replaces class-oligarchy, and the regime of property qualifica- 
 tions, it becomes contradictory and meaningless to talk of a 
 class-State. Political and social institutions are no longer the 
 work and the instrument of the possessing class ; they become 
 the work of the majority ; they can be steered and guided in 
 the direction of the public interest. 
 
 This speech was followed by one from M. Millerand in which 
 he defended his votes, and substantially accepted M. Sarraute's 
 principles. (Cp. also infra, pp. 180-184.) After him spoke M. Jaurls, 
 
 From the First Speech of M. Jaures. <' 
 
 Citizens, I should like to reply, as shortly but as clearly as 
 possible, at once to Citizen Hervd, to Citizen Sarraute, and to 
 Citizen Millerand, and particularly to the observations of 
 Citizen Sarraute and Citizen Millerand. For my part, I reject 
 absolutely the motion of exclusion proposed against Millerand. 
 I find it not only brutal, but unjust and impolitic. I add that 
 it would be extremely dangerous, if it should have the effect 
 of hampering the free, fair, and needful criticism, which I think 
 we should oppose to some unfortunate votes and a dangerous 
 tactic, formulated here in theory by Sarraute and in practice 
 by Millerand. 
 
 Yes, it is true, as Sarraute has said, that some of our 
 Socialist comrades, whether inside or outside this hall, 
 interpret the class-war in a sense much too simple, one-sided, 
 and abstract. It is true that it is not enough to note the 
 antagonism between the capitalist and wage-earning classes ; 
 you must at once add — and Sarraute is right in insisting on 
 
1 68 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 it— that this antagonism moves and develops inside demo- 
 cracy, that it undergoes the conditions of the democratic 
 rigime, and that the struggle between the two opposed classes, 
 between the two groups of antagonistic interests, cannot have 
 either the same form, the same character, or the same means 
 in a republican democracy and in a despotic or oligarchic 
 state. That is true and incontestable. 
 
 But where Citizen Sarraute goes wrong in his turn, where 
 he falls into the over-simplification for which he blames his 
 opponents, is when he thinks it enough to lay down the 
 principle of democracy in order to resolve, in a sort of 
 automatic fashion, the antagonisms of society. Yes, we are 
 under a democratic r'egime, but the enthronement of political 
 democracy and universal suffrage by no means suppresses the 
 profound antagonism of classes. Citizen Sarraute seems to 
 transport himself to the end of political evolution ; he seems to 
 ' think that political democracy has received its supreme formula 
 — as if political democracy itself could receive its supreme 
 form while it is in contradiction with an economic form, not, 
 for its part, penetrated by democracy. Sarraute's mistake is 
 to consider political democracy in the abstract ; just as Guesde, 
 to my thinking, errs in positing the class-war apart from 
 democracy, Sarraute errs in positing democracy without noting 
 that it is modified, adulterated, thwarted by the antagonism of 
 classes and the economic predominance of one class. 
 
 Even universal suffrage and political democracy undergo 
 class-influence. Universal suffrage, in all its applications and 
 its political movement, undergoes the economic influence of 
 contemporary society in two ways. The most visible influence 
 of economic oligarchy on political democracy is the pressure 
 that employers controlling all the means of work, and there- 
 fore of existence, can exert on the workers by threatening 
 dismissals and lock-outs ; and daily the worker is injured in 
 his portion of political democracy, because he has not his 
 portion of social sovereignty. But there is ariother distorting 
 influence of our economic regime upon democracy — what I 
 
J. JAURES 169 
 
 will call the influence of habit. Not only does the proletariate 
 too often suffer violence directly from the economic power of 
 capitalists, but, if I may say so, its own mind is distorted by 
 the habit of the social rigime, under which it lives. The 
 worst tyranny exerted by a social rigime or form is, that in 
 absorbing all the strength of the workers and pouring them 
 into the mould of contemporary society, it renders a very great 
 number of workers whom it overwhelms incapable even of 
 conceiving another possible way of applying their strength. 
 Thus contemporary society weighs doubly on the workers in 
 the exercise of this political sovereignty; which is violated, 
 firstly, by the employers, and secondly, by the silent and 
 chronic capitalistic prejudice, stamped by habit on the very 
 class which suffers from its sway. It is to react against these 
 fatal effects — this pressure, this distortion — exerted by economic 
 inequality even on the political action of the wage-workers, 
 that we must affirm, always within the democracy, the 
 antagonism of classes and the need for the proletarian class 
 to organize; and always affirm the coUectivist or communist 
 ideal in the definite, precise, vigorous form needed to dissipate 
 the capitalistic prejudice inoculated into the proletarian class 
 itself. 
 
 If Sarraute will allow me to say so, he too — and I would 
 invite his philosophic attention to it — has worked one-sidedly, 
 in too simple and abstract a fashion. When I heard him 
 speak of political democracy expressing itself above parties 
 and classes by the impartial and decisive law of majorities, he 
 seemed to me to imagine universal suffrage as a sort of extra- 
 ordinary, supra-mundane God, living outside mankind and 
 shaping the world No, universal suffrage is carried along 
 in the great current of economic action, influenced and 
 distorted by it; and just as under the level surface of the 
 sea subsist the unevennesses of the sea-floor, its hills and 
 its abysses, so the flood of democracy has not yet got rid of 
 social inequalities; they mingle with it, and it is for us to 
 achieve their destruction, for the proletariate to fill up the 
 
1 70 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 abysses and realize equality. Consequently the relation of 
 the proletariate to the State is falsified by Sarraute in one 
 way, just as, I think, it is falsified by Guesde in the other. 
 
 Guesde is wrong in thinking to-day (I knew a time when 
 he did not think so) that the State is exclusively a class-State, 
 upon which the too feeble hand of the proletariate cannot yet 
 inscribe the smallest portion of its will. In a democracy, in a 
 Republic where there is universal suffrage, the State is not for 
 the proletarians a refractory, hard, absolutely impermeable and 
 impenetrable block. Penetration has begun already. In the 
 municipalities, in Parliament, in the central Government, there 
 has begun the penetration of Socialistic and proletarian in- 
 fluence; and, really, it is a strange conception of human 
 affairs which can imagine any institution whatever, any 
 political or social form whatever, capable of being closed 
 to the irradiation, the influence, the penetration of one of 
 the great social forces. To say that the State is the same — 
 the same closed, impenetrable, rigid State, brazenly bourgeois 
 — under an oligarchic r'egime, which refuses the proletarians 
 universal suffrage, and under a regime of universal suffrage, 
 which, after all^ lets the workers transmit their will even to 
 Government by delegates with the same powers and rights as 
 the delegates of the bourgeoisie itself, is to contradict all the 
 laws of Nature. There is no one force in Nature impenetrable 
 to others ; all are moving and crossing, all act on each other ; 
 and henceforth the State is penetrated, in part, by the force of 
 Socialism and the proletariate. 
 
 If it is in part penetrated by this democratic, popular. 
 Socialistic force, and if we can reasonably hope (and I do hope, 
 as do Sarraute and Millerand) that by organization, education, 
 and propaganda this penetration will become so full, deep, and 
 decisive, that in time by accumulated efforts we shall find the 
 proletarian and Socialistic State to have replaced the oligarchic 
 and bourgeois State, I do not believe, either, that there will 
 necessarily be an abrupt leap, the crossing of the abyss; 
 perhaps we shall be aware of having entered the zone of the 
 
J. JAURES 171 
 
 Socialistic State, as navigators are aware of having crossed the 
 line of a hemisphere — not that they have been able to see as 
 they crossed it a cord stretched over the ocean warning them 
 of their passage, but that little by little they have been led into 
 a new hemisphere by the progress of their ship. Possibly we 
 may thus gradually penetrate into the zone of the Socialistic 
 State ; but — and this is what Sarraute omits in his theory, and 
 Millerand forgets too far in practice — granted that the State 
 has been partially penetrated by the proletarian and Socialistic 
 force, granted that we can and ought to hope, in reason, that 
 the democratic State can be entirely penetrated, assimilated, 
 and transformed by the force of Socialism and the people, it 
 remains true to-day in a proportion still vast and overwhelming, 
 that the State — thanks to the power of the propertied bour- 
 geoisie, to the routine and narrow individualism of a vast mass 
 of peasants, to the Nationalist diversions and the short-sighted- 
 ness of part of the petty bourgeoisie of artisans and shop-keepers, 
 to the division of the proletarians weakening and fighting 
 against each other, and to the force of tradition — is in fact a 
 bourgeois State, a State of capitalistic property ; which to-day 
 resists us less, and works with us in part ; but which to-morrow, 
 by the abrupt coalition of all our opponents or half-hearted 
 supporters, may again become against us a State of violence, 
 aggression, and systematic resistance : and if we should never 
 lose the chance of penetrating as fully as possible this demo- 
 cratic bourgeois State, we should never let the proletarians 
 forget that it is still but partially won over, that it is still 
 largely a hostile force. Against this hostile force subsisting in 
 the State we must pit the one force which can neutralize it — 
 that of the complete Socialistic ideal, grouping and rallying the 
 proletarians, to add to their force of penetration. 
 
 What I say of the democracy of the State, I say no less of 
 the general interests which Sarraute mentioned. I admit that 
 henceforth Socialism must guard its part of the country's general 
 interests — those of freedom, security, and prosperity; and 
 Socialism will not fail to do so. It defends, and has defended. 
 
172 
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 .the political freedom of all classes — political freedom con- 
 ' ceived at once as an instrument of emancipation for the 
 proletarian class, and a guarantee of dignity for the individuals 
 of the nation. Also it jiefeuds-security : when we ask for the 
 transformation of -the barrack-army into a popular and national 
 Ijmilitia, it is not to disarm the country ; it is, pending the time 
 swhich we hasten of simultaneous European disarmament, to add 
 I to the nation's defensive strength, by harmonizing its military 
 'institutions with the principle of its political ones. And we 
 defend the economic prosperity of the country ; when conven- 
 tions like the Brussels Sugar Convention intervene to regulate 
 international economics, we see to it that France is not tricked ; 
 we think it the duty of our diplomacy, without violence or 
 colonial exactions, to insist, so far as France's productivity 
 entitles her to insist, that a share in distant markets, in China 
 or elsewhere, be assured to the pacific penetration of our 
 industry, which is a necessary condition for plentiful wages for 
 I the proletarian class. We do not therefore ignore the general 
 prosperity, the general security, and the general freedom of the 
 ; country ; but I add, and the addition is needed, that in watch- 
 ing and guiding the course of general interests, we must do so 
 from the proletarian standpoint. It is our good fortune that the 
 general interest of France and of civilization is tied up with 
 the self-interest of a rising class, which is the proletariate.* 
 
 Look at the health questions. Those diseases which come 
 and infect all society— whence do they originate ? From the 
 squalor of the people, from the filth of the working-class dwell- 
 ings. And it is we, who want to compel a new housing ritgime in 
 the great cities and the rural districts, who are not hampered in 
 this by private-property prejudices, who put the health and life 
 
 ' Cp. the quotation from Mr. Frederic Harrison, prefixed to Gronlund's 
 Co-operative Commonwealth :—" The working-class is the only class which 
 is not a class. It is the nation. It represents, so to speak, the body as 
 a whole, of which the other classes only represent special organs. These 
 organs, no doubt, have great and indispensable functions, but for most 
 purposes of government the State consists of the vast labouring majority. 
 Its welfare depends on what their lives are like." 
 
J. JAURES 173 
 
 of men above a narrow interpretation of property rights ; it is 
 we alone who can here be the guardians of the general health, 
 precisely in being the champions of the proletariate in par- 
 ticular. What, again, can contribute more to the nation's 
 general forces, its productive forces, its power of economic 
 expansion, than the health of the race, the health and vigour 
 of the workers themselves ? And it is we, and we only, who 
 by a vigorous labour legislation can protect these working 
 forces, which are not only the proletariate's right, but the whole 
 nation's patrimony, and which capitalistic selfishness must not 
 be allowed to squander. Again, from the economic stand- 
 point — the standpoint of prosperity of which Millerand spoke, 
 that of wealth of which Sarraute spoke — of course we do not 
 want to set up Socialism in an impoverished nation ; of course 
 we do not want Socialism to be the effect of, or the signal for, 
 a sort of economic rarefaction in our country ; of course we 
 want activity, initiative, and production to make wealth 
 circulate in streams ; but we want the streams to take number- 
 less channels, to let their strength and their blessings reach all 
 the producers. Well, what is to-day the most decisive means 
 of augmenting these productive forces of France and of 
 Europe? Obviously it is to rid Europe of the crushing, 
 exhausting burden of old-fashioned armaments which not only 
 squander seven or eight milliards of francs, but squander the 
 strength of men in the season of youth and energy, when the 
 activities that are numbed later could yield their maximum 
 effort for the wholesale production. Well, and who can realize 
 this simultaneous disarmament of Europe ? Who is interested, 
 most urgently interested, in the relief of the budget from this 
 overwhelming burden? Is it the bourgeoisie? Yes, the! 
 bourgeoisie has some interest; to obtain the simultaneous 
 disarmament of Europe we do not decline to appeal- to its\ 
 interest, rightly understood. We do not decline to ; and we \ 
 do not wish, by any sort of narrow, uncompromising prejudice, \ 
 to mutilate and sterilize our propaganda. But if the bourgeoisie, j 
 too, has an interest in disarmament, the proletariate, it must be I 
 
174 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 agreed, has twice and thrice as much. It is interested because 
 it, too, shares in the general progress of production; it is 
 additionally interested, because while the bourgeoisie is already 
 provided for — in the budget, by bounties, subsidies, and 
 millions of State interest, and, failing the national budget, by 
 the social budget of dividends and rents secured to it by the 
 capitalistic constitution of present society— the proletariate can 
 only be provided for — for the social work it needs, for relief, 
 and insurance against unemployment, disablement, and old 
 age — if there is such a large free surplus in the budget as there 
 can only be when the millions squandered on works of inter- 
 national destruction are reserved for works of social solidarity. 
 Lastly, the proletariate has a still more direct and decisive 
 class interest in disarmament ; it is that while armaments go 
 on, while the spectre of war between nations remains on the 
 horizon, the people and the proletarians themselves have 
 necessarily a vital concern diverting to the care of external 
 defence a part of the energies which should be spent on 
 internal organization. In this way war, while it burdens the 
 bourgeoisie like the people, is also a possible diversion against 
 the proletariate ; and that is why the latter, besides sharing 
 the general interest of nations in the abolition of war, has, 
 further, a direct class interest in it. That is why it is to-day 
 not the only force, of course, but the deepest, most definite, 
 most decisive force for disarmament and peace ; and why we 
 should preserve in the affirmation of the proletariate's will and 
 policy, even inside democracy, the definiteness that ensures 
 its needful vigour. 
 
 Well, I say that in my view Millerand's mistake in the 
 votes which he gave, and which have been criticized, was in 
 reckoning, like Sarraute, with but one aspect of the problem. 
 He saw, quite rightly, that we were a democracy, a Republic ; 
 he understood, and had the courage to say, that this enclosure 
 of the proletariate by Republican democracy, this possibility 
 for the proletariate to move and progress within the democracy 
 and through the Republic, entailed special obligations as well 
 
J. JAURES 175 
 
 as special opportunities on the proletariate and on the Socialist 
 party which expresses it in politics ; and to enable the Socialist 
 party to assist in the common task of limited reforms, of 
 strengthening public liberties, which can be realized in concert 
 with the other democratic groups, he consciously or un- 
 consciously abraded and blunted overmuch the sharpness 
 with which the proletariate should stamp its own force and 
 will even on the democracy. That is what I blame in his 
 policy ; that is its danger. I was glad to hear him say 
 yesterday, that if he gave the votes criticized (of which I will 
 speak), he did not give them to remain faithful to the attitude 
 he had to take as a Minister in virtue of Cabinet solidarity. I 
 was glad to hear him say that, because if he had said, or let it 
 be understood, that the participation of a Socialist in the 
 Government obliged the Minister who had been through a 
 coalition to limit afterwards his Socialistic utterances to the 
 momentary compact concluded in view of Ministerial action. 
 Socialistic participation in the Government would be the 
 worst of dangers, for it would kill off by the way all the living 
 forces which our party might contain. Such a view is 
 impossible, and will be impossible for the proletariate. When 
 the proletariate wants, as I think force of circumstances will 
 impel it, to make it a normal and regular practice for Socialists 
 to take part in the central Government, the Socialist represen- 
 tative, while the Ministerial mandate which his party has 
 entrusted to him lasts, will be bound by the rules and obliga- 
 tions of Ministerial solidarity. The proletariate will recognize in 
 this a formal obligation — which I will call, if you like, a passing 
 professional requirement — which makes no inroad on the 
 representative programme; so that when the momentary 
 Ministerial compact is over, he recovers — I will not say his 
 undiminished freedom of Socialistic action, for he has never, 
 save by a sort of purely formal stipulation, lost that — he 
 recovers his entire freedom of speech. What would, I repeat, 
 be fatal, would be the notion that after this momentary 
 compact for Government action there survived a kind of 
 
1/6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 posthumous obligation ; for that would mean for ever limiting 
 the statement of Socialism to the limits of a business pro- 
 gramme necessarily full of the bourgeois spirit. I rejoice that 
 Millerand sets forth the problem otherwise. He says : " No, 
 but we must take account of the new conditions in which the 
 Socialist party must move ; and since it can aspire to govern 
 or in any case can henceforth exert a very strong influence on 
 Governments, it must set itself to make their work as easy as 
 possible, by not presenting to them, as I said just now, that 
 part of the Socialistic programme which too violently exceeds 
 the bounds of what is immediately realizable." 
 
 Ah, my friend Millerand, I acknowledge that your idea of 
 tactics would make things singularly easy. But, let me say, it 
 has, conversely, the same fault as Guesde's policy ; it is too 
 easy. We are no longer at the stage when politics are easy 
 for the Socialist party. Guesde has no difficulties with his : 
 " I for my part know nothing in society but the working-class ; 
 all that is not working-class I fight, and fight indiscriminately. 
 I make no distinction between groups that are retrograde, 
 violently retrograde, Caesarist or clerical, and the liberal, 
 democratic groups of the bourgeoisie; I leave out the whole 
 revolutionary tradition of France, which at tragic periods has 
 forced the democratic bourgeoisie, in order to vanquish the Old 
 Regime, to make acting agreements with the revolutionary 
 population of the faubourgs, whose consequences extend into 
 contemporary history." Guesde ignores all that; he is shut 
 up in an exclusive proletariate, as in a fortress surrounded 
 by a deep moat, and fights impartially against every party 
 encamped round it ; whether they come as friends or as foes, 
 he turns his weapons against all quarters of the horizon alike. 
 This is indeed the easy policy ; it is, if I may say so without 
 hurting any one, the supremely lazy policy, that which saves 
 the trouble of acting, adapting, reflecting, drawing distinctions. 
 But the essential function of the human understanding just is, 
 to find distinctions inside things which to the ignorant and the 
 simple appear uniform. It is a childish policy, the policy of 
 
J. JAURES 177 
 
 childhood, of powerlessness ; it may have served for a passing 
 hour to preserve the scarce-born consciousness of the pro- 
 letariate from the troubling of outside influences; but now 
 that the proletariate is formed, and is clearly self-conscious, now 
 that the Socialistic idea is powerful, and it can and must act, 
 to return to this policy of false no-compromise is to go system- 
 atically back to childhood ; and whereas childhood is lovable 
 and healthy when it is natural childhood, it is deplorable and 
 deadly when it is the relapse of a mind already developed, but 
 blinded by ignorance. Yes, this policy is easy to excess ; you 
 need only say, " Class-war." 
 
 But your policy, Millerand, is too easy also. You need 
 only say, " We do not keep, or we keep chiefly for our state- 
 ments of Socialistic programmes, anything but what can be 
 immediately assimilated by the Governmental action of to-day." 
 I admit that, if so, our relations with Governments and with 
 other bourgeois groups are simplified remarkably. Only this 
 policy has a decisive danger ; it cuts the Socialistic programme 
 in two. You saw through the tree at a certain height, and 
 only the lower part of the programme remains assimilated to 
 reality : the rest is an apex detached from the root ; and the 
 part of our programme which we have thus ceased to assert, 
 which we have not incorporated by our assertions at least into 
 the daily life of the party — this part ceasing to receive the sap 
 of action and vitality, will no longer be anything but a sort of 
 flourish, a dead survival. 
 
 I acknowledge, again, that this complicated policy which 
 I am trying to formulate before the party, a pohcy which 
 consists in at once collaborating with all democrats, yet 
 vigorously distinguishing one's self from themj penetrating 
 partially into the State of to-day, yet dominating the State of 
 to-day from the heights of our ideal — I acknowledge that this 
 policy is complicated, that it is awkward, that it will create 
 serious difficulties for us at every turn ; but am I to suppose 
 that you ever hoped, with your deep practical feeling and high 
 intelligence, that we could pass from the period of capitalism 
 
 N 
 
178 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 to the organization of Socialism without coming across these 
 difficulties incessantly ? 
 
 The question was eventually referred to a Committee which sat 
 late on the 13th, and reported to the Congress on the 14th. The 
 order of the day orig^ally suggested by the federations desirous of 
 exdudmg Millerand ran thus :— 
 
 The Congress, 
 
 Recognizing tiiat Millerand has openly taken the responsibility 
 for his attitude and his acts ; — 
 
 Without declining to pursue the policy of reforms capable of being 
 obtained in accordance with the law of the Republic ; — 
 
 Asserts that the Socialist party remains a party revolutionary in 
 its end — the transformation of capitalist society into collectivist or 
 communist society, and in its means—the general strihe and recourse 
 to the force of the proletariate in case the bourgeoisie cannot be 
 expropriated by Parliamentary action ; — 
 
 Declares that it only acknowledges the so-called practical policy ' 
 so far as it entails on Socialism no violation of its programme and 
 principles, no abdication of its programme and principles, no abdica- 
 tion of its ideal ; — 
 
 Decides that by his votes, which illustrate his personal tactics, 
 Citizen Millerand has placed himself outside the Socialist party, and 
 decides that within the Socialist party there is no room for the tactics 
 and the conception of Citizen Millerand, 
 
 During the discussion in the Committee, however, the anti- 
 Millerand representatives came to think that greater unanimity would 
 be obtained by a briefer declaration, and therefore substituted the 
 following :— 
 
 The Congress decides that Citizen Millerand is excluded from the 
 Socialist party on account of his anti-Socialistic votes. 
 
 This was adopted m Committee by 19 federations, against 16 
 voting for an order of the day of M. Jaures, and two abstentions. 
 On the following morning it was submitted to the whole congress by 
 M. Renaudel ; after whom M. Jaurfes set forth his counter-proposal 
 in the following terms : — 
 
 This is the text of the order of the day which in the name 
 
 ' La politique dite des realith. 
 
J. JAURES 175, 
 
 of sixteen federations I will briefly, as far as my strength allows 
 me, defend before the Congress :— 
 
 Tfie Congress, 
 
 Considering that the action of the Socialist party ought 
 to be constantly regulated by the idea of a complete transformation 
 of the social order; 
 
 Considering that the necessary work of daily reform cannot 
 be separated from the constant assertion, in theory and practice, 
 of the Socialistic ideal defined by the national and international 
 congresses, particularly by the Congress of Tours ; 
 
 Declares that it is the strict duty of Socialist representatives 
 to uphold by their votes the tradition of the Socialist party regard- 
 ing the separation of the Churches and the State, and to insure 
 always the free development of the working-class organized for 
 the necessary struggle against the capitalist class ; 
 
 Declares, further, that the Socialist party is a party of free 
 thought and perpetual scientific inquiry, but that its duty towards 
 the proletariate is to exact from all its representatives the disciplined 
 observation of the collective decisions of the party in Congress 
 assembled; 
 
 And takes note of the declarations made in this sense by 
 Citizen Millerand. 
 
 I say, citizens, that this order of the day answers to every 
 legitimate and reasonable anxiety of the Congress and of our 
 opponents themselves. What do you want — what does the 
 Socialist party want ? It wants three things. Firstly, it wants 
 to assert that the work of reforms, of daily. Parliamentary 
 action in which it is engaged, will in no way curtail the assertion 
 of the ideal defined by the Congress. That is one of the essen- 
 tial parts of the declaration we submit. Secondly, it wants, 
 while recalling the need for representatives to uphold by their 
 votes the tradition regarding the separation of the Churches and 
 the State, to indicate to French Socialists and Frenchmen 
 generally that in certain individual votes Millerand had put 
 
i8o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 upon the party's doctrines a misinterpretation for which it was 
 not responsible and which it forbade to be repeated. Thirdly, 
 the Congress, the Socialist party, is to point out, that in our 
 party there is full freedom of discussion and freedom of thought ; 
 that there are principles, but there is no dogma. And in 
 asserting this freedom of thought and inquiry, this perpetual 
 right of the Socialist mind to follow in its course the moving 
 world and to renew its thought as things renew themselves, 
 the party means to and must indicate the freedom of conscience, 
 of thought, of mind, without which we should be the most 
 miserable of churches claiming to set up an infallibility un- 
 sanctioned by divine intervention. And we had to indicate 
 while asserting this indefinite freedom, that in action (and for 
 representatives action takes the form of voting) there must be 
 a certain minimum of unity and discipline, which does not 
 bind the representative's tactics on this or that point, but which 
 harmonizes his external action and his visible vote with the 
 collective decisions of the organized party. 
 
 The orders of the day of MM. Renaudel and Jaur&s were then 
 discussed, the one expelling M. Millerand, the other censuring by 
 implication his disputed votes, and engaging him not to repeat them. 
 During the discussion Millerand made another speech, from which 
 portions are here extracted dealing with (i) M. Jaures' view of the 
 opposition between ultra-reformers and ultra-revolutionaries, (2) the 
 attitude of the party to participation in government. 
 
 I am only at this tribune to aflSrm my intention, my firm 
 desire, to-day as yesterday and as always, to speak not of 
 exclusion and infallibility, but of union, conciliation, and 
 concord. It is because I desire this conciliation and concord 
 intensely, that I ask you to let me briefly reply to that 
 interesting and moving portion of Jaurfes' speech where he 
 came to close quarters with the two conceptions which he 
 examined before you.^ If he will let me say so in all friendli- 
 ness, he seems to me to have paralleled rather too easily what 
 he called the Guesde and the Sarraute conceptions. It is not 
 
 ' Cp. ante, pp. 164-170, 176-178. 
 
A. MILLERAND i8i 
 
 for me to defend the Guesde conception — I should be afraid 
 of being charged with a want of conviction if I did — but 
 regarding the Sarraute conception you will let me say that 
 really perhaps it has not been coiisidered as a whole ; there 
 has been the tendency, involuntary but arising naturally from 
 its comparison with Guesde's, to bring out what is possibly 
 its weak side. I have been told — for they have done me the 
 honour, for which I am sincerely grateful to Jaurfes, of asso- 
 ciating me with the clear and striking demonstration of my 
 friend Sarraute — I have been told, " Take care ! you have 
 blunted the sharpness (I quote Jaurfes' phrase) of the Socialist 
 proletariate." Do you think so, Jaurfes? Our adversaries, 
 all the same, seemed to find it sharp enough, judging by their 
 outcries. No, we have not blunted the sharpness of the 
 proletariate so much ; nor is it perfectly accurate to say that 
 my whole policy is limited to retaining that portion of the 
 Socialistic conception which can be assimilated at once. I 
 think with you that it becomes our duty, I consider our 
 imperious duty, to intrude our ideas, bit by bit, into facts, 
 laws, and customs ; the more must we, while realizing peace- 
 fully and legally this work of necessarily partial and incomplete 
 construction, show the proletariate simultaneously the complete 
 Socialistic edifice as a whole, and never let it lose sight of the 
 end towards which we march. Let me say that the speaker 
 who addresses you cannot be charged with having ever for- 
 gotten the end for the sake of immediate reforms; and that 
 I made a point, even when in office, I would say especially 
 when in office, at the very time when I was naturally busy 
 realizing what partial reforms I could, of asserting in public 
 — at Lille, at Lens, at Firminy, whenever I possibly could — 
 that I was not only a faithful soldier of the Socialist party, 
 acknowledging my party's authority, but a Socialist who asserted 
 when in office our unimpaired doctrine, our entire ideal. But 
 really, when we fulfil this duty, we must meet the needs of 
 the day. 
 
 Just now Citizen Pierre Bertrand asked in this place, 
 
i82 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 "What is meant by the solidarity of classes?" I did not 
 want to interrapt him, or I might have saved myself a speech 
 and said, " I will not refer you to my friend Sarraute's very 
 remarkable work on Socialism in opposition and in power — 
 you might be prejudiced against it; I refer you to Jaurfes 
 himself. He showed this morning, in a lofty and precise 
 manner, that the Socialist party could take charge on its own 
 account of the general interests of the country, and that there 
 was none of them in which the proletariate itself was not 
 preponderatingly interested." 
 
 You, Jaurbs, said that we must look at these social interests 
 from the proletarian standpoint. But what does that mean 
 but to look at them from the standpoint, not of a narrow class, 
 but from the highest standpoint that one can take up? To 
 say that we look at them from the proletarian standpoint is 
 to say that we study them from the standpoint of those who 
 are the mass, the many, the crowd, the disinherited, to whom 
 we would fain give more light, justice, and well-being. Class- 
 solidarity, therefore, is patent to all; it forces itself on their 
 attention. It does not suppress class-antagonism ; they are 
 two standpoints, different but equally true. Society to-day 
 is such as to admit simultaneously both a class-antagonism — 
 which our aim just is to abolish, by abolishing classes — and 
 also, citizens, a class-solidarity, thanks to which we not only 
 can but must care for the general interests of the country, 
 since in working for all we work for the proletarians. 
 
 If that point is reached, do you not see we are at the end 
 — we are agreed? It is understood — for I heard no protest 
 anywhere against Jaurfes' words — that the Socialist party, 
 serving and defending the interests of the proletariate, in no 
 way neglects the general interests of the country, but shares 
 in their burden. Is it not, then, clear that it must therefore 
 in every way, under every accessible form, serve those general 
 interests whose care is not separated in its thought from the 
 proletariate's interests ? 
 
A. MILLERAND 183 
 
 What I here assert afresh is the need for the Socialist party 
 to unite clearly on common principles, accepted by all. 
 
 As for these principles, citizens, we have never all through 
 this long debate discussed them. One point has been dis- 
 cussed for three long years — 'participation in Government ; 
 and on it you will allow me these few words. When it 
 presented itself, as I told you yesterday, those more particu- 
 larly called revolutionary Socialists, seeing themselves con- 
 fronted by this natural consequence of their own conduct, 
 were frightened. They saw that it was the condemnation, not 
 of their conduct, but of a way of speaking which they dechned 
 to give up. They withdrew ; you remained ; and what then 
 occurred in the portion of the Parti Socialiste Frangais which 
 you form ? A very natural thing. Before, during, and after 
 the split — at least, in a few months which followed it — while 
 not condemning participation in the Government, while accept- 
 ing it, even, you yet surrounded it with all sorts of restrictions 
 and reserves; just because you hoped, and would fain hope 
 even against hope, to keep united to you the Socialist comrades 
 who threatened to go off, and who in fact did separate; 
 secondly, because you feared — and what scruples could do 
 you more honour? — lest the wine of truth should be too 
 strong for your adherents' heads if you poured it out to them 
 without stint ; lest in wanting to fly at one stretch to the end 
 marked out for you, you should leave too many laggards and 
 separatists by the wayside. Besides, you were in no hurry 
 to settle it ; you had in the Government a comrade who was 
 there under his own responsibility; you had put him, as it 
 were, on furlough there, and the position was — if he erred, 
 the party could lawfully disclaim all responsibiUty, but if he 
 did anything good and useful, he would, you knew, be the 
 first to refer the honour and profit of it to the party as a 
 whole. 
 
 But, citizens, that situation has ended. You have had to 
 take sides, and what should have happened has happened : 
 participation in the Government — I may say after this present 
 
1 84 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 debate, whose pivot and centre, openly or implicitly, it has 
 all the time been — is no longer opposed in principle. On 
 that I must explain myself. You ask for clearness j you 
 cannot complain if I am clear. I say that in all the debate, 
 at which we have just been present, participation in the 
 Government has apparently aroused no opposition ; and if 
 it does arouse it, then we must take sides — let me say no less 
 flatly and frankly — about the principles as well as the direction 
 of the party, i.e. about the essence of its methods. I think 
 we should be fully agreed ; I think we are ; and it is because 
 I think we are, because I am convinced that on participation 
 in the Government, as on our principles, there is between the 
 vast majority of this Congress and myself no opposition in 
 what I say-^ — no, there can be no split between us ; since, as 
 soon as we agree on the guiding ideas, you understand that 
 on questions of application, however important, divorce and 
 division cannot be. 
 
 I believe that on these questions I was right in acting as I 
 did ; I have given you my reasons ; I am confident that the 
 future will confirm them, and that the application of the 
 principles and tactics which I have indicated will lead you 
 rapidly on this fated path. But understand that on these 
 questions of application I only ask to go forward as a disciplined 
 soldier. I have faith in the future, in the goodness of my 
 cause, in your honesty, in the care which you have, as I have 
 for the interests of the Socialist party and of the country itself • 
 and to-morrow, hand in hand, we pursue the same task at 
 which for the ten years we have worked together for the 
 Republic and the social idea. 
 
 When the two resolutions were put to the Congress, that of M. 
 Jaurfes, censuring but not excluding M. Millerand, was carried by 
 109 votes to 89, with 15 abstentions. 
 
XIII 
 THE THEORY OF INCREASING MISERY 
 
 The Verelendungstheorie has been so diversely understood that the 
 following passages from the Bernstein debate at the German party's 
 Liibeck Congress, igoi, seem worth detaching. Kautsky and Bebel 
 are the leading Marxists, Dr. David a leading Revisionist. 
 
 From the Speech of Karl Kautsky. 
 How, then, do things stand with the Theory of Increasing 
 Misery? The theory asserts, that things must always get 
 worse before they can get better, that the proletariate sinks 
 into ever-increasing misery until it has grown quite irresistible, 
 and that only then does the great day of emancipation dawn. 
 Comrades, has that theory ever been held by any one in the 
 party with any claims to importance ? Certainly not. It has 
 long ago been refuted — refuted by none other than Karl 
 Marx in his " Capital." " Increasing misery " is to be under- 
 stood only as a tendency and not as an unconditional truth ; 
 it means only that capital, in order to increase its surplus-value, 
 must tend to make the position of the workers ever more and 
 more miserable. That we know; but Marx himself has 
 indicated the counter-tendency. He himself was one of the 
 first champions of laws protecting the workers, one of the first 
 who drew attentionTo ' the Tniportence ' ofTrade-unionSj at a 
 time when other Socialists ignored them, as early as 1847. 
 He showed that this tendency is absolutely necessary, but not 
 that it leads of absolute necessity to the depression of the 
 worker. But we must distinguish ourselves from bourgeois 
 
 185 
 
1 86 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 reformers, in that the latter think the tendency itself can be 
 overcome and a social peace be established, a state of things 
 in which capital does not tend to depress the workers. Capital 
 must so tend J and that is the basis of the class-war, which 
 must go on till we wrench from capital the instruments of its 
 political and economic power. Till that is done, social peace 
 cannot be restored ; and only in that sense have we held fast 
 to the Theory of Increasing Misery. 
 
 From the Speech of Dr. Eduard David. 
 
 Again, there is the Theory of Increasing Misery. We talked 
 at Hanover about the miserable condition of this Theory of 
 Increasing Misery ; and now back comes Kautsky with the 
 assertion that no one formerly conceived of it in the sense of a 
 progressive absolute increase of misery, but that it always was 
 only thought a tendency, with which counter-tendencies inter- 
 fered. At Hanover I answered Kautsky by simply quoting 
 the Communist Manifesto, where nothing is said of a tendency 
 to depression, but where bourgeois society is described as 
 not even in a position to feed its slaves — the worker turning 
 into the pauper. And that is not said of individuals, but of 
 the mass of the proletariate ; and the manifesto makes not the 
 smallest reference to counteraction by trade-unionist organiza- 
 tion. Marx did so later; but in the Communist Manifesto 
 he did not lay the smallest stress upon it. He did say some- 
 thing quite different ; he said, " In the revolution closely 
 confronting us the working-class will break its chains, because 
 it has nothing to lose." And the Communist Manifesto 
 closes with the prospect of revolution, in the sense of violent 
 revolution close ahead. So there have been people who have 
 taken this standpoint; and if to-day the Communist Mani- 
 festo is still set up as a standard, as Kiesel ' has set it up, it 
 is impossible to say, " What a crazy exposition of the Theory 
 
 ' A delegate who spoke earlier on the same afterijobn. 
 
BEBEL 187 
 
 of Increasing Misery that is ! No rational human being ever 
 held that ! " If one alters one's opinion, one should have the 
 courage and the strength to say, " We made a mistake." 
 
 From the Speech of Bebel. 
 
 First of all, I intended not to go into differences of prin- 
 ciple between the two schools. I thought that the Hanover 
 Congress had settled that. To my surprise, Kautsky has 
 deviated from the proper course. He has gone into the so- 
 called Theory of Increasing Misery, and has thereby given 
 David opportunity for a polemic. It is bad to let things of 
 that sort go uncontradicted ; so I will say a few words. The 
 Communist Manifesto has been appealed to. I affirm that 
 already in 1872, Engels, in concert with Karl Marx, declared 
 that they wished to re-publish it only as a historical document. 
 Whoever has studied the works of Marx and Engels in detail 
 can have no doubt that tbey. jeyer _set_ up the Theory of In- 
 creasing Misery injhe sense explained by David. If anything 
 is" Hiaracteristic, and refutes Targe "passages in Bernstein's 
 " Presuppositions of Socialism," it is the passage from 
 " Capital/' prefixed as a motto to Bernstein's book, in which 
 Karl Marx describes the Ten Hours' Bill as the victory of a 
 principrer~TSIa.r5r took IHe^view that by organizatTon' the worlc- 
 ing-class can counteract the depressing"'tendencies of capital, 
 an3°if"T)y the' strehgFET of their Sfganization they succeeded in 
 inciting the State to take such steps, then it was not merely a 
 great moral advance, but the victory of a new principle. Even 
 a man like Lassalle, who took so decidedly the standpoint of 
 the Brazen Law of Wages, — even he gives no occasion for his 
 being invoked as a witness on behalf of a false conception of 
 the Theory of Increasing Misery. In his " Open Letter in 
 Reply " he says : " People tell you workers you are to-day in 
 quite a different position from that of three or four hundred 
 years ago. No doubt you are better off than the Botokudians 
 or than cannibal savages." " Every human satisfaction," he 
 
1 88 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 says further on, " depends always on the relation of the means 
 of satisfaction to what the custom of the period demands 
 already as bare necessaries for existence, or, which is the same 
 thing, upon the excess of the means of satisfaction over the 
 lowest limit of what the custom of the period demands as bare 
 necessaries for existence." " If you then compare," he suggests 
 further, " whatjjfp. nV-h rlf|ss has tn-day with what Jthfi-JEOlking- 
 class has to-day, then the gap between, .the. Hrorkingiclass^ and 
 tbfi-xickxJass to-daji^is greater thanjever hefiore." That is the 
 pith of the Theory of Increasing Misery — a thing so simple 
 and obvious that David, who is an important man in our 
 party, and well acquainted with its history, should have been 
 unprejudiced enough to recognize these conceptions of our 
 great theorists. 
 
XIV 
 
 GERMAN SOCIALISTS AND THE GENERAL 
 STRIKE 
 
 Here are given (i) the celebrated Jena resolution passed by the 
 German Social Democratic party in 1905, (2) extracts from a speech 
 of August Bebel at the party's Mannheim Congress in 1906, (3) the 
 resolution passed by the Mannheim Congress. For August Bebel, 
 see p. I ; and for the subject see Introduction to the second edition, 
 pp. xiii-xv, 
 
 'I. The Jena Resolution 
 
 In view of the efforts made by the ruling classes and authori- 
 ties to withhold from the working-class a legitimate influence 
 upon the public ordering of affairs in the Commonwealth, or, so 
 far as the workers have attained any such influence through 
 their representatives in Parliaments, to take this from them, and 
 so render the working-class politically and economically without 
 rights or power, — the Congress thinks it right to declare that 
 it is the bounden duty of the entire working-class to assist witji 
 every means at their disposal every attack on their rights as 
 meii and citizens, and continually to demand complete equali- 
 zation of rights. 
 
 In particular, experience has shown that the governing 
 parties, even those far to the bourgeois Left,^ are hostile to the 
 universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage ; that they merely 
 tolerate it, but at once try to abolish or impair it, as soon as they 
 think that it imperils their supremacy. Hence their opposition 
 
 ' i.e. Liberals. 
 189 
 
igo MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 to an extension of universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage 
 to the separate States (Prussia, etc.) ; and hence, too, they 
 even make worse existing and backward electoral laws, from 
 regret at the working-classes exercising any influence in the 
 Parliaments, however slight. 
 
 In this way, a bourgeoisie, greedy of power and unlimitedly 
 timid, and a narrow-minded lower middle-class, have taken 
 away the people's votes in Saxony and in the so-called Republics 
 of Hamburg and Lubeck, and have made worse the communal 
 elections in various German States (Saxony, Saxe-Meiningen, 
 etc.) and places (Kiel, Dresden, Chemnitz, etc.) ; acting through 
 the representatives of various bourgeois parties. 
 
 But considering that universal, equal, direct, and secret 
 suffrage is the starting-point for a normal political Hevelopinent 
 of the commonwealth^ as is compete Treedom of combination 
 for the economic uplifting of the working-class ; considering, 
 further, that the working-class by its ever-increasing numbers, 
 its intelligence, and its labour for the economic and social life 
 of the whole nation, as well as by the material and physical 
 sacrifices which it has to support for the military defence of the 
 country, is the most important element in modern society ; 
 this class must demand not only the maintenance but the ex- 
 tension of universal, equal, direct, and secret suflftage' for all 
 representative bodies, in the sense of the Social Democratic 
 programme, and the securing of full freedom of combination. 
 
 Accordingly, the Congress declares that in case of an 
 attack on universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage, or on 
 the right of combination, it is the duty of the entire working- 
 class to Employ vi^gorously every weapon of defence that seems 
 appropriate. 
 
 As one of the most effective weapons to repel such a 
 poUticai crime against the working-class, or to capture an 
 important right as a basis for its emancipation, the Congress 
 recommends, in the case given — 
 
 " the most comprehensive application of the general refusal to 
 work!' 
 
BEBEL 191 
 
 But in order to render the use of this weapon possible, and as 
 effective as possible, the greatest expansion of the political and 
 trade-union organization of the working-class, and the incessant 
 education and enlightenment of the masses, by the labour 
 journals and by agitation and literature, is indispensably 
 necessary. 
 
 This agitation must set forth the importance ,of, and neces- 
 sity for, the political rights of the working-class, especially 
 for universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage and for com- 
 plete freedom 'of combination ; with references to the class- 
 character of the State and society, and the daily misuse of 
 political power by the governing classes and authorities against 
 the working-class, in virtue of their monopoly of it. 
 
 Every member of the party is bound to join a trade-union, 
 if one exists or can be founded in his trade or calling, and he 
 is bound to support the aims and objects of the trade-unions. 
 But it is also the duty of every class-conscious member of a 
 trade-union to adhere to the political organization of his class, — 
 the Social Democratic party, — ^and to promote the circulation 
 of Social Democratic literature. 
 
 II. From a Speech of August Bebel at the 
 Mannheim Congress. 
 
 Although at Jena I enthusiastically recommended the 
 
 general strike as a weapon in the last resort, no word of 
 
 mine can be taken to mean that I recommended _ 
 
 General 
 one for the commg year. Just because we in strike 
 
 Germany, through the whole shaping of our poli- ^ °"^fggg * 
 
 tical conditions, are concerned with perfectly weapon. 
 
 definite rights, on behalf of which in a given °^}^.^°^ 
 
 event we should institute the general strike, and through 
 
 because we must wish in all our interests to hold !?*^®™® 
 
 1.1- I ^ alselpllne, 
 
 such a demonstration completely m hand, we 
 
 desire a still more thorough agitation and education, in order 
 
 that at the given moment our disciplined masses, which must 
 
 sweep the undisciplined away, may be so held in hand that no 
 
192 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 blunders occur. I tell you in the name of the party Council 
 and the Committee of Control, which we have consulted on 
 the subject, our position is, that on the one hand the general 
 strike may be necessary, but on the other hand we will not let 
 ourselves be hounded into it against our convictions by any- 
 body, no matter whom. I regard the general strike as the 
 ultima ratio, the final, and, remember, the bloodless instrument 
 of our party, the weapon which we need all our strength and 
 discipline and self-restraint so to employ, as we think the 
 interests of the party and the people demand. That is a 
 hazard, which as yet, with our present organization, we cannot 
 entertain. I think it false to be optimistic at this point. In 
 every direction our activity needs to be developed. The 
 stimulus given at Jena has already in the 'short space of a 
 year yielded splendid successes. But agitation and organiza- 
 tion must develop much further yet ; and if they do, we will 
 see what we can do more. 
 
 The question now arises : What is the attitude of our trade- 
 unions to the general strike? You all know, that in our 
 Trade- debates last year at Jena reference was often made 
 
 the°'enerai *° ^'^ Cologne resolution, and the opinion was 
 strike, expressed, that it contradicted the Jena resolution. 
 
 I will not say more on this question here, but I might make 
 one point clear, and indeed am glad to, namely, that in spite 
 of the unpleasant references made to the party by individual 
 speakers at the conference of the trade-union committees, the 
 proceedings as a whole showed, that notwithstanding every- 
 thing, we had drawn considerably closer together than pre- 
 viously at Jena appeared to be the case. On that point no 
 doubt can exist. I was especially satisfied to read in the 
 speech of comrade Bomelburg at that conference his assertion, 
 that if once an issue were raised, which put in question the 
 right of combination, — a right indispensable for the workers 
 and peculiarly so for the trade-unions, — then the trade-unions 
 must not wait for the party to give the lead, but themselves 
 must come forward and set to work with the general strike. I 
 
BEBEL 193 
 
 am glad we agree on that. I noticed, too, another remark in 
 the report of that conference. An outspoken adversary of the 
 general strike told the meeting that he had himself noticed 
 " people beginning by degrees to accustom themselves to the 
 thought of the general strike." That shows that the discussions 
 at Cologne and Jena, and subsequently in the press, have led 
 a great many comrades to reflect more deeply, and the result 
 of their reflections diflfers a good deal from their former Une of 
 thought. To me it appears beyond question, that we must win 
 over the trade-unions to the idea of the general strike. I think 
 so just because without the co-operation of the trade-unions 
 the general strike is impracticable. On the other hand I admit 
 that in trade-xmion circles, in consequence of a series of state- 
 ments in articles and speeches, and notably in the transactions 
 of the trade-union Congress this spring, the thought has been 
 expressed, that people in the Social Democratic party were 
 inclined to play fast and loose with the general strike. This 
 view, too, is that, for example, of the Nieder-Barnim resolu- 
 tion, which does the most extraordinary thing that can be 
 done in this cormection. Comrades, does not the Nieder- 
 Bamim electoral district, which has adopted this resolution by 
 a majority, — does it not know, what the Congress of the party 
 for Prussia decided about street demonstrations ? Does it not 
 know, that if (as the wording of the resolution says) we insti- 
 tuted street demonstrations, the result would be a massacre, 
 and yet we should have no certainty of emerging from the 
 massacre victorious ? The talk is not merely of demonstra- 
 tions, but in most cases also of general strikes. According to 
 that, they are represented as a means of agitation applicable at 
 any moment. To-day we start one general strike, to-morrow 
 another, and the day after to-morrow a third. Conceptions of 
 this kind we must reject with decision, I can only ask the 
 Congress to reject every resolution introduced under this head, 
 and adopt the resolution which we propose to you. I would 
 point out that the greater part of these resolutions has been 
 already dealt with now. 
 
 o 
 
194 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 All I want to do further is briefly to oppose a resolution 
 adopted by our comrades at Miihlhausen. The resolution 
 Suggested refers to a danger arising, that in the great struggle 
 strike to for Russian freedom the Pussian Government 
 German in- might want to march Prussian troops into Russia, 
 tepference in order to smother the revolution by the aid 
 In Russia, ^j. Qg^man blood. Comrade Maurenbrecher ex- 
 pressed the same thought in an article. Abroad, too, it was 
 widely mooted. From most diverse groups of Russian Socialists 
 came questions asking me, whether it was true that Germany 
 would intervene, and how the German Social Democrats would 
 behave in that event. I have replied : German intervention 
 is unthinkable. One must admit that, however low one's 
 opinion of the conduct of our foreign affairs. The Imperial 
 Chancellor himself took the first opportunity of declaring in 
 the Reichstag, that these rumours were untrue, that in Prussian 
 Germany no one thought of espousing the cause of the Russian 
 Government. Doubtless the hearts of the German Emperor, 
 the Government, and the bourgeoisie, are on the Tsar's side. 
 It is natural that in all these circles people should desire 
 the successful repression of the Russian revolution ; but it is 
 a long step from that to the actual marching of German troops 
 into Russia. The events of 1792 have been cited as an 
 example. But the French Revolution in 1792 had the whole 
 of Europe for its enemy. At that time a coalition of Europe 
 could be formed; at that time it was possible to hope to 
 smother the revolution in blood. Yet even so the attempt 
 miscarried. 
 
 The situations of 1792 and 1906, are entirely different. 
 To-day there is no European coalition ready to mobilize 
 against Russia, and Germany, thanks to her clumsy foreign 
 policy, is isolated. The Austrian press, of all parties, protested 
 most promptly and energetically against the idea of any such 
 interference. For Germany to interfere in Russia would mean 
 a European war. And care will be taken in Germany not to 
 invite such a gigantic peril. What else does the proposal of 
 
BEBEL 
 
 •95 
 
 the Miihlhausen comrades mean, but what Nieuwenhuis advo- 
 cated at the Zurich Congress, the general strike on behalf of 
 peace in the event of an outbreak of war ? Very 
 few of you, comrades, have experienced a great war. strike to 
 
 You have no notion of the situation which arose on P^''^ "'i*' 
 1 11/- • r. ^ ,. break or 
 
 the outbreak of war m 1870. Of course we have war not 
 
 grown much stronger since then, but the forces at P^'^'^t'^^'''^' 
 the disposal of the anti-SociaUsts have grown too. Above all, 
 the military armament has completely changed. Who then 
 believes, that at a moment, when a violent shock, a fever, is 
 stirring up the masses from their very deepest depths, when the 
 perils of a gigantic war and its appalling misery confront us — 
 who believes, that at such a moment it is possible to institute 
 a general strike ? The idea is puerile. From the first day of 
 the outbreak of such a war there march under arms in Germany 
 five million men, with many hundreds of thousands of Sociahsts 
 included among them. The entire nation is in the ranks. 
 Frightful want, xmiversal unemployment, starvation, stoppage 
 of factories, fall of paper securities, — is it credible that at such 
 a moment, when each is thinking only of himself, one could 
 institute a general strike? If any leaders of the party were 
 so senseless as to institute a general strike on such a day, 
 martial law would at once be extended, along with the 
 mobilization, over the whole of Germany, and decisions then 
 pass from the hands of the civil courts into those of courts- 
 martial, I have often heard it said, — and I think it probable, 
 because in governing circles it is supposed, that the Socialists 
 could be crazy enough to take such a course, — I have often 
 heard it said, that exalted persons have long nursed the idea 
 of preparing the same fate for all the Socialist leaders as was 
 meted out in 1870 to the members of our party committee. 
 If you think that in such a case our adversaries will exercise 
 any clemency, you are mistaken ; I think it inconceivable that 
 in such a case any should be expected. Things are different 
 with us from things in other countries. Germany is a State 
 which no other State resembles. That may be taken as a 
 
196 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 compliment, but it is the truth ; and this truth we must keep 
 in sight, and direct our affairs accordingly. I can only 
 emphatically ask you to reject the Miihlhausen resolution. 
 Adopt the resolution that we propose, for it offers you the 
 way along which the party may victoriously pursue its end. 
 
 III. The Mannheim Resolution (moved by Bebel). 
 
 1. The Congress confirms the resolution of the Jena 
 Congress upon the political general strike, and after declaring 
 that the resolution of the trade-union congress at Cologne' 
 does not contradict the Jena resolution, regards all disputes 
 over the meaning of the Cologne resolution as settled. 
 
 The Congress again recommends specially urgent atten- 
 tion to the clauses calling for the strengthening and extension 
 of the party organization, the circulation of the party literature, 
 and the adherence of members of the party to trade-unions 
 and of trade-unionists to the party organization. 
 
 As soon as the Party Council deems a political general 
 strike to be necessary, it must put itself in communication 
 with the General Committee of the trade-unions, and take all 
 requisite measures to carry out its course successfully. 
 
 2. The trade-unions are indispensably necessary to uplift 
 the class-position of the workers inside bourgeois society; 
 they are not less necessary than the Social Democratic party, 
 which has to conduct in the political sphere the struggle to 
 uplift the working-class and to make its rights equal to those 
 of the other classes in society, but which further, and beyond 
 
 * The Cologne resolution included the following expressions : 
 " The Congress therefore considers, that all attempts to set up a definite 
 line of tactics by preaching the political general strike should be repudiated ; 
 it recommends the organized workers to resist such attempts energetically. 
 
 "The Congress regards the general strike, as it is represented by 
 Anarchists and people without any experience in the sphere of economic 
 struggle, as beneath consideration ; it warns the workers not to let the 
 acceptance and circulation of such ideas distract them from the detailed 
 daily work of strengthening their trade organizations." 
 
BEBEL 197 
 
 these immediate objects, strives for the emancipation of the 
 working-class' from every oppression and exploitation, by 
 abolishing the wage-system and organizing a system of pro- 
 duction and exchange resting on the social equality of all, — 
 organizing, that is, the Socialist society: an aim for which 
 the class-conscious workers of the trade-unions must also 
 necessarily strive. The two organizations are thus led to 
 mutual agreement and co-operation in their struggles. 
 
 To bring about harmonious procedure in affairs which 
 concern the interests of the trade-unions and the party equally, 
 the central executives of the two organizations must endeavour 
 to come to an understanding. 
 
 But in order to secure that harmony of thought and action 
 between the party and the trade-unions, which is indispensably 
 requisite for the victorious progress of the proletarian class- 
 struggle, it is absolutely necessary, that the trade-union move- 
 ment should be dominated by the spirit of the Social Democracy. 
 Therefore it is the duty of every member of the party to exert 
 himself in that sense. 
 
XV 
 
 SOCIALISM AND THE CAPITALISTIC 
 TRANSFORMATION OF AGRICULTURE 
 
 By E. Vandervelde 
 
 An address delivered to an audience of Belgian agricultural 
 experts in July, 1899. 
 
 Emile Vandervelde (bom 1868) is the leader of the Belgian Labour 
 party in the Belgian Chamber. He is also among the most learned 
 of living Socialists. His most recent publications upon Agfriculture 
 include L'Exode Rural et le Retour aux Champs (Paris, 1903), Essais 
 sur la Question Agraire en Belgique (Paris, 1903), La Propriete Foncihre 
 en Belgique (Paris, 1900), and five studies va the Annates de I'lnstitut 
 des Science Soeiales (Brussels, 1898 and 1899). 
 
 From the following lecture a short introduction is omitted, in 
 V7hich M. Vandervelde refers the institution of property to social 
 utility, and premisses that he will examine private property in land 
 from this standpoint. His account of the decay of peasant pro- 
 prietorship is the more interesting because drawn from the very 
 country which to J. S. Mill (Political Economy, b. ii,, c. 6, § 5) was 
 " the most decisive example in opposition to the English prejudice 
 against cultivation by peasant proprietors." 
 
 At the outset I must point out aii underlying essential 
 distinction, which is at the very foundation of the collectivist 
 theories. I want to distinguish between peasant property 
 exploited immediately by the owner himself, and capitalistic 
 property leased out for exploitation because its owner is not 
 a cultivator. Clearly these are two different economic 
 categories, which cannot be confounded under one head 
 without causing a real confusion. Clearly peasant property, 
 
 198 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 199 
 
 which is an instrument of labour for the cultivator, cannot 
 be assimilated to capitalistic property, which is a means of 
 exploiting this cultivator for the profit of a landed proprietor. 
 I must therefore place myself in turn at the point of view of 
 peasant property and at that of capitalistic property to examine 
 the question whether private property in land is in the interest 
 of society at large. So far as concerns peasant property, we 
 have to ask ourselves first of all, whether in our country there 
 still exist many cultivators who own the land which they 
 cultivate. 
 
 The most recent statistics bearing on this point are to be 
 found in the third volume of the agricultural census of 1895. 
 From them we learn, that there were then ownership 
 *3i>3i9 cases of ownership by the cultivator (the by the 
 owner cultivating all or more than half his land <=""'™top. 
 in each case). Are we to infer that there are over 200,000 
 cultivators owning the soil that they till ? Statistically that is 
 so, but practically it is quite clear that those who cultivate a 
 " table-cloth," a " pocket-handkerchief" of ground of a few 
 ares ' — an estate of 2 hectares, for instance — cannot as a rule 
 be regarded as peasant proprietors living in an independent way 
 on the products of the soil which they cultivate, and finding in 
 it a livelihood for themselves and their families. Except in 
 districts of intensive market-gardening, and in certain parts 
 of Flanders, they are really labourers, agricultural or industrial 
 proletarians, who only find in their tiny estate something to eke 
 out their wages, a more or less trifling resource to be added to 
 their daily earnings. As to those who really possess an 
 independent peasant estate, capable of furnishing the cultivator 
 and his family with a livelihood, we shall be more than 
 generous if we reckon as such all those in the whole country 
 who exploit as cultivating owners more than 2 hectares. The 
 last agricultural census gives their number as 66,452. From 
 this figure must be deducted a certain number of large estates, 
 some hundreds of farms of over 50 hectares (i23'S57 acres), 
 ' I are = ll9'6o3 square yards ; 2 hectares = 4*942 acres. 
 
200 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 which are cultivated by active owners with the assistance of 
 agricultural labourers. So there remain between 50,000 and 
 60,000 peasant estates cultivated by peasant proprietors, 
 who can, whether the season be good or bad, derive a more or 
 less suflScient livelihood from them. 
 
 You notice that in our population of over six millions the 
 peasant proprietor forms an extremely limited social cat^ory, 
 limited in respect of numbers, still more limited in respect of 
 the area exploited. In fact, as the statistics of 1 895 go on to 
 inform us, out of every 100 hectares of land, about half (49'4 
 per cent.) are cultivated by their owners, and the other half 
 (50-6 per cent.) are rented; but it must be borne in mind 
 that the official figures include as cultivated by their owners 
 the woods, the waste lands, and the heaths, whether belonging 
 to private persons or to public bodies, so that there are villages 
 which seem to be the promised land of cultivating ownership 
 when really they belong to landlords whose property is wood 
 or waste. If we only take account of ordinary forms of 
 cultivation, which alone interest us at the moment, the propor- 
 tion owned by its cultivators out of every himdred hectares of 
 land exploited in Belgium is 31 '6, against 68"4 which are 
 rented. And we should observe (for the observation has a 
 fundamental importance) that most of the land cultivated by 
 peasant proprietors is situated in the poorest and least- 
 endowed parts of the country. In Flanders or Hesbaye 
 ownership by the cxiltivator is exceptional— in the Ostend 
 district, for instance, it has wholly disappeared ; on the other 
 hand, it still plays a great part in Campine, in the Ardennes 
 and also in the south of Hainaut, in the districts of Chimay, 
 Beaumont, etc. — that is, in parts where peasant properties 
 are found in combination with common properties and often 
 also with accessory industries. A striking instance of such a 
 state of social affairs is that of the parishes situated along the 
 French frontier, in the Philippeville constituency, Olloy, 
 Oignies, Nismes, Petigny, Cerfontaine, etc. There are there 
 a fairly large number of small peasant proprietors ; the parish 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 201 
 
 has extensive common lands, which enable them to pasture 
 their cattle, and to obtain firewood, or litter for their beasts. 
 Besides this, the majority of these peasant proprietors spend 
 their days also on industrial work. That is the case, for 
 instance, with the slate-tilers of Oignies, the sabot-makers of 
 Nismes or of Cerfontainej and imder these conditions these 
 properties may be said to present considerable advantages for 
 the populations who benefit by them. 
 
 These conditions, essential not only to their prosperity, but 
 to their existence, may be summarized as follows : — 
 
 (i) Property extensive enough to supply the cultivator's 
 family with a livelihood. Conditions 
 
 (2) Accessory industry supplying them with e^g^enee 
 supplementary means of subsistence. of peasant 
 
 (3) Rights over common lands sufficiently ^^°^^ ^• 
 considerable for the peasants to procure what they require, in 
 order to carry on the petty cultivation. 
 
 Under these conditions it comes about that a poor 
 population, living in a poorly endowed district, finds itself 
 really better oflf, socially speaking, than a population living in 
 the most fertile and richest districts in the country. One 
 cannot doubt, for instance, that the small farmer of the Waes 
 country, with its pretty white flower-hung houses and such well- 
 cultivated fields, but with such heavy rents to pay, has less 
 favourable conditions of life and is less substantially fed than 
 the peasant — poor, no doubt, but freer and more independent 
 — of the Upper Ardennes or of Condroz. The first scarcely 
 eats an3rthing but churned milk and black bread; the latter 
 is always sure to have at least some bacon with his potatoes. 
 But in proportion as agricultural progresses, as agricultural 
 technique is perfected, as the capitalist regime takes hold 
 of industry and agriculture, we see the conditions for the 
 existence and prosperity of peasant property disappear one 
 after the other. It is idle, to prove it, to look for instances 
 in other countries; it is enough to see what has happened 
 in our own. We shall note, in fact, that for a century the 
 
202 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 development of industry has resulted in the upsetting, one 
 after the other, of what I shall call the props of peasant 
 property. 
 
 First fell the rights over common lands. As soon as ever 
 industry on the large scale begins to develop, and the industrial 
 Rights over proletariate grows, and the food-requirements of the 
 commons, population increase — and as long as the competition 
 of foreign corn-stuffs does not make itself felt— agriculturists 
 regard the working of waste lands as an advantageous operation, 
 and hurry by every means to divide up and alienate common 
 lands. That is what happened in Belgium during the first 
 half of this century. You know that to promote this transfor- 
 mation the Chamber voted the law of March 25, 1848, on 
 compulsory ahenation of common lands. In the course of 
 twenty years the best part of the collective estate of the 
 parishes was alienated. What remains of it to-day scarcely 
 retains any importance except in Campine and the Ardennes 
 region. 
 
 On another side, at about the same period, other factors 
 intervened, and rendered the position of peasant property more 
 Home and more difficult. There were in Flanders small 
 
 Industries, cultivators or small owners, whose use of the soil 
 was insufficient by itself to supply them with a livelihood, but 
 who found a supplementary resource in home industries carried 
 on by themselves, their wives, and their children. The women 
 and girls spun linen, the man wove it ; and in, so to say, every 
 house on the Flemish countrysides was a textile business. 
 But from 1847 onwards the potato disease and the introduction 
 of machines reduced to starvation the greater part of these 
 peasants who were literally expropriated by the conquering 
 competition of urban industry. From that date the Flemish 
 labourers — especially those of the districts of Alost, Termonde, 
 Audenaerde, etc. — as with the labourers of the district of Ath, 
 are to be seen on annual emigrations, going off into the Grand 
 Duchy, or into Northern or Central France, for harvesting and 
 beetroot-gathering. 
 
E, VANDERVELDE 203 
 
 Lastly there comes in a third factor, tending to make the 
 position of peasant property harder still. Formerly it produced, 
 before all else, things of value for use, products ppoduetlon 
 consumed on the spot by the peasant himself; but fopex- 
 now it has to produce things of value for exchange, ^*'*°^^* 
 products which find a sale on the market, to have the means of 
 paying the ever-increasing taxes, the ever-growing burden of 
 fiscal charges. 
 
 . Destruction of rights over common lands, decay of home 
 industries, production of things valuable for exchange instead 
 of things valuable for use, and on top of these the action of 
 the law on inheritance, the influence of compulsory equal 
 partition — such are the principal reasons for the diminution 
 of cultivating owners and the critical position of peasant 
 property. 
 
 But, some one will perhaps say, if you consult the official 
 figures, you find, in contradiction to what we have been saying, 
 that ownership on a small scale tends to spread, and that the 
 number of owners increases from year to year. 
 
 This is, in fact, what a superficial glance at the figures 
 seems to show. The documents supplied by the Finance 
 Department inform us, that in 1846 there were MuitipUea- 
 914,937 holdings of land in Belgium. In 1896 tionof 
 there were 1,187,000; and so it is often inferred ""' '°^^" 
 that the number of owners has passed from 914,937 to 
 1,187,000. But it is important to notice some facts which 
 reduce this inference to its real value — 
 
 (i) The population has increased faster than the number of 
 holdings of land. In 1830 there were 22 holdings to every 
 hundred inhabitants ; in 1896 there are only 18. 
 
 (2) As every one is aware, many properties are only such 
 in name ; properties on which, as the Flemings put it, there 
 is " a little man on the roof," i.e. a burdening mortgage. 
 
 (3) You know, too, that the number of holdings of land 
 does not match the number of properties ; that many pro- 
 prietors possess not one holding but very many, scattered in 
 
204 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 different parishes. In Flanders there are some landowners 
 with 40, 50, and even 60 holdings scattered in as many 
 parishes. 
 
 (4) There are in existence a very great number of holdings 
 of land so small that they only represent a phantom of 
 property. Not long ago I was studying the land-register of 
 a little parish, Rixensartj situated beside the one in which I 
 hve, and I found there proprietors like these: one with 40 
 centiares, income fivepenccj another, with income twopence- 
 halfpenny ; two others, designated suggestively, X. " blind," 2 
 hectares, Z. " beggar," 85 ares. It will be readily recognized 
 that it is hard to consider proprietors of this sort as independent 
 peasant proprietors capable of drawing from the soil which 
 belongs to them a livelihood for themselves and their families. 
 But after making this series of preliminary observations, we 
 must examine more closely the statistics concerning holdings 
 of land. 
 
 I have noted that the number of these holdings had 
 increased since the date when the land-register was com- 
 Aninvesti- piled j but the important point is, whether there 
 the\and- ^^^ really been an equalizing partition of property, 
 registers, whether the laws of the Revolution, which aim at 
 dividing up the soil among a constantly increasing number of 
 proprietors, have produced that result. And to settle this 
 question, which is of paramount importance, I have under- 
 taken, with the collaboration of several friends, an inquiry, 
 which has cost us long months of work, on the division of 
 landed property in Belgium. This inquiry was of the following 
 nature.^ Possessing, thanks to the oiBcial statistics, the total 
 number of holdings of land, we picked out in the 15,000 or 
 20,000 land-registers deposited in the provincial registries 
 the holdings of over 100 hectares, which may be considered 
 in Belgium as large landed estates. We have the figure of 
 
 ' Monographs for each of the nine provinces, entitled " L'lufluence des 
 villes dans les Campagnes," in the Annales de TInstiiut des Sciences Sociales 
 {II, Rue Ravenstein, Brussels). 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 
 
 20; 
 
 every province but one, that of Namur, in which, notoriously 
 large estates are more general than anywhere else; for the 
 eight other provinces the following are the results given by a 
 comparison of the land-register in 1834 (when it was first 
 compiled) and in 1898 : — 
 
 
 Holdings of over loo hectares of land. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total (in hectares) 
 
 Total (in hectares) 
 
 
 for 1834-1845. 
 
 for i8g8. 
 
 Brabant 
 
 38.963 
 
 41.545 
 
 Antwerp 
 
 
 
 34.184 
 
 39.48s 
 
 Limbourg . 
 
 
 
 15,298 
 
 12,522 
 
 Luxembourg 
 
 
 
 SS.9II 
 
 66,313 
 
 Hainaut 
 
 
 
 55.258 
 
 39,186 
 
 East Flanders 
 
 
 
 14,414 
 
 18,927 
 
 West Flanders 
 
 
 
 23,048 
 
 23.847 
 
 Li^ge .... 
 
 48,763 
 
 S5.8II 
 
 Eight provinces ' 
 
 285,839 
 
 297,636 
 
 So in the last sixty years, taking the country as a whole, 
 property on the large scale, far from being subdivided, has 
 rather gained ground. Partition has occurred in some pro- 
 vinces, e.g. Hainaut and Limbourg, but concentration on the 
 other hand, in provinces such as Antwerp, Lidge, Luxembourg, 
 Brabant, and the provinces of Flanders ; reckoning altogether, 
 there is an increase of 8000 hectares for the eight provinces. 
 
 On the other hand, property on the small scale has gained 
 ground since the number of holdings of land has increased ; 
 the partition has fallen, therefore, upon property on the 
 moderate scale, on the intermediate class in society, on the 
 family properties of which I was speaking just now. Evolution 
 has tended in two directions — on the one side, the concentra- 
 tion of large properties; on the other, the breaking up of 
 
 ' The figures for Namur have since been obtained : 106,672 hectares in 
 1834 ; 100,276 hectares in 1898. 
 
2o6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 middle-sized ones and the creation of dwarf properties which 
 become too small to feed a family. What is the social effect 
 of this ? It is that peasant property becomes more and more 
 incapable of feeding a family, and that those who still possess 
 land worked by themselves as cultivating owners are obliged 
 to seek other means of subsistence. Some take a small shop 
 — oftenest a public-house ; others are country artisans ; others, 
 again, take service as agricultural or industrial labourers ; 
 others go abroad to do harvesting, or even take the train each 
 morning to go and work in the centres of industry ; and after 
 all that, what is left of the 50,000 or 60,000 peasants of whom 
 I was speaking a moment ago ? Barely a few thousands, who 
 can still painfully, by a hard toil, by a real exploitation of 
 themselves and their families, make the two ends meet. The 
 rest have fallen into the proletariate, or cultivate for some one 
 else's profit ; and this diminution of cultivating ownership in 
 consequence of insufiScient capital, of partition due to the 
 laws on inheritance, of the ever-growing aggravation of fiscal 
 and military charges, is to be found indicated in the official 
 statistics. Here are the figures given upon this subject by 
 the last census. Taking into account only the ordinary forms 
 of cultivation, there were in 1880 out of every 100 hectares 
 of arable land 36 worked by the owner himself and 64 rented 
 for working. In 1895 ownership by the cultivator sank to 31 hec- 
 tares in every hundred^ against 69 per cent, which were rented. 
 Let us ask now what inference is to be drawn from the 
 facts which I have just set before you. From the point of 
 Economic view of distribution. Socialism (which aims at 
 ©"peasant ""i'i"g i" the Same hands property and labour) 
 property. has no fault to find with peasant property. In 
 this case there is a wedlock of Property and Labour. The 
 cultivator is joined to his instrument of labour — what he 
 produces is the result of his labour ; and from that all Socialists 
 agree in saying, that there is no ground for bringing pressure 
 to make peasant property come into the collective domain. 
 But if Socialists are unwilling to touch peasant property — 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 207 
 
 because it is closely associated with labour, because it is 
 fertilized^ by the sweat of the peasant — they note, and every- 
 body must note, that the development of capitalism, the 
 progress of industry, and the rise in the value of land, under 
 the influence of towns, necessarily result in diminishing peasant 
 property, in restricting the area of soil occupied by cultivating 
 owners, in developing more and more cultivation by farmers 
 who pay rent It is capitalistic agriculture alone which 
 furnishes sufficient capital to work the land in an intensive 
 manner, with perfected appHancesj it is it which allows 
 agriculture to struggle against foreign competition and to 
 become, in a word, an industry like other industries ; to crush 
 this development (supposing it were possible to do so) would 
 be, as Pecquem: put it, to decree mediocrity all round. 
 
 Thus peasant property, equitable from the distributive 
 point of view, is open to serious criticism from the point of 
 view of production. And that brings me to speak capitalistic 
 of the other form of property in land — capitalistic property, 
 property, worked by the cultivator no longer on his own 
 accoxmt, but under obligation to pay a rent to the owner of 
 the soil. We said just now that the only form of property 
 which can appear justifiable is property founded on work. 
 Well, who works on a great estate ? Is it the owner himself ? 
 He is seldom to be seen, except perhaps in the shooting 
 season. I see a farmer directing the business, I see agricultural 
 labourers toiling from morning till night ; these are the workers, 
 but they are not the owners of the property. On the contrary, 
 we remark the divorce of property and work — on the one side, 
 a toiling rural population ; on the other, town-dwellers, whose 
 part is most often confined to pocketing the rents. 
 
 I know that extenuating circumstances are pleaded; that 
 according to some economists the recipient of rent for land is 
 not a parasite, but is on the contrary the fellow- p^J,^ piayed 
 worker, the banker, even (as was said once by byiand- 
 M. de Bruyn, the Minister for Agriculture) the "w^^""^- 
 " nursing father " of farmers and agricultural labourers. Possibly 
 
2o8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 there are exceptions of this sort, possibly there are petits man- 
 teaux hleus who play Providence for some farmers ; but the official 
 documents themselves, which are not suspected of Socialistic 
 bias, violently contradict those who regard landowners as pro- 
 vidential beings, as bankers given by nature to farmers and 
 agricultural labourers. I will take only a few examples. This 
 is how, in the Agricultural Investigation of 1886, which though 
 very incomplete contains things of interest, the Governor of 
 West Flanders expresses himself about the landowners in his 
 province — 
 
 " AH, or nearly all, live in a dolcefar niente, ignorant of most 
 of the elements of estate management, scarcely taking the 
 trouble to ascertain whether their properties are cultivated in 
 their own best interests ; if their rents are paid regularly, all is 
 well." (Question 10, p. 314.) 
 
 In this same Agricultural Investigation we could gather a 
 series of depositions of the same sort, but I prefer — ab uno 
 disce omnes — to quote to you another fact, related in an interest- 
 ing pamphlet by one of the founders of the agricultural co- 
 operative society of Borsbeke near Alost. The farmers of this 
 village had formed themselves into a society, and had written 
 to their landowners to ask them to take some shares. All 
 these landowners without exception live outside the parish. 
 There were twenty of them; only three took the trouble to 
 answer the farmers ; the rest sent no answer. One of them 
 even sent back the circular without stamping it, so that the 
 first expense of the society was in paying the postal charge 
 incurred by this protector of agriculture ! 
 
 There is no need for me to go on quoting facts, for you 
 know better than any one, that in proportion as the owner of 
 the soil ceases to be the squire living with his peasantry and 
 becomes the monied man, the rick man of the towns, who as a 
 rule scarcely knows where the farms that he buys are, personal 
 relations between farmer and landlord become rarer and rarer ; 
 the parasitic function of the latter becomes more and more 
 clearly apparent ; and the position is the more open to criticism, 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 209 
 
 because normally^ when a country's population and industry 
 develop, the rent of land tends to increase, without the 
 landowners having to do anything to increase it — the point 
 which Henry George has well brought out in his celebrated 
 book Progress and Poverty, where he studies Thepiseof 
 especially the phenomenon of the increase of rents rents, 
 in a new country like the United States. A town is founded ; 
 it requires food-products ; the land gets more valuable year by 
 year, and if you have had the luck to acquire a piece of soil, 
 you can, as George puts it, " sit down and smoke your pipe j 
 you can lie down like the lazzaroni of Naples or the Uperos of 
 Mexico ; you can go up in a balloon or dig a hole in the earth ; 
 and without doing anything, without increasing the wealth of 
 the community one iota, in ten years you will be rich." By 
 the development of industrial civihzation, by the growth of 
 population, rent rises, farm-rents go up, the landowner becomes 
 wealthy. And so it was in our old European countries until the 
 agricultural crisis of these last years. It is interesting to carry 
 one's self fifty years back to see how far the presentment of the 
 agrarian question differed from that of to-day. In 1853 ^'^ 
 Minister of the Interior remarked in the Belgian Chamber that 
 the food requirements of the population went on growing and 
 the dearth of cereals became greater and greater, while the 
 increase of imports was hopelessly slow. " From 1830 to 1839," 
 said he, " our imports of cereals (rye and wheat) averaged 41 
 million hectolitres a year; from 1840 to 1852 this average rose 
 annually to 102 millions. If in the shade of peace the popu- 
 lation of Belgium continues to grow in the same propor- 
 tion, before ten years are out the shortage in our supply of 
 cereals — I hardly dare state the figure — will be about two 
 million hectolitres. I keep below the truth, that it may be 
 impossible to dispute my figure." {Ann. Pari. Chambre des 
 JReprisentants, Nov. 25, 1853.) At that time, then, the agrarian 
 question meant the insufficient production of cereals and other 
 food-stuffs. There was not enough bread to go round; in- 
 dustrial wages were not rising, or even were falling ; agricultural 
 
 p 
 
210 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 wages remained at a deplorably low level; but the demand 
 for agricultural products went on increasing constantly, and 
 the rents for farms went up, up, continually up, even during 
 the famine in Flanders, so that at that time one certainly might 
 have said of the Belgian landowners, what Ricardo said of land- 
 owners in general, that they formed the only class in society whose 
 interests were opposed to those of the rest of the population. 
 
 This rise of farm-rents — under the influence of the develop- 
 ment of industry — continues till the time when the progress of 
 The Agpleul- ^^e transport industry entirely alters the situation, 
 tupal crisis, and the competition of foreign corn imported from 
 the United States, from India, and from Russia, effects in our 
 rural districts ravages more terrible than the Cossaek invasions, 
 the Ganges epidemics, or the storms which come over the 
 Atlantic. Thenceforward farm-rents fall, rent of land goes 
 steadily down, the agricultural crisis becomes more and more 
 painful, and soon the development of land transport begins to 
 accentuate it still further. You know that since 1870 the 
 Belgian Government* has instituted special railway rates for 
 Workmen's workmen. In 1870 industrial prosperity was in 
 trains. full swing. Urban manufacturers and managers 
 
 of coUieries were crying out for cheap labour. It was hoped 
 that trade-union opposition would be broken down, if rural 
 labourers were drawn in by a serious reduction in the passenger 
 rates — such a reduction that to-day the Belgian State may be 
 said to carry workmen for almost nothing. Have you ever 
 had the curiosity to take up the railway guide and see what it 
 costs a workman to travel, for instance, 50 kilometres ? For 
 a single journey there and back the ordinary traveller pays 
 3 francs 5 centimes, whilst a workman, for six journeys 
 there and back with his weekly ticket, only pays 2 francs 25 
 centimes. He pays less, therefore, for six journeys than the 
 ordinary traveller for a single journey. What is the result? 
 Thousands and thousands of labourers, not finding a sufficient 
 livelihood in the country, not having ready to hand local 
 ' The Belgian railways are State-owned and State-managed. 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 211 
 
 industries or large farms which can employ them, not finding 
 work in winter since the introduction of threshing-machines, 
 have acquired the habit of going every day to work in towns or 
 industrial centres. I asked the Minister of Railways to supply me 
 with the statistics for workmen's tickets from year to year since 
 1870 j here are the figures which he has kindly furnished : — 
 
 Year. Number of weekly tickets. 
 1870 14,223 
 
 '|7S 193.675 
 
 Jff° 33S.SS6 
 
 looS 667,522 
 
 »|9o 1,018,383 
 
 •°9S 1,759.025 
 
 '897' 2,699,594 
 
 There must be further added to these figures the workmen's 
 tickets issued by the North Belgian company, the local railways, 
 etc, ; add to that the 45,000 agricultural labourers who go off 
 every year to work in foreign countries; and you will come 
 to conclude that over 100,000 Belgian proletarians, while 
 continuing to Uve in the country, have really become industrial 
 proletarians, manual workers, absent during half the year. 
 They have still a strip of land which they own, or, more 
 frequently, rent ; in the statistics they are counted as farmers. 
 In reality they are labourers, proletarians in every sense of 
 the term ; and we have to ask, what, from the point of view 
 of cultivation, have been the effects of such a change. 
 
 On the one hand, foreign competition comes in and lowers 
 rentals to some extent (although in many districts the lowering 
 of rent has not corresponded to the fall in prices), and on the 
 other hand, the labourers go off townwards and work in indus- 
 trial centres, and agricultural labour becomes increasingly rare, 
 and, in virtue of the laws of supply and demand, increasingly 
 dear. The results of this double phenomenon, changes in 
 from the point of view of culture, are strikingly cultivation, 
 apparent in the last agricultural census. But they are not the 
 same in all districts. If, for instance, we take the province of 
 
 ' In 1900 the figure reached was 4,515,214. 
 
MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Luxembourg, the Ardennes district, we note that the number 
 of tiny plots of less than 2 hectares is diminishing, and the 
 number of large farms of over 50 hectares is diminishing no 
 less, while that of middle-sized areas of cultivation is on the 
 increase. What does this mean? Why do the tiny plots 
 diminish? Because, the means of transport being little 
 developed in Luxembourg, the labourers, instead of going off 
 every day into the towns or industrial centres, are obliged to 
 reside there permanently and give up their bit of land. Why 
 do the large farms diminish ? Because agricultural labourers 
 are no longer to be had, because they are very expensive, and 
 because these conditions render it more advantageous to sub- 
 divide cultivation and to create farms of small or moderate 
 size, which are worked by the farmer with the help of his 
 family. Thus industrial capitalism more and more pumps the 
 living forces out of the country, and the result is that in certain 
 districts cultivation by families is developing ; but it is quite 
 otherwise in districts with developed transport facilities, where 
 labourers easily go off to the town and return home every 
 evening. In that case the opposite phenomenon shows itself. 
 In Hainaut, for instance, between 1889 and 1895 small and 
 middle-sized areas diminished, whereas there was an increase 
 of tiny plots cultivated by labourers, agricultural or industrial, 
 and also a very marked increase of large farms (those over 50 
 hectares). If we now consider the country as a whole, the 
 two censuses of 1880 and 1895 supply us with the following 
 figures for comparison : — 
 
 
 18S0. 
 
 1895. 
 
 Acres of cultivation under 50 ares . 
 
 ,, ,, „ from 50 ares to 2 hectares . 
 „ „ „ „ 2 to 10 hectares 
 „ „ „ „ 10 to 50 hectares 
 „ „ „ over 50 hectares 
 
 472,471 
 
 238,092 
 
 158,261 
 
 38,169 
 
 3.403 
 
 458,120 
 
 176.233 
 
 150,586 
 
 32,065 
 
 3.584 
 
 
 910,396 
 
 820,588 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 213 
 
 So there is a diminution under every head except that of large 
 farms, of over 50 hectares. But if the statements of the 
 Minister of Agriculture are to be trusted, this diminution is 
 only apparent so far as concerns areas of less than two 
 hectares : in 1880 there were included in the list very many 
 infinitesimal plots which in 1895 were left out. Conversely, 
 there appears to be no doubt that the number of large areas 
 has perceptibly increased: 3,403 in 1880; 3,584 in 1895. 
 
 Thus we have reached in these last years a turning-point 
 in our agricultural evolution. Till now, the subdivision of 
 areas of cultivation was constantly on the increase, j ^ t i u- 
 Belgium was becoming more and more the land zationof 
 of cultivation on a small, even a minute, scale, aericuiture. 
 For the last fifteen years we see cultivation on the large scale 
 gaining, and farms of over 50 hectares becoming more 
 numerous. This seems to me to result from the fact that 
 agriculture is coming more and more to be an industry like 
 the other industries, which, as a rule, it is advantageous to 
 exploit on a large scale. Certainly for all districts and all 
 kinds of cultivation this is not the case. I readily admit that 
 the question is infinitely more compUcated when it is a matter of 
 cultivation than when it is one of industry, properly so called. 
 All the same, what cannot be disputed is the progressive 
 intensification of agriculture, the development of the use of 
 machinery — in a word, the increase of fixed capital in com- 
 parison with fluctuating {i.e. in comparison with capital for 
 paying manual labour) ; agriculture is being industrialized ; 
 arable land is turned into pasture; we see the multiplication 
 of agricultural industries — distilling, sugar-making, the manu- 
 facture of butter, of chicory, of syrups, etc.; and in conse- 
 quence of this transformation, more and more the population 
 of the rural districts is splitting into two quite distinct classes. 
 You see there a growing proletariate, made up of agricultural 
 labourers, who are the minority ; industrial labourers, who go 
 off daily to work elsewhere ; and what may be called half-and- 
 half labourers, half agricultural, half industrial, working in the 
 
214 
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 sugar factories at certain periods, harvesting at others, going 
 to the collieries in winter, to resume work in the fields in 
 the spring. It is just because of the development of this 
 proletariate that we find in the country districts audiences 
 open to our ideas and favourable to our programme. 
 
 I should like, in conclusion, to point out to you the guiding 
 The Socialist principles of this programme, apologizing for my 
 programme, inroads upon your attention, while keenly regretting 
 that for lack of time I must confine myself to a few short 
 outlines. 
 
 Let me first summarize the considerations which I have 
 submitted to you thus far. Peasant property seems to us 
 Socialism inferior from the productive standpoint to capi- 
 pepty ta" talistic property, while from the distributive stand- 
 land, point it is superior. The capitalistic evolution 
 tends to make it disappear, but Socialism has not to aim at 
 expropriating it. On the other hand. Socialism pronounces a 
 decidedly adverse verdict upon capitalistic property ; and in 
 all our congresses (notably at the International Congress in 
 London) we have agreed unanimously in demanding the 
 collective appropriation of the land, as well as of the other 
 means of production. But when we come to the means of 
 realizing this ideal, the question presents itself differently in 
 different countries. In a country like England, for instance, 
 and above all, like Scotland, where property in land is 
 otherwise concentrated, it is quite natural that theorists who 
 are not even Socialists — bourgeois economists like H. George 
 or Wallace — should demand at once the socialization, national- 
 ization, of the land. As to the means of realizing the change, 
 I will confine myself to outlining the solution suggested by 
 Colins and his school They think that there are reasons 
 for bringing the land into collective ownership before the 
 instruments of labour are brought, and to indemnify the 
 capitalistic landowners they suggest a tax of 25 per cent, 
 on collateral inheritances and testamentary successions, plus a 
 tax (the percentage to be determined) on inheritances which 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 215 
 
 descend in a direct line. The percentage, of course, is 
 immaterial to the theory : the question would need examining 
 in the light of circumstances of time and place ; all I retain at 
 this moment is the root idea of the Colins school, which is to 
 buy up the land with the yield from taxes on inheritance, and 
 to let it out by auction either to individuals or to associations. 
 The Colins system does not imply at this point any transforma- 
 tion of the capitalistic regime as a whole. Capital remains 
 private property ; only the land, the basis of all l^^^ 
 industry and all agriculture, belongs to society col- nationai- 
 lectively, and the sections of it are let to individuals * °"' 
 or associations for the profit of all, instead of, as now, for that of 
 a few landowners. There would be only one alteration ; the 
 farmer, instead of paying rent for land to an individual, would 
 pay it to society as a whole, and this payment would help to 
 reduce all the burdens which weigh on the members of society. 
 The receipt of farm and other rents by the State would 
 correspondingly lower taxation. 
 
 According to Cohns, this expropriation of the landowner 
 should come before the expropriation of capitalists properly 
 so-called; but most modem SociaUsts, and notably those of 
 Marx's school, think this procedure a mistake. Their view is 
 that landed property represents but a comparatively inconsider- 
 able part of social capital as a whole. In this opinion the 
 first steps should be taken against the great industries which 
 are ripe for collectivism — those which already form a virtual 
 monopoly and, in a word, realize the maximum of capitalistic 
 concentration. Herr Kautsky, in the book which he has 
 recently published on the agrarian question {Die Agrar- 
 frage), flatly condemns the resumption of the land by the 
 State under a capitalist rigime. His standpoint is pre-eminently 
 German, and he thmks that in Germany the substitution of 
 the State for the landlords would be a permanent menace to 
 public liberty. Evidently the same danger does not exist, or 
 at least does not exist in the same degree, in countries with 
 liberal or democratic institutions like Switzerland or England ; 
 
2i6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and therefore, wherever ownership is concentrated in a few 
 hands, we see many theorists and reformers declaring for the 
 immediate sociaUzation of the soil and the agencies of Nature. 
 As for the particular case of Belgium, there are at any rate 
 some portions of the land which ought, without delay, to 
 become the property of society. Thus, for example, many 
 bourgeois economists themselves agree with us in recognizing 
 that the ownership of the forests ought to belong to the 
 State rather than to private persons. So, too, with the com- 
 mon lands, which many good thinkers who are not SociaUsts 
 would like to see conserved, extended, and put to good use. 
 Recently even our Minister of Agriculture has objected to the 
 squandering of common lands, and has declared that in future 
 the Government will no longer authorize parishes to ahenate 
 them. 
 
 Lastly, what would, from the cultivator's point of view, 
 present very great advantages, would be the taking over of the 
 Sociaiiza- great agricultural industries, and notably of the 
 euitupal!^'"' ^^^^^ which are manifestly evolving in the coUec- 
 industries. tivist direction — dairying, distilling, and sugar- 
 making. 
 
 As for dairying, the evolution is quite marked.' Co- 
 operative societies are formed, grouped, federated; recently 
 they have founded the Dairy Association, which 
 you all know ; and it may be foreseen that we shall 
 shortly witness the formation of a vast trust, the " Belgian 
 Dairies," which will be organized on co-operative, instead of 
 capitalistic foundations. If this evolution goes on in its 
 present form, and capitalism does not get possession of the 
 dairying industry, it will be an interesting example of spon- 
 taneous collectivism, of the socialization of industry realized 
 
 ' In 1899 there were 298 co-operative dairies in Belgium, with 34,205 
 members ; in 1900 the figures had risen to 356 and 40,706. In the latter 
 year the members per society averaged 114; the sales per member, 510 
 francs (;^20 Ss.) ; the number of cows kept per member, 271 (showing 
 what small cultivators the co-operators are). 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 217 
 
 by the people interested, with State advice and intervention. 
 If it is otherwise, and capitalism gets the better of co-operative 
 industry, we shall then be confronted by the problem of ex- 
 propriation, which confronts us in the case of the sugar 
 factories and distilleries. 
 
 I need not demonstrate to you what an advantage it 
 would be for country people to be delivered from the capi- 
 talistic monopoly, with which a small number of y ^. 
 sugar manufacturers burden them. Further, the sugar 
 workers of the sugar factories will obtain the •"'^^^fy- 
 advantages which the State's employees secure. Nor can it 
 be doubted that, from the tax-payer's point of view, it would 
 be wholly an advantage that the profits of the sugar industry, 
 instead of belonging to a few, should be reaped by the whole 
 community. Perhaps it will be objected that the sugar in- 
 dustry's golden age is over, and that it needs, in order to hold 
 its ground, fiscal privileges, said to be conferred on it much 
 less on behalf of the capitalists interested than on behalf of 
 agriculturists. But if so, it is one more reason for entrusting 
 the guardianship of agricultural interests to the community 
 itself, rather than to private individuals, who too often take 
 advantage of it in order to exploit the cultivators. 
 
 In the case of the distilleries the question becomes still 
 more simple ; for, thanks to M. de Smet de Naeyer, the position 
 of the distilleries is such that for some months we ni. The 
 have witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of the distilleries, 
 distillers themselves asking to be saved by being bought out. 
 In short, for agricultural as for all other industries, the 
 concentration of capital leads, we believe, to the need of 
 socializing the means of production. 
 
 But while that is our ideal, and we regard collectivism as 
 the final result, the logical outcome, of the industrial and 
 agricultural evolution, we at the same time take our stand for 
 immediate measures, and energetically demand that some- 
 thing be done to protect the agricultural labourer, who, in the 
 society of to-day, might be called "the man whom no one 
 
2i8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 remembers." Some time after the disturbances of March, 
 1886, the former deputy for Waremme, the late M. Cartuy- 
 ppotection vels, said to the Chamber: "The industrial 
 "uUupai workmen obtain protection by law, and on all sides 
 laboupeps. suggestions are made for measures to better their 
 lot. Why? Because they show their teeth; because they 
 protest ; because they organize. But what has beeii done for 
 the agricultural labourers? Nothing." These words, which 
 were only too true fifteen years ago, may be said again to-day. 
 We have in the Chamber an agricultural group which ener- 
 getically defends the interests of the large farmers and the 
 landowners. As a rule, the Conservatives neglect the interests 
 of the agricultural labourers ; but it is they to whom the 
 Socialists before all appeal, and whom they especially aspire 
 to win over. I know that among these workers, bowed 
 beneath the weight of immemorial domination, propaganda 
 will be difficult. They are not like the industrial workman, 
 the proletarian completely sundered from the instruments 
 with which he works, robbed of the prospect of ever getting 
 a share in the ownership of the means of production, con- 
 demned to remain a proletarian for ever, and for that very 
 reason making his ideal, not the acquisition of private property, 
 but the conquest of social property. On the contrary, in the 
 agricultural labourer there are, so to say, two contradictory 
 spirits : the spirit of the small peasant who has still his plot 
 of land, owned or rented, and the spirit of the proletarian 
 working on a capitalist's account. The first makes him a 
 Conservative, inclined to religion and resignation ; the second 
 makes him accessible to Socialism ; and the latter only over- 
 comes the former in so far as capitalism overcomes the 
 primitive forms of ownership and cultivation. 
 
 The driving force in this transformation is the development 
 Revolution °^ industry. It is industry which has caused the 
 effected by., common land to disappear, which has killed by 
 Industry. j^g competition the small industries of the home 
 and the farm, which has provoked the agricultural crisis 
 
E. VANDERVELDE 219 
 
 by flooding our markets with foreign corn, which has drawn 
 off to the town (the " cuttle-fish town ") the great mass of rural 
 labourers ; but it is industry also which is rationalizing agricul- 
 ture, perfectingits methods — in short, revolutionizing agricultural 
 technique. Bebel once said, " Wherever a factory chimney rises, 
 there you will see Socialists being made." In the same way 
 wherever agricultural capitalism develops and spUts the popu- 
 lation of the countrysides into two classes. Socialism follows 
 capitalism like a shadow, and wins over, not only this rural pro- 
 letariate which bears the whole weight of our present society on its 
 shoulders, but also the small cultivators and landowners, whose 
 position is often more wretched than that of the labourers them- 
 selves. And lastly, just as industrial Socialism has won over 
 individuals in the bourgeois class who had no personal interest 
 in fighting the people's battle, so we strongly hope that agri- 
 cultural Socialism will enter the heads of many large farmers, 
 who will imderstand that parasitic ownership must disappear 
 and they themselves be set free when their labourers are. 
 
XVI 
 
 SOCIALISM AND AGRICULTURE AS OFFICI- 
 ALLY REGARDED BY THE GERMAN 
 SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY 
 
 Resolution adopted by the Frankfort Congress 
 (1894) ON THE Agrarian Question 
 
 This resolution was moved by G. von Vollmar and Dr. Bruno 
 Schoenlank. Its notable feature is its idea that Socialism should 
 take sides with the peasant proprietor against the for^FcRiSKmg 
 him. 
 
 The agrarian question is the product of the modern economic 
 system. The more home agriculture becomes dependent on 
 the world-market and the international competition of all 
 agricultural countries, the more it enters the sphere of influence 
 of capitalistic production of commodities, banking, and usury, 
 the more quickly is the agrarian question aggravated into the 
 agrarian crisis. 
 
 In Prussian Germany the agricultural employing class, which 
 is not distinct in essence from the great industrial capitalists, 
 fights by the side of the rural nobility. This nobility is only 
 maintained artificially by bounties, protective duties, rebates 
 on exports, and privileges in respect of taxation. In spite of 
 all, the Junker-farming^ east of the Elbe is largely over- 
 
 ' The Junkers are the Prussian squirearchy, who owe their dispro- 
 portionate political influence to the fact that they supply the Prussian army 
 with its officers, 
 
 220 
 
THE GERMAN PARTY 221 
 
 indebted through bad agriculture, partition of inheritances, and 
 arrears of purchase-money, and its doom is sealed. 
 
 To this must be added the constantly accentuated cleavage 
 between the great landowners and the class of small peasants. 
 The latter is tottering, burdened with military service and 
 heavy taxes, hampered by mortgages and personal debts, and 
 oppressed on all sides. For it protective duties are only an 
 empty show. This fiscal policy cramps the purchasing power 
 of the labouring class, and restricts the peasant's market. The 
 peasant is becoming proletarized. 
 
 On the other hand, the class opposition between rural em- 
 ployers and rural workers is developed more and more clearly. 
 From this has resulted a rural working-class. It is bound by 
 feudal laws, which deny to its members the right of combination, 
 and place them under the " Ordinance of Servants," while they 
 no longer enjoy the old patriarchal relations, which gave them, as 
 belonging to their masters, a definitely assured existence. The 
 intermediate classes, day-labourers with small holdings, dwarf 
 peasants who are driven to wage-earning to supplement their 
 resources, sink, in spite of all apparent reforms, into the class 
 of the rural proletariate. With uncertainty of gain, wage- 
 pressure and bad management, and the increase of travelling 
 labourers, the cleavage between landed capital and rural 
 labour grows ; and the class-consciousness of the rural worker 
 awakens. 
 
 Hence the great need that the Social Democracy shall occupy 
 itself in the most serious manner with the agrarian question. 
 The preliminary for this is a detailed knowledge of the agri- 
 cultural situation. As in Germany this varies — technically, 
 economically, and socially, our propaganda must match it 
 and be varied to suit the peculiarities of the country people. 
 
 The agrarian question, as a necessary ingredient of the 
 social question, will only be finally solved when the land, with 
 all the means of work, is given back to the producers, who now 
 as wage-workers or small peasantry cultivate it in the service 
 of capitalists. But at present the necessitous condition of the 
 
222 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 rural worker must be alleviated by fundamental reforms. The 
 immediate object of the party is to formulate a special pro- 
 gramme of agrarian policy, explaining and completing the 
 immediate demands of the Erfurt Programme, which are very 
 advantageous for the peasants as well as for the country 
 labourers, in an exposition adapted to the comprehension of 
 the rural population. 
 
 The law protecting peasants ought to safeguard the peasant, 
 whether as taxpayer, debtor, or agriculturist. 
 
 The law protecting rural labourers should afford the rural 
 labourer the right of combination and of public meeting; 
 should place him on a level with the industrial workers 
 (removal of the Ordinance of Servants) ; and by special 
 protective social legislatfon "(as" to wbfk-time, conditions of 
 work and inspectorates) should safeguard him from unbridled 
 exploitation. 
 
 A special Agrarian Committee is to lay its proposals before 
 the next Congress. 
 
 The Committee appointed was a very strong and representative 
 one. It divided Germany into three areas, and itself into three sub- 
 committees, who drew up for the Breslau Congress (1895) the 
 following three draft prog^rammes :— 
 
 Draft Programme of the Sub-committee for 
 North Germany. 
 
 The sub-committee consisted of Bebel, Liebltnecht, Molkenbuhr, 
 Schippel, and Schoenlank j the area which they considered was that 
 east of the Elbe. 
 
 1. Organization by the (Imperial) State of loans on mort- 
 gage. Interest on loans to cover costs only. 
 
 2. Organization by the (Imperial) State of the insurance 
 of movable and immovable property against fire, hail, or 
 floods, and the insurance of cattle. 
 
 3. Construction and maintenance of public streets, roads, 
 and watercourses by the (Imperial) State. 
 
THE GERMAN PARTY 223 
 
 4. The maintenance of common property (common lands) 
 and common rights over water, woods, and pasture. 
 
 5. Transformation of property in mortmain, of lands 
 belonging to institutions and churches, into public property. 
 Abolition of fideicommissa. 
 
 6. Founding of compulsory co-operative societies for 
 improvements, irrigation, and draining j and support of these 
 co-operative societies by State loans. 
 
 7. The establishment of public technical agricultural 
 schools and experimental stations, and the holding of regular 
 lectures upon agriculture. Teaching, school apphances, and 
 maintenance free. 
 
 8. Lowering of the rates for personal and goods traffic. 
 
 9. Transference to the public of all private forests. Free 
 sporting rights on lands owned or rented. Full compensation 
 for all damages done in hunting and by game. 
 
 10. Chambers of Agriculture, where all persons engaged 
 in agriculture shall be on an equal footing. 
 
 11. Agricultural arbitration courts for the settlement of 
 all disputes arising out of conditions of wages, work, or 
 service. 
 
 12. Compulsory insurance against sickness of workmen 
 and servants, and also of independent cultivators whose 
 income does not exceed 2000 marks (;^ioo). 
 
 13. Veterinary attendance and medicines without charge. 
 
 Draft Programme of the Sub-committee for 
 Central Germany. 
 
 The sub-committee was composed of Bock, Hug;, Katzenstein, 
 Schulze, and Dr. Quarck. The area examined included Saxony, 
 Thuringia, Oldenburg, Brunswick, Westphalia, and Hanover. 
 
 After the concluding section of the Erfurt Programme the 
 following is to be added : — 
 
 In the interest of the small peasants and rural labourers, 
 as well as to preserve and develop agricultural production ; 
 
Z24 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 1. Retention and increase of public property in land 
 (every kind of State and communal property — municipal 
 lands, commons, common forest, etc.) under control of the 
 popularly elected bodies ; abolition of all laws and ordinances 
 promoting sub-division and alienation ; communes to be given 
 a right of pre-emption in respect of the lands of bankrupts sold 
 by auction. 
 
 2. Farming of their domains by the State and communes 
 on their own account ; or lease of them to co-operative asso- 
 ciations of agricultural labourers or peasants farming per- 
 sonally, under State and communal inspection j clearing and 
 improvement of domains; creation of irrigation works; 
 encouragement of forestry, tillage, horticulture, and grass 
 culture; improvement of cattle; care of water-supply and 
 rural transport; establishment and support of agricultural 
 colleges ; compulsory continuation schools, and model farms, 
 with instruction and materials provided free of charge by the 
 State or the communes. 
 
 3. Nationalization of mortgages and landed debts. 
 
 4. Nationalization of every branch of agricultural insurance ; 
 maximum extension of this to all branches of work ; gratuitous 
 veterinary service ; and State grants to those impoverished by 
 devastating natural occurrences. 
 
 5. Maintenance and extension of the existing rights of 
 forestry and turbary, to be equally shared by all members of a 
 commune ; right of purchasing leafage, firewood, and timber 
 from State and communal woods at fixed prices; prevention 
 of or, as the case may be, full compensation for damage done 
 by game ; sport to be free, and harmful animals to be exter- 
 minated. 
 
 6. Restriction and gradual abolition of the dependence of 
 farm produce upon middlemen, by support of the co-operative 
 system and purchase of produce needed for public purposes, 
 by preference from the producers. 
 
 7. Removal of the land-tax. 
 
 8. Right of the tenant farmer, if the net yield persistently 
 
THE GERMAN PARTY 225 
 
 deteriorates, or severe natural damages are incurred, to demand 
 the reduction of his rent by an agricultural arbitration court. 
 
 9. Extension of legislation protecting workmen, and the 
 right of combination, to agriculture; State supervision of all 
 agricultural businesses ; rural arbitration courts ; investigation 
 and regulation of rural conditions of employment and work 
 by an imperial Agricultural Department, district agricultural 
 bureaux, and chambers of agriculture. 
 
 TO. Abolition of all public privileges connected with 
 private possession of land, and suppression of property- 
 districts. 
 
 Draft Programme of the Sub-committee for 
 South Germany. 
 
 The sub-committee consisted of Bassler, Birk, Eduard David, 
 Geek, and Von Vollmar ; the area which it examined included Baden, 
 Bavaria, the Palatinate, and Wiirtemberg. 
 
 In regard to the agrarian question, the Social Demo- 
 cratic party of Germany makes the following immediate 
 demands : — 
 
 1. Systematic organization of national food-supply by the 
 State, which is progressively to increase its influence over 
 agricultural production and the marketing of its produce. 
 
 2. Prohibition of the sale of public property in land 
 (belonging to communes, corporations, or the State). 
 
 3. Owners of giant properties (latifundid) to be expro- 
 priated; the larger estates to be subject to the rules of the law 
 protecting industrial workers, as well as to the State-inspection 
 of its machinery and working. 
 
 4. Abolition of all magisterial functions connected with 
 landed property and other privileges, such as independent pro- 
 perty districts, privileges on representative bodies, patronage, 
 
 fidei-commissa, etc. 
 
 5. Progressive nationalization of debts secured on land, and 
 the whole credit system, with a lowering of the. rate of interest. 
 
 Q 
 
2z6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 The State to acquire rights over agricultural products. Peasant 
 properties sold by auction on bankruptcy to be purchased up 
 to the limit of their appraised value by the communes; the 
 procedure may be proposed by the debtor himself, to whom, 
 if solvent, the land may be leased. 
 
 6. Agricultural land owned by the State to be applied to 
 the establishment of model farms, to the enlargement of the 
 property of communes, and also to -the leasing of land at its 
 economic rent to lessees cultivating it personally. Such allot- 
 ments are to be calculated to provide the cultivator's family 
 with their entire subsistence. 
 
 7. Establishment of extensive agricultural colleges in con- 
 nection with the model farms, for gratuitous technical education. 
 
 8. State loans to be given to communes to purchase and 
 manage estates of tenure, to reclaim wastes, to improve the 
 soil, the breed of cattle, and all other branches of farming, and 
 to encourage co-operation under State inspection. 
 
 9. Purchase of the agricultural products required for the 
 provisioning of public institutions, of suitable quality, direct 
 from the producers. 
 
 10. Regulation of private contracts of tenancy, according 
 to the value of the yield from time to time, and compensation 
 for outlay incurred by tenant farmers for the improvement of 
 the soil. 
 
 11. NationaUzation of every branch of agricultural insur- 
 ance, and State intervention in cases of impoverishment through 
 devastating natural occurrences. 
 
 12. Uncurtailed maintenance of existing rights over forests 
 and heaths. Prevention of, or, as the case may be, full com- 
 pensation for damage done by game. 
 
 13. Complete legal equalization of agricultural labourers 
 with industrial wage-workers. Settlement of all disputes arising 
 out of conditions of work by arbitration courts, to be composed 
 in equal parts of workers and employers. 
 
 14. Bureaux and Chambers of Agriculture, in which pro- 
 prietors, tenants, and workers participate on an equal footing, 
 
THE GERMAN PARTY 227 
 
 to investigate and regulate conditions of work, wages, tenancy, 
 and industry, and to represent all professional interests. 
 
 All these draft progrEimmes, but especially the South German one 
 inspired by Von Vollmar, encountered extreme opposition as soon 
 as they were published, because of their attempt to prop the small 
 independent cultivators. At the Breslau Congress every compromise 
 or modification of this idea vras rejected, and the foUovring resolution, 
 moved by Kautsky, became the official expression of the party's 
 attitude. 
 
 The draft Agrarian Programme proposed by the Agrarian 
 Commission is to be rejected, because it sets before the eyes 
 of the peasantry the improvement of their position, that is, the 
 confirmation of their private ownership ; it proclaims the 
 interest of agriculture in the modern social system to be an 
 interest of the proletariate ; and yet the interest of agriculture, 
 like that of industry, is, under the rule of private property in 
 the means of production, an interest of the possessor of the 
 means of production, who exploits the proletariate. Further, 
 the draft Agrarian Programme suggests new weapons for the 
 State of the exploiting class, and thereby renders the class-war 
 of the proletariate more difficult ; and, lastly, it sets before the 
 capitalistic State objects which can only be usefully carried 
 out by a State in which the proletariate has captured political 
 power. 
 
 The Congress recognizes that agriculture has its pecuUar 
 laws, differing from those of industry, which must be studied 
 and considered if the Social Democracy is to develop an 
 extended operation in rural districts. It therefore suggests to 
 the Committee of the party that, having regard to the impetus 
 already given by the Agrarian Committee, it might entrust a 
 number of suitable persons with the task of undertaking a 
 fundamental study of the matter available concerning German 
 agrarian conditions, and publishing the results of this study in 
 a series of articles as a " Collection of works on agrarian policy 
 by the Social Democratic party of Germany." 
 
 The Committee of the party is fully empowered to make 
 
228 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the necessary expenditure to enable the comrades entrusted 
 with the work in question to complete their task.' 
 
 ' Little has since been done officially ; but two important works have 
 appeared, Kautsky's Die Agrarfrage (1898), against peasant proprietorship, 
 and Dr. Eduard David's Socialismus und Lundwirthschaft (1903), in favour 
 of it. Both writers have kept up, with others, a considerable debate in the 
 party's journals. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE FREE TRADE CONTROVERSY IN RELA- 
 TION TO INDUSTRIAL PARASITISM AND 
 THE POLICY OF A NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 By Sidney and Beatrice Webb 
 
 This striking^ dissertation appeared as an appendix to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Webb's Industrial Democracy (1897). For the subject, cp. 
 Introduction, pp. xxix-xxxi ; and for the authors, cp. supra, p. 90. 
 
 The existence of parasitic trades supplies the critic of inter- 
 national Free Trade with an argument which has not yet been 
 adequately met. To the enlightened patriot, ambitious for 
 the utmost possible development of his country, it has always 
 seemed a drawback to Free Trade, that it tended, to a greater 
 or lesser extent, to limit his fellow-countrymen's choice of 
 occupation. Thus, one community, possessing great mineral 
 wealth, might presently find a large proportion of its population 
 driven underground ; another might see itself doomed to be- 
 come the mere stock-yard and slaughter-house of the world ; 
 whilst the destiny of a third might be to have its countryside de- 
 populated, and the bulk of its citizens engaged in the manufac- 
 ture, in the slum tenements of great cities, of cheap boots and 
 ready-made clothing for the whole habitable globe. To this 
 contention the answer has usually been that the specialization 
 of national function, whilst never likely to be carried to an 
 extreme, was economically advantageous all round. Such a 
 reply ignores the possibility of industrial parasitism. If 
 
 229 
 
2 30 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 unfettered freedom of trade ensured that each nation would 
 retain the industry in which its efficiency was highest, and its 
 potentiaUties were greatest, this international "division of 
 labour " might be accepted as the price to be paid for getting 
 every commodity with the minimum of labour. But under 
 unfettered freedom of competition there is, as we have seen, 
 no such guarantee. Within a trade, one district may drive all 
 the rest out of the business, not by reason of any genuine 
 advantage in productive efficiency, but merely because the 
 workers in the successful district get some aid from the rates 
 or from other sources. Within a community, too, unless care 
 be taken to prevent any kind of parasitism, one trade or one 
 process may flourish and expand at the expense of all the rest, 
 not because it is favoured by natural advantages or acquired 
 capacity, but merely by reason of some sort of "bounty." 
 Under Free Trade the international pressure for cheapness is 
 always tending to select, as the speciality of each nation in 
 the world-market, those of its industries in which the employers 
 can produce most cheaply. If each trade were self-supporting, 
 the increased efficiency of the regulated trades would bring 
 these easily to the top, notwithstanding (or rather, in conse- 
 quence of) the relatively high wages, short hours, and good 
 sanitary conditions enjoyed by their operatives. If, however, 
 the employers in some trades can obtain labour partially 
 subsisted from other sources, or if they are free to use up in 
 their service not only the daily renewed energy, but also the 
 capital value of successive relays of deteriorating workers, they 
 may well be able to export more cheaply than the self-support, 
 ing trades, to the detriment of these, and of the community 
 itself. And this, as we have seen, is the direct result of the 
 very freedom of Individual Bargaining on which the Free 
 Traders rely. Indeed, if we follow out to its logical conclusion 
 the panacea of unlimited freedom of competitive industry both 
 within the country and without, we arrive at a state of things 
 in which, out of all the various trades that each community 
 pursues, those might be "selected" for indefinite expansion, 
 
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 231 
 
 and for the supply of the world-market, in which the employers 
 enjoyed the advantage of the greatest bounty; those, for 
 instance, which were carried on by operatives assisted from 
 other classes, or, still worse, those supplied with successive 
 relays of necessitous wage-earners standing at such a dis- 
 advantage in the sale of their labour that they obtained in return 
 wages so low and conditions so bad as to be positively insuffi- 
 cient to maintain them permanently in health and efficiency. 
 Instead of a world in which each community devoted itself 
 to what it could do best, we should get, with the " sweated 
 trades," a world in which each community did that which 
 reduced its people to the lowest degradation. Hence the 
 Protectionist is right when he asserts that, assuming unfettered 
 individual competition within each community, international 
 free trade may easily tend, not to a good, but to an exceedingly 
 vicious international division of labour. 
 
 The criticism is not dealt with, so far as we are aware, in 
 any of the pubUcations of the Cobden Club, nor by the 
 economic defenders of the Free Trade position. Thus 
 Professor Bastable, in his lucid exposition of The Theory of 
 International Trade (2nd edition, London, 1897), assumes 
 throughout that the prices of commodities in the home 
 market, and thus their relative export, wiU vary according to 
 the actual " cost of production," instead of merely according 
 to their " expenses of production," to the capitalist entrepreneur. 
 Yet it is evidently not the sum of human efforts and sacrifices 
 involved in the production that affects the import or export 
 trade, but simply the expenses that production involves to the 
 capitalist. The absence of any reference to the possibility of 
 the cheapness being due to underpaid (because subsidized or 
 deteriorating) labour, enables Professor Bastable optimistically 
 to infer (p. 18) that " the rule is that each nation exports those 
 commodities for the production of which it is specially suited." 
 Similarly Lord Farrer, in TTie State in its delation to Trade 
 (London, 1883), when stating the argument against Protection, 
 simply assumes (p. 134) that the industry for which the country 
 
232 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 is specially suited pays higher wages than others. "One 
 thing is certain, viz. that we cannot buy the French or Swiss 
 ribbons without making and selling something which we can 
 make better and cheaper than ribbons, and which consequently 
 brings more profit to our manufacturer, and better wages to our 
 workmen." And Mr. B. R. Wise, seeking in his Industrial 
 Freedom to revise and restate the Free Trade argument in the 
 light of practical experience, is driven to warn his readers that 
 " it cannot be too often repeated that the competition of 
 abstract political economy — that competition through which 
 alone political economy has any pretension to the character 
 of a science— is a competition between equal units,'' . . . and 
 nothing could be further from the truth than to suppose that 
 " free competition " in the labour market bore any resemblance 
 to the competition between equal units that the current 
 expositions of Free Trade theory required.' 
 
 But though the existence of parasitic trades knocks the 
 bottom out of the argument for laisser faire, it adds no weight 
 to the case for a protective tariff. What the protectionist is 
 concerned about is the contraction of some of his country's 
 industries ; the evil revealed by our analysis is the expansion 
 of certain others. The advocate of a protective tariff aims at 
 excluding imports ; the opponent of " sweating,'' on the other 
 hand, sees with regret the rapid growth of particular exports, 
 which imply the extension within the country of its most highly 
 subsidized or most parasitic industries. Hence, whatever 
 ingenious arguments may be found in favour of a protective 
 tariff,^ such a remedy fails altogether to cope with this 
 
 ' B. R. Wise, Industrial Freedom (London, 1882), pp. 13, 15. 
 
 ^ For any adequate presentment of the case against international free 
 trade, the student must turn to Germany or the United States, notably to 
 Friedrich List, The National System of Political Economy, published in 
 Germany in 1841, and translated by Sampson Lloyd (London, 1885), and 
 the works of H. C. Carey. The arguments of List and Carey were 
 popularized in America by such writers as Professor R. E. Thompson, 
 Political Economy with Especial Reference to the Industrial Histojy of 
 Nations (Philadelphia, 1882) ; H. M. Hoyt, Protection and Free Trade 
 
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 233 
 
 particular evil. If the expansion of the industries which England 
 pursues to the greatest economic advantage — say, for instance, 
 coal mining and shipbuilding, textile manufacture and machine- 
 making — is being checked, this is not because coal and ships, 
 textiles and machinery are being imported into England from 
 abroad, but because other less advantageous industries, within 
 England itself, by reason of being favoured with some kind of 
 bounty, have secured the use of some of the nation's brains 
 and capital, and some of its export trade. This diversion 
 would clearly not be counteracted by putting an import duty 
 on the small and exceptional amounts of coal and shipping, 
 textiles and machinery that we actually import, for this would 
 leave unchecked the expansion of the subsidized trades, which 
 if the subsidy were only large enough, might go on absorbing 
 more and more of the nation's brains and capital, and more 
 and more of its export trade. To put it concretely, England 
 might find its manufactures and its exports composed, in 
 increasing proportions, of slop clothing, cheap furniture and 
 knives, and the whole range of products of the sweated trades, 
 to the detriment of its present staple industries of cotton and 
 coal, ships and machinery. In the same way, every other 
 country might find its own manufactures and its own exports 
 increasingly made up of the products of its own parasitic trades. 
 In short, the absolute exclusion by each country of the imports 
 competing with its own products would not, any more than 
 Free Trade itself, prevent the expansion within the country of 
 those industries which afforded to its wage-earners the worst 
 conditions of employment^ 
 
 the Scientific Validity and Economic Operation of Defensive Duties in the 
 United States, 3rd edition (New York, 1886) ; whilst another line has been 
 taken by Francis Bowen, American Political Economy . The whole position 
 has been restated by Professor Patten, in Tlie Economic Basis of Protection 
 (Philadelphia, 1890), and other suggestive works which deserve more 
 attention in England. 
 
 ' It is unnecessary to notice the despairing suggestion that a protective 
 duty should be placed on the products of the sweated trades themselves. 
 But these, as we have seen (if they are really parasitic industries like the 
 
234 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 A dim inkling of this result of international competition is 
 at the back of recent proposals for the international application 
 of the Device of the Common Rule. During the past seven 
 years statesmen have begun to feel their way towards an 
 international uniformity of factory legislation, so as to make 
 all cotton mills, for instance, work identical hours, and work- 
 men are aspiring to an international Trade Unionism, by 
 means of which, for example, the coalminers, cotton-operatives, 
 glass-workers, or dock-labourers of the world might simul- 
 taneously move for better conditions. If, indeed, we could 
 arrive at an International Minimum of education and sanitation, 
 leisure and wages, below which no country would permit any 
 section of its manual workers to be employed in any trade 
 whatsoever, industrial parasitism would be a thing of the past. 
 But internationalism of this sort — a " zoUverein based on a 
 universal Factory Act and Fair Wages clause " — is obviously 
 Utopian. What is not so generally understood, either by 
 statesmen or by Trade Unionists, is that international uni- 
 formity of conditions itithin a particular trade, which is all 
 that is ever contemplated, would do little or nothing to remedy 
 the evil of industrial parasitism. In this matter, as in others, a 
 man's worst foes are those of his own hoasehold. Let us 
 imagine, for instance, that, by an international Factory Act, all 
 the cotton mills in the world were placed upon a uniform basis 
 of hours and child-labour, sanitation, and precautions against 
 accidents. Let us carry the uniformity even a stage further, 
 and imagine what is impossible, an international uniformity of 
 wage in all cotton mills. All this would in no way prevent a 
 
 wholesale clothing manufacture, and not merely self-supporting but un- 
 progressive industries like English agriculture), will usually be exporting 
 trades, not subject to the competition of foreign imports. Merely to put an 
 import duty on the odds and ends of foreign-made clothing or cheap knives 
 that England imports would in no way strengthen the strategic position, as 
 against the employer, of the sweated outworkers of East London or Sheffield, 
 or render the respectable young women of Leeds less eager to be taken on 
 at a pocket-money wage in the well-appointed clothing factories of that 
 city. 
 
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 235 
 
 diversion of the nation's brams and capital away from cotton 
 manufacture to some other industry, in which, hy reason of a 
 subsidy or bounty, the employer stood at a greater relative 
 advantage towards the home or foreign consumer. The 
 country having the greatest natural advantages and technical 
 capacity for cotton manufacture would doubtless satisfy the 
 great bulk of the world's demand for cotton goods. But, if 
 there existed within that same country any trades carried on 
 by parasitic labour, or assisted by any kind of bounty, it would 
 obtain less of the cotton trade of the world than would other- 
 wise be the case ; the marginal business in cotton would tend 
 to be abandoned to the next most efficient country, in order 
 that some brains and capital might, to the economic loss of 
 the nation and of the world, take advantage of the subsidy 
 or bounty.^ We see, therefore, that even an international 
 uniformity of conditions within a particular trade would not, 
 in face of industrial parasitism at home, prevent the advan- 
 tageously situated country from losing a portion of this uniformly 
 regulated trade. The parasitic trades have, in fact, upon the 
 international distribution of industry, an effect strictly analo- 
 gous to that which they have upon the home trade. By ceding 
 as a bribe to the consumer the bounty or subsidy which they 
 receive^ they cause the capital, brains, and labour of the world 
 to be distributed, in the aggregate, in a less productive way 
 than would otherwise have been the case. 
 
 We can now see that the economists of the middle of the 
 century only taught, and the Free Trade statesmen only 
 learnt, one-half of their lesson. They were so much taken up 
 with the idea of removing the fiscal barriers between nations 
 that they failed to follow up the other part of their own con- 
 ception, the desirability of getting rid of bounties of every 
 kind. M'Culloch and Nassau Senior, Cobden and Bright, 
 realized clearly enough that the grant of money aid to a 
 
 ' This hypothetical case is, we believe, not unlike the actual condition 
 of the cotton manufacture in the United Kingdom at the present time, in 
 spite of the absence of international uniformity. 
 
236 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 particular industry out of the rates or taxes enabled that 
 industry to secure more of the nation's brains and capital, and 
 more of the world's trade, than was economically advan- 
 tageous. They even understood that the use of unpaid slave 
 labour constituted just such a bounty as a rate in aid of wages. 
 But they never clearly recognized that the employment of 
 children, the overwork of women, or the payment of wages 
 insufiScient for the maintenance of the operative in full indus- 
 trial efficiency stood, economically, on the same footing. If 
 the object of " Free Trade '' is to promote such a distribution 
 of capital, brains, and labour among countries and among 
 industries, as will result in the greatest possible production, 
 with the least expenditure of human efforts and sacrifices, the 
 factory legislation of Robert Owen and Lord Shaftesbury 
 formed as indispensable a part of the Free Trade movement 
 as the tariff reforms of Cobden and Bright. " During that 
 period," wrote the Duke of Argyll of the nineteenth century,* 
 " two great discoveries have been made in the Science of 
 Government : the one is the immense advantage of abolishing 
 restrictions upon Trade ; the other is the absolute necessity 
 of imposing restrictions on labour. . . . And so the Factory 
 Acts, instead of being excused as exceptional, and pleaded 
 for as justified only under extraordinary conditions, ought 
 to be recognized as in truth the first legislative recognition of 
 a great Natural Law, quite as important as Freedom of Trade, 
 and which, like this last, was yet destined to claim for itself 
 wider and wider application." 
 
 Seen in this light, the proposal for the systematic enforce- 
 ment, throughout each country, of its own National Minimum 
 of education, sanitation, leisure, and wages, becomes a neces- 
 sary completion of the Free Trade policy. Only by enforcing 
 such a minimum on all its industries can a nation prevent the 
 evil expansion of its parasitic trades being enormously aggra- 
 vated by its international trade. And there is no advantage in 
 this National Minimum being identical or uniform throughout 
 ' The Reign of Law (London, 1867), pp. 367, 399. 
 
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 237 
 
 the world. Paradoxical as it may seem to the practical man, a 
 country enforcing a relatively high National Minimum would 
 not lose its export trade to other countries having lower con- 
 ditions, any morej indeed, than a country in which a high 
 Standard of Life, spontaneously exists, loses its trade to others 
 in which a standard is lower. If the relatively high National 
 Minimum caused a proportionate increase in the productive 
 efficiency in the community, it would obviously positively 
 strengthen its command of the world market. But even if 
 the level of the National Minimum were, by democratic 
 pressure, forced up further or more rapidly than was com- 
 pensated for by an equivalent increase in national efficiency, so 
 that the expenses of production to the capitalist employer 
 became actually higher than those in other countries, this 
 would not stop (or even restrict the total of) our exports. 
 " General low wages,'' emphatically declare the economists, 
 "never caused any country to undersell its rivals, nor did 
 general high wages ever hinder it from doing so." ' So long 
 as we continued to desire foreign products, and therefore to 
 import them in undiminished quantity, enough exports would 
 continue to be sent abroad to discharge our international 
 indebtedness. We should, it is true, not get our tea and 
 foodstuffs, or whatever else we imported, so cheaply as we 
 now do J the consumer of foreign goods would find, indeed, 
 that these had risen in price, just as English goods had. If 
 we ignore the intervention of currency, and imagine foreign 
 trade to be actually conducted, as it is virtually, by a system 
 of barter, we shall understand both this rise of price of foreign 
 goods, and the continued export of English goods, even when 
 they are all dearer than the corresponding foreign products. 
 For the English importing firms, having somehow to discharge 
 their international indebtedness, and finding no English products 
 which they can export at a profit, will be driven to export some 
 even at a loss — a loss which, like the item of freight or any 
 
 ' J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Book III. chap. xxv. § 4, 
 p. 414 of 1865 edition. 
 
238 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 other expense of carrying on their business, they will add to 
 the price charged to the consumer of foreign imports. They 
 will, of course, select for export those English products on 
 which the loss is least — that is to say, those in which England 
 stands at relatively the greatest advantage, or, what comes 
 to the same thing, the least disadvantage. Therefore, if the 
 rise in the expense of English production were uniform, not 
 only the total, but also the distribution of our exports would 
 remain unaffected. The foreign consumer, by reason of the 
 cheapness of production of his own goods, will then be getting 
 English-made goods at a lower price than would otherwise be 
 the case — it may be, even a lower price than the Englishman 
 is buying them at in his own country — just as the Englishman 
 at the present time buys American products in London at the 
 comparatively low level of English prices, and sometimes 
 actually cheaper than they are sold at in New York. For 
 this process of exporting at an apparent loss, as a set-off 
 against a profitable import trade, actually takes place, now in 
 one country, now in another.' It sometimes happens that the 
 same firm of merchants both exports and imports : more 
 usually, however, the compensatory process is performed 
 through the banking-houses, and manifests itself in those 
 fluctuations of the foreign exchanges, which, though clear 
 enough to the eye of the practical financier and economist, 
 shroud all the processes of international exchange from the 
 ordinary man by a dense veil of paradox. 
 
 The practical check to a rise in the National Minimum 
 comes, indeed, not from the side of international trade, but, as 
 we have already explained, from the home taxpayer and the 
 home consumer. Every rise in the National Minimum not 
 compensated for by some corresponding increase in the 
 efficiency with which the national industry was carried on 
 
 ' When, for instance, the export of gold is prohibited, or when all the 
 gold has already been sent away ; or when, for any reason, less expensive 
 ways of discharging a balance of indebtedness do not exist. — See Goschen's 
 Theory of the Foreign Exchanges, or Clare's A.B.C. of the Foreign Exchanges. 
 
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 239 
 
 would imply an increase in the number of the unemployable, 
 and thus in the Poor Rate or other provision for their mainte- 
 nance ; and every increase in the expenses of production would 
 be resented as a rise in the price by the bulk of the popula- 
 tion. The lowlier grades of labour, employing a majority of 
 the citizens, would clearly benefit by the improvement which 
 the rise would cause in their own conditions. Other grades 
 of producers, including the brain- working directors of industry, 
 would find their own " rent " of specialized or otherwise 
 exceptional faculty undiminished, even if they had to pay away 
 more of it in taxes and higher prices. The great and growing 
 army of officials on fixed incomes would loudly complain of 
 the increased cost of living, which would presently be met by 
 a rise in salaries. But the real sufferers would be the rentier 
 class, existing unproductively on their investments. These 
 persons would be hit both ways : they would find themselves, 
 by increased taxation, saddled with most of the cost of the un- 
 employable, and by higher prices, charged with at least their 
 share of the increase in the nation's wage-bill. Such a prac- 
 tical diminution in the net income of the dividend-receiving 
 classes would, from Ricardo down to Cairnes, have been sup- 
 posed to correct itself by a falling off in their rate of saving, 
 and therefore, as it was supposed, in the rate of accumulation 
 of additional capital. This, as we have seen, can no longer be 
 predicted, even if we cannot yet bring ourselves to believe, 
 with Sir Josiah Child and Adam Smith, that the shrinking of 
 incomes from investments would actually quicken production 
 and stimulate increased accumulation. What it might con- 
 ceivably do would be to drive the rentier class to live increas- 
 ingly abroad, with indirect consequences which have to be 
 considered. 
 
 We have hitherto left on one side the possible migration of 
 capital from a country, in which the National Minimum had 
 been unduly raised, to others in which labour could be hired 
 more cheaply. This is hindered, to an extent which we do 
 not think is sufficiently appreciated, by the superior amenity 
 
240 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 of English life to the able business man. So long as our 
 captains of industry prefer to live in England, go abroad with 
 reluctance even for high salaries, and return to their own 
 country as soon as they possibly can, it will pay the owners of 
 capital to employ it where this high business talent is found. 
 The danger to English industrial supremacy would seem to us, 
 therefore, to lie in any diminution of the attractiveness of life in 
 England to the able brain-working Englishman. An increase in 
 the taxation of this class, or a rise in the price of the commodities 
 they consume, is not of great moment, provided that facilities 
 exist for them to make adequate incomes ; and these rewards 
 of exceptional talent are, it will be remembered, in no way 
 diminished by the Device of the Common Rule. But any 
 loss of public consideration, or any migration of their rentier 
 friends or relations, might conceivably weaken their tie to 
 England, and might, therefore, need to be counteracted by 
 some increase in their amenities or rewards.* Our own opinion 
 is that this increased amenity, and also this increased reward 
 of exceptional ability, would actually be the result of a high 
 National Minimum. It is diflScult for the Englishman of to-day 
 to form any adequate idea of how much pleasanter English life 
 would be if we were, once for all, rid of the slum and sweating 
 den, and no class of workers found itself condemned to grinding 
 poverty; if science had so transformed our unhealthy trades 
 that no section of the population suffered unnecessarily from 
 accident or disease ; and if every grade of citizens was rapidly 
 rising in health, intelligence, and character. 
 
 It follows that each community is economically free, with- 
 out fear of losing its foreign trade, to fix its own National 
 Minimum, according to its own ideas of what is desirable, its 
 own stage of industrial development, and its own customs of 
 life. The course and extent of International trade — if we 
 
 ' It would be interesting to inquire how far the fatal " absenteeism " of 
 Ireland's men of genius has been caused or increased by the reduction of 
 Dublin from the position of a wealthy and intellectual capital to that of a 
 second-rate provincial town. 
 
SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB 241 
 
 imagine all fiscal barriers to be removed, and all bounties 
 to be prevented — is, in fact, determmed exclusively by the 
 desires of the world of consumers, and the actual faculties and 
 opportunities of the producers in the different countries ; not 
 by the proportion in which each nation chooses to share its 
 National Dividend between producers and property-owners. 
 Each community may, therefore, work out its own salvation in 
 the way it thinks best. The nation eager for progress, con- 
 stantly raising its National Minimum, will increase in produc- 
 tive efficiency, and steadily rise in health and wealth. But 
 it will not thereby interfere with the course chosen by others. 
 The country which honours Individual Bargaining may reject 
 all regulation whatsoever, and let trade after trade become 
 parasitic ; but it will not, by its settling down into degradation, 
 gain any aggregate increase in international trade, or really 
 undermine its rivals.^ Finally, the nation which prefers to 
 be unprogressive, but which yet keeps all its industries self- 
 supporting, may, if circumstances permit its stagnation, retain 
 its customary organization, and yet continue to enjoy the same 
 share in international commerce that it formerly possessed. 
 
 ' Let us suppose, for instance, that the capitalists of the United States 
 so far strengthen their position as to put down all combinations of the 
 wage-earners, annul all attempts at factory legislation, and, in fact, prohibit 
 every restriction on Individual Bargaining as a violation of the Constitution. 
 The result would doubtless be a proletarian revolution. But assuming this 
 not to occur, or to be suppressed, and the rule of the Trusts to be unchecked, 
 we should expect to see the conditions of employment in each trade fall to 
 subsistence level, and with the advance of population, stimulated by this 
 hopeless poverty, even below the standard necessary for continued efficiency. 
 The entire continent of America might thus become parasitic, and successive 
 generations of capitalists, served by a hierarchy of brain-working agents, 
 might use up for their profit successive generations of degenerated manual 
 toilers, until these were reduced to the level of civilization of the French 
 peasants described by La Bruyere. But the total international trade of 
 America would not be thereby increased ; on the contrary, it would 
 certainly be diminished as the faculties of the nation declined. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE ECONOMICS OF DIRECT EMPLOYMENT 
 By the Fabian Society 
 
 This is Fabian Tract, No. 84, the basis of which was a paper 
 read at the British Association's Oxford meeting', 1894, by Mr. 
 Sidney Webb. JJ^indude£^aiLaccqun^p/,tJie_ Fair Wages £oli^ 
 which is possibly the greatest success achieved by the Fabian 
 method. ~ 
 
 During the last twelve years there has gradually been 
 developed, among the various Town and County Councils 
 and other public authorities, a definite economic policy with 
 regard to the employment of labour. This policy, initiated by 
 the School Board for London in January, 1889,' has been 
 adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, by several hundred 
 local governing bodies throughout the United Kingdom. It 
 has, perhaps, been most completely carried out by the London 
 County Council, where it has been successfully maintained for 
 over ten years, and where it has lately been endorsed and 
 confirmed by a decisive majority at the election of 1898. 
 
 The Labour Policy of the London County Council. 
 The Labour Policy of the London County Council has been 
 intelligently criticized, from the point of view of economic 
 
 • The London School Board was, in January, 1889, the first public 
 body to adopt the principle of insisting that not less than the recognized 
 standard rates of wages should be paid. See The History of Trade 
 Unionism, and also Industrial Democracy, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 
 
 242 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 243 
 
 science, mainly under three heads. Instead of "buying its 
 labour in the cheapest market," as it was termed, it has, from 
 the first, striven to adopt as its standard, the trade-union rate 
 of wages, and to assert a " moral minimum " of earnings below 
 which it was inexpedient that any London citizen should be 
 allowed to sink. Moreover, not content with proceeding on 
 these lines as regards the workmen whom it directly employs, 
 it has sought throughout to secure that all contractors execut- 
 ing its work should adopt the same principle. Finally, it has 
 endeavoured, wherever possible, to dispense with the middle- 
 man entrepreneur, and to substitute salaried supervision and 
 management directly under public control. 
 
 The Fair Wages Movement. 
 
 Let us take first what is known as the Fair Wag es Move- 
 ment. After prolonged discussions, repeated at intervals 
 during nine years, it has become the settled policy, {a) to^pay, 
 in eactLtrad&> the„recognize d st andard rate o f wages, {b) to 
 ^ve no adult male workman less than dd. per hour, and no 
 adultjTOmSiT^^^an^STr^Fweek.' Those unfamiliar with 
 the" actual practice of industrial life at first imagined that 
 the trade-union rate of wages meant just whatever rate the 
 trade-union might choose to claim. As a matter of fact, the 
 trade-union rate of wages is, in every organized trade, a well- 
 understood expression, denoting the actual rate which has 
 been agreed to, more or less explicitly, by representative 
 employers and the trade-union executives. What the Council 
 has done has been merely to insert in its own standard list of 
 wages the rate proved, on inquiry, to be actually recognized 
 and adopted by the leading employers in the particular trade 
 
 ' "The Standing Orders of the L.C.C.," containing the Fair Wages 
 Clauses, is sold at is. by P. S. King & Son, Great Smith Street, West- 
 minster. For other places see House of Commons Return, " Urban 
 Sanitary Districts (Conditions of Contracts)," No. 47, nth February, 
 1898 ; 2|rf. (P. S. King & Son.) 
 
244 MODERN SOCIALISiM 
 
 within the London district. In the whole of the building 
 trades, for instance, which include seven-eighths of the work 
 done for the Council, the trade-union rate of wages has been 
 solemnly agreed to in a formal treaty between the London 
 Building Trades Federation and the London Master Builders' 
 Association. So far as the organized skilled trades are 
 concerned, the Council has not attempted to do more than 
 place itself on a line with the common average of decent 
 employers. 
 
 With regard to unskilled, labour, the case is more di^gult. 
 Here, in most cases, no generally recognized trade-union rate 
 exists. The Council has accordingly taken the position that 
 it^j§_j3Jadj^irable, whatever the competition, that any of its 
 employees should receive less than the minimum required 
 
 rW- ,M *l^- "tf -'4»-—^ r . , „-,.„^^ I .»■ Mil —ni l ■• ■ „ ^ ^ 11 ■■HIM! .1 , I 
 
 for efficient and decent existence. ' Seeing that MfT CHarles 
 Booth places' the" sicttiaT '^'poverty line " in London at regular 
 earnings of 21s. per week, it cannot be said the Council's 
 "moral minimum" of 24s. for men and i&s. for women errs 
 on the side of luxury or extravagance. But, unlike the 
 Council's wage for skilled workmen, it is more than is actually 
 paid by many conscientious employers ; and it is undoubtedly 
 above the rate at which the Council could obtain such labourers, 
 if it chose to disregard all other considerations. 
 
 The^jabour poUcy of the London County .Council, whether 
 with regard to skilled or unskilled labour, ma^jDe explained as 
 the deliberate choice of that form of competition which secures 
 the greatest possible efficiency, as compared with the form 
 which secures the greatest apparent cheapness. Public offices 
 may be filled in one of two ways. We may, on the one hand, 
 practically put the places up to auction, taking those candi- 
 dates who ofifer to do the work for the lowest wage ; or, on the 
 other hand, we may first fix the emoluments, and then pick the 
 best of the candidates coming forward on those terms. When 
 we want brain-workers of any kind, every one agrees that the 
 latter pohcy is the only safe one. We do not appoint as a 
 judge the lawyer who offers to take the place at the lowest 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 245 
 
 rate. No one would think of inviting competitive tenders 
 from clergymen as to the price at which they would fill a 
 vacant bishopric. And a Town or County Council which 
 bought its engineer or its medical officer in the cheapest 
 market would, by common consent, make a very bad bargain. 
 In all these cases we have learnt, by long and painful expe- 
 rience, that there is so much difference between competence 
 and incompetence, that we do not dream of seeking to save 
 money by taking the candidate who offers his services at the 
 lowest rate. Unfortunately, many worthy people who realize 
 this aspect of brainwork, because they belong themselves to 
 the brainworking class, are unconscious that it applies no less 
 forcibly to mechanical labour. They will pay any price for a 
 good architect, but are apt to regard bricklayers and masons 
 as all equally " common workmen." The consequence is that, 
 owing to the extraordinary ignorance of the middle and upper 
 classes about the actual life of the handicraft trades, it has 
 gradually become accepted as good business that, though you 
 must take all possible trouble in choosing your manager, it is 
 safe and right to buy wage labour at the lowest market rates. 
 But, as a matter of fact, there is as great a relative difference 
 between one painter or plasterer and another, as there is 
 between one architect or manager and another. If the 
 pressure of competition is shifted from the plane of quality 
 to the plane of cheapness, all economic experience tells us 
 that the result is incompetency, scamped work, the steady 
 demoralization of the craftsman, and all the degradation of 
 sweating. When a man engages a coachman or a gardener he 
 understands this well enough, and never for a moment thinks 
 of hiring the cheapest who presents himself. Even the 
 sharpest-pressed employer does not entrust expensive 
 machinery to the mechanic who offers to take the least wages. 
 The London County Council, realizing it more vividly than 
 some bodies less in touch with the actual facts of industrial 
 life, applies the principle all round. Whether the post to be 
 filled be that of an architect or a carpenter, the wage to be 
 
246 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 paid is first fixed at a rate sufficient to attract the best class of 
 men in the particular occupation. Then the most competent 
 candidate that can be found is chosen. Competition among 
 the candidates works no less keenly than before; but 
 it is competition tending not to reduce the price, thereby 
 lowering the standard of life throughout the nation, but 
 to enhance efficiency, and thus really to reduce the cost of 
 production. 
 
 With regard to the lowlier grades of labour a further con- 
 sideration enters in. It may be economically permissible, 
 under the present organization of industry, for a private 
 employer to pay wages upon which, as he perfectly well 
 knows, it is impossible for the worker to maintain himself or 
 herself in efficiency. But when a Board of Poor Law 
 Guardians finds itself rescuing from starvation, out of the 
 poor rate, women actually employed by one of its own 
 contractors to make up workhouse clothing, at wages in- 
 sufficient to keep body and soul together, even the most 
 rigorous economist would admit that something was wrong. ^ 
 The London County Council, responsible as it is for the 
 health of the people of London, declines to use its position as 
 an employer deUberately to degrade that health by paying 
 wages obviously and flagrantly insufficient for maintenance, 
 even if competition drives down wages to that pitch. The 
 economic heretics, in fact, are not the Council, but those who, 
 in flat defiance of Adam Smith, McCulloch, Mill, and Marshall, 
 alike, persist in assuming that there is some obligatory " law " 
 that the pressure of competition ought, without interference 
 from man, to be allowed so to act as to degrade the standard 
 of life of the whole community. 
 
 ' The Chelsea Board of Guardians was, in 1894, paying its scrubbers 
 IJ-. 6d. a day, without food, which amounts to a weekly wage of gs. A 
 day's illness is su6Scient to force such a worker to seek relief from the 
 rates, and the Board then finds itself rescuing from starvation its own 
 underpaid workpeople. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 247 
 
 The Moralization of the Contractor. 
 
 ^ome critics, however, who do not object to the Council, 
 like a prudent housekeeper or an experienced employer, fixing 
 the wages of its servants at an adequate sum, jdemur to an]/;_ 
 interference with thp freedom gf contractors) and denounce as 
 economically heretical the Council's standing orcigr., confining 
 tEe TJbuncil's work ±0, such, firms as adopt the standard rate of 
 wages. It is, say such critics, no concern of the Council how 
 a contractor manages his business; and if he can get his 
 workmen at less than the ordinary price of the best men, so 
 much the better for him, and, in the long run, for his customers. 
 The very object of industrial competition, they would add, is to 
 keep the cost of production down to the lowest possible point, 
 and any interference with the contractor's freedom to do his 
 business in his own way tends to increase that cost. 
 
 It will, however, be obvious to the economist that these 
 criticisms confuse cost of production with expenses of produc- 
 tion. What the community has at heart is a reduction of the 
 cost of production — that is, of the efibrts and sacrifices involved 
 in getting the object desired. This is of no concern to the 
 contractor. What he wants is to diminish the expenses of 
 production to himself — that is, the sum which he has to pay 
 for materials and labour. This object he may effect in one of 
 two ways. He may, by skilful management, ingenious inven- 
 tion, or adroit manipulation of business, get the work accom- 
 plished with less effort and sacrifice on the part of those 
 concerned, allowing of a reduction of the out-of-pocket pay- 
 ments by himself J or he may, on the other hand, without 
 diminishing the effort and sacrifices, induce those concerned to 
 accept a smaller remuneration for their labour. Either way 
 will equally serve his profit, but either way will not equally 
 serve the community. If the first case, a real economy in the 
 cost of production has been effected, to the gain of all con- 
 cerned. In the second case, no economy in the cost of pro- 
 duction has taken place ; but the pressure of competition has 
 
248 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 been used to depress the standard of life of some of the 
 workers. The one result is a real and permanent advantage 
 to the community ; the other is a serious economic calamity, 
 bringing far-reaching secondary evils in its train. 
 
 Now, many large fortunes have been made by contractors 
 pursuing each of these methods, and the " good business man " 
 doubtless resorts to both of them as opportunity serves. Un- 
 fortunately it is much more difficult and toilsome to be per- 
 petually making new inventions, devising fresh labour-saving 
 expedients, or discovering unsuspected economies, than to pare 
 down wages, even at the risk of producing a slight falling-ofF 
 in quality, provided that the deterioration is not so gross as to 
 cause the actual rejection of the work. It is so hard to spend 
 laborious nights and days in improving processes. It is so 
 easy to find workmen eager for a job at 10 per cent, below 
 the standard rate. " Mankind," says Emerson, " is as lazy as 
 it dares to be," and contractors are no exception. It is safe to 
 say that the more you leave it open to a contractor to make a 
 profit, by reducing the expenses of production, the less he will 
 trouble about lowering the cost. So much is this the case 
 that, under a prolonged regime of free and unrestricted com- 
 petition, the very existence of the alternative has often been 
 forgotten. " Profits," said one capitalist^ " are the shavings of 
 wages." 
 
 It was in order to put a stop to the constant tendency gf 
 contractors to^ nibble at the current standard wag es th at_ the 
 London" County Council inserted its celebrated fair wages 
 clauses. These clauses, it will be observed, leave open to con- 
 tractors every chance of profit which comes from reduction of 
 the cost of production. By concentrating the contractor's 
 energy and attention on this point they presumably increase 
 the fierceness of that part of the competitive struggle which 
 promotes the public good. But, just as the Factory Acts, 
 the Mines Regulation Acts, and the Education Acts, "rule 
 out " of industrial competition the cheapness brought about by 
 the overwork of women and children, or the neglect of sanitary 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 249 
 
 precautions, so the London County Council, representing the 
 people of London, declines to take advantage of any cheapness 
 that is got by merely beating down the standard of Ufe of 
 particular sections of the wage-earners. Here, the key-note of 
 the Council's policy is, not the abolition of competition, but the 
 shifting of its plane from mere cheapness to that of industrial 
 efficiency. The speeding up of machinery, the better organi- 
 zation of labour, the greater competency of manager, clerk, or 
 craftsman, are all stimulated and encouraged by the deliberate 
 closing up to the contractor of other means of making profit.' 
 
 And just as the Factory Acts have won their way to econo- 
 mic approval, not merely on humanitarian grounds, but as 
 positively conducive to industrial efficiency, so, too, it may 
 confidently be predicted, will the now widely adopted fair 
 wages clauses.^ 
 
 Municipal Industry. 
 
 We come to an altogether different range of criticism when 
 we consider the Council's determination to dispense, wherever 
 possible, with the contractor, and execute its works by engag- 
 ing a staff of workmen under the supervision of its own salaried 
 officers. This has been fiercely attacked as being palpably 
 and obviously opposed to political economy and business 
 experience. It is worth while to place on record the facts. 
 
 Constructive work was not undertaken at first, but labour 
 
 ' The economist will recall the analogous effect which labour legislation 
 and strong trade unions have had in increasing the efficiency of the Lan- 
 cashire cotton industry. Compare, tooj Mr. Mather's testimony to the 
 beneficent effect upon employers of trade-union action in the engineering 
 trades (see Contemporary Review, vol. Ixii., 1892, and S. and B. Webb's 
 Industrial Democracy). 
 
 ' Many local governing bodies have adopted some kind of fair wages 
 clause in ieir contracts. Particulars of regulations in 218 places are given 
 in Parliamentary Return H. C. 47 of Feb. 11, 1898, "Urban Sanitary 
 Districts (Conditions of Contracts)," 2\d. Compare also the House of 
 Commons' unanimous resolutions of Feb. 13, 1891, 'and March 6, 1893, 
 imposing the principle for Government contracts. 
 
2 50 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 was hired to clean the bridges' and to repair the Council 
 oflSces,^ at a considerable saving compared with contract prices. 
 The first piece of building work was executed by the Main 
 Drainage Committee at £$3^ below the lowest tender of 
 _;^2i88. But the case which finally convinced three out of 
 every four members of the Council of the desirability of execu- 
 ting their own works was the York Road Sewer. The engineer 
 estimated the cost at ;^7ooo, and tenders were invited in the 
 usual manner. Only two were sent in, one for ;^i 1,588, and 
 the other for ;^i 1,608. The Council determined to do the 
 work itself, with the result that a net saving of £4411 was 
 made.* 
 
 This remarkable result naturally created a sensation in the 
 contracting world, and attempts were made to impugn the 
 engineer's figures. In his crushing reply he pointed out that 
 the contractors had reckoned out their tenders at absurdly high 
 prices in nearly every detail^ charging, for instance, 60s. and 
 70J. respectively per cubic yard of brickwork and cement, 
 whereas the work was done at $gs. It is clear from the other 
 particulars given, and from facts notorious at the time, that 
 an agreement had been come to among contractors not to 
 compete with one another for this job, in order to induce the 
 Council to abandon its fair wages clause. The Council 
 preferred to abandon the contractor.* 
 
 The outcome was the establishment, in the spring of 1893, 
 of a Works Department to execute works required by the other 
 committees in precisely the same manner as a contractor. The 
 Works Department stands to the other committees of the 
 Council exactly in the same relation as if it were an indepen- 
 dent contractor. When a committee has any work to execute, 
 the Council's architect and engineer prepare the plans and 
 make an estimate, without any reference to the Works 
 
 ' Minutes, October 18, 1892, pp. goo, 901. 
 
 ^ Minutes, June 27, 1893, p. 683. 
 
 ' Minutes, October 17, 1893. 
 
 * See the fuller particulars in Minutes of October 31, 1893, pp. 1063-5. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 251 
 
 Department. Then the Council decides whether the work shall 
 be done with or without a contractor. Sometimes it decides to 
 put the work up to tender, a course which enables it to see 
 whether the estimates of the architect and engineer are trust- 
 worthy guides. The Works Department may say that it is 
 not prepared to do the work, either because it is not satisfied 
 with the specifications and estimates, or because it has no con- 
 venience for doing work at that particular site, or of that 
 particular kind. In that case the job is put up to tender and 
 done by a contractor. 
 
 The accounts of the Works Department are kept distinct 
 from those of other departments of the Council. The Finance 
 Committee sees that it is debited with the interest and sinking 
 fund on all the capital it uses ; that full allowance is made to 
 cover depreciation and renewals ; that a complete stocktaking 
 is regularly carried out by independent officers ; and that all 
 outgoings and maintenance charges are properly spread over 
 the various works done. The accounts are elaborately checked 
 by the Council's Controller, as well as by the Local Govern- 
 ment Board's Auditor. 
 
 The Works Department has now been at work for over six 
 years, during which it has executed over ^1,000,000 worth of 
 work of the most varied character — sewer construction, the 
 making of roads, building houses of every kind^ erecting 
 bridges, carrying out of every sort of repairing and decorating 
 jobs, and an innumerable array of miscellaneous operations. 
 Whether, and to what extent, this work has been done cheaper 
 than it would have been done by contractors is a matter of hot 
 controversy.' The Progressives assert that, even with all the 
 disadvantages of starting a new business, and struggling with 
 "wreckers" inside the Council, the whole ^£"1, 000,000 worth 
 of work has, taken as a whole, and including the "jobbing 
 
 ' See The Truth about the Works Department of the London County 
 Council. (London Reform Union.) The year ended September 30, 1899, 
 shows a "profit" of ;f 10,365 on completed works estimated at £,T),^^o 
 (Minutes, Nov. 1899). 
 
2S2 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 work," been executed at just about what the contractors would 
 have charged. The Moderates declare that it has cost more ; 
 but even they do not put the excess at more than about 5 per 
 cent, on the whole of the architect's estimate — an excess which 
 any one accustomed to builders' bills will think amazingly low. 
 But no sound judgment on the policy of dispensing with the 
 contractor can be formed on statistics of this kind, extending 
 over so brief a period. We must take a wider sweep, and see 
 what inferences can be dravn from other experience. 
 
 It is usually assumed by the Council's critics, that its policy 
 of eliminating the contractor is an unparalleled innovation, 
 unknown outside London. A little knowledge of the action of 
 local governing bodies elsewhere would prevent this mistake. 
 It is, of course, unnecessary to remind the reader that 
 Birmingham,' dominated by the strictest sect of the Individual- 
 ists, has municipalized its water and its gas, which are in 
 London still left to private enterprise. What is not so well 
 known is that the Town Council dispenses with the contractor 
 whenever it can, each committee getting much of its own work 
 done by its own directly employed staff. The Public Works 
 Committee, which looks after the thoroughfares, and the 
 Health Committee, which is responsible for sanitation, have 
 not only entirely eliminated the contractor from the cleaning 
 and repairing of the streets and the removal of refuse, but even 
 from the laying down of granite paving and flagging, once a 
 most profitable item of his business. The Gas Committee is 
 not content with employing hundreds of men to make gas, but 
 also keeps its own staff of carpenters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, 
 tinmen, painters, fitters, etc., to execute its numerous works. 
 The Improvements Committee, like the Estates Committee, has 
 its own carpenters, fitters, bricklayers, paperhangers, plasterers, 
 and zincworkers, whilst the Water Committee, besides a 
 regular staff of mechanics of all kinds, is now actually engaged 
 
 ' Return of Hours of Labour, Wages, etc. (Appendix to Birmingham 
 General Purposes Committee's Report, July 25, 1893.) See Appendix II., 
 p. l8. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 253 
 
 in constructing several huge dams and reservoirs near Rhayader, 
 two tunnels and various water towers and syphons, together 
 with workmen's dwellings to accommodate a thousand people, 
 stables, stores, workshops, a public hall and recreation room, a 
 school, two hospitals, and a public-house — all without the 
 intervention of a contractor. The construction of all the build- 
 ings on the works is being carried out by the workmen of 
 the Corporation, under the superintendence of the resident 
 engineer and his assistant. The timber and other material is 
 being purchased by tender. "This method," reports the 
 Water Committee, " of using material supplied by contract, and 
 constructing by the direct employees of the Corporation, the 
 Committee consider, under the circumstances of the case, to be 
 the most economical, as well as calculated to secure the best 
 results." But this is not all. The Water Committee, finding 
 that the village would have beer, has decided also in this 
 matter to dispense with any entreprenmr, and has " resolved 
 that a canteen shall be established in the village," out of the 
 capital of the Birmingham citizens, and "that the person 
 managing it shall have no interest whatever in the quantity 
 sold." ' 
 
 And if we turn to Liverpool we learn that " almost all the 
 city engineer's work is done by men directly employed by the 
 Corporation. . . . The construction of sewers is now done 
 entirely by the Corporation themselves. . . . They had such a 
 cruel experience of doing the work of sewering by contractors 
 that they have given it up." " It appears that in the old days, 
 when the contractors agreed and charged for two courses of 
 brickwork, no amount of inspection sufficed to prevent them 
 putting in one only. " What happened was this : that whenever 
 the Inspector came round, or the Clerk of Works, to watch 
 the contractors, they found the two rings of brickwork going 
 
 ' Report of the Birmingham Water Committee, presented February 6, 
 
 1894. 
 
 2 Evidence of the Deputy Town Clerk of Liverpool before the Unifi- 
 cation of London Commission, p. 328 of C— 7493-I. 
 
2 54 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 on very well ; as soon as the Inspector went away ... the 
 second ring of brickwork was left out . . . and so the sewer 
 got weak. . . . You could trace the visits of the Inspector by 
 the double rings " which were found here and there at intervals 
 when the sewers were subsequently uncovered for repairs.' 
 
 This evidence from Liverpool is especially interesting in 
 connection with what has recently been discovered at Man- 
 chester. The auditor's report, published in 1896, exposes 
 a precisely similar fraud in connection with the thirty-five miles 
 of new sewers now under construction. This work was let to 
 thirty-four different contractors, who had already received 
 over _;^6oo,ooo for their work. The new city surveyor, 
 finding that the work had been scamped, had " street after 
 street taken up at great expense, and such an exposure was 
 made of fraud and deceit as I," writes the auditor, "have 
 never before seen. The men who built these sewers in 
 a tunnel never dreamed that their rascality would be dis- 
 covered." The chief method adopted was, as at Liverpool, 
 leaving out one ring of brickwork, except when the Corporation 
 Inspector was signalled as being about to descend the shaft. 
 Then the workmen hastily put on a second row of bricks at 
 that spot The frequency of the Inspector's visits to each bit 
 of work were found marked by this extra ring of bricks, here 
 and there, instead of along the whole length of the sewer.^ 
 
 jSTor are these Councils in any way exceptional in their 
 steady progress towards the elimination of the contractor. In 
 the early days of municipal activity practically everything was 
 let out to a contractor. Nowadays every large municipality, 
 even if it does not possess any separate Works Department, 
 has a staff of mechanics and artisans in regular municipal 
 employment, and every day executes many important works 
 and services by its own workmen, which were formerly let by 
 tender to the lowest bidder. 
 
 ' Evidence of the Deputy Town Clerk of Liverpool before the Unifi- 
 cation of London Commission, p. 328. 
 
 2 Report of the Citizens' Auditor of the City of Manchester for 1895. 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 255 
 
 Nor is it in municipal boroughs alone that we see the 
 change in policy. Nothing was more common a few years 
 ago than for highway authorities to get their roads kept in 
 order by contractors. An interesting return obtained in 1892 
 by the County Surveyors' Society shows that this practice has 
 been almost entirely abandoned in favour of direct employ- 
 ment of labour by the county surveyor. Only in one or two 
 counties out of thirty-five furnishing particulars does the old 
 custom linger. The county surveyor for Gloucestershire 
 indignantly denied an allegation that he favoured the contract 
 system. " It does not coimnend itself to me in any way," he 
 writes, "and encourages a low form of sweating. My own 
 experience of road-contracting is that it does very well for five 
 years, then the roads go to pieces, and you have to spend all 
 your previous savings to put them to rights." ^ 
 
 When we thus find even the County Councils in rural districts 
 giving up the contractor, it ceases to be surprising that the 
 Town Council of Manchester, in the city of Cobden and Bright, 
 now manufactures its own bass-brooms, or even that the ultra- 
 conservative Commissioners of Sewers of the City of London, 
 actually set the County Council an example by manufacturing 
 their own carts.'' The^ superiority of direct municipal egi^plpy- 
 ment, under salaried^ supervision, to the jystem. of- letting out 
 works, to QontractorsJaias, iaJact,.been.jlpwly^QXiie iu_ on the 
 "best municipal authorities all over the country by their own 
 administrative experience, quite irrespective of social or 
 political theories. 
 
 Integration of Processes. 
 
 Business men, not so very long ago, would have argued 
 that this policy of including all kinds of industrial processes 
 
 ' Particulars of Management of Main Roads in England and Wales, a 
 report compiled for the County Surveyors' Society, by Mr. Heslop, County 
 Surveyor for Norfolk. See Builder, March 19 and 26, 1892. 
 
 ^ Statement of the Commissioners of Sewers, presented to the Royal 
 Commission on London Unification. 
 
256 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 under one administration was contrary to the lessons of 
 business experience. The last generation of captains of 
 industry believed in each undertaking sticking closely to its 
 own special trade, and contracting with similarly specialized 
 undertakings for all subsidiary parts of the business. " Never 
 make anything yourself that you can buy elsewhere" was a 
 common industrial maxim. The last thirty years have changed 
 it to " Never buy from any one else what you can manufacture 
 for yourself." 
 
 The most familiar instance of this revolution of policy is 
 seen in the English railway companies. Once a railway com- 
 pany was an association for getting a railway made, and running 
 trains on it. An able essay written by Mr. Herbert Spencer 
 forty years ago, protested strongly against any extension of 
 a railway company's scope. Nowadays an up-to-date railway 
 company runs docks, canals, ferries, steamships, and hotels 
 ot its own, and carries on, besides, innumerable subsidiary 
 businesses^ and manufactures every conceivable kind of article, 
 entirely by its own operatives, working under its own salaried 
 stafif. The directors of the London and North- Western Railway 
 Company, for instance, with a comprehensiveness that would 
 have staggered George Stephenson, lay it down as an axiom 
 that the company " should be dependent on the outside world 
 for as few as possible of the necessaries of life." The manager 
 at the company's great workshop-town of Crewe, " can think of 
 nothing of importance that is imported in a manufactured state, 
 except copper tubes for locomotive boilers." " As we pass from 
 shop to shop, here may be seen a steel canal boat in process of 
 construction (for the company, it must be remembered, is a 
 great canal proprietor) ; there, a lattice-work bridge is being 
 fitted together. Further on, hydraulic pumps, cranes, and 
 capstans crowd a huge shed. In another place, chains of all 
 sorts and sizes, from cables to harness traces, are being forged 
 by the ton ; close by, coal-scuttles and lamps are being turned 
 out by the hundred. In all the works there is no stranger 
 sight than a corner in the carpenters' shop, where two men are 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 257 
 
 constantly employed making artificial limbs. Some two years 
 back (that is, about 1885) the company embarked on this 
 branch of manufacture, and undertook to supply legs and 
 arms of the most finished workmanship to any man who lost 
 his own in their service." ' 
 
 Nothing indeed is too small or too great for the North- 
 western to manufacture for itself. Crewe turns out a new 
 locomotive engine every five days, and you may watch the 
 company's own rails being rolled in its own steel works. At 
 Wolverton, Mr. Acworth recounts how he " came upon a man 
 engaged in etching designs upon the plates of ground glass 
 that were to form the windows of lavatory compartments, and 
 was told that the company had recently found that it could 
 do this work for itself at half the price it had formerly paid " 
 (pp. 60, 61). Since 1881 the North- Western has been steadily 
 eliminating the privately owned waggon. For over twenty 
 years the companies have managed their own collection and 
 delivery business. Nearly every company, too, now builds its 
 own carriages. The Midland Railway prints its own tickets ; 
 whilst the Great Eastern goes a step further, and executes 
 in its Stratford works nearly the whole of its own printing, 
 including its gorgeous coloured posters and pictorial advertise- 
 ments. " In the printing works the company keeps about no 
 persons constantly employed, and is understood to save a good 
 deal of money by doing so." ^ 
 
 But the Midland has tried another experiment. At the 
 great Trent stores are between three and four hundred 
 thousand empty corn sacks, which the company furnishes 
 for the conveyance of the com from the farmer to the 
 miller. Here, too, the contractor formerly existed and made 
 a profit, until, a few years ago, the business was undertaken by 
 the company itself. 
 
 In every branch of railway management, in short, the 
 
 ' TAe Railways of Englatid, by W. M. Acworth, London : 1889, 
 
 P- 59- 
 
 * Ibid, p. 416. 
 
 S 
 
2 58 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 elimination of the independent entrepreneur or contractor is 
 being rapidly effected. It was impossible that this example, 
 set by undertakings in many respects analogous to municipal 
 departments, should have no influence on the business men 
 who rule our Town Councils. 
 
 But although railway directors cannot be supposed to have 
 been bitten by the tarantula of Collectivism, every one will not 
 be convinced by their remarkable change of policy. They 
 resemble the members of a Town Council in not working for 
 their own personal profit, and may, it is urged, therefore be 
 indifferent whether their ambitious excursions into manu- 
 facturing industry actually pay their way. It is, therefore, 
 interesting to find exactly the same revolution of business 
 policy in large private undertakings. No better instance 
 couid be adduced than the history of a certain world-renowned 
 firm of shipbuilders, whose rapid and continued expansion is 
 one of the marvels of modem industry. 
 
 Twenty years ago this firm constructed in their own yard 
 little more than the hulls of the vessels, contracting for all the 
 thousand and one articles of equipment with numerous other 
 manufacturing firms which specialized in these directions. 
 Nowadays, this same shipbuilding firm manufactures every 
 one of these articles — from triple-expansion engines down to 
 the brass handles of the cabin lockers — in its own works; 
 and turns out its vessels from keel to topmast entirely of its 
 own construction. Instead of employing only shipwrights 
 and platers, that firm now engages men of several hundred 
 separate trades, who work under the salaried management of 
 different heads of departments. 
 
 The following letter gives some of the dates and particulars 
 of this industrial evolution : — 
 
 Letter from an Eminent Shipbuilding Firm as to Dates 
 OF Progressive Absorption of Subsidiary Processes. 
 I have yours of nth inst., and have much pleasure in giving 
 
 you the information you ask for respecting certain subsidiary work 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 259 
 
 previously done for us by sub-contractors but now carried out within 
 our own works. 
 
 In 1879 we began to rig the ships built by us. 
 
 In the same year we began to build lifeboats. 
 
 In 1880 we commenced plumbing work on board our ships, and 
 to make our own sails. 
 
 In 1881 we opened an upholstery department to carry out that 
 branch of work ourselves. 
 
 In 1882 we opened an electric light department. 
 
 It was in 1880 that we started our engine works, all the engines 
 for vessels constructed by us up till then having been made in 
 outside engfine works. And even after we opened the engine works 
 certain subsidiary machinery was obtained from outside which we 
 now construct ourselves. 
 
 For instance, in 1885, we first built crank shafts for main engines. 
 In 1887 we began to manufacture manganese bronze propeller 
 blades. In 1890 we began to make circulating pumps and engines, 
 duplex pumps, steam steering engines, and brass sidelights for 
 ships, and in the same year our smith work gradually merged into 
 general forge work. 
 
 The history of great engineering establishments shows the 
 same tendency. The progress of the largest firm in the United 
 Kingdom shows how, during the present generation, business 
 has been added to business, until the firm has become one of 
 the largest in the world, mining its own ore, making its own 
 pig-iron, smelting its own steel, building its own ships, erecting 
 its own engines, constructing its own tools, and executing 
 innumerable subsidiary works in every direction. 
 
 And, turning to quite another industry, we may cite the 
 experience of a Birmingham manufacturer of metal goods, 
 whose business has distanced all his rivals, and is now the 
 largest and most prosperous in the trade. Thirty years ago 
 he was completely under the dominion of the then prevalent 
 idea of specialization. Everything required in his business 
 which did not come strictly within the limited sphere of his 
 own specialties he obtained by contract from other firms. 
 Gradually his ideas changed, more and more of the subsidiary 
 work was done in his own factory. He began to make his own 
 
26o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 tools and machines. He commenced to repair, and then to 
 construct his own engines. When additions to his works were 
 required, he picked his own clerk of the works, bought his own 
 bricks, and engaged his own artisans. Year by year he has 
 found himself becoming less and less dependent on outside 
 contractors, until the other day he started making in his own 
 essentially metal factory even the wooden hogsheads and paper 
 boxes in which his goods were packed. And he himself 
 attributes the continued profitableness of his business, and 
 its very rapid expansion during times when his competitors 
 have often been working at a loss, mainly to this progressive 
 elimination of the contractor and subsidiary entrepreneur. 
 The following memorandum describes these changes in his 
 business. 
 
 Memorandum by a Hardware Manufacturer, describing 
 THE Subsidiary Operations now undertaken by his 
 Firm. 
 
 I find that some time at the latter end of 1870 we first began to 
 manufacture goods that we had previously bought from other 
 manufacturers. These goods were chiefly unfinished work that 
 was required to complete the various articles that we sold. In 
 some cases I made the change because I thought I could make a 
 better article, and possibly a cheaper one. But the important 
 advantage was in obtaining quick deliveries, and, therefore, prompt 
 execution of orders. Since that date we have bought less and less 
 outside, and at the present time we make almost everything that we 
 require. 
 
 About 1868 we began to do all our own repairs to machinery, 
 plant, and buildings, and employed carpenters, fitters, machinemen, 
 bricklayers, slaters, and painters. 
 
 In 1879 we began to make and design machinery that we 
 required, and to erect new buildings. For some eight years earlier 
 than this I had designed all machinery, and had it made either in 
 Birmingham or Manchester. This alteration was made chiefly 
 because the machines were special, and I did not want them used 
 by competitors in my trade. 
 
 In 1884 we built large carpenters' fitting and erecting shops, to 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 261 
 
 enable us to equip ourselves a large factory we were then putting 
 up. These shops employed some 100 hands, who for the last ten 
 years have been fully employed. 
 
 In 1886 we began to make all the hogsheads (used for packing), 
 packing cases, paper boxes, and everything that is required for the 
 delivery of goods to our customers. We even make what is called 
 wood wool, a substitute for straw. This department is a very large 
 one, and uses up small forests of timber. This development has 
 greatly faciUtated the quick dehvery of ovir goods, and has prevented 
 a great waste caused by breakage in transit. 
 
 Space forbids any further multiplication of instances, or we 
 might recount how one of the leading London publishers has 
 lately become his own bookbinder, whilst another well-known 
 firm combines in a single undertaking every stage of book- 
 production, from the hiring of the author at fixed wages down 
 to the sale of the volume by travelling pedlars. Or we might 
 cite the colossal manufacturer of boots, buying his own hides 
 in America, or his own gutta-percha in Borneo, and vending 
 his wares, on the other hand, in his own retail shops all over 
 the kingdom. 
 
 Economic criticism of the London County Council has 
 perhaps suffered by the fact that this integration of processes, or 
 union, under a single management, of many separate businesses, 
 has hitherto scarcely attracted economic attention. It is, of 
 course, by no means the same as the oft-described elimination 
 of the small business in competition with the large. The 
 tendency, in fact, is frequently the other way — a large spe- 
 cialized business becomes superseded because its customers 
 begin to do the work for themselves, each of them in a much 
 smaller way than the single separate factory. Thus an old- 
 established firm of " finishers " of certain textile manufactures 
 have described how, during the past thirty years, they have 
 one by one lost their best customers, not to any rivals in the 
 " finishing " trade, but because the manufacturers were steadily 
 tending to do their own " finishing." The essential feature of 
 the change is the substitution of salaried work and management 
 
z62 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 for the entrepreneur labouring for his own profit. Business 
 men have apparently discovered, contrary to ordinary economic 
 opinion, that the economically most advantageous form of 
 industrial organization is that in which the stimulus and temp- 
 tation of profit is confined to as few of the actual workers as 
 possible. So far is it, indeed, from being true that the hope 
 of profit-making is the best or the chief stimulus to industrial 
 efficiency that, from the mediaeval master craftsman down 
 to the modern captain of industry, the proportion of the 
 population who work for profit has been steadily diminish- 
 ing. The remarkable growth in the numbers of men 
 directly employed by municipalities and other public bodies 
 is, in fact, paralleled by an exactly similar growth in the 
 numbers of men directly employed at salaries and wages by 
 private establishments. The elimination of the contractor 
 or subsidiary entrepreneur is the dominant fact in modern 
 industry. 
 
 It is also to be noticed that the tendency is to shift the 
 direction of industry from the producer to the consumer. The 
 manufacturer whose business requires a steady supply of raw 
 material, particular kinds of tools, engines and buildings 
 adapted to his processes, or packages ready at the very moment 
 his wares are finished, finds that it is more convenient, less 
 liable to mistake or delay, and, in the truest sense, more 
 economical for him, as the consumer, to obtain all these 
 things by his own directly employed staff, than to rely upon 
 the competition of producing entrepreneurs of specialized firms. 
 And thus, as the manufacturer absorbs the separate producers 
 of the wares he consumes, he must not be surprised when the 
 public, the ultimate consumers of the wares he produces, 
 themselves apply the lesson, and, through their elected repre- 
 sentatives, finally absorb him.' 
 
 ' Compare the steady expansion of co-operation by associations of con- 
 sumers — see The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain. By Beatrice 
 Potter (London, 1891). The substitution, as the director of industry, of 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 263 
 
 Why is the elimination of the subsidiary entrepreneur more 
 practical now than it was in the last generation? It would 
 take too long to examine the fundamental causes and con- 
 ditions of this change in industrial organization. Most changes 
 in social structure depend, in the long run, upon individual 
 character ; possibly there has been a growth m the number of 
 men who can be trusted to work efficiently and honestly as 
 salaried managers instead of for their own personal profit. 
 Possibly, too, as industrial organization becomes more complex, 
 the advantage to the consumer in directly controlling the pro- 
 duction of every article he requires, becomes more apparent. 
 All improvements in social organization, too — steam, telegraph, 
 the free use of the printing-press, and now the telephone — 
 facilitate the massing of workmen under single generals of 
 industry, able efficiently to control larger and more heteroge- 
 neous and more complex industrial armies than could be 
 managed by the captains of the past generation. Finally, as 
 regards the substitution of the collective for the individual 
 management of industry, it is evident that this will have been 
 rendered increasingly practicable by the perfecting of demo- 
 cratic organization. 
 
 All these and other influences are but fragmentary sugges- 
 tions towards the explanation of a change in industry of which 
 the policy of public authorities in getting rid of the contractor 
 is but one out of many manifestations. Formerly the best 
 business management was that which itself managed least. 
 Nowadays the best business management is that which can 
 
 the consumer for the producer usually implies a clear economic gain in 
 saving one of the processes of checking or examining. Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer has himself described how the Admiralty was driven to set up its 
 own flour-mills, because it cost too much to maintain the necessary scrutiny 
 of every sack of flour delivered by the contractors. The London County 
 Council found that it involved no more of the time and attention of their 
 architect and engineer actually to supervise work done by the Council's 
 own foreman and mechanics than to keep the necessary close watch upon 
 the contractor and his manager, who were anxious, not to make their men 
 build well, but only quickly. 
 
264 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 safely and efficiently administer most. The integration of 
 productive processes under direct control of the consumers 
 may or may not be economic heresy ; the business history of 
 England for the past thirty years inc^ates that it is industrial 
 orthodoxy. 
 
XIX 
 
 MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 
 By the Right Hon. John Burns, M.P. 
 
 The following letter was written for the purposes of an ephemeral 
 controversy ; but beyond its ephemeral references thereto, jtcratains 
 a sing^arly strong presentation of the Socialistic view^f citizenship, 
 wHcff"seems the vitaliy^Socialistic elenientja.S[MLaSHL£)!ja§SSj>f 
 English municipal life. '" 
 
 John Bums (bom 1858) worked as a boy in a candle factory, then 
 as a rivet-boy, and finally was apprenticed as an engineer. He 
 worked twelve months on the Niger, and in 1878 toured Europe ; 
 about 1880 the centre of his political work became Battersea. He 
 was early a member of the Social Democratic Federation ; in 1885 he 
 contested West Nottingham for it ; and in 1886 was twice prosecuted 
 —for the "West End Riot" and for the " Bloody Sunday" episode 
 in Trafalgar Square. He left the Social Democratic Federation ; but 
 in 1889 conducted a great agitation in connection with the London 
 Dock strike. Battersea returned him in 1889 to the London County 
 Council, and in 1892 to the House of Commons ; and after 1895 he 
 drew closer to the Liberal party. He was unfriendly to the growth 
 of the independent Labour Representation Committee; and in 
 December, 1905, entered the Liberal Cabinet as President of the 
 Local Government Board. Although thus separated in tactics from 
 the body of English Socialists, he has never disowned Socialist 
 opinions. 
 
 To THE Editor of "The Times." 
 
 SiRj — ^When a great newspaper arraigns the best, the most 
 ancient, and the most remunerative form of British institutions, 
 it should at least undertake that task with a sense of fitness, 
 accuracy, fairness, and proportion. 
 
 265 
 
266 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 In its articles on Municipal Socialism the Times has dis- 
 played none of the qualities which^ properly applied, would have 
 checked occasional abuse in local life, restrained raw haste in 
 municipal experiment, stimulated the best men of all classes 
 to give increasingly their unpaid services to improve their 
 towns, beautify their cities, and ameliorate by civic means the 
 communal lot of their poorer neighbours. On the contrary, 
 out of the welter of irrelevancy, pettiness, and prejudiced 
 support of vested interests which these articles disclose, there 
 is nothing to elevate an indispensable phase of public life, 
 reform its minority of erring councillors, instruct the rate- 
 payers, or inspire its capable municipal civil service. If the 
 allegations made in "Municipal Socialism" were a true reflex 
 of civic life in Britain, if " this is the government of Britain's 
 Isle," then Britain is undone. If popular representation. 
 Labour, Socialism, and municipal workmen were not capable 
 of better conduct than the Times imputes, Democracy is a stilted 
 make-believe, popular administration a sham, and municipal 
 service is but a pretext for patronage, corruption, gluttony, 
 and vanity. Fortunately for all, these allegations are generally 
 untrue ; munici pal life in Britain is much purer than the Times 
 alleges, and if itseSaency is noFyef ideal'ltTtill is better than 
 private enterprise and the contract system, which it is rapidly 
 supplanting "By^its innate "superiority, and is still the constant 
 envy of all the foreign countries who sedulously copy what the 
 Times so much condemns. 
 
 That there are a few failures^ that some experiments have 
 not achieved financial success — not always the best criterion 
 in human affairs — may be true ; that here and there the 
 transient blunders of undisciplined zealots are caused by lack 
 of business capacity, only proves that the sphere of municipal 
 activity is no more infallible than is that of Parliament itself, 
 and every human institution, especially criticism, and even 
 the Times. As for personal corruption, there is little, if any, 
 alleged, and less is proved. That there is too much feasting 
 and journeying for insufficient reason by some councillors at 
 
JOHN BURNS 267 
 
 the public expense but in the public interest is true, but not 
 new ; but this is confined to a few men in few places, and this 
 folly is, fortunately, diminishing. Curiously, there is less of 
 this vulgar conduct amongst Labour councillors than other 
 classes. 
 
 But even in this respect the most flagrant sinner is the 
 City of London Corporation, against which, so far, the Times 
 has failed to say a single word, notwithstanding that its official, 
 i.e. public, gluttony is as notorious as it is costly, and if the 
 character of the personnel of Labour councillors is to be con- 
 sidered, and where defective properly condemned, it must not 
 be forgotten that several of the Corporation members and some 
 of its Lord Mayors have been censured by the Judiciary for 
 private trafficking and public nepotism, a vice relatively unknown 
 amongst the Municipal Socialists. 
 
 The authors of the articles are directing almost solely their 
 attacks on poor men, on Labour parties, and attribute to new 
 views and popular principles errors and mistakes that 20 years 
 ago would have been unnoticed under the old r'egime of Tory 
 aldermen, jerry-building domination, company wire-pulling, and 
 reactionary rule. 
 
 The fierce light of criticism is to beat only upon the West 
 Ham labourer, the Battersea bricklayer, and the Wolverhampton 
 engineer, whose entry into public office is due too often to 
 the abdication of municipal service by men of " superior " (?) 
 classes and greater business knowledge for the leisure that 
 rusts, the pleasures that defile, the search for money that rarely 
 exalts. 
 
 Worse even than that, the Times practically lays it down 
 that richness of personal character and wealth of public spirit 
 are incompatible with slender means — a fallacy that is refuted 
 by the degradations of public Ufe in South Africa and America 
 almost exclusively by rich men. 
 
 And because some poor Labour councillors have attempted 
 too much in a short time, and in the face of unscrupulous 
 opposition, often by officials, always by the publicans, house 
 
268 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 agents, slum owners, food adulterators, and others, who make 
 up the ratepayers' alliances and are the nucleus of anti-pro- 
 gressive municipal life — then they are to be pilloried on small 
 errors for great crimes. 
 
 The authors of the articles seek, as in their Crisis in 
 British Industry less to reform what exists, than to destroy 
 popular efifort either in industrial organization or municipal 
 life, and in this they will inevitably fail. I suspect that their 
 real and greater object is to divert public attention from the 
 blunders of the governing caste at home and abroad, and so 
 divert criticism and punishment from their political allies, so 
 that the South African blunder can be covered up by the 
 " horrible doings of the West Ham Socialists " or " the awful 
 crimes of the Battersea Labour League" in starting a self- 
 supporting club and gymnasium for the diversion of potential 
 hooligans into comely youths and decent citizens. 
 
 The pitiably sordid defence of the railway companies 
 against paying their proper share of local burdens discloses 
 the class bias of the attack on Municipal Socialism. These 
 increased rates in nearly every case have been caused through 
 the lack of foresight by the companies themselves, whose 
 blunders in approaches, railway arches, and other conveniences 
 have been a curse to many localities, some of which in London, 
 particularly Battersea, have been heavily burdened in con- 
 sequence. 
 
 The gross misrepresentation of municipal electric lighting, 
 gas, water, and tramway ownership, when one year's figures 
 are taken as a sample, stamps the authors as mere fuglemen of 
 monopoly, the mouthpiece of trust and company rule. What 
 is more, it proves their ignorance of the subjects of which they 
 try to treat. A casual reading only of the technical papers 
 like the Electrical Times or Municipal Journal would demon- 
 strate that the municipalities generally, as compared with 
 companies, sell cheaper, generate cheaper, for kilowatt of plant 
 have less capital, serve the public better, and all the time are 
 piling up a public asset which is not only good Socialism, but 
 
JOHN BURNS 269 
 
 first-rate business for the ratepayers, and ultimate wealth for 
 the community. 
 
 The answer to all their charges against municipal trading, 
 its costs and results, is best given in the words of Mr. Maltbie, 
 in 1900, after an inquiry of great care and exhaustiveness into 
 municipal gasworks, as compared with company exploitation : — 
 
 " Summarizing the results of municipal ownership as com- 
 pared with private operation under public control, it is to be 
 said that under the former system, prices for gas, meters, and 
 fittings are lower ; that the quality of gas is better, that it is 
 much more extensively used, that wages are higher, that the 
 treatment of labourers is better, that profits are nearly as large, 
 that works are not as highly capitalized, that sinking funds are 
 adequate, that productivity per unit of raw material is almost 
 as great, and that the management is fully as progressive ; all 
 in all, municipal operation has been more successful than 
 private operation." 
 
 Practically the same, or better, can be said of the 930 
 authorities who supply water, the 240 owning gasworks, the 
 100 owning tramways, and the 180 supplying electricity. Cer- 
 tainly tramways more than justify expectations from all points 
 of view, especially that of housing. 
 
 Electric light, measured by the standard of cost, service, 
 price, and regularity, tells the same tale, as a perusal of the 
 electric manuals will prove. Markets do the same; and 
 measured by quality of work, at less or the same price as 
 contract, direct employment in public building operations 
 comes out well. The financial aspect and monetary success 
 of the whole ramifications of municipal trading is proved con- 
 clusively by Sir Henry Fowler's return made in 1899. This 
 official report proved that of ;^88,379,93i of capital invested 
 in waterworks, gasworks, tramways, electric lighting, markets, 
 baths, cemeteries, dwellings, piers, and miscellaneous, there 
 was a net profit of ;£3,6i3,668. This business-like result 
 could not be secured if labour-loafing and municipal malinger- 
 ing prevailed to the extent alleged by the Times articles. 
 
270 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Similar results are shown in Reports 343 and 347, 1901, 
 and 1899 for Scotland. Apart from these satisfactory results, 
 the capacity and adaptability of municipalities to manage well 
 is imdoubted. The Glasgow tramways have run off a rival 
 parallel steamboat service, and actually caused a great Scotch 
 railway to abandon its dearer and slower suburban services 
 because the directors thereof have given to political lobbying 
 and extraneous work what should have been devoted to better 
 management for the public, and dividends for their share- 
 holders. 
 
 Truly the directors, when they see with envious eyes the 
 superiority and greater cheapness of municipal traction, can 
 say, " Not in our (municipal) stars, but in ourselves, that we 
 are underlings." 
 
 I venture to predict something similar in London for omni- 
 buses, railways, and even tubes, when London owns a complete 
 electrical surface tramway service with a universal penny fare, 
 but which is at present being obstructed and crippled in its 
 development by a small knot of Parliamentary capitalists who 
 find mischievous allies in the House of Lords. 
 
 What the Times really fears is not municipal mismanage- 
 ment, because that does not prevail. In the interest of private 
 enterprise it really dreads State and municipal absorption, and 
 more efficient working thereby, of monopolies that in service 
 have become intolerable, and in slowness and cost unendurable, 
 either for civic expansion, social needs, or commercial develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The Times apprehends, without cause shown, that muni- 
 cipal trading may fail I do not share that fear. Social odium 
 and displacenlent can always be relied upon to stimulate 
 officials to do " the utmost for the highest." Greater powers 
 to committees and officers to dismiss lazy or incompetent 
 workmen will correct any abuse from this quarter. And if 
 sectional aims go too far, as often they do, particularly at the 
 War Office, the mass of the public can be relied upon to 
 administer the necessary corrective in a summary way. 
 
JOHN BURNS 271 
 
 Where that has not been done, experience will teach, and 
 the necessity for success will compel. 
 
 In the latter process, labour leaders, as in the past and 
 present, will deprecate and resist the sectional aims of a class 
 or trade unless these can be reconciled with the instalment 
 process of improving the mass of the community step by step. 
 
 In fact, signs are not wanting that already the sensible 
 servants of the State, and the equitably-minded of the muni- 
 cipal workmen, are conscious of the danger that disproportionate 
 demands may bring to the commonwealth. And, with a few 
 exceptions, amongst leaders and men there is asserting itself 
 a beUef that all for each means also each for all. The ever- 
 widening sphere of municipal employment, of course, presents 
 social, political, moral, and ethical difficulties. But the same 
 problem is greater in the trust, the combine, and the public 
 monopoly, as the " Car Barn Vote " of companies' employes 
 proves. 
 
 The greater difficulty about the latter is that a few persons, 
 often a single individual, such as a Pierpont Morgan or a 
 Penrhyn, can only be dealt with when an industrial crisis is 
 reached, and from behind the wall of uncontrolled possession 
 either cripple industry by a corner in commodities, or by rail- 
 way rates, or crush out human sympathy and combination by 
 a feudal edict that municipal ownership would avoid. 
 
 In a word, the rapidity of growth of towns, the productivity 
 of labour and machinery, the aggregations of populations, the 
 increase thereby of complex civic problems, brush aside all the 
 doctrinaire theories of individual as against collective owner- 
 ship. The average Briton, to his credit, cares neither for the 
 cast-iron formulae of Marx, or the belated wails of individualists ; 
 what he cares for, votes for, and pays for is the best that any 
 system will produce, and the answer to the allegations of the 
 Times, as to the dangers of municipal enterprise, is that con- 
 currently with keener criticism municipal trading dispropor- 
 tionately grows, and will so continue to prosper. 
 
 What is needed for its guidance, development, and full 
 
272 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 fruition for the ratepayers is greater tolerance and more sympa- 
 thetic relations between all classes of people in matters that 
 affect the common interests of the newer and the higher 
 citizenship. Fortunately this is coming, as is evidenced by 
 the excellent work, apart from their political differences, that 
 the London County Councillors have generally displayed at 
 Spring Gardens for the betterment of London. In this work 
 none have shown better judgment, tact, and self-denial than 
 the Labour members. 
 
 It would have done the Times more credit if it had en- 
 couraged this process from its higher vantage-ground, instead 
 of turning on a cock-and-bull story about an officer sending a 
 map to be repaired to the Works Department — ^the cheapest 
 and best way of getting it done, by the way — or of a painter 
 refusing to unscrew a door-plate because it was a carpenter's 
 work. 
 
 I could retort by saying that because my trade union and 
 the plumbers spent foolishly about ;^ 100,000 over a demar- 
 cation of work dispute some years ago on the Tyne, that 
 therefore the employer on whose works this collective folly 
 occurred should be pilloried for an act he was not responsible 
 for. The fault rested with the respective trades, not with the 
 council or employer. Similarly the Times distorts, exaggerates, 
 omits, and misinterprets the greatest movement of the century 
 which it wishes to destroy, but has not the fairness to 
 understand. 
 
 Its charges about direct employment of labour are as 
 ridiculous as they are untrue. 
 
 The L.C.C. only asks contractors to grant their workpeople 
 " the rate of wages, hours, and conditions in practice 
 obtained " by the trade unions from associations of employers, 
 and in practice obtained. The L.C.C. itself only pays to its 
 workpeople what the same workmen could get on similar work 
 elsewhere. Its other clauses as to payment, arbitration, re- 
 tention moneys, and other conditions are much more favour- 
 able to contractors than those enforced by the MetropoUtan 
 
JOHN BURNS 273 
 
 Board of Works. The Council insists upon, and generally 
 secures, the same amount of work as contractors, and certainly 
 gets a better quality of work from those it employs. 
 
 With regard to its Works Department, the inception of 
 this poUcy was due to the contractors themselves by their high 
 prices and their mysteriously similar tenders, and the desire to 
 remove from L.C.C. officials a sphere of temptation to which 
 I am not anxious any public servants should be subjected, and 
 to which some of their predecessors' servants succumbed, as 
 recent magisterial and other significant facts disclose. 
 
 Whether the Times cares for it or not, the elimination of 
 the middleman, the abolition of the contractor, is a rapidly 
 growing process not only for all public bodies, but for Govern- 
 ments and even large private manufacturers. It is in that way 
 that profit, concentration, and economy are to be found, and 
 is the only weapon of the community against the tyranny of 
 the trust What is more, if there is any defect in the direct 
 employment of labour by the L.C.C, the primary responsibility 
 for this rests upon those who, for political or trade reasons, 
 have prevented the proper equipment, administration, and 
 work of the department. 
 
 Where similar work is done by the City of London, the 
 London School Board, or even by the Government, at same 
 cost and no better quality, there is a studious silence; but 
 " what in the City captain is but a choleric word, in the 
 County Council soldier is rank blasphemy." But the facts 
 about the Works Department are these : — 
 
 Since its inception it has done, under the old management, 
 ^793,990 SJ. T-d, of estimated work at a cost of ;^86s,244 
 9^. lod., or ;^7 1,334 above estimate, by no means the 
 absolute standard, and that on 12 jobs taken too cheaply in 
 the early stages. 
 
 Under the new management it has completed ;^466,io2 
 8j. 2d. estimated, at a cost of .;^473.7i3. or £^()^.o above. 
 From the latter alleged loss ^£7233 is to be deducted for 
 profits on jobbing works, or a net loss of ;^4oo. As a set-off 
 
274 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 against this, over the whole period, ;^97,ooo has been incurred 
 for excessive establishment charges, _;£'34,ooo for general 
 charges, including interest on capital, ;^iz,377 for repayment 
 of capital, or a total of ;^i44,ooo. If any ratepayer wishes to 
 see whether he has value for the money, a visit to New Cross, 
 Whitefriars, Battersea River, and other fire-stations will 
 reassure him ; whilst a visit to the new Lots Road Pumping 
 Station, Heathwall, and other works, will dispel the "wild 
 and whirling " words of the authors of Municipal Socialism in 
 the Times as to the capacity, cost, and quality of the depart- 
 ment's work. 
 
 If contract comparisons are needed : Parliament Street 
 contract paving, the annual cost of ;^3S,ooo a year on 
 scamped Board School buildings, the Victoria Embankment 
 repairs, and the enormous extras on the works by other 
 London bodies that can be named. These bodies are being 
 tardily driven to follow the policy of the L.C.C. in defence of 
 the ratepayer, independently of the interest of the workman, 
 the protection of the contractor, or the aims of the theorist. 
 
 The wise municipal statesman says, with the poet Pope — 
 
 " For forms of government let fools contest, 
 Whate'er is best administered is best." 
 
 The growth of municipal trading is only the recognition, 
 and the profitable application to municipal affairs, of the 
 sensible couplet that is never quoted by the present Govern- 
 ment of the country, which on all counts is worse managed 
 than any borough council I know of, including, with all its 
 difficulties, overburdened, undermanned West Ham. 
 
 The Times, in its quixotic crusade against municipal trading, 
 descends from the criticism of municipal life in general to the 
 particular in several instances, and of course, not unexpectedly, 
 Battersea, with which I am associated. Is this a premonition 
 of an imminent general election, as I notice that invariably in 
 London a wholesale onslaught is made either on the L.C.C. or 
 the Battersea local governing body a few weeks before either 
 
JOHN BURNS 275 
 
 of the two elections occurs? Of Battersea, the first charges 
 are that the representatives of the masses make pilgrimages to 
 Battersea, with the view not of studying municipal efficiency, 
 " but of getting nice, soft, and comfortable jobs." This quite 
 unfounded statement is disposed of by the fact that the over- 
 whelming majority of the staff now engaged by the Battersea 
 Borough Council have been transferred from the old local 
 Board of Works, the defunct vestry, or as vacancies have 
 occurred from the best qualified, whether from Liverpool, 
 Manchester, or elsewhere, irrespective of politics, creed, or class. 
 
 Borough Councillors can truly say, " None of my relations 
 are (local) Government contractors." Whilst in the matter of 
 relationships. Downing Street could do worse than emulate the 
 Spartan self-denial of Battersea. 
 
 It is true that the majority of councillors are of the working 
 classes, but so are their constituents. Better this than the 
 creatures of contractors, as too many members of the old 
 London vestries were, and in so being causing their belated 
 disappearance in favour of the existing bodies, who are 
 extending municipal enterprise as fast as they can to undo the 
 heritage of neglect and jobbery the vestries bequeathed to 
 them. The allegation that this Labour representation has 
 operated to the detriment of the district is disposed of by 
 comparing its roads and the cost per mile thereof, streets, 
 sanitation, libraries, baths, electric light, its steriUzed milk 
 dep6t, its gymnasia, gardens, and other amenities, with Tory, 
 middle-class, company-ridden Wandsworth, or with the aristo- 
 cratic Westminster City Council, which, in my opinion, is the 
 worst and most costly district in London, with its paving 
 scandals and its mania for advertizing itself in costly street 
 name-plates. 
 
 It is true that Battersea has a works department, but so 
 has the Times office for its limited work. 
 
 That works department from 1895 to March, 1902, did 
 -^266,000 of estimated works at a cost of ;^256,ooo, or 
 ;^io,ooo below estimate, and which, allowing for office and 
 
276 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 establishment charges, still yields a profit to ratepayers for 
 admittedly superior work, the abolition of tips, secret com- 
 missions, and high maintenance charges that bad contract 
 work always means. 
 
 The instance of the excessive cost on the Albert Bridge 
 Road sewer is only partially true. This was a difficult job. 
 A new sewer had to be placed under another, which had 
 collapsed long before its proper time, because it was badly 
 built by a contractor j there were difficulties through land 
 water getting in ; but there is less to blame the council for in 
 this than in the system of cheap and nasty work that rendered 
 this job necessary at all. 
 
 What the " Municipal Alliance " want is to get back to 
 power to revive this condition of things ; hence their rage and 
 disappointment through the medium of the Times. 
 
 The silly stories of five men to drive a nail, the fiction 
 about York Road chalet, which could not be put elsewhere 
 except at treble the cost, and could not be altered as to level 
 because of main sewer, my unfounded visits to certain works, 
 and my purely imaginative rebuke of workmen on these jobs, 
 are but the irresponsible clatter of defeated jerrybuilders in 
 their cups, or the fictions of a few dismissed employes who 
 were sent about their business. 
 
 The statement about " local government in Battersea being 
 carried on far more in the interests of municipal employes than 
 in those of the general body of the ratepayers " is as unfair as 
 untrue. This statement is the invention of the local Municipal 
 Alliance, that on several occasions have failed to make their 
 charges true, and, what is more, do not make them on the 
 council itself, where they can be refuted. 
 
 The numerical answer is that in November, 1899, ^^ 
 council had in its employ 570 when work to be done justified 
 this number. It has now 242 doing its necessary public work, 
 and of these I should say half were without votes, spread over 
 two L.C.C. and Parliamentary constituencies, and the majority 
 of these people often are Tory in their views. 
 
JOHN BURNS 277 
 
 It is true that Battersea has a debt of ;£'5 15,000, but what 
 of that? Its assets in electric light, libraries, baths, wharves, 
 works, and other properties, counterbalance this. It is also 
 true that its rates have been seriously increased, but this is not 
 altogether the fault of the borough council. It is due to causes 
 general to all parts of the metropoUs, partly to outside bodies, 
 who out of a total rate levied by the borough council of 
 ;£'383,ooo, leave the borough council only _;^i 36,000 for its 
 manifold duties; and this cannot be specially attributed to 
 Battersea workmen. One of the chief reasons is due to the 
 eviction of the very poor from low-rated West End parishes, 
 who bundle their poor and their burdens over the bridges from 
 Belgravia to Battersea. The way out is to further equalize the 
 cost of Poor Law maintenance, but not to cut down the 
 standard of sanitary efficiency. 
 
 The !nmes then makes a great fuss about what Battersea 
 spent upon free concerts, now disallowed by Local Govern- 
 ment Board auditor. The cost of giving 76 concerts to 84,000 
 people in three years, delightful counter-attractions to the 
 street and the public-house, cost the parish up to date less 
 than ;;^90o, or not a farthing rate for the year, and less than a 
 fooUsh person in the West End recently spent on a dinner for 
 ten persons that fitly ended in a street row. If, however, there 
 had been more tact and judgment displayed in this matter 
 by those responsible, this venture could have proceeded as 
 originally intended," but raw haste was ever half-sister to delay." 
 
 The facts about the bOys' club and gymnasium are not as 
 stated. The truth about the matter is, that the Latchmere 
 Baths in the winter were lying idle; youths were lounging 
 about the streets, with nowhere to go but the public-house or 
 other undesirable places, sucking at cigarettes. 
 
 The council fitted up a gymnasium at a cost of £a9^, in- 
 cluding appliances, wages, expenses, and salary of instructor, 
 and charged a small fee for admission and use; 31,000 youths 
 paid this fee, or a sum of ;^403, leaving a deficit of ;£'93, a 
 set-off against which is the improvement of physique, manners. 
 
278 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and habits of the lads frequenting the place, which would have 
 pleased Colonel Fox, of Aldershot Gymnasium, and the Royal 
 Commission on Physical Education. 
 
 As to the club, where they can play bagatelle and other 
 innocent games, 16,000 boys paid in fees the sum of ^^S^ for 
 the use of recreative pleasures that saved them from the streets 
 and yielded ^3 above cost and working expenses. In all, 
 47,000 youths for less than ^^loo had opened out to them 
 something better than the streets and their consequent hooli- 
 ganism j and this useful work is described as a scandal. 
 
 It is not true, as stated, that the Latchmere Baths are a 
 loss of nearly _;^4ooo a year to the parish. The working 
 expenses, including repayment of principal, are ;^4843 for 
 230,000 bathers; the receipts are _;^2i83, and, in spite of low 
 charges, are rapidly improving. 
 
 The Times man forgets to mention, whilst on Latchmere 
 Baths, that these dreadful Battersea workmen have dared to 
 dispense with a water company bill of ;^6oo per annum by 
 sinking a well, the property of the council, that gives them the 
 necessary supply for less than ;^ioo. He forgot also to 
 mention that its sterilized milk depfit is becoming self-support- 
 ing in a short time, and has been blessed by the Coroner, 
 approved by the doctors and the Lancet and has certainly 
 reduced the infantile death-rate, which the dreadful Labour 
 Leaguers are determined to stiU farther diminish. 
 
 The statement about Nine Elms Baths is equally misleading. 
 The Times investigator, if he had inquired further, would have 
 ascertained that the loss on this bath could have been wiped 
 out if the _;^4ooo a year, or id. rate, which the council now 
 spends in repairing defective private combined drainage out of 
 the public funds, had not been saddled upon the parish by 
 the house-agents who run the Municipal Alliance, and wish to 
 ruin the parish; It is true there is a loss upon the Morden 
 Cemetery, which is a new burial-ground of enormous size and 
 with low fees; but Battersea prefers to make a dividend of 
 better health out of the living rather than a profit out of the 
 
JOHN BURNS 279 
 
 prematurely dead. The Labour Leaguers actually had the 
 audacity to ask the railway company for cheaper railway fares 
 for the mourners, and, as with nearly all its attempts, it really 
 succeeded. The borough would, however, bury the Municipal 
 Alliance at a loss, to prevent their emissaries from misleading 
 a great paper Uke the Times, that might, before publishing these 
 libels, have seen the responsible oflBcials and members of the 
 borough council. If not too late, I will give the authors of 
 the articles a few days to correct their mis-statements by view- 
 ing the parish with them and displaying its attractions and im- 
 folding its well-kept accoimts. 
 
 The greatest inaccuracy of all is that the borough loses 
 over ;^3ooo a year over the men's sick club. The fact is, the 
 borough council gave ^£'250 last year for a fund to which the 
 men contribute 4//. per week. Of the 624 average membership 
 this year, 21 only at this moment are on the fund. Consider- 
 ing the character of occupation and age of men, none under 40 
 being engaged on roads, this is not bad. This is allowed and 
 approved by the Local Government Board. This is a sample 
 of the allegation that passes for criticism in the Times, which 
 seems to me very much " out of joint." Here and there in 
 the Times articles on Battersea is disclosed the source from 
 which the inspiration is derived. I have to meet it at every 
 L.C.C. and borough council election, and presumably this 
 last criticism is intended for local use by the dispossessed 
 Moderates at the next Parliamentary election. 
 
 I have not the least fear as to the result, because con- 
 currently with refuting the Times' attacks on democratic govern- 
 ment in this district, in the main prejudiced, partial, or untrue, 
 I intend to advise those with whom I work to legislate for the 
 parish as a whole, and if, as on one or two occasions, this is 
 not done in the general interest of the community, I will with- 
 hold what support I can command, and, if necessary, actively 
 oppose any party or candidate who could act or would attempt 
 to defend the purely imaginary condition of misgovernment 
 which the Times has fabricated. 
 
28o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 The fact is a great paper has been befooled by a few 
 discredited and defeated people, who have stuffed the ears of 
 the Times' correspondents with fables, filled their mouths with 
 libels of a district that, with all its shortcomings, as competent 
 observers can see, is a model to the west and an exemplar to 
 the east. 
 
 In all that Battersea and its Labour majority does for the 
 improvement of its community by the money its generous rate- 
 payers place at their disposal, I believe that better value is 
 given in return by officers, workmen, and councillors than in 
 any district in London. 
 
 I say that deliberately after having given five weeks of my 
 Parliamentary vacation to visiting all the districts, parks, works, 
 and other public institutions all over London. 
 
 In spite of a few blunders that have been checked, a few 
 errors of judgment, curiously by the very section the Times 
 picks out for special distinction, the borough council still 
 enjoys the confidence of the electors; but has earned the 
 curses of the opponents of all that is good for the parish and 
 for London, 
 
 The attack of the Times has failed to impress the district, 
 because it is but a rickauffi of flat, stale, and unprofitable 
 mendacity that failed at the last elections for L.C.C. and the 
 borough council, and is mainly directed, politically and person- 
 ally, against myself. From the collection of house-agents, 
 slum-owners, publicans, and others that compose the declining 
 Municipal Alliance we expected nothing better. But from a 
 great newspaper that is still a power when it dares to rise to its 
 great traditions we had expected dignified correction when 
 proved to be wrong, sensible advice when doubtful policies 
 were under discussion, and cultivated instruction when inex- 
 perience prompted a wayward policy. 
 
 But instead of a dignified and well-informed reminder of 
 duty, obligations, and the responsibilities of Labour to the 
 community, which we could have respected, and where true 
 and applicable sincerely adopted, we have had a wanton 
 
JOHN BURNS 
 
 281 
 
 attack, inspired by local malignants, prompted by political 
 faction, in the interests of private monopoly that too long 
 has dominated the life of our great city. In the movement 
 called by the Times "Municipal Sociahsm," it suspects that 
 this is an attempt of a class to capture power, fill offices, spend 
 other people's money in the interest of a special class to the 
 detriment of the community as a whole. This is what the 
 contractor, the trust, the syndicate, the resultant " Boss " and 
 " spoils" system have produced in many American cities. 
 
 Municipal Socialism will avoid that danger in Britain, be- 
 cause the incentive for company franchises, the fruitful source 
 of corruption everywhere, even in Parliament, will not exist; 
 because the town will own the trust, instead of the trust 
 owning the town. 
 
 In so far as Battersea has secured the ownership by its own 
 ratepayers of what is left to inefficient and costly private enter- 
 prise elsewhere, Battersea has done well. 
 
 The movement amongst workmen for a greater share of 
 the blessings that municipal life confers on society as a whole 
 is not a disordered scramble for office, patronage, or largesse 
 under the guise of dawdling service or perfunctory labour. For 
 Labour there must be no " Miching Mallecho ; " for the com- 
 munity none but loyal and strenuous service. 
 
 It is a revival of the old-time enthusiasm for a richer, 
 fuller civic life as a means of lifting themselves from the pit of 
 Tophet into which past neglect consigned them, private enter- 
 prise enthralled them; and from which in raising themselves 
 they deserve better than the gibes and jeers of the "Joe 
 Millers " of the Liberty and Property Defence League in the 
 columns of the Times. If in this upward movement of a 
 people, for the benefit of the race, for something better than 
 hovels to live in^ drink as a diversion, monotonous toil as a 
 livelihood, there has been, as at West Ham and elsewhere, 
 strong language, in some cases provoked by the present 
 snobbery and past jobbery of Tory Bumbledom, it is but a 
 rough incident^ a mere stumble, in the stride of a people from 
 
282 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the cringing, dependent period of monopoly tutelage, to the 
 higher life of the craftsman citizen of a free community. 
 
 In that general movement for a brighter, better London, 
 Battersea deservedly stands in the forefront of municipal 
 progress ; and for that worthy cause Battersea Labour honestly 
 works, and its workmen, without patronage or corruption, will 
 ever honourably and fairly strive to lead. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 JOHN BURNS. 
 
 September 23, 1902. 
 
 The following was the municipal programme given in Mr. Burns' 
 election address for the London County Council election of 1898. 
 
 If elected, I will, as heretofore, devote my time to the 
 Council's work, and am in favour of — 
 
 1. The extension of the powers of the Council, so that the 
 City, with all its funds and endowments, be included in and 
 used by a real Municipality for London. 
 
 2. That all monopolies, such as gas, water, tramways, 
 omnibuses, markets, docks, river steamboats, and electric 
 lighting, should be municipalized, and the profits, amounting 
 to _;^4,ooo,ooo annually, or three times the Council's revenue, 
 devoted to public purposes. 
 
 3. Establishment of municipal hospitals in every district, 
 and control by the Council of those which already exist. 
 
 4. Artisans' dweUings, as now, to be constructed and owned 
 by the Council. 
 
 5. Enlargement of powers so as to enable the County 
 Council to undertake the organization of industry and distri- 
 bution, especially in those departments dealing with the neces- 
 saries of life. 
 
 6. Rigorous enforcement of Public Health Acts, and 
 efficient sanitary and structural inspection of dwellings and 
 workshops. 
 
 7. The organization of unemployed labour on useful work 
 at trade-union wages. 
 
JOHN BURNS 283 
 
 8. The direct employment of all labour by the Council at 
 eight hours per day at trade-union rates, women and men 
 receiving equal pay for equal work. Nine years' experience 
 has proved that contract work, however well supervised, does 
 not produce such good buildings and workmanship as the 
 Council has secured by its own workmen. 
 
 9. Direct control by the Council of the five millions of 
 money now spent, and too often squandered, on useless 
 officialism and feasting by charitable institutions and City 
 companies. 
 
 10. The police of the City and Greater London to be 
 controlled by the County Council. 
 
 11. Cumulative rating, the taxation of ground landlords for 
 the relief of the occupier, and the provision of new sources of 
 revenue. Sevenpence — half our present rate — now goes to pay 
 the old debt left by our predecessors, thus depriving London 
 of many necessary improvements. 
 
 Besides these measures, I will work and vote for any plan 
 that will enable London to reduce its poverty and brighten the 
 lives and increase the comfort of its people. 
 
 The following is Mr. Bums' Parliamentary programme as given 
 in his election address of 1900. 
 
 As a candidate, dealing with immediate questions, and 
 asking your votes, I am in favour of the following : — 
 
 Home Rule for Ireland, and such measures of legislative 
 independence as the Irish people may demand for their 
 political, social, and industrial emancipation. 
 
 Payment of members and election expenses. 
 
 Adult Man and Woman's Suffrage, and drastic amendment 
 of Registration Laws, Second Ballot, and Referendum. 
 
 Triennial Parliaments. 
 
 Abolition of the House of Lords and all Hereditary 
 Authorities. 
 
 Conferring upon the London County Council all the 
 powers enjoyed by other municipalities, and giving to London 
 
284 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 a unification of complete municipal self-government, with power 
 to acquire all existing monopolies. 
 
 Wider powers to Local Authorities to deal with Housing 
 of the Poor, and the creation of Fair Rent Courts. 
 
 Alteration of the incidence of taxation, so that the ground 
 landlord, the owner, and the rich, shall pay their just propor- 
 tion of taxation. 
 
 Disestablishment of the Church. 
 
 The Legal Eight Hours' Day as the best means of securing 
 work for all, overwork for none, the avoidance of strikes, 
 reduction of the rates, and giving permanent employment 
 where demoralizing casual labour now prevails. 
 
 Raising the age of child labour, and placing all trades 
 within the scope of the existing and future Factory and 
 Sanitary Acts. 
 
 Alteration of existing Poor Law, and diversion of its funds 
 to some scheme of Old Age Pensions that, by cumulative or 
 graduated income-tax on the rich, would give sustenance to old 
 people without pauperization. 
 
 Giving to localities absolute and complete power in decid- 
 ing upon all questions relating to the drink traffic by Direct 
 Veto and Local Option. 
 
 The recognition of Trades Unions, the abolition of sweating 
 and subletting, the payment of union wages in all Government 
 Departments, and the checking of waste, jobbery, and extrava- 
 gance wherever found. 
 
XX 
 
 SOCIALISM AND CO-OPERATION 
 By E. Anseele 
 
 An address delivered to a meeting of French Socialists in Paris 
 in 1900. 
 
 Edouard Anseele is the son of a working bootmaker, and began 
 life as a compositor at Ghent. He started in 1873, ^'^h a handful 
 of friends, the Ghent Socialist Co-operative Society, "Vooruit;" 
 which from the smallest beginnings has come to have nearly 10,000 
 members and over ;f 25,000 capital, with premises which are the finest 
 in Ghent There is now a Sod^st co-operative in Brussels on an 
 even larger scale, and of the 1700 co-operative societies in Belgium 
 most are Socialist. All Belgian Socialist activity centres now 
 aronnd its " Maisons du Peuple." 
 
 The following address gives some idea of the all-round manner 
 in which these Socialist co-operatives try to benefit their members, 
 providing entertainment, education, medical care, funds for the 
 Socialist press and party, and premises for trade-union meetings. 
 
 I COME to plead before you for the marriage of two ideas, 
 which some years ago were thought incapable of uniting — 
 Co-operation and SociaUsm. 
 
 In a meeting at Brussels some time back, I made a com- 
 parison. The Co-operative Socialist movement which we — 
 my friends and I— have created in Belgium might j^^ alliance 
 be likened to the union of a sempstress and an of Socialism 
 artist. She, the sempstress, wants a larger life opepaTion. 
 than her shop and her trade ; he, the artist, wants 
 his soup served to the minute and his cooking done reliably 
 and regularly on a plentiful scale, to enable him to fling himself 
 
 285 
 
286 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 into the world of the most daring creations. She has had her 
 trials, the poor sempstress. She was looking after her little 
 household with a prudence which not many ministers of finance 
 display in many countries ; while he took it into his head to 
 consort with wrong people, or rather people with wrong ideas 
 — revolutionists and Utopians — and to spend the money so 
 hardly earned in meetings and manifestations and for under- 
 takings which, after all, yield no income. She was annoyed, 
 and now and then she would say, " I'll stop payment." And 
 then he explained things ; talked of the new world, of the nobler 
 ideal, of a great revolution in ideas, of universal changes, of 
 things which she understood very little but felt very much ; and 
 she would say, " I love you more than ever ; I'll go on paying, 
 only — don't ask for too much ! " 
 
 In Belgium the cause is won. They are married, and from 
 their marriage lots of children have been bom — lots more 
 even than in Zola's novel Ficondite. But the case is far from 
 being won here in France. No more is it in Germany, much 
 less in England. On the one hand, people blame Co-operation 
 for being Socialist ; on the other, they blame Socialism for 
 being Co-operative. And yet in Belgium the marriage is such 
 a success, its offspring is so sturdy and numerous, that we have 
 even (again as in Zola's novel) reached the colonizing stage — 
 which has brought me here. 
 
 Co-operators who are only co-operators say : No Socialism 
 in Co-operation; Co-operation and nothing else; grocery, bread- 
 Theanti- baking, drug-selling— that's all; soup at a penny- 
 Socialist eo- halfpenny, bread at twopence-halfpenny — ^beyond 
 operator. ,^^^^ nothing. We say : You are wrong. And, my 
 bourgeois friends, note that we can discuss the subject with 
 you ; we are as good men of business as you lovers of pure 
 Co-operation. Look at our bread-factories, just as successful as 
 yours, and perhaps more so, because people can be thorough- 
 going reformers and remain good men of business. Well, I say 
 you are doubly wrong, from the moral standpoint and from 
 the material. Co-operation has to be Socialist. And whv s-o 
 
E. ANSEELE 287 
 
 wrong ? Take the moral standpoint first. What is Co-opera- 
 tion, unless it is a struggle, not merely for the immediate 
 Bettering of one's lot, but for the transformation of sofiety 
 in a higher sense? Otherwise, we should have simply 'to 
 endeavour, by competition, to get our wares as cheap as yours. 
 But Co-operation is a great work of reform; and to create, 
 maintain, and enlarge a great work of reform, you want the 
 sacred fire among those who take part in it. Socialism 
 supplies that sacred fire. And if with us that union of which 
 I spoke just now is so strong and indestructible, if with us our 
 enthusiasm is as great as our daring, it is, thanks to the sacred 
 fire, that Socialism has put into our hearts and minds. Secondly, 
 you are wrong from the material standpoint. Do you want a 
 striking example? Here is one. Suppose all the French co- 
 operative societies. Socialist and non-Socialist, joined ; suppose 
 them as rich and strong as all the co-operative societies in the 
 world put together ; they never, never, never — not if they had 
 the greatest business men, the greatest financiers, the greatest 
 accountants at their head — they never could, of themselves 
 alone and without exerting pressure in the political sphere, 
 lower the price of bread in the same proportion as the protec- 
 tive tariff law in France has increased it by putting a seven-franc 
 duty on the import of foreign grain. In vain, you co-operators 
 pure and simple, in vain you may want to cut a farthing into 
 two; of all your saving, of all your initiative, half or three- 
 quarters or the whole will be annihilated by a single bad law 
 which will raise the price of an article more than by your 
 intelligence and your efforts you can lower it. 
 
 That is how the co-operators pure and simple err, both from 
 the moral and the material standpoint. 
 
 Next there are our friends (and when our friends give it 
 us they do give it us !) — our friends the anti-co-operative 
 Socialists. What do they say, our friends? They The anti- 
 fear, it seems, for our work. I like and respect co-operative 
 this sentiment, if it is sincere. But what do they Socialists, 
 fear ? Do they fear that Co-operation, which tends to give a 
 
288 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 gentler character to the Socialist movement, may check the 
 generous hearts and the broad minds of the other class, and 
 prevent them from coming to Socialism in greater numbers ? 
 I think they are mistaken: for precisely through the incite- 
 ment to gentleness and the practical spirit, which Co-operation 
 gives to Socialism, do I think that the generous hearts and 
 broad minds of the other class will come in greater numbers 
 than before. Do they fear their coming in too great numbers ? 
 Are they afraid of the flood of "intellectuals," of generous 
 hearts and broad minds from the other class, pouring into our 
 class ? Do they fear that ? I do not. I am not afraid either 
 of the wealth in their brains or that in their coffers; and if 
 their ideas help us to find our way, and their coffers help us to 
 travel along it with fewer victims and less suffering, I do not 
 fear the advent of as many " intellectuals " as possible in the 
 ranks of the working-class. In Belgium we have with us 
 " intellectuals " full of talent, — you know about them, and I 
 need not mention names, — fine fellows who in the Belgian 
 Chamber can give some nasty knocks to the champions of their 
 former class. Well, these "intellectuals," full of talent and 
 enthusiasm, and sincere in their faith, can only do good in 
 our midst. And if they wanted to do harm, the conscience 
 of the organized working-class would prevent them in twenty- 
 four hours. 
 
 Do they fear, our friends who criticize us, that the petty 
 bourgeoisie may not join us or may leave us? For that 
 Socialist eo- matter, let it leave us; it is no great loss. It is 
 
 opepation jjQt on our side, even if we are not co-operators. 
 
 and the _ . , ^ ', . ^ 
 
 petty hour- Certamly I would not go out of my way to scare 
 
 geoisie. ^hg petty bourgeoisie, nor any part of a class which 
 is not my class. But if to set my own class free I am con- 
 vinced that I must adopt certain tactics, and if it happens that 
 in consequence of these tactics the petty bourgeoisie is in- 
 duced to leave me or not to join me, I would stick to my 
 tactics, come what may. I have the interests of my class to 
 defend, and it is these and no others that guide my conscience. 
 
E. ANSEELE 289 
 
 Besides, what can we do ? What can the little co-operative 
 societies — little compared with the Louvre, or Bon Marchd, 
 or Dufayel, like tiny cockleshells beside big transatlantic 
 liners, — ^what addition by themselves can the little co-operative 
 societies make to the vast economic process which is tending 
 to stamp out the petty bourgeoisie ? The great industry has 
 resulted in a lessening of the cost of production ; it is logical 
 that the cost of exchange should be lessened as far as possible 
 also. If in this new economic transformation things must 
 happen which hurt a part of a certain class, well, I pity it 
 from the bottom of my heart. But if its elimination leads 
 us to an order better, juster, and more generous for the vast 
 mass of men, well, I throw into the balance the welfare of 
 the majority against the misfortune of a few. Besides, in 
 the development of production have not we, we also, been 
 stamped out? Has not the artisan been displaced by the 
 machine, dispossessed of his technical knowledge, of his trade, 
 to be swallowed up in the factory, which has grown large 
 enough to hold a whole village's population within its walls ? 
 To this precarious situation, caused by the economic develop- 
 ment I, the workman, have, willy-nilly, to make up my mind. 
 And in the conditions in which I live, I have none too 
 much of my wretched wage by the end of the week. I must 
 be a very sober workman; my wife must be a very thrifty 
 woman J my children cannot be ill twice a year; or else — 
 I get into debt. Suppose, then, I am a workman whose duty, 
 as father of a family, is to take good care of the household 
 interests, and suppose, by a system of buying and seUing 
 different from that of the bourgeoisie, I can lower the price 
 of the articles of food on which my family and I subsist, am 
 I to be prevented from doing so by a feeling of solidarity with 
 the petty bourgeoisie ? I could understand it, were this class 
 always at our side in all our struggles, sustaining us, encou- 
 raging us, — if it were with us heart and soul. But no ; a very 
 great part of the petty bourgeoisie is at heart with the enemy, 
 and with us for its pocket. Mind you, I do not say that 
 
290 
 
 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 systematically. People tell us : " You frighten the petty 
 bourgeoisie." I reply : " I cannot help it ; if it wants to join us, 
 it can. What is more, it ought ; for after all, I reckon, the life 
 of the petty bourgeois, from the spiritual point of view (I do not 
 speak here of the material standpoint), is an unhappy one. 
 He must always be of his customer's way of thinking, or else 
 he loses him ; and if he loses three, four, five customers, his 
 trade is doomed. His whole existence hangs by a silken 
 thread. And it is this miserable life that he wants to keep j 
 he wants to tighten the chains, to stick yet faster in the mud, 
 of the capitalist society, which leaves him this shame of the 
 spirit to earn his bread with. Well, let him endure it. 
 
 Our friends (those who give it us so often and give it us so 
 hard) say too : " By your co-operative societies you excite the 
 
 „, „ . selfishness of the working-class." Well, those who 
 The fear of . ° „ . ,. 
 
 makinethe say so are not acquamted with the Socialist co- 
 working- operative societies. Had they been ever members 
 of one, they would have a different knowledge of 
 what goes on in them. In the Socialist co-operative societies, 
 as in all others, bonuses are divided out quarterly, half yearly, 
 or annually. Well, I can assure you, not one of these divisions 
 occurs where members receive five, ten, or fifty francs, without 
 there being by the side of the man who pays them out one, two, 
 or three boxes — " For the Sociahst propaganda, please ! " " For 
 the weavers on strike, for the spinners on strike, please ! " 
 " For the Socialist children, please ! " — and it is " please " this 
 and " please " that, and of the money meant for the woman's 
 purse or the man's waistcoat only three-quarters goes there. So 
 a quarter of the bonuses goes — of the co-operator's own accord, 
 through the SociaUstic impulse which inspires the man, makes 
 him better, warms his heart — to the noble ideas, the large 
 aspirations, which make men not egoists but altruists. That 
 reproach is so false, the truth is so contrary to what our friends 
 the anti-co-operative Socialists say, that do you know what we 
 are obliged to do ? With us at Ghent it goes so far that some 
 of our members are — how should I put it ? it is perhaps harsh 
 
E. ANSEELE 291 
 
 — bothered by all these kinds of collections, till we have been 
 obliged to make it a condition for every collection in the 
 "Vooruit," that the Central Committee's leave be obtained first. 
 See how selfish Socialist co-operation makes people ! 
 
 But beyond that, if these friends (whose friendship I may 
 have misunderstood), if these Socialist anti-co-operative friends 
 mean that the ameliorations we secure, the bit of good we do 
 to the workman's family, do harm to the movement, then I 
 lose patience, and tell them that this time they err grossly. 
 What ! they say we do a disservice to the working-class ? To 
 increase the working-class's comfort is to endanger its cause 
 and ours ? Are, then, the poorest the most intelligent and 
 brave and deserving? Is it the wretchedest who know best 
 how to sacrifice themselves for the cause of all ? No ; the 
 poorer people are, the more they are liable to be brutalized ; 
 and if there is anything which raises a man^ it is not misery, 
 it is comfort. Wealth makes men bad ; poverty makes them 
 brutish : comfort makes them independent. What does in- 
 creased comfort effect? It not only enriches the man who 
 gains by it, it gives him weapons, for him to go higher and get 
 more; and it gives him besides that ferment, that leaven, 
 which makes revolutionaries, new needs. 
 
 The objectors go on : " Yes, that may be so ; but selling 
 syrup or putting half-soles on boots isn't, after all, a Socialist's 
 work." Of course not. But if that groups men, what does it 
 matter whether I group them by syrup or by vinegar, provided 
 that I group them ? And I shall group them more easily with 
 syrup than with vinegar. Besides, there is another point. 
 Did any one ever think he could ennoble trade ? Surely, a 
 thankless, quasi-impossible task. Yet we have ennobled trade. 
 Trade, says Dumas, is other people's money. It is not so 
 with us. There is no overcharge, or, if there is, it comes back 
 to the purchaser of the article, that is, to all the class who 
 suffer and fight for new ideas. We ennobled commerce when 
 I proposed that the " Vooruit " should establish free pensions 
 for all its members. I said : " That seems almost chimerical ; 
 
292 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 it is not easy ; but aren't we accustomed to doing things far 
 from easy ? " And I said again to my comrades : " But did 
 you ever think it possible, ever conceive it humanly possible, 
 to get a pension while having one's old boots mended, or 
 buying a litre of milk or a kilo of bread ? " " No/' they replied, 
 " that's a new thing." " Well," added I, " you'll see it." And 
 at the " Vooruit " there are pensions for all members aged sixty 
 after twenty years' participation in the Society; after having 
 bought at the Society's shops 3000 francs' worth during twenty 
 years, you get a free pension ranging from 120 to 300 francs 
 per member per year, which a man's wife can inherit from him. 
 So in buying syrup or vinegar, in having one's boots mended, 
 in buying a present for wife or husband, the New Year's gift 
 for the grandmother, or the St. Nicholas ^ toy for the little one, 
 one is working for the father's pension. But that means en- 
 nobling trade ; it is one of Co-operation's noble sides ; one of 
 its great moralizing sides. 
 
 " But," say our friends the anti-co-operative Socialists, 
 " you give the working-class petty-bourgeois ideas.'' Wrong 
 Co-opera- again. I ask those of you who have paid our 
 
 tionneed co-operative societies a visit, whether you can 
 
 not lower , . . , -^ , , ■ -j 
 
 Socialist oe mspired with petty-bourgeois ideas on entering 
 
 ideals. their fine premises, as fine as museums, their halls 
 
 and shops, as spacious as cathedrals. I ask them, can the 
 workman who goes in there and says, "There is something 
 of me here, /" am part of the class which has made these 
 great things " — I ask you, does that man feel a petty bourgeois ? 
 No ; he feels himself one of the new Grand Army, which will 
 not go to plant eagles across Europe, but to plant the land- 
 marks of the new world across the universe. Petty bourgeois ? 
 No, no ; " petty " people do not do these things. And recol- 
 lect how we started at Ghent : a handful of the poor weavers, 
 whose misery Heinrich Heine has sung, whose life of sorrow 
 and whose outbursts of revolt the German playwright Haupt- 
 mann has displayed. Recollect what poor wretches we were, 
 ' St. Nicholas is a Belgian counterpart of the English Santa Claus. 
 
E. ANSEELE 293 
 
 without money, without premises; for it was to be without 
 money to have but 85 francs 93 centimes ' subscribed capital, 
 and it was to be without premises to have a cellar ; with an 
 old kneading-trough, an old shovel, an old baker, not even a 
 cart — a big basket — some few loaves in it ; and, tally-ho ! off 
 we started. Well, when with those resources, that beginning, 
 those rudiments, you do what has been done at Ghent — what, 
 also, under similar conditions the Brussels workmen have done, 
 — I think you can say, that a work which has created all that, 
 which has thus transformed wretched weavers into apostles of 
 the new cause, that this co-operative work does not inspire 
 petty-bourgeois ideas. Really, how our friends do give it us, 
 and give it us hard ! 
 
 And what, after all, is the aim of these friends, the anti- 
 co-operative Socialists, and what, really, is ours ? It is the 
 organization of the working-class, to do with it what Archi- 
 medes was unable to do. You know, that old Syracusan 
 architect said one day, " Give me a fulcrum, and I will find 
 a lever to lift the world." Well, Socialism has found the 
 fulcrum and the lever. The fulcrum is equal rights ; the lever 
 is the organized and conscious strength of the workers, which 
 will lift the world and bring a new order out of it. That is 
 our aim. Then I ask my friends,^ how can Socialism, allied 
 \^& Co-operation — the artist married to , the sempstress^-how 
 can it hurt the organization of the workers ? 
 
 Suppose I have a working-class audience, purely working- 
 class, the sort of people we are to organize, and suppose I speak 
 as well as I can, and that in his turn Jaures with co-opera- 
 all his heart and eloquence addresses you, and ""^a^l'gtffo 
 that between us we send our respective audiences get at once 
 to the seventh heaven. We finish speaking; the to work, 
 audience goes outj we have preached organization, trade- 
 unions, mankind, everything. The audience has gone ; follow 
 it " Ah, how well Jaures spoke ! What an orator ! Anseele, 
 too, was tolerable." So they talk and debate, happy, warmed, 
 ' £3 Ss. 9id. 
 
294 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 convinced. Afterwards they each go home; and if we take 
 the worker whom I addressed, and who applauded me just 
 before, what does he find ? A sick wife, or a sulky mother ; 
 or, next day, the master before whom he is isolated weak in 
 his isolation, before whom he is nothing, like the pigmy David 
 without his sling before Goliath. Of all the enthusiasm, of all 
 the fine sentiments, of the aspirations, which one has created in 
 these hearts and heads, there will only remain here and there 
 a single man who is willing to sacrifice himself for the idea, 
 who will continue the struggle without hope of reward, even 
 with the certainty of receiving from his friends more ingratitude 
 than gratitude. He will have the minority with him, and the 
 majority will remain just as it has been for generations. 
 
 The minority will remain isolated and without cohesion — 
 and why? Because the groups formed by our warmth, our 
 fire, our enthusiasm, give but little or no immediate advantage. 
 The masses, with their great needs, ask for palpable benefits, 
 which they can, as it were, weigh in their hands, as the gold- 
 merchant weighs his gold in the balance. 
 
 This is the jweak side of trade-unions. WhaL,^. necessary 
 for the success of a trade;uriipn, in flrder_that one may reap its 
 immediate benefits ? It is necessary : that in each trade at 
 least the majority of the members shall be organized ; to be 
 strong against the employers you must have most of the trade's 
 workers, there must be plenty of money, lots of gold pieces in 
 the strong box. To obtain these lots of yellow-boys needs 
 weeks, months, years of saving and suffering, or else the 
 struggle is lost before it begins ; and, later, when the crisis 
 comes, there is possibly but half a victory, possibly a defeat ; 
 and if, favoured as one may be by the unparalleled prosperity 
 of industry hitherto, one may by a sufficiently strong trade- 
 union, and by the cohesion of the members of the trade-union, 
 snatch some advantages from the employers, yet at the very 
 first crisis we risk the loss of all we have gained. 
 
 You must not misunderstand me. I don't want here to 
 run down trade-unions : I am a trade-union maker. I do not 
 
E. ANSEELE 295 
 
 wish to put despair into the souls of those who take part in 
 the trade-union movement. Far be it from me. But I wish 
 to speak of things as they are and as I know them. With 
 friendly societies and trade-unions, their future is always at the 
 mercy of their financial position ; how, then, can these friendly 
 societies and trade-unions, which have to stand such severe 
 struggles, put aside funds to build large premises, large rooms 
 for recreation, for all the necessary organizations, and for the 
 Socialist education which the working-class needs, to attain the 
 end towards which it marches? Whereas, when you create 
 a co-operative society like your "Avenir de Plaisance," for 
 example, in any quarter, it is not necessary that the majority 
 of the people in that quarter should become members in 
 order that the society shall succeed. Let us suppose that we 
 are in a city like Paris, where there are 600,000 workmen. 
 One could create a co-operative society in a quarter with 
 6000 workmen, even with 1000, which, if well administered, 
 gives immediate advantages : the workmen at once receive 
 money, after the first six or twelve months, and their wives 
 receive with them — their wives, that is to say, the other half, 
 the most backward half, of our movement, the part of the 
 working-class most dominated by priest and capitalist. And 
 this you count as nothing ? To find a means of organization 
 which, instead of frightening the women, instead of alienating 
 them, attracts them, reconciles them with your opinion, your 
 ideal, your party, you count that as nothing ? I look upon it 
 as more than the half, because woman is, in fact, for man, 
 more than the half. 
 
 Trade-unions and friendly societies cannot build large pre- 
 mises, it is the exception ; but larger co-operative societies, 
 like the Ghent " Vooruit," the Brussels " Maison Through Co- 
 du Peuple," or .the Paris " Avenir de Plaisance " gSism 
 and " Egalitaire," can easily do so ; and if they can envelop 
 have wise managers, they can build their premises, f^g^/\^'| 
 as, for example, has been done with the " Avenir workers, 
 de Plaisance," like the ancient churches, where side by 
 
296 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 side the praises of God were sung and the butcher and the 
 grocer trafficked. They can put the altar in the middle of the 
 grocery-shop; and thus the complete union of Socialism and 
 Co-operation is really achieved. Understand me; later, as 
 things progress, that must change. The temple must not be 
 in the grocery-shop, but outside ; and between the two there 
 must be assembly-rooms for the trade-unions, large reading- 
 rooms for every one, and libraries. We require more; we 
 require Co-operation, as we regard it, to be like the Roman 
 Church. It must lay hold of its man as soon as he comes 
 into the world, and say, " Welcome, little one ; " then lead him 
 on to the end of his life, till the moment when he leaves it for 
 ever. From the cradle to the grave Co-operation and Socialism 
 must never leave him. All his material, his moral, and his 
 intellectual needs, his needs as a man, or hers as a woman, 
 this new church of the proletariate must supply in full ; that 
 the child of the people may be dedicated from his mother's 
 womb to the sole defence of interests which :are his own. 
 To-day we have the great misfortune of being nearly all our 
 lives in the hands of those whose interests are opposed to the 
 interests of our class. Suppose I am born a workman — my 
 father a miner, a tailor, an artisan, or an agricultural labourer. 
 Scarcely have I left my mother's breast when I am sent to the 
 creche — established that my mother may go working, and sweat 
 to supplement my father's too low wage — established that the 
 whole of the working-class family may be exploited for the 
 gain of the capitalist family. From the creche I go to the school, 
 whose programmes have been drawn up by the hostile class, 
 not to make a man of me, but to knead my brains as a baker 
 kneads his dough, to make a slave of me. From the school I 
 go to the workshop, where my whole mind, my whole producing 
 strength, is let and sold down to my last drop of sweat to the 
 class which is living upon my class. At twenty I leave the 
 workshop, and they send me to the barracks, that some 
 day I may die on a battlefield for thrones which are not 
 mine. 
 
E. ANSEELE 297 
 
 That must be changed (A voice : " Let us hope so "). I do 
 hope so. And why am I calm and hopeful ? Because, you see, 
 there we are, in poor manufacturing towns with co-opera- 
 wages of black bread, workers of the great, the "°" enables 
 middle-sized, or the small industry, and we know 1066°°* ^ 
 well enough, that if the whole mass of workers is Patient, 
 not yet conscious of its rights and its duties, and has not the 
 indispensable managing capacity to direct production and 
 exchange, ;to rule the world, to eliminate wholly the ruling 
 class and put our own in its place, that vast task of transform- 
 ing the workers' minds will take a long time. And then, like 
 all men or bodies of men who have given themselves heart and 
 soul to a great cause, we have the virtues indispensable for pre- 
 serving our enthusiasm — patience and faith. I am not ashamed 
 to say I am patient. Things do not move so quickly in this 
 world. I know we want patience ; I have patience ; I have grown 
 up in the patience that misery has forced upon me. The 
 patience, which the bourgeoisie has given to me, I keep for our 
 battle against it and for our future victory. The world must 
 be ours — we workers with brain or with hand ; and we say to 
 the bourgeois, " You shall labour, or there shall be no room 
 for you." They talk of revolution ; we are not such radical 
 revolutionaries. We want but to change one word, one single 
 qualifying one ; to change the system of the bourgeoisie into 
 the system of the workers. That is all we want to do. And 
 you cry out at a single word ! Yes, we want tJie system of the 
 workers — those who labour put in the place of those who are 
 paid but do not labour. Our demand is as plain as " Good- 
 morning ; " it is that in all factories and farms, on every ship, 
 in every management, it should everywhere be the workers 
 who through their delegates give the orders, the workers 
 who make the law of nations and the law of workshops. 
 For our attaining that, bless Co-operation. For the more I 
 think of it, the more I see that Co-operation is forwarding 
 the long-looked-for hour, when the kingdom of Socialism shall 
 come.. 
 
298 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 See to-day : a church in every village, the people nowhere. 
 There is a priest inside every church, but very often there is 
 no school opposite. Well, beside every church, in every 
 village, and in the quarters of the large towns, must rise a 
 House of the People.^ I should like to show our friends the 
 anti-co-operative Socialists of France, who give it us so often 
 and so hard, I should like to show them in prospect the photo- 
 graphs of all those Houses of the People in the thousands 
 and thousands of French villages. Do you know what would 
 happen? There would be no more contentions j they would 
 fall into each other's arms, ready to do battle once more. We 
 saw that in Belgium. Yes, at Ghent, a town with 165,000 
 inhabitants, we have five large premises. There are, I believe, 
 twenty-five Catholic churches. And opfKjsite them already, 
 since 1873, five Socialist churches. In twenty-seven years 
 (the CathoUcs have been there centuries) we have done that. 
 You see, we shall soon catch them up. 
 
 Would it not be admirable to have in every quarter of 
 
 Paris a beaudiiil large House of the People ; and one, too, in 
 
 Thepossi- every commune in every department of France? 
 
 biiities You would depend no longer on a caf^-keeper, on 
 
 through ^ ^ proprietor, who thinks the right of lording it 
 
 "Houses of exists in every constitution, because his right of 
 the PeoDle " • • 
 
 ■ property suppresses all rights and all constitutions. 
 
 Would it not be fine to organize in every co-operative society 
 
 workmen's education — a trade school for workmen, a trade 
 
 school preparing the managers of production, distribution, 
 
 and exchange in the future, when the bourgeois management 
 
 of to-day shall have disappeared ? And what excellent results 
 
 will be obtained in Houses of the People, where every hour, 
 
 every minute, every second, aU the vices and weaknesses of 
 
 the poor are driven out, as some day all their enemies shall 
 
 be. War on alcohol ! War on the spiritlessness of our own 
 
 class ! War on all that makes us less good, less great, less 
 
 ' The name given by the Belgian Socialists to their co-operative estab- 
 lishments. 
 
E. ANSEELE 299 
 
 human, that robust virtues may grow in the heart and head of 
 every man and every woman. 
 
 Yet another thing must be looked for from these trade 
 schools. I will explain. Working for a master is sometimes 
 very diflScult, especially to satisfy him, because he , 
 stipulates for so many things. You remember to work 
 Figaro's saying : " For the virtues which masters without a 
 require in a servantj very few masters would be 
 worthy of being one." Working for a master, then, is difficult. 
 But for many workmen working without a master is still more 
 difficult ; and that is what we must teach the workers — how to 
 work without a master. That is one of the reasons why in 
 many trades co-operative production cannot succeed ; that is 
 what we must get the proletarians to learn — to master them- 
 selves, to work of themselves, without having forced on them 
 the will of an authority. 
 
 What I am going on to say will, perhaps, draw down an 
 uproar on my head. I shall say it all the same. I say there 
 must be order in industry, order in the factory, discipline in 
 labour ; the labourers must know that it is their duty to push 
 on the production of all for the gain of all. If only every one 
 had a character of intellectual and moral strength, strongly 
 equipped with professional skill and abounding in energy ! 
 But find me such a rare bird. Find the manager who can be 
 employed in a productive co-operative society. Moral qualities 
 and knowledge of the trade are his only means of influence 
 there. Find me this paragon of a manager, and find a hundred 
 of them combining all the superior qualities which make a 
 man superior in his own place, which make him one of the 
 smiths who shall hammer out the new world. Find me that 
 in every village, every quarter, every trade. Alas, no; the 
 working-class, we must say it out loud, has not yet reached 
 that point as regards either personal qualities, technical know- 
 ledge, or professional knowledge of trades. That is why the 
 distributive co-operative societies, which help to form and 
 support the productive ones, are of immense benefit and 
 
300 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 service to the working-class education, which should impel 
 the worker to work for himself, without a master and without 
 fear. That is the great practical end of distributive co-opera- 
 tion and of productive co-operation. 
 
 And now they keep saying to us, "You will fail." That 
 depends on what you are asking for. If you think I want by 
 
 ,. .^ ^ distributive and productive co-operation to solve 
 Limits to , . , . ^ ^ , . , -. 
 
 possibilities the social question, you are strangely mistaken. I 
 
 of Co-opera- ]jnow, my friends the anti-co-operative Socialists 
 tlon alone. ,,.. . ,, ,„%, 
 
 (who give It us so often and so cheernilly), that 
 
 the co-operative societies wiU in vain realize aU imagined 
 advantages ; they wUl never have enough capital to buy out the 
 whole fortune of the capitalists of to-day, to-morrow, and the 
 day after. I know as weU as you that the complete emanci- 
 pation of the toilers is only possible by the expropriation 
 (qualified or unqualified — ^peaceful or violent — ^with or without 
 compensation) of all the means of production and exchange. 
 I know all that But it is irrelevant. WiU your trade-unions 
 alone conduct you to this end ? Will your political party alone, 
 without trade-unions or friendly societies, do so ? 
 vantage of The real question is : Do Co-operation aUied with 
 
 combing Socialism and Socialism allied with Co-operation 
 methods. *^ 
 
 work for the hurt of the working-class or for its 
 
 victory ? To that question I answer, " Yes," fully and boldly. 
 "Yes, Co-operation is working for its victory." I say yes, 
 because in Belgium Co-operation and Socialism combined have 
 achieved wonders. I say yes, because there, where Co-opera- 
 tion is so strong, you may say regarding purity of principles 
 that the Belgian Labour party, to its honour, is as pure as the 
 purest Labour party in the world. I say yes, because there in 
 Belgium Co-operation does so well and presents no danger, and 
 because there is no reason why it should not do as well 
 amongst you. 
 
 I do not want, you know, to force my tactics on you. 
 Tactics depend on a thousand diflferent conditions, which must 
 be carefiiUy looked at. All the same, my method has caught 
 
E. ANSEELE 301 
 
 on in North France ; and it pays for propaganda work. How 
 would our comrades in the North get on without their co-opera- 
 tive societies, especially at election times? I wish some day 
 one of our friends, the anti-co-operative Socialists^ would be 
 present at one of our general meetings at Ghent. We had a 
 few weeks ago ten thousand strikers among us, thousands of 
 flax-spinners, and the carpenters' lock-out, and there was a 
 general meeting at the " Vooruit" I was then, as you are now, 
 sitting listening, and they were there in the hall, thousands 
 upon thousands. They said : " You know, there's the strike " 
 — " Yes, yes " — " That means money " — " Of course it means 
 money" — "The Society will give something" — "All you 
 want," was the reply ; " you have free course, you can use the 
 chest as largely as you wish, according to circumstances." 
 And after results like that, people come and say that Co-opera- 
 tion lessens the Socialist spirit, the class-consciousness, the 
 class-war, the spirit of revolution in the proletariate. How un- 
 true ! And it is the same at Brussels, the same at Jolimont, at 
 Lidge, at Bouvy j go north, south, east, or west, you will every- 
 where see big bakeries topped by the red flag. 
 
 I am glad to be at Paris, this incomparable city, where I 
 have enjoyed visiting your rich exhibition; but above all the 
 splendours I have seen something finer — I have seen Socialists 
 who, after a debate at the Co-operative Congress, have joined 
 hands, embraced, and united in the sacred cause of the prole- 
 tariate. That is finer than the exhibition. I saw when our friend 
 Leonard, of Charleroi, had shown all that Socialist Co-operation 
 in Belgium had achieved from the standpoint of our great 
 ideal, I saw when Jaurbs contributed the keen insight of his 
 deeply philosophic mind and the stirrings of his warm soul, — I 
 saw the entire hall rise like one man, every arm meeting, in 
 unity. Unity in the workers' cause ; unity for its triumph. 
 
 And now go to work, my co-operative friends. Men will 
 throw stones at you. Never mind; they threw mud at me. 
 A shake, and it falls ofi" you. I believe, I am sure, that you 
 are very much on the right road. Try to have practical 
 
302 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 assemblies, family meetings like that which I have attended for 
 the past few days at Paris. Try to let these meetings of com- 
 rades shed the balm of brotherhood over the sore places of 
 recent disputes, that at last imity may be brought among you ; 
 and then the France of past ages will be once more what 
 she should be — the vanguard of the proletariate marching to 
 win the world. 
 
XXI 
 
 THE POLICY OF INDEPENDENT LABOUR 
 By J. Keir Hardie, M.P. 
 
 These two articles illustrate the particular work in the Socialist 
 movement which Mr. Keir Hardie has especially done. That of 
 X894 seems worth reprinting, as showing^ the consistency with which 
 he has advocated a view which is now far commoner among work- 
 men than it was then. 
 
 J. Keir Hardie was bom in Scotland of workingf-dass parents. 
 He worked in the mines from his seventh to his twenty-fourth year, 
 and in 1880 became Secretary of the Lanarkshire Miners' Union. 
 He entered Parliament for West Ham in 1892, and in 1892-3 played 
 a chief part in the birth of the Independent Labour party. He was 
 defeated in West Ham in 1895, but in 1900 re-entered Parliament for 
 Merthyr Tydvil. He took a chief part in forming the Labour 
 Representation Committee, now the Labour Party, and in 1906 was 
 chosen as its Leader in the House of Commons. 
 
 I. — Clearing the Way. 
 
 {Labour Leader, June 16, 1894.) 
 
 The question is frequently put to the Independent Labour 
 party, why don't you unite your forces with the Radical 
 party? It is pointed out that I.L.P. — ism and Radicahsm 
 should make common cause against Whiggism; and that 
 were this done, these two advanced sections would be 
 practically masters: of the situation. On the face of it there 
 seems something to be said for this view of the matter. But 
 it is double-sided. At present Radicals win elections for 
 Liberalism, whereupon the Whig element in the party sets itself 
 
 303 
 
304 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 to exploit Radicalism for all it is worth. When Liberal 
 Cabinets are being formed, the Whig party insists upon being 
 the dominant party therein. If the Radicals attempt to 
 dispute the supremacy of Whiggism, the Whigs threaten to 
 go over to the Tories, and thus place Liberalism in a hopeless 
 minority. This has gone on for a quarter of a century at least, 
 and, so far as we can see at present, will go on for a long time 
 again, unless something happens to bring it to an end. Now, 
 the Radical party wish to use Labour men, as the Whigs 
 hitherto have used the Radicals. The Whig cry to the 
 Radicals has been, "Join with us to beat the Tories," and 
 the Radicals, having accepted the invitation, found that they 
 did the fighting, whilst the Whigs raked in the spoils of victory. 
 Were the Independent Labour party to accept the invitations 
 so plentifully showered upon it by the Radical party, a similar 
 state of things would prevail. A much better way is that which 
 the Independent Labour party has adopted — to go straight on 
 its own course, gathering strength as it goes, until men who pose 
 as Radicals will be compelled to decide between Whiggism and 
 I.L.P. — ism. 
 
 Besides, there is another aspect of the question. We are 
 asked to come into the Radical ranks, and we may use the 
 Radical party to further the objects we have in view. Much 
 has been said and written in defence of this method ; and it is 
 on this assumption that many men, who are as much in earnest 
 as the most advanced I.L.P. — er, still remain within the ranks 
 of Liberalism. It does not seem to occur to those men that 
 two can play at the game of having a party. And whilst 
 they fondly believe that they are making use of Liberalism 
 in the interests of Labour, the managers of the Liberal party 
 are under the equally comfortable belief that they are using 
 Liberalism in the interests of themselves. 
 
 The struggle for supremacy between these two forces is 
 very unequal. The minds of the workers are so engrossed in 
 the struggle for a bare existence, that they have neither time 
 nor opportunity for cultivating the commercial instincts. They 
 
J. KEIR HARDIE 305 
 
 have no wealth wherewith to hire cunning lawyers to scheme 
 and plan for them. They cannot offer posts of honour or 
 emoluments to those who are their friends. At best, all they 
 can say is, that those who are with them are serving humanity 
 by their devotion to principle. On the other hand, there is 
 wealth in abundance — ever to command all the unscrupulous- 
 ness which lays itself out for sale in the political as in the 
 commercial world. Men whose whole life has been applied 
 to develop their commercial instincts — cunning lawyers, versed 
 in the art of quibbling and making black appear white — social 
 position, and distinction as reward for those who serve the 
 party faithfully, and above and beyond all, a pecuniary interest 
 in preventing the people seeing that the private ownership of the 
 wealth possessed by the privileged class is at the root of every 
 social injustice. It is not difficult to foresee the outcome when 
 these two sections are endeavouring each to best the other. 
 And it makes one incredulous when one hears Labour men 
 boast that they are using, or are going to use, Liberalism to 
 achieve Labour reforms. The spectacle of a small community 
 of kids in the midst of a horde of wolves, comforting them- 
 selves with the belief that they were about to use the wolves 
 for their own advantage, would not be more absurd. 
 
 II. — Federated Labour as a New Factor in British 
 Politics. 
 
 {North American Review, August, 1903.) 
 
 The Independent Labour party is a Socialist, and not, as its 
 title might seem to imply, a purely working-class organization. 
 It aims at the creation of a Co-operative Commonwealth, 
 founded upon the socialization of land and capital. Its methods 
 of realizing its objects are, to educate the community in the 
 principles of Socialism and to secure the return to Parliament 
 and to all elected bodies of members representative of its 
 principles. Since its formation in 1893, it has been regarded 
 
 X 
 
3o6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 as the stormy petrel of politics, and has kept itself well in 
 evidence mainly by running its own candidates and by 
 missionary zeal and activity. The actual paying membership 
 of the party is returned at 13,000, including a fair proportion 
 of the educated and well-to-do classes who see in Socialism the 
 only hope for solving the social problem. The yearly income 
 of the party averages ^^25,000. As the bulk of this comes 
 from the wage-earning classes, and as the payments are purely 
 voluntary, this sum argues a considerable degree of sincerity. 
 In addition to the regular membership named above, the party 
 commands the active political support of that very large and 
 rapidly growing section of the community which has lost faith 
 in the Liberal party as an effective instrument of reform. The 
 energies of its members are tireless, and its political resources 
 are apparently inexhaustible. It is a standing illustration of 
 the truth of John Stuart Mill's axiom, that in politics one man 
 with convictions is equal to ninety-nine men who have only 
 interests. 
 
 Prior to 1893 there had been no sustained effort to create 
 a Labour party in Britain. In the early sixties the old 
 International Working Men's Association promised for a time 
 to become a power, but it went down under the Continental 
 influence by which it was dominated. During the seven 
 years ending 1874 there was great political activity among 
 trade-unionists, who were at that time endeavouring to secure 
 full legal recognition for their organizations. The effort 
 culminated with the running of seventeen Labour candidates 
 at the General Election in the year named and the defeat of 
 the Liberal party. The year following saw the passing 
 of the Bills which secured full recognition to the trade- 
 union movement; and, the object aimed at having thus 
 been gained, the leaders of the movement lapsed back into 
 the ranks of their ordinary political allegiance, and there the 
 matter ended. 
 
 Nothing more was done until 1887, when the Labour 
 Electoral Association came into being. It succeeded in 
 
J. KEIR HARDIE 307 
 
 existing, in struggling fashion, for a few short years, and then 
 collapsed, without leaving any indication of its ever having 
 been. At that time there was considerable ferment in the 
 Labour world, and the Labour Electoral Association, with its 
 half-hearted poUcy, alienated the support of the active spirits 
 by its feverish anxiety not to offend orthodox political opinion. 
 
 Somewhere about 1880, William Morris and H. M. 
 Hyndman commenced their Socialist propaganda; and the 
 Social Democratic Federation, modelled largely on the lines of 
 the German organization of that name, was formed, and for 
 a time enlisted in its ranks most of the men who have since 
 become powerful in connection with Labour politics. But it 
 failed to hold them. William Morris withdrew and formed the 
 Socialist League, and John Burns and others of equal standing 
 left, owing to disagreement with the tactics which were being 
 pursued. 
 
 The great Dock Strike of 1888 may be taken as the 
 starting-point of the new Labour movement, as, with the single 
 exception of John Burns, all the men who came to the surface 
 during that conclusive period were subsequently identified with 
 the inception and propaganda work of the Independent Labour 
 party. At the General Elections of 1892 a number of Labour 
 candidates were run by local organizations in various parts 
 of the country ; and, the year following, at a conference held 
 in Bradford in Yorkshire, at which one hundred and twenty 
 representatives of various Labour and Socialist organizations 
 attended, the Independent Labour party was definitely launched, 
 and entered upon its career. 
 
 At that time the Liberal party was in office, with a small 
 and precarious majority. Trade was much depressed, and tens 
 of thousands of workmen were roaming the country in fruitless 
 search for employment. As is usual at elections, great hopes 
 and expectations had been formed as to what would happen if 
 the Liberals were returned. In the very nature of things, it 
 was impossible that these hopes could be realized ; and as the 
 months slipped into years, enthusiastic Radicals, finding that 
 
3o8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 their party in office was apparently as unable or as unwilling 
 to do anything eflfective for Labour as their Conservative 
 opponents had been, deserted in thousands and cast in their 
 lot with the newly formed Independent Labour party. At 
 every by-election in an industrial centre the Independent 
 Labour party ran a candidate, with results which siUT)rised 
 friends and opponents alike. In only one case did the Labour 
 candidate come within measurable distance of winning ; but in 
 every case the number of votes polled showed the strength of 
 the feeling of discontent which existed in the constituencies. 
 In those days the hand of every man was against the Indepen- 
 dent Labour party, which had dared to set itself in opposition 
 to the cherished political traditions of the nation. The press, 
 the pulpit, and the platform fulminated and stormed against 
 the new movement; whilst the usual misrepresentations and 
 silly inventions were freely indulged in, and, of course, as freely 
 believed. The party, however, held on its way unswerving. 
 Its members were enthusiasts, but not mere theorists ; there was 
 always a method behind their apparent madness. Inspired by 
 a Socialist ideal, they yet managed to keep their feet firm on 
 solid earth ; and the poUticians learned that the British work- 
 man, despite his well-known proclivities, could be a practical 
 kind of idealist when properly led. At the General Election of 
 189s the party ran twenty-eight candidates of its own, every one 
 of whom, including the present writer, was defeated. As showing 
 the state of feeling at that time, I may remark, in passing, that 
 the return of my Conservative opponent was announced, at 
 the National Liberal Club, as a Liberal triumph. The In- 
 dependent Labour party vote represented just under thirty 
 per cent, of the electoral strength in those constituencies which 
 its candidates had contested. In 1900 we had the Khaki 
 election, when, despite the fact that all its candidates were 
 Pro-Boers, and as such anathema to every " patriotic " voter, 
 the party vote showed a largely increased following, and in one 
 case — my own — ^won a seat from a Liberal who had given an 
 enthusiastic support to the war in South Africa. 
 
J. KEIR HARDIE 309 
 
 Up to this stage, 1900, the idea of seeking to create a 
 Labour party had, in the main, been confined to the ranks of 
 the Independent Labour party. Where a trade-union had 
 sought representation in Parliament, the candidate was put 
 forward as a working-man Liberal or Conservative, as the case 
 might be. Recent events, however, chiefly the decisions of 
 the law courts in trade-union cases, have led to a new and 
 startling development. The trade-unions have practically cut 
 themselves adrift from their old political moorings, and they 
 are heading direct for the open sea of Labour representation 
 and a Labour party. I have already indicated how the Houses 
 of Parliament gave full recognition and legal standing to the 
 trade-unions. For close upon thirty years the law was 
 assumed to regard trade-unions as voluntary organizations, in 
 the nature of clubs, which could neither sue nor be sued, and 
 as not being entities known to the law, since they were not 
 an individual, a corporation, or a company. Picketing, it was 
 assumed, had also been fully legalized, including the power to 
 "peacefully persuade" men to abstain from working. The 
 strike in all its phases, it was supposed, had been legalized. 
 The decisions of the law courts in recent cases have upset 
 these suppositions. Employers of labour have been able to sue 
 trade-unions as such and obtain damages from the funds, in 
 one case amounting to ^^2 3,000 for the alleged illegal acts of 
 the union officials. Peaceful persuasion whilst picketing has 
 been held to be clearly illegal, rendering the pickets liable to 
 imprisonment J whilst the sympathetic strike has been once 
 again brought within the definition of the common law of 
 conspiracy. These facts have naturally alarmed the trade- 
 unionists and forced them into the political arena. With the 
 very existence of trade-unions imperilled, they instinctively 
 feel that they cannot trust either of the political parties to see 
 justice done them. 
 
 For years past the feeling in favour of a direct Labour 
 party has been makbg steady headway within the trade-union 
 movement, but it was held in check by the fact that the ranks 
 
310 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 were about equally divided in their allegiance to the Liberal 
 and Conservative parties. Many of the leaders of the unions, 
 on the other hand, had been brought into political conflict 
 with the militant spirits of the Independent Labour party, 
 and, as a consequence, were none too well disposed towards 
 that movement. To the onlooker, the result seemed to be a 
 tangle, escape from which was almost hopeless. Where the 
 will exists, however, the way will usually be found ; and so, 
 when legal necessity compelled the trade-unionists to face 
 the situation, they resolved, at their annual congress in 1889, to 
 call an open conference of representatives of Trade-Unionism, 
 Socialism, and Co-operation, to consider what means could be 
 devised for securing more adequate representation of Labour 
 interests in the House of Commons. The conference was heldj 
 and what has since been known as the Labour Representa- 
 tion Committee^ came into existence. Perhaps its objects will 
 best be defined by quoting from its constitution, as amended 
 by the annual meeting this year : — 
 
 " I. The Labour Representation Committee is a Federation of 
 Trades-Unions, Trades- Councils, the Independent Labour party, 
 and the Fabian Society. Co-operative Societies are also eligible 
 for membership. 
 
 " Object 2. To secure, by united action, the election to Parlia- 
 ment of candidates promoted, in the first instance, by an Affiliated 
 Society or Societies in the constituency, who undertake to form or 
 join a distinct group in Parliament, with its own whips and its own 
 policy on Labour questions, to abstain strictly from identifying 
 themselves with or promoting the interests of any section of the 
 Liberal or Conservative party, and not to oppose any other candi- 
 date recognized by this Committee. All such candidates shall 
 pledge themselves to accept this constitution, to abide by the 
 decisions of the Group in carrying out the aims of this constitu- 
 tion or to resign, and to appear before their constituencies under 
 the title of Labour candidates only. 
 
 The Labour Representation Committee is financed by each 
 affiliated organization, paying ten shillings for each thousand 
 
 ' In 1906 its name was altered to " The Labour Party." 
 
J. KEIR HARDIE 311 
 
 members. This is for working expenses. In addition, there 
 is a Payment of Members fund, to which each affiliated 
 organization contributes one penny per member per annum, 
 and from which it is expected each member returned to Parlia- 
 ment, under the auspices of the Committee, will be paid ;^2oo 
 a year. 
 
 That the time was ripe for this new movement is fully 
 evidenced by the fact, that in England and Wales— Scotland 
 having a separate organization — over 900,000 trade-unionists 
 are now affiliated. The movement, as stated above, is a 
 federation, the basis of which is, that each affiliated organization 
 shall finance its own candidates and become responsible for 
 their maintenance if returned to Parliament, each, however, com- 
 bining with the others to secure the return of their respective 
 nominees. Thus far, a considerable amount of success has 
 attended the new movement. Since the General Election, it 
 has fought four Parliamentary vacancies, two of its candidates 
 being successful and the other tWo just missing success. From 
 the outset it has assumed an attitude of rigid independence 
 towards the orthodox parties, with surprising results. The 
 Conservative working-men and their Liberal fellows are finding 
 in the new movement a platform upon which they stand whilst 
 working for the realization of an object common to both — the 
 protection of their unions and the promotion of their interests 
 as wage-earners. The financial difficulty, which at one time 
 bulked so large when the question of Labour representation 
 was being considered, has been solved by a contribution of 
 one shilling per member per annum to a Labour Representation 
 Fund. By this means an annual income of not less than 
 _^5o,ooo has been secured. All the principal trade-unions 
 have selected candidates, and these are being eagerly sought 
 after by industrial constituencies. The National Liberal 
 Federation, at its annual meeting a few weeks ago, fully 
 recognized the strength and importance of this new develop- 
 ment in Labour politics, and practically advised Liberal Associa- 
 tions in industrial constituencies to stand aside in favour of 
 
312 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Labour nominees when these were put forward. Unless the 
 election be rushed, it is a safe estimate that not less than fifty 
 Labour candidates will enter the lists at the next General 
 Election, under the auspices of the Labour Representation 
 Committee, a fair proportion of whom are certain to be re- 
 turned. They will not all be Socialists, but they will all be 
 Labour members pledged to the formation of a Labour 
 party in the House of Commons, and to the raising of 
 the Condition of the People question as a distinct political 
 issue. 
 
 Circumstances are favourable to the development of the 
 new movement. Apart from the trade-union demands, 
 already referred to, wider issues of greater importance are 
 being opened up daily. The questions of the hour are no 
 longer political, but industrial and economic. The growth of 
 the trusts, the precariousness of employment, the increased 
 cost of living, and the growing desire on the part of the work- 
 ing-class for a larger share in the prosperity of the nation, are 
 all tending to foment a spirit of unrest. Nor is this to be 
 wondered at. On every hand there is evidence of a surplus- 
 age of wealth, in which the worker has little share. If there 
 has been a slight increase in wages, there has also been an 
 increase in house-rent and in certain articles of food, which 
 has more than redressed the balance. In the staple industries 
 of the country broken time has become almost chronic ; and, 
 whilst this does not diminish the nominal weekly wage, it plays 
 sad havoc with the actual income. Even for the well-to-do 
 artisan, therefore, there is much in his lot of which he has 
 good reason to complain. It does not help him at all to be 
 told that the wealth of the nation is growing at an unprece- 
 dented rate ; that last year the income of the rich, as shown by 
 the income-tax returns, was ;^4o,ooo,ooo in excess of the 
 previous year; or that in five years the revenue brought to 
 the exchequer from a penny rate on incomes of ;^i6o and 
 upwards has gone up by _;^6oo,ooo, or from _;^2,ooo,ooo to 
 ;^2, 600,000. This may be evidence of national prosperity; 
 
J. KEIR HARDIE 313 
 
 but, as an individual, the wage-earner does not feel any the 
 richer, nor is his lot in life made any the more easy. 
 
 When we leave the skilled artisan, however, we begin to 
 sound an unfathomable depth of poverty. Wages of agricul- 
 tural labourers are returned by the Government as averaging, 
 for the whole of England and Wales, thirteen shillings and 
 eightpence per week. Out of this miserable pittance house- 
 rent has to be paid and a family maintained. Only in very 
 rare instances is the agricultural labourer permitted to eke out 
 this sum by the cultivation of a little plot of land. The farmers, 
 who have the control of the machinery by which the Allotments 
 Act could be put into operation, are strangely averse to giving 
 their labourers opportunities for improving their condition. 
 There are those who argue in favour of a protective duty on 
 com, as a means of enabling the farmer to pay his labourer 
 better wages ; but these are forgetful of the fact that, in the 
 days of high protection in England, the agricultural wages 
 were little over half what they are now, and that, in common 
 with other workers, the labourer's lot, in so far as it has im- 
 proved, has done so under the operation of Free Trade. It is 
 not alone the agricultural labourer who is living on the verge 
 of starvation all the year round. Recent investigations, con- 
 ducted by merchant princes like Mr. Charles Booth in London, 
 and Mr. Seebohm Rowntree in York, the results of which have 
 been since given to the world with a wealth of detailed evidence 
 which permits of no dubiety as to the conclusions, prove that 
 close upon thirty per cent, of the working-class are not in 
 receipt of sufiScient income to enable them to obtain, for 
 themselves and their dependents, the standard of comfort 
 which they would receive as paupers in the poor-house or as 
 criminals in gaol. This fact has startled and alarmed people. 
 The comfortable theory that formerly existed, that, but for 
 drunkenness and want of thrift, the working-class would all 
 be contented, prosperous, and happy, has been shivered to 
 atoms; and, for the first time in her long career of self- 
 delusion, England has been brought face to face with the fact 
 
314 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 that, despite her world-wide trade, her unparalleled wealth and 
 prosperity, her growing bounds of empire and her political, 
 mechanical, and intellectual progress, there is at the foundation 
 of her society an amount of misery and destitution^ due to low 
 wages, which casts a dark shadow over the whole national life, 
 and shows how insecure are the foundations upon which the 
 whole structure of her wealth has been raised. Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman, the leader of the Liberal party, in a recent 
 speech, declared his belief that twelve millions of our population 
 were always living at or under the poverty line. In plain lan- 
 guage, this means that twelve millions of the British people are 
 improperly fed, insufEciently clothed, and inadequately housed. 
 The Census returns tells us that 480,277 houses of one room 
 are registered in England, Scotland, and Wales, and that these 
 contain a living population of 1,571,504, From one to two 
 rooms is a very short step in the social scale ; but, on the same 
 authority from which we have just quoted, we learn that forty- 
 four per cent, of the people in Scotland are accommodated in 
 houses of one or two rooms. Speaking with a good deal of 
 practical experience, I assert that, in three cases out of five, 
 the householder of two rooms will be foimd to be indulging in 
 one or two lodgers, from which it follows that a worse form of 
 overcrowding occurs than when there is only one apartment. 
 With this condition of things staring them in the face, with 
 no hope perceivable of any improvement, there is little wonder 
 that the more thoughtful leaders of the working-class have 
 made up their minds to see how far a Labour party can be 
 instrumental in securing reform. Many of them, although 
 not all, accept Socialism as being not only inevitable but 
 desirable. They reason that, if commercialism, in the hey- 
 day of its prosperity, and with the markets of the world at 
 its imchallenged disposal, has produced such results as those 
 indicated above, it has little chance, now that it has passed 
 its zenith and is being faced with the ever-increasing compe- 
 tition from other countries, to succeed in the future where 
 it has failed in the past. To men who are Socialists, an 
 
J. KEIR HARDIE 315 
 
 Independent Labour party is a logical outcome of their 
 economic faith. 
 
 But even those trades-xinion readers who are not Socialists 
 — and there are many — are equally convinced of the necessity 
 of the new departure. The break-up of the Liberal party has 
 been an important influence in leading them to this position. 
 Free Trade, despite Mr. Chamberlain, is at present the 
 accepted creed of both great parties. On the subject of 
 Imperial expansion, there is little to choose between the two 
 sides; and it is doubtful whether, even with the Liberals in 
 oflBce, the military and naval expenditure, which in a dozen 
 years has gone up from _;^28,ooo,ooo to _;£'7o,ooo,ooo a year, 
 would be materially lessened. There is no evidence whatever 
 that either party has the remotest idea of how to grapple with 
 the social problem and remove poverty from the land. Added 
 to all this, there is a growing feeling that the interests of Labour 
 cannot be adequately safeguarded or protected until there is 
 a Labour party charged with that particular responsibility. 
 Therefore it is that all true trades-union leaders who are not 
 Socialists are equally determined to wean Labour from its 
 political dependence on some other party, and to place it in a 
 position where it can formulate its own demands. These men 
 see how, in twenty years, an Independent Irish party has 
 succeeded in convincing, not merely the Liberals, but also the 
 Conservatives, of the justice of their claims. The Irish Land 
 Bill now before the House of Commons, pledging the credit 
 of the State to the extent of hundreds of millions of money to 
 enable the Irish farmer to buy out his landlord, is a standing 
 evidence of what can be done by an independent and resolute 
 party, knowing its own mind and acting entirely in the interests 
 of the classes it represents, and Laboiu" leaders are determined 
 to make an effort to copy this example. 
 
 To conclude, the British working-man is for the movement, 
 thoroughly in earnest about the formation of a Labour 
 party, and he will not be easily turned aside from his purpose. 
 He is realizing as he has never done before, that, with 
 
3i6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 seven-tenths of the voting power in his hands, he is master of 
 the political situation. With a party of his own, he will play 
 an ever-increasing part in the great drama of politics, and 
 be less easily led than heretofore by the charlatan and the 
 ofifice-seeker. 
 
XXII 
 
 PROGRAMME OF THE GERMAN SOCIAL 
 DEMOCRATIC PARTY 
 
 Voted at the Erfurt Conference, 1891. 
 
 The economic development of bourgeois society leads by 
 natural necessity to the downfall of the small industry, whose 
 foundation is formed by the workers' private ownership of his 
 means of production. It separates the worker from his means 
 of production, and converts him into a property less proletarian, 
 while the means of production become the monopoly of a 
 relatively small number of capitalists and large landowners. 
 
 Hand-in-hand with this monopolization of the means of 
 production goes the displacement of the dispersed small 
 industries by colossal great industries, the development of the 
 tool into the machine, and a gigantic growth in the productivity 
 of human labour. But all the advantages of this transforma- 
 tion are monopolized by capitalists and large landowners. For 
 the proletariate and the declining intermediate classes — petty 
 bourgeoisie and peasants — it means a growing augmentation 
 of the insecurity of their existence, of misery, oppression, 
 enslavement, debasement, and exploitation. 
 
 Ever greater grows the number of proletarians, ever more 
 enormous the army of surplus workers, ever sharper the oppo- 
 sition between exploiters and exploited, ever bitter the class- 
 war between bourgeoisie and proletariate, which divides modern 
 
 317 
 
3i8 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 society into two hostile camps, and is the common hall-mark 
 of all industrial countries. 
 
 The gulf between the propertied and the propertyless is 
 further widened through the crises, founded in the essence of 
 the capitaUstic method of production, which constantly become 
 more comprehensive and more devastating, which elevate 
 general insecurity to the normal condition of society, and 
 which prove that the powers of production of contemporary 
 society have grown beyond measure, and that private owner- 
 ship of the means of production has become incompatible 
 with their application to their objects and their full develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Private ownership of the means of production, which was 
 formerly the means of securing to the producer the ownership 
 of his product, has to-day become the means of expropriating 
 peasants, manual workers, and small traders, and enabling the 
 non-workers — capitalists and large landowners — to own the 
 product of the workers. Only the transformation of capitalistic 
 private ownership of the means of production — the soil, mines, 
 raw materials, tools, machines, and means of transport — into 
 social ownership, and the transformation of production of goods 
 for sale into Socialistic production managed for and through 
 society, can bring it about, that the great industry and the 
 steadily groT^jkig productive capacity of social labour shall for 
 the hitherto exploited classes be changed from a source of 
 misery and oppression to a source of the highest welfare and 
 of all-round harmonious perfection. 
 
 This social transformation means the emancipation not 
 only of the proletariate, but of the whole human race which 
 suffers under the conditions of to-day. But it can only be 
 the work of the working-class, because all the other classes, in 
 spite of mutually conflicting interests, take their stand on the 
 basis of private ownership of the means of production, and 
 have as their common object the preservation of the principles 
 of contemporary society. 
 
 The battleof the working-class against capitalistic exploitation 
 
GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME 319 
 
 is necessarily a political battle. The working-class cannot 
 carry on its economic battles or develop its economic organiza- 
 tion without political rights. It cannot eflfect the passing of 
 the means of production into the ownership of the community 
 without acquiring political power. 
 
 To shape this battle of the working-class into a conscious 
 and united effort, and to show it its naturally necessary end, is 
 the object of the Social Democratic party. 
 
 The interests of the working-class are the same in all lands 
 with capitalistic methods of production. With the expansion 
 of world-transport and production for the world-market the 
 state of the workers in any one country becomes constantly 
 more dependent on the state of the workers in other countries. 
 The emancipation of the working-class is thus a task in which 
 the workers of all civilized countries are concerned in a like 
 degree. Conscious of this, the Social Democratic party of 
 Germany feels and declares itself one with the class-conscious 
 
 workers of all other lands. ' ' 
 
 ""T&e Social Democratic party of Germany fights thus not 
 for new class-privileges and "exceptional rights, biit for the 
 abolition of class-domination and of the classes themselves, and 
 for the equal rights and equal obligations of all, without dis- 
 tinction of sex and parentage. Setting out from these views, it 
 combats in contemporary society not merely the exploitation 
 and oppression of the wage-workers, but every kind of exploita- 
 tion and oppression, whether directed against a class, a party, 
 a sex, or a race. 
 
 Setting out from these principles, the Social Democratic 
 party of Germany demands immediately — 
 
 I. Universal equal direct suffrage and franchise, with direct 
 ballot, foTall members of the Emplre'dver twenty years of age, 
 without distinction of sex, for all elections and acts of voting. 
 Proportional representation ; and until this is introduced, re- 
 division of the constituencies by law according to the numbers 
 of population. A new Legislature every two years. Fixing of 
 elections and acts of voting for a legal holiday. Indemnity 
 
320 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 for the elected representatives. Removal of every curtailmen 
 of political rights except in case of tutelage. 
 
 2. Direct legislation by the people by means of the initia- 
 tive and referendum. Self-determination and self-government 
 of the people in empire, state, province, and commune. 
 Authorities to be elected by the people ; to be responsible and 
 bound. Taxes to be voted annually. 
 
 3. Education of all to be capable of bearing arms. Armed 
 nation instead of standing army. Decision of war and peace 
 by the representatives of the people. Settlement of all inter- 
 national disputes by the method of arbitration. 
 
 4. Abolition of all laws which curtail or suppress the free 
 expression of opinion and the right of association and assembly. 
 
 5. Abolition of all laws which are prejudicial to women in 
 their relations to men in public or private law. 
 
 6. Declaration that religion is a private matter. Abolition 
 of all contributions from public funds to ecclesiastical and 
 religious objects. Ecclesiastical and religious communities are 
 to be treated as private associations, which manage their affairs 
 quite independently. 
 
 7. Secularizatiortof education. Compulsory attendance of 
 public primary schools. No charges to be made for instruc- 
 tion, school requisites, and maintenance, in the public primary 
 schools ; nor in the higher educational institutions for those 
 students, male and female^ who in virtue of their capacities are 
 considered fit for further training. 
 
 8. No charges to be made for the administration of the 
 law, or for legal assistance. Judgment by popularly elected 
 judges. Appeal in criminal cases. Indemnification of inno- 
 cent persons prosecuted, arrested, or condemned. Abolition 
 of the death-penalty. 
 
 9. No charges to be made for medical attendance, includ- 
 ing midwifery and medicine. No charges to be made for 
 death certificates. 
 
 10. Graduated taxes on income and property, to meet all 
 public expenses as far as these are to be covered by taxation. 
 
GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME 321 
 
 Obligatory self-assessment. A tax on inheritance, graduated 
 according to the size of the inheritance and the degree of 
 kinship. Abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other 
 politico-economic measures which sacrifice the interests of the 
 whole community to the interests of a favoured minority. 
 
 For the protection of the working-class the Social Demo- 
 cratic party of Germany demands immediately— 
 
 1. An effective national and international legislation for the 
 protection of workmen on the following basis : 
 
 {a) Fixing of a normal working-day with a maximum of 
 eight hours. 
 
 {b) Prohibition of industrial work for children under 
 fourteen years. 
 
 {c) Prohibition of night-work, except for such branches of 
 industry as, in accordance with their nature, require night-work, 
 for technical reasons, or reasons of public welfare. 
 
 {d) An uninterrupted rest of at least thirty-six hours in 
 every week for every worker. 
 
 (e) Prohibition of the truck system. 
 
 2. Inspection of all industrial businesses, investigation and 
 regulation of labour relations in town and country by an 
 Imperial Department of Labour, district labour departments, 
 and chambers of labour. Thorough industrial hygiene. 
 
 3. Legal equalization of agricultural labourers and domestic 
 servants with industrial workers ; removal of the special regula- 
 tions affecting servants. 
 
 4. Assurance of the right of combination. 
 
 5. Workmen's insurance to be taken over bodily by the 
 Empire; and the workers to have an influential share in its 
 administration. 
 
 6. Separation of the Churches and the State. 
 {a) Suppression of the grant for public worship. 
 
 Ip) Philosophic or religious associations to be civil persons 
 at law. 
 
 7. Revision of sections in the Civil Code concerning 
 marriage and the paternal authority. 
 
322 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 {a) Civil equality of the sexes, and of children, whether 
 natural or legitimate. 
 
 (6) Revision of the divorce laws, maintaining the husband's 
 liability to support the wife or the children. 
 
 (c) Inquiry into paternity to be legalized. 
 
 (d) Protective measures in favour of children materially or 
 morally abandoned. 
 
XXIII 
 
 PROGRAMME OF THE BELGIAN LABOUR 
 PARTY 
 
 Voted at Brussels, 1893, this programme is two years later than 
 that of the German Social Democrats. The Declaration of Principles 
 is, perhaps, the most perfect in form and moderate in statement to 
 be found among those of the last century. The three programmes 
 following it are notable for their superior arrangement, their inclusion 
 of what amounts to an agrarian programme, and many minor points 
 of originality, e.g. Political Programme 2b and 3c. 
 
 C6sar de Paepe, the first great apostle and theorist of Socialism 
 in Belgium, died in 1890. The Belgian Labour party was founded 
 under his auspices in 1885. A revision of the franchise in 1893, 
 following a general strike, enabled it to send 30 deputies to the 
 Chamber. After the partial election of May, 1906, its deputies 
 numbered 31 out of 166. 
 
 Declaration of Principles. 
 
 r. The constituents of wealth in general, and in particular 
 the means of production, are either natural agencies or the fruit 
 of the labour — manual and mental — of previous generations 
 besides the present ; consequently they must be considered the 
 common heritage of mankind. 
 
 2. The right of individuals or groups to enjoy this heritage 
 can be based only on social utility, and aimed only at securing 
 for every human being the greatest possible sum of freedom 
 and well-being. 
 
 3. The realization of this ideal is incompatible with the 
 maintenance of the capitalistic rSgime, which divides society 
 
 323 
 
324 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 into two necessarily antagonistic classes — the one able to enjoy 
 property without working, the other obliged to relinquish a 
 part of its product to the possessing class. 
 
 4. The workers can only expect their complete emancipa- 
 tion from the suppression of classes and a radical transforma- 
 tion of existing society. 
 
 This transformation will be in favour, not only of the pro- 
 letariate, but of mankind as a whole; nevertheless, as it is 
 contrary to the immediate interests of the possessing class, the 
 emancipation of the workers will be essentially the work of the 
 workers themselves. 
 
 5. In economic matters Jheir.airn must be to secure the free 
 use, without charge,_of all the means of production. This 
 result can only be attained, in a society wKere collective 
 labour is more and more replacing individual labour, by the 
 collective appropriation of natural agencies and the instruments 
 of labour. 
 
 6. The transformation of the capitalistic r'egime into a 
 collectivist r'egime must necessarily be accompanied by corre- 
 lative transformations — 
 
 (a) In morals, by the development of altruistic feelings and 
 the practice of solidarity. 
 
 ip) In politics, by the transformation of the State into a 
 business management {administration des choses). 
 
 7. Sociahsm must, therefore, pursue simultaneously the 
 economic, moral, and political emancipation of the proletariate. 
 Nevertheiless, the economic point of view must be paramount, 
 for the concentration of capital in the hands of a single class 
 forms the basis of all the other forms of its domination. 
 
 To realize its principles the Labour party declares — 
 
 (i) That it considers itself as the representative, not only of 
 
 the working-class, but of all the oppressed, without distinction 
 
 of nationality, worship, race, or sex. 
 
 (2) That the Socialists of all countries must make common 
 
 cause {itre solidaires), the emancipation of the workers being 
 
 not a national, but an international work. 
 
PROGRAMME OF BELGIAN LABOUR PARTY 325 
 
 (3) That in their struggle against the capitalist class the 
 workers must fight by every means in their power, and par- 
 ticularly by political action, by the development of free 
 associations, and by the ceaseless propagation of Socialistic 
 principles. 
 
 L — Political Programme. 
 
 1. Electoral reform . 
 
 (a) Universal suffrage without distinction of sex for all ranks 
 (age-limit, twenty-one ; residence, six months). 
 
 {b) Proportional representation.^ 
 
 (c) Election expenses to be charged on the public 
 authorities. 
 
 {d) Payment of elected persons. 
 
 (e) Elected persons to be bound by pledges, according to 
 law. 
 
 (/) Electorates to have the right of unseating elected 
 persons. 
 
 2. Decentralization of political power. 
 («) Suppression of the Senate. 
 
 {b) Creation of Legislative Councils, representing the 
 different functions of society (industry, commerce, agriculture, 
 education, etc.) ; such Councils to be autonomous, within the 
 limits of their competence and excepting the veto of Parlia- 
 ment ; such Councils to be federated, for the study and defence 
 of their common interests. 
 
 3. Commtmal autonomy. 
 
 (a) Mayors to be appointed by the electorate. 
 (6) Small communes to be fused or federated. 
 (c) Creation of elected committees corresponding to the 
 different branches of communal administration. 
 
 4. Direct legislation. 
 
 Right of popular initiative and referendum in legislative, 
 provincial, and communal matters. 
 
 ' Secured in 1899 by popular pressure on the Government. 
 
326 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 5. Reform of education. 
 
 {a) Primary, all-round, free, secular, compulsory instruction 
 at the expense of the State. Maintenance of children attending 
 the schools by the public authorities. Intermediate and higher 
 instruction to be free, secular, and at the expense of the State. 
 
 {b) Administration of the schools by the public authorities, 
 under the control of School Committees elected by universal 
 suffrage of both sexes, with representatives of the teaching staff 
 and the State. 
 
 (c) Assimilation of communal teachers to the State's 
 educational ofiScials. 
 
 ((^ Creation of a Superior Council of Education, elected by 
 the School Committees, who are to organize the inspection and 
 control of free schools and of official schools. 
 
 (e) Organization of trade education, and obligation of all 
 children to learn manual work. 
 
 (/) Autonomy of the State Universities, and legal recogni- 
 tion of the Free Universities. University Extension to be 
 organized at the expense of the public authorities. 
 
 6. Separation of the Churches and the State. 
 
 (a) Suppression of the grant for public worship. 
 (i) Philosophic or religious associations to be civil persons 
 at law. 
 
 7. Revision of Sections in the Civil Code concerning marriage 
 and the paternal authority. 
 
 (a) Civil equality of the sexes, and of children, whether 
 natural or legitimate, 
 
 (^) Revision of the divorce laws, maintaining the husband's 
 hability to support the wife or the children. 
 
 (c) Inquiry into paternity to be legalized. 
 
 {i) Protective measures in favour of children materially or 
 morally abandoned, 
 
 8. Extension of liberties? 
 
 Suppression of measures restricting any of the liberties. 
 
 ' The liberties referred to are freedom of the person, of speech, of the 
 press, of public meeting, etc. 
 
PROGRAMME OF BELGIAN LABOUR PARTY 327 
 
 9. Judicial reform. 
 
 (a) Application of the elective principle to all jurisdictions. 
 Reduction of the number of magistrates. 
 
 {b) Justice without fees; State-payment of advocates and 
 officials of the Courts. 
 
 {c) Magisterial examination in penal cases to be public. 
 Persons prosecuted to be medically examined. Victims of 
 judicial errors to be indemnified. 
 
 10. Suppression of armies. 
 
 Provisionally ; organization of a national militia. 
 
 11. Suppression of hereditary offices, and establishment of a 
 Republic. 
 
 II. — Economic Programme. 
 
 A. — General Measures. 
 
 1. Organization of statistics. 
 
 (a) Creation of a Ministry of Labour. 
 
 {b) Pecuniary aid from the public authorities for the 
 organization of labour secretariates by workmen and 
 employers. 
 
 2. Legal recognition of associations, especially — ■ 
 
 (a) Legal recognition of trade-unions.^ 
 
 (b) Reform of the law on friendly societies and co-opera- 
 tive societies and subsidy from the public authorities. 
 
 (c) Repression of infringements of the right of combina- 
 tion. 
 
 3. Legal regulation of the contract of employment. 
 Extension of laws protecting labour to all industries, and 
 
 specially to agriculture, shipping, and fishing. Fixing of a 
 minimum wage and maximum of hours of labour for workers, 
 industrial or agricultural, employed by the State, the Com- 
 munes, the Provinces, or the contractors for public works. 
 Intervention of workers, and especially of workers' unions, 
 
 ' Syndicats professiontuls, including unions of employers as well as of 
 employed. 
 
328 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 in the framing of rules. Suppression of fines. Suppression 
 of savings-banks and benefit clubs in workshops. Fixing 
 of a maximum of 6000 francs for public servants and 
 managers. 
 
 4. Transformation of public charity into a general insurance 
 of all citizens — 
 
 {a) against unemployment ; 
 
 {b) against disablement (sickness, accident, old age) ; 
 
 {c) against death (widows and orphans). 
 
 5. Reorganization of public finances. 
 
 (a) Abolition of indirect taxes, especially taxes on food 
 and customs tariffs. 
 
 (b) Monopoly of alcohol and tobacco. 
 
 (<:) Progressive income-tax. Taxes on legacies and gifts 
 between the living (excepting gifts to works of public 
 utility). 
 
 (d) Suppression of intestate succession, except in the 
 direct line and within limits to be determined by law. 
 
 6. Progressive extension of public property. 
 
 The State to take over the National Bank. Social organi- 
 zation of loans, at interest to cover costs only, to individuals 
 and to associations of workers, 
 i. Industrial property. 
 
 Abolition, on grounds of public utility, of private 
 ownership in mines, quarries, the subsoil generally, 
 and of the great means of production and trans- 
 port, 
 ii. A grictiltural property. 
 
 (a) Nationalization of forests. 
 
 (b) Reconstitution or development of common lands. 
 
 (c) Progressive taking over of the land by the State 
 
 or the communes. 
 
 7. Autonomy of public services. 
 
 (a) Administration of the public services by special 
 autonomous commissions, under the control of the State. 
 
 (b) Creation of committees elected by the workmen and 
 
PROGRAMME OF BELGIAN LABOUR PARTY 329 
 
 employes of the public services to debate with the central 
 administration the conditions of the remuneration and organi- 
 zation of labour. 
 
 B. — Particular Measures for Industrial Workers. 
 
 1. Abolition of all laws restricting the right of combina- 
 tion, 
 
 2. Regulation of industrial labour. 
 
 (a) Prohibition of employment of children under fourteen. 
 
 {b) Half-time system between the ages of fourteen and 
 eighteen. 
 
 (c) Prohibition of employment of women in all industries 
 where it is incompatible with morals or health. 
 
 {d) Reduction of working-day to a maximum of eight 
 hours for adults of both sexes, and minimum wage. 
 
 (if) Prohibition of night-work for all categories of workers 
 and in all industries, where this mode of working is not abso- 
 lutely necessary. 
 
 (/) One day's rest per week, so far as possible on 
 Sunday. 
 
 (g) ResponsibiUty of employers in case of accidents, and 
 appointment of doctors to attend persons wounded. 
 
 (Ji) Workmen's memorandum-books and certificates to be 
 abolished, and their use prohibited. 
 
 3. Inspection of work. 
 
 \a) Employment of paid medical authorities^ in the interests 
 of labour hygiene. 
 
 {b) Appointment of inspectors by the Councils of Industry 
 and Labour. 
 
 4. Reorganization of the Industrial Tribunals (Conseils de 
 Prud'hommes) and the Councils of Industry and Labotir. 
 
 (a) Working women to have votes and be eligible. 
 
 (b) Submission to the Courts to be compulsory. 
 
 5. Regulation of work in prisons and convents. 
 
330 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 C. — Particular Measures for Agricultural Workers. 
 
 1. Reorganization of the Agricultural Courts. 
 
 {a) Nomination of delegates in equal numbers by the land 
 owners, farmers, and labourers. 
 
 (b) Intervention of the Chambers in individual or col- 
 lective disputes between landowners^ farmers, and agricultural 
 workers. 
 
 {c) Fixing of a minimum wage by the public authorities on 
 the proposition of the Agricultural Courts. 
 
 2. Regulation of contracts to pay farm-rents. 
 
 (a) Fixing of the rate of farm-rents by Committees of 
 Arbitration or by the reformed Agricultural Courts. 
 
 (6) Compensation to the outgoing farmer for enhanced 
 value of property. 
 
 (c) Participation of landowners, to a wider extent than that 
 fixed by the Civil Code, in losses incurred by farmers. 
 
 (d) Suppression of the landowner's privilege. 
 
 3. Insurance by the provinces, and reinsurance by the State, 
 against epizootic diseases, diseases of plants, hail, floods, and other 
 agricultural risks, 
 
 4. Organization by the public authorities of a free agricultural 
 education. 
 
 Creation or development of experimental fields, model 
 farms, agricultural laboratories. 
 
 5. Purchase by the communes of agricultural implements to be 
 at the disposal of their inhabitants. 
 
 Assignment of common lands to groups of labourers 
 engaging not to employ wage-labour. 
 
 6. Organization of a free medical service in the country. 
 
 7. Reform of the Game Laws. 
 
 (a) Suppression of gun licences. 
 
 (b) Suppression of game preserves. 
 
 (c) Right of cultivators to destroy all the year round animals 
 which injure crops. 
 
PROGRAMME OF BELGIAN LABOUR PARTY 331 
 
 8. Intervention of public authorities in the creation of agri- 
 cultural co-operative societies — 
 
 («) For buying seed and manure. 
 {b) For making butter. 
 
 {c) For the purchase and use in common of agricultural 
 machines. 
 
 {d) For the sale of produce ; 
 
 (e) For the working of land by groups. 
 
 9. Organization of agricultural credit. 
 
 111. — Communal Programme.' 
 
 1. Educational reforms. 
 
 (a) Free scientific instruction for children up to fourteen. 
 Special courses for older children and adults. 
 
 (b) Organization of education in trades and industries, in 
 co-operation with workmen's organizations. 
 
 (c) Maintenance of children; except where the public 
 authorities intervene to do so. 
 
 (d) Institution of school refreshment-rooms. Periodic 
 distribution of boots and clothing. 
 
 (e) Orphanages, Estabhshments for children abandoned 
 or cruelly ill-treated. 
 
 2. Judicial reforms. 
 
 OfSce for consultations free of charge in cases coming before 
 the law-courts, the industrial courts, etc. 
 
 3. Regulation of work. 
 
 ' Under this head will be found the programme for local governing 
 bodies. The three units of government in Belgium are the State, the nine 
 provinces, and the communes. The communal councils correspond to our 
 borough, district, and parish councils. Rural communes, however, though 
 small, are not as small as English parishes ; and urban communes, though 
 large, are not allowed to reach the size of the great municipalities in 
 England and America. The city of Brussels is divided between six com- 
 munes. Hence the provision, in § 7 below, for federations of communes. 
 
332 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 (a) Minimum wage and maximum working-day to be made 
 a clause in contracts for communal works. 
 
 (6) Intervention of trade associations in the fixing of rates 
 of wages, and general regulation of industry. The Echevin 
 of Public Works to supervise the execution of these clauses in 
 contracts. 
 
 {() Appointment by the workmen's associations of inspectors 
 to supervise the clauses in contracts. 
 
 (d) Rigorous application of the principle of tenders open 
 to all, for all services which, during a transition-period, are not 
 managed directly. 
 
 (e) Permission to trade-unions to tender,^ and abolition 
 of security-deposit. 
 
 (/) Creation of Bourses du Travail^ or at least offices 
 for the demand and supply of employment, whose administra- 
 tion shall be entrusted to trade-unions or labour associations. 
 
 (£) Fixing of a minimum wage for the workmen and 
 employes of a commune. 
 
 4. Public charity? 
 
 (a) Admission of workmen to the administration of the 
 councils of hospitals and of public charity. 
 
 {p) Transformation of public charity and the hospitals into 
 a system of insurance against old age. Organization of a 
 medical service and drug supply. Establishment of public free 
 baths and wash-houses. 
 
 (c) Establishment of refuges for the^ aged and disabled. 
 Night-shelter and food-distribution for workmen wandering in 
 search of work. 
 
 ' For this cp. Millerand's Bill of Nov. 14, 1899 > ^s also his depart- 
 mental efforts to stimulate trade-unions to co-operative production by 
 certain preferences in the assignment of contracts, especially in connection 
 with the Paris Exhibition, 1900. 
 
 ' For Bourses du Travail, cp. p. 154. They were originally suggested 
 by the Belgian, De Paepe, in 1868, in connection with the International 
 Working Men's Association, 
 
 ^ Includes matters dealt with under the English poor law. 
 
PROGRAMME OF BELGIAN LABOUR PARTY 333 
 
 5. Complete neutrality of all communal services from the 
 philosophical point of view} 
 
 6. Finance. 
 
 (a) Saving to be effected on present cost of administration. 
 Maximum allowance of 6000 francs for mayors and other 
 officials. Costs of entertainment for mayors who must incur 
 certain private expenses. 
 
 (^) Income-tax. 
 
 (c) Special tax on sites not built over and houses not let. 
 
 7. Public services. 
 
 (a) The commune, or a federation of communes com- 
 posing one agglomeration, is to work the means of transport — 
 tramways, omnibuses, cabs, district railways, etc. 
 
 (H) The commune, or federation of communes, is to work 
 directly the services of general interest at present conceded to 
 companies — lighting, water-supply, markets, highways, heating, 
 security, health. 
 
 (c) Compulsory insurance of the inhabitants against fire ; 
 except where the State intervenes to do so. 
 
 {i/) Construction of cheap dwellings by the commune, the 
 hospices, and the charity offices. 
 
 ' No preference for employment of persons with any special creed. 
 
XXIV 
 
 PROGRAMME OF THE AUSTRIAN SOCIAL 
 DEMOCRATIC PARTY 
 
 Voted at Brunn, 1901. 
 
 The Social Democratic Labour party in Austria strives on behalf 
 of the whole people, without distinction of nation, race, and sex, 
 for emancipation from the fetters of economic dependence, 
 political oppression, and intellectual confinement. The cause 
 of these unsatisfactory conditions lies, not in particular political 
 arrangements, but in the fact essentially conditioning and 
 dominating the whole state of society, that the means of working 
 are monopolized in the hands of individual possessors. The 
 possessors of the power to work, the working-class, fall there- 
 fore into the most oppressive dependence upon the possessors 
 of the means of working, which include land — that is, upon 
 the great land-owning and capitalist classes, whose political 
 and economic domination is expressed in the class-State of 
 to-day. 
 
 Technical progress, the growing concentration of production 
 and property, the union of every economic force in the hands 
 of capitalists and capitalistic groups, have the effect of depriving 
 ever-widening circles of small industrial employers and peasants, 
 formerly independent, of their means of production, and 
 bringing them as wage-workers, employ'es, or debtors, into 
 direct or indirect dependence on the capitalists. The mass of 
 proletarians grows ; the degree of their exploitation also rises ; 
 
 334 
 
AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME 335 
 
 and, in consequence, the standard of life of ever-deepening 
 strata of the working people contrasts more and more with 
 the rapidly rising productivity of their own work and the 
 expansion of the wealth which they themselves create. The 
 crises resulting from the want of design in the capitalistic 
 method of production, with the unemployment and misery 
 resulting from them, precipitate and accentuate this develop- 
 ment. 
 
 But the more the development of capitalism increases the 
 proletariate, the more is the proletariate compelled and enabled 
 to take up the battle against it. The suppression of individual 
 production makes individual property ever more superfluous 
 and harmful, while at the same time the necessary mental and 
 material conditions are afforded for new forms of co-operative 
 production on the basis of social ownership of the means of 
 production. Simultaneously the proletariate becomes conscious 
 that it must advance and precipitate this development, and 
 that the transfer of the means of work to the communal owner- 
 ship of the whole people must be the end, and the capture of 
 political power the means, in its fight for the emancipation of 
 the working-class. Only the proletariate aroused to class- 
 consciousness, and organized for the class-war, can carry out 
 this necessary development. To organize the proletariate, to 
 fill it with the consciousness of its position and its object, to make 
 and keep it mentally and physically fit for the battle, is therefore 
 the real programme of the Social Demdcratic Labour party in 
 Austria, towards which it will avail itself of all means which 
 subserve its aim and correspond to the people's natural sense 
 
 of justice. 
 
 The Social Democratic Labour party in Austria will in all 
 political and economic questions always represent the class- 
 interest of the proletariate, and energetically oppose any 
 attempt to obscure and conceal the class-antagonisms, as well 
 as any attempt to wear out the workers on behalf of the 
 bourgeois party. 
 
 The Social Democratic Labour party in Austria is an 
 
336 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 international party; it condemns the privileges of nations as 
 well as those of birth and sex, property and lineage, and 
 declares that the war against exploitation must be international 
 like the exploitation itself. It condemns and combats all 
 restrictions upon the free expression of opinion, and all State 
 and ecclesiastical tutelage. It strives for legal protection of 
 the standard of life of the working-classes, and fights to give 
 the proletariate a maximum influence upon every sphere of 
 public life. 
 
 Setting out from these principles, the Austrian Social 
 Democracy demands immediately — 
 
 1. Universal, equal, direct, and secret suffrage in State, 
 province, and commune for all members of the State, without 
 distinction of sex, from the age of twenty upwards ; propor- 
 tional representation ; fixing of elections for a legal holiday ; 
 triennial legislative periods; maintenance-grant for elected 
 persons. 
 
 2. Direct legislation by the people by means of the initiative 
 and referendum ; self-determinarion and self-government of the 
 people in State, province, and commune. 
 
 3. Abolition of all laws which limit the right to free expres- 
 sion of opinions ; in particular, provision of full freedom of the 
 press by the removal of outside management and the restriction 
 upon colportage of printed matter ; removal of all laws restrict- 
 ing the right of association and assembly. 
 
 4. Removal of all restrictions upon free locomotion; in 
 particular, of all vagrancy laws. 
 
 5. A law to be passed and carried out subjecting officials 
 who infringe the political rights of individuals or associations 
 to a severe penalty. 
 
 6. Independence of the law-courts to be guaranteed. No 
 charges to be made for the administration of the law, or for 
 legal assistance. Indemnification of innocent persons arrested 
 and condemned. Election of jiu-ors on the basis of universal, 
 equal, and secret suffrage. Subjection of all State-servants to 
 the ordinary laws and courts. Abolition of the death penalty. 
 
AUSTRIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME 337 
 
 7. State and communal organization of the public health 
 service. Provision of medical attendance and medicine without 
 charge. 
 
 8. Declaration that religion is a private matter. Separa- 
 tion of the Church from the State, and declaration that eccle- 
 siastical and religious communities are private associations, 
 which manage their affairs quite independently. Compulsory 
 civil marriage. 
 
 9. Compulsory, free, secular education, in complete corre- 
 spondence with the needs and development of the several 
 nationalities. No charges to be made for school requisites and 
 maintenance in the primary schools for all children, and for 
 those pupils of higher educational institutions who are capable 
 of further training. 
 
 10. Substitution for all indirect taxes and duties of graduated 
 taxes upon income, property, and inheritance. 
 
 11. Substitution of the armed nation for the standing array. 
 Education of all to be capable of bearing arms. Arming of the 
 whole nation. Decision of war and peace by the representatives 
 of the people. 
 
 12. Removal of all laws whereby women are prejudicially 
 affected as against men in public or private law. 
 
 13. Liberation of workmen's co-operative societies from all 
 burdens and limitations impeding their activity. 
 
 As a minimum of protection for workers, the Austrian 
 Social Democracy demands — 
 
 1. Full freedom of combination ; legal recognition of trade- 
 union organizations; legal equalization of agricultural labourers ; 
 abolition of the regulations affecting servants. 
 
 2. Eight hours' maximum working-day, without clauses and 
 without exceptions. 
 
 3. Prohibition of night-work except in businesses whose 
 technical nature does not permit of an interruption ; night-work 
 for women and non-adult workers is to be prohibited without 
 exception. 
 
 4. Complete rest of at least thirty-six hours on Sunday. 
 
 z 
 
338 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 5. Prohibition of work for profit by children under fourteen 
 to be thoroughly enforced. Comprehensive laws to protect 
 apprentices and non-adult workers. 
 
 6. Exclusion of women workers from industries especially 
 injurious to women's physique. 
 
 All these regulations are to apply to industries of every 
 kind and degree (great industry, transport industry, handicraft, 
 trade, home industry). 
 
 Development of the industrial inspectorate. Increase of 
 inspectors, to whom executive powers are to be given. Partici- 
 pation of the workers' organizations in the control of the 
 enforcement of workmen's protection, through the inspectors, 
 male and female, whom they select 
 
 Employers who transgress the laws for the protection of 
 workers are to be liable to severe penalties, which may not be 
 converted into money fines. 
 
 Workmen's insurance is to be subjected to a radical reform, 
 to be completed by the introduction of a universal insurance 
 against old age and disablement, as well as a provision for 
 widows and orphans, and to be uniformly organized with a 
 thorough autonomy for the insured. 
 
XXV 
 
 A FRENCH PROGRAMME OF 1902 
 
 This was voted at Tours by the " French Socialist Party,'' the 
 less revolutionary wing of French Socialism, led by M. Jaur^s and 
 comprising about three-quarters of the Socialist deputies. In 1905 
 this wing fused itself with the more revolutionary "Socialist Party 
 of France," under MM. Guesde and Vaillant, and the result was the 
 present United Socialist Party (/es Unifies). The latter has never 
 yet settled a programme, but its election address (1906) will be found 
 on p. 378. 
 
 I. — Declaration of Principles. 
 
 Socialism proceeds simultaneously from the movement of i 
 democracy and from the new forms of production. In history, [I 
 from the very morrow of the French Revolution, the proletarians 
 perceived that the Declaration of the Rights of Man would 
 remain an illusion unless society transformed ownership. 
 
 How, indeed, could freedom, ownership, security, be 
 guaranteed to all, in a society where miUions of workers have 
 no property but their muscles, and are obliged, in order to live, 
 to sell their power of work to the propertied minority ? 
 
 To extend, therefore, to every citizen the guarantees in- 
 scribed in the Declaration of Rights, our great Babeuf demanded 
 ownership in common, as a guarantee of welfare in common. 
 Communism was for the boldest proletarians the supreme 
 expression of the Revolution. 
 
 Between the political rkgime, the outcome of the revolu- 
 tionary movement, and the economic rigime of society, there 
 is an intolerable contradiction. 
 
 In the political order democracy is realized : all citizens 
 339 
 
340 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 share equally, at least by right, in the sovereignty ; universal 
 suffrage is communism in political power. 
 
 In the economic order, on the other hand, a minority is 
 sovereign. It is the oligarchy of capital which possesses, 
 directs, administers, and exploits. 
 
 Proletarians are acknowledged fit as citizens to manage 
 the milliards of the national and communal budgets ; as 
 labourers, in the workshop, they are only a passive multitude, 
 which has no share in the direction of enterprises, and they 
 endure the domination of a class which makes them pay 
 dearly for a tutelage whose utility ceases and whose prolonga- 
 tion is arbitrary. 
 
 The irresistible tendency of the proletarians, therefore, is 
 to transfer into the economic order the democracy partially 
 realized in the political order.^ Just as all the citizens have 
 and handle m common, democratically, the political power, so 
 they must have and handle in common the economic power, 
 the means of production. 
 
 They must themselves appoint the heads of work in the 
 workshops, as they appoint the heads of government in the 
 city, and reserve for those who work, for the community, 
 the whole product of work. 
 
 This tendency of political democracy to enlarge itself into 
 social democracy has been strengthened and defined by the 
 whole economic evolution. 
 
 In proportion as the capitalistic regime developed its 
 effects, the proletariate became conscious of the irreducible 
 opposition between its essential interests and the interests of 
 the class dominant in society, and to the bourgeois form of 
 democracy it opposed more and more the complete and 
 thorough communistic democracy. 
 
 All hope of universalizing ownership and independence by 
 multiplying small autonomous producers has disappeared. 
 The great industry is more and more the rule in modern 
 production. 
 
 By the enlargement of the world's markets, by the growing 
 
PROGRAMME OF FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 341 
 
 facility of transport, by the division of labour, by the increasing 
 application of machinery, by the concentration of capitals, 
 immense concentrated production is gradually ruining or sub- 
 ordinating the small or middling producers. 
 
 Even where the number of small craftsmen, small traders, 
 small peasant proprietors, does not diminish, their relative 
 importance in the totality of production grows less unceasingly. 
 They fall under the sway of the great capitalists. 
 
 Even the peasant proprietors, who seem to have retained 
 a little independence, are more and more exposed to the 
 crushing forces of the universal market, which capitalism 
 directs without their concurrence and against their interests. 
 
 For the sale of their wheat, wine, beetroot, and milk, 
 they are more and more at the mercy of great middlemen or 
 great industries of milling, distilling, and sugar-refining, which 
 dominate and despoil peasant labour. 
 
 The industrial proletarians, having lost nearly all chance 
 of individually rising to be employers, and being thus doomed 
 to eternal dependence, are further subject to incessant crises of 
 luiemployment and misery, let loose by the unregulated com- 
 petition of the great capitalist forces. 
 
 The immense progress of production and wealth, largely 
 usurped by parasitic classes, has not led to an equivalent 
 progress in well-being and security for the workers, the pro- 
 letarians. Whole categories of wage-earners are abruptly 
 thrown into extreme misery by the constant introduction of 
 new mechanisms and by the abrupt movements and trans- 
 formations of industry. 
 
 Capitalism itself admits the disorder of the present regime 
 of production, since it tries to regulate it for its gain by 
 capitalistic syndicates, by trusts. 
 
 Even if it succeeded in actually disciplining all the forces 
 of production, it would only do so while consummating the 
 domination and the monopoly of capital. 
 
 There is only one way of assuring the continued order and 
 progress of production, the freedom of every individual, and 
 
342 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the growing well-being of the workers ; it is to transfer to the 
 collectivity, to the social community, the ownership of the 
 capitalistic means of production. 
 
 The proletariate, daily more numerous, ever better prepared 
 for combined action by the great industry itself, understands 
 that in coUectiveness or communism lie the necessary means of 
 salvation for it. 
 
 As an oppressed and exploited class, it opposes all the 
 forces of oppression and exploitation, the whole system of 
 ownership, which debases it to be a mere instrument. It does 
 not expect its emancipation from the good will of rulers or 
 the spontaneous generosity of the propertied classes, but from 
 the continual and methodical pressure which it exerts upon the 
 privileged class and the government. 
 
 It sets before itself as its final aim, not a partial ameliora- 
 tion, but the total transformation of society. And since it 
 acknowledges no right as belonging to capitalistic ownership, 
 it feels bound to it by no contract. It is determined to fight 
 it, thoroughly, and to the end ; and it is in this sense that the 
 proletariate, even while using the legal means which democracy 
 puts into its hands, is and must remain a revolutionary class. 
 
 Already by winning universal suffrage, by winning and 
 exercising the right of combining to strike and of forming 
 trade-unions, by the first laws regulating labour and causing 
 society to insure its members, the proletariate has begun to 
 react against the fatal effects of capitalism; it will continue 
 this great and unceasing effort, but it will only end the struggle 
 when all capitalist property has been reabsorbed by the com- 
 munity, and when the antagonism of classes has been ended 
 by the disappearance of the classes themselves, reconciled, or 
 rather made one, in common production and common owner- 
 ship. 
 
 How will be accomplished the supreme transformation of 
 the capitahst rigi'me into the coUectivist or communist ? The 
 human mind cannot determine beforehand the mode in which 
 history will be accomplished. 
 
PROGRAMME OF FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 343 
 
 The democratic and bourgeois revolution, which originated 
 in the great movement of France in 1789, has come about in 
 different countries in the most different ways. The old feudal 
 system has yielded in one case to force, in another to peaceful 
 and slow evolution. The revolutionary bourgeoisie has at one 
 place and time proceeded to brutal expropriation without com- 
 pensation, at another to the buying out of feudal servitudes. 
 
 No one can know in what way the capitalist servitude will 
 be abolished. The essential thing is that the proletariate 
 should be always ready for the most vigorous and effective 
 action. It would be dangerous to dismiss the possibility of 
 revolutionary events occasioned either by the resistance or by 
 the criminal aggression of the privileged class. 
 
 It would be fatal, trusting in the one word revolution, to 
 neglect the great forces which the conscious, organized pro- 
 letariate can employ within democracy. 
 
 These legal means, often won by revolution, represent an 
 accumulation of revolutionary force, a revolutionary capital, of 
 which it would be madness not to take advantage. 
 
 Too often the workers neglect to profit by the means of 
 action, which democracy and the republic put into their hands. 
 They do not demand from trade-unionist action, co-operative 
 action, or universal suffrage, all that those forms of action can 
 give. 
 
 No formula, no machinery, can enable the working-class to 
 dispense with the constant effort of organization and education. 
 
 The idea of the general strike, of general strikes, is in- 
 vincibly suggested to proletarians by the growing magnitude of 
 working-class organization. They do not desire violence, 
 which is very often the result of an insufficient organization 
 and a rudimentary education of the proletariate; but they 
 would make a great mistake if they did not employ the power- 
 ful means of action, which co-ordinates working-class forces to 
 subserve the great interests of the workers or of society j they 
 must group and organize themselves to be in a position to 
 make the privileged class more and more emphatically aware 
 
344 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 of the gulf, which may suddenly be cleft open in the economic 
 life of societies by the abrapt stoppage of the wom-out and 
 interminably exploited workers. They can thereby snatch 
 from the selfishness of the privileged class great reforms 
 interesting the working-class in general, and hasten the com- 
 plete transformation of an unjust society. But the formula 
 of the general strike, like the partial strike, like poUtical action, 
 is only valuable through the progress of the education, the 
 thought, and the will of the working-class. 
 
 The Socialist party defends the Republic as a necessary 
 means of liberation and education. Socialism is essentially 
 republican. It might be even said to be the Republic itself, 
 since it is the extension of the Republic to the rigime of 
 property and labour. 
 
 The Socialist party needs, to organize the new world, free 
 minds, emancipated from superstitions and prejudices. It 
 asks for and guarantees every hiunan being, every individual, 
 absolute freedom of thinking, and writing, and affirming their 
 beliefs. Over against all religions, dogmas, and churches, as 
 well as over against the class conceptions of the bourgeoisie, it 
 sets the unlimited right of free thought, the scientific conception 
 of the universe, and a system of public education based ex- 
 clusively on science and reason. 
 
 Thus accustomed to free thought and reflection, citizens 
 will be protected against the sophistries of the capitalistic 
 and clerical reaction. The small craftsmen, small traders, and 
 small peasant proprietors will cease to think that it is Sociahsm 
 which wishes to expropriate them. The Socialist party will 
 hasten the hour when these small peasant proprietors, ruined 
 by the underselling of their produce, riddled with mortgage 
 debts, and always liable to judicial expropriation, will eventually 
 understand the advantages of generalized and systematized 
 association, and will claim themselves, as a benefit, the socializa- 
 tion of their plots of land. 
 
 But it would be useless to prepare inside each nation an 
 organization of justice and peace, if the relations of the nations 
 
PROGRAMME OF FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 345 
 
 to one another remained exposed to every enterprise of force^ 
 every suggestion of capitalist greed. __ 
 
 The Socialist party desires peace among nations; it con- 
 demns every policy of aggression and war, whether continental 
 or colonial. It constantly keeps on the order of the day for 
 civiUzed countries simultaneous disarmament. While waiting 
 for the day of definite peace among nations, it combats the 
 militarist spirit by doing its utmost to approximate the system of 
 permanent armies to that of national mihtias. It wishes to pro- 
 tect the territory and the independence of the nation against 
 any surprise ; but every offensive policy and offensive weapon - 
 is utterly condemned by it. 
 
 The close understanding of the workers, of the proletarians 
 of every country, is necessary as well to beat back the forces of 
 aggression and war as to prepare by a concerted action the 
 general triumph of SociaUsm. The international agreement of 
 the militant proletarians of every country will prepare the 
 triumph of a free humanity, where the differences of classes 
 will have disappeared, and the difference of nations, instead 
 of being a principle of strife and hatred, will be a prin- 
 ciple of brotherly emulation in the universal progress of 
 mankind. 
 
 It is in this sense and for these reasons that the Socialist 
 party has formulated in its congresses the rule and aim of its 
 action — international understanding of the workers; political 
 and economic organization of the proletariate as a class party 
 for the conquest of government and the socialization of the 
 means of production and exchange ; that is to say, the trans- 
 formation of capitaUst society into a coUectivist or communist 
 society. 
 
 II. — Programme of Reforms. 
 
 The Socialist party, rejecting the policy of all or nothing, 
 has a programme of reforms whose realization it pursues 
 forthwith. 
 
•,x6 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 (i) DaKccraiisaium cf Puhl:c AuihofHies. 
 
 1. Univeisal direct sufiGrage, withont distinction of sex, in 
 every election. 
 
 2. Reduction of time of residence. Votes to be cast for 
 lists, with proportional representation, in every election. 
 
 3. L^islative measures to secure the freedom and secrecy 
 of the vote. 
 
 4. Popular right of initiative and referendum. 
 
 5. Abolition of the Senate and Presidency of the Republic 
 The powers at present belonging to the President of the 
 RepubUc and the Cabinet to devolve on an executive councU 
 appointed by the Parliament. 
 
 6. L^al regulation of the l^islator's mandate, to be 
 revocable by the vote of any absolute majority of his con- 
 stituents on the raster. 
 
 7. Admission of women to all public fimctions. 
 
 8. Absolute fteedom of the press, and of assembly guaran- 
 teed only by the common law. Abrt^tion of all exceptional 
 laws on the press. Freedom of civil associations. 
 
 9. FuU administrative autonomy of the departments and 
 communes, under no reservations but that of the laws 
 guaranteeing the republican, democratic, and secular character 
 of the State. 
 
 {2) Ccmpkti- Secularisaiian cf the State. 
 
 I. Separation of the Churches and the State ; abolition of 
 the Budget of PubUc Worship; freedom of public worship; 
 prohibition of the political and collective action of the Church^ 
 against the crril laws and republican liberties. 
 
 3. AboUtion of the congregations: nationalization of the 
 property in mortmain, of every kind, belonging to them, and 
 appropriation of it for works of social insurance and solidarity ; 
 in the interval, aU industrial, agricultural, and commercial 
 undertakings are to be forbidden to the congregations. 
 
PROGRAMME OF FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 347 
 
 (3) Demoa-atic and Humane Organization of Justice. 
 
 1. Substitution for all the present courts, whether civil or 
 criminal, of courts composed of a jury taken from the electoral 
 register and judges elected under guarantees of competence ; 
 the jury to be formed by drawing lots from lists drawn up by 
 universal suffrage. 
 
 2. Justice to be without fee. Transformation of ministerial 
 offices into pubUc functions. Abolition of the monopoly of 
 the bar. 
 
 3. Examination from opposite sides at every stage and on 
 every point. 
 
 4. Substitution for the vindictive character of the present 
 punishments, of a system for the safe keeping and the ameliora- 
 tion of convicts, 
 
 5. Abolition of the death penalty. 
 
 6. Abolition of the military and naval courts. 
 
 (4) Constitution of the Family in conformity with Individual 
 
 Rights. 
 
 1. Abrogation of every law establishing the civil inferiority 
 of women and natural or adulterine children. 
 
 2. Most liberal legislation on divorce. A law sanctioning 
 inquiry into paternity. 
 
 (5) Civic and Technical Education. 
 
 1. Education to be free of charge at every stage. 
 
 2. Maintenance of the children in elementary schools at 
 the expense of the public bodies. 
 
 3. For secondary and higher education, the community 
 to pay for those of the children who on examination are 
 pronounced fit usefully to continue their studies. 
 
 4. Creation of a popular higher education. 
 
 5. State monopoly of education at the three stages ; as a 
 means towards this, all members of the regular and secular 
 clergy to be forbidden to open and teach in a school. 
 
348 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 (6) General recasting of the System of Taxation upon 
 Principles of Social Solidarity. 
 
 1. Abolition of every tax on articles of consumption which 
 are primary necessaries, and of the four direct contributions ; * 
 accessorily, relief from taxation of all small plots of land and 
 small professional businesses.^ 
 
 2. Progressive income-tax, levied on each person's income 
 as a whole, in all cases where it exceeds 3000 francs {;£-i2o). 
 
 3. Progressive tax on inheritances, the scale of progression 
 being calculated with reference both to the amount of the 
 inheritance and the degree of remoteness of the relationship. 
 
 4. The State to be empowered to seek a part of the 
 revenue which it requires from certain monopolies. 
 
 (7) Legal Protection and Regulation of Labour in Industry, 
 Commerce, and Agiiculture. 
 
 1. One day's rest per week, or prohibition of employers to 
 exact work more than six days in seven. 
 
 2. Limitation of the working-day to eight hours- as a 
 means towards this, vote of every regulation diminishing the 
 length of the working-day. 
 
 3. Prohibition of the employment of children under four- 
 teen J half-time system for young persons, productive labour 
 being combined with instruction and education. 
 
 4. Prohibition of night-work for women and young persons. 
 Prohibition of night-work for adult workers of all categories 
 and in all industries where night-work is not absolutely neces- 
 sary. 
 
 5. Legislation to protect home-workers. 
 
 6. Prohibition of piece-work and of truck. Legal recog- 
 nition of black-listing. 
 
 7. Scales of rates forming a minimum wage to be fixed 
 by agreement between municipalities and the working-class 
 corporations of industry, commerce, and agriculture. 
 
 ' Personal tax ; tax on movables ; tax on land ; door and window tax. 
 ^ A licence to trade is required for many businesses in France. 
 
PROGRAMME OF FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 349 
 
 8. Employers to be forbidden to make deductions from 
 wages, as fines or otherwise. Workers to assist in framing 
 special rules for workshops. 
 
 9. Inspection of workshops, mills, factories, mines, yards, 
 public services, shops, etc., shall be carried out with reference 
 to the conditions of work, hygiene, and safety, by inspectors 
 elected by the workmen's unions, in concurrence with the 
 State inspectors. 
 
 10. Extension of the industrial arbitration courts to all 
 wage-workers of industry, commerce, and agriculture. 
 
 11. Convict labour to be treated as a State monopoly ; the 
 charge for all work done shall be the wage normally paid to 
 trade-unionist workers. 
 
 1 2. Women to be forbidden by law to work for six weeks 
 before confinement and for six weeks after. 
 
 (8) Soda/ Insurance against all Natural and Economic Risks. 
 
 1. Organization by the nation of a system of social insur- 
 ance, applying to the whole mass of industrial, commercial, 
 and agricultural workers, against the risks of sickness, accident, 
 disability, old age, and unemployment. 
 
 2. The insurance funds to be found without drawing on 
 wages ; as a means towards this, limitation of the contribution 
 drawn from the wage-workers to a third of the total contri- 
 bution, the two other thirds to be provided by the State and 
 the employers. 
 
 3. The law on workmen's accidents to be improved and 
 applied without distinction or nationality. 
 
 4. The workers to take part in the control and administra- 
 tion of the insurance system. 
 
 (9) Extension of the Domain and Public Services, Industrial 
 and Agricultural, of State, Department, and Commune. 
 
 I, Nationalization of railways, mines, the Bank of France, 
 insurance, the sugar refineries and sugar factories, the dis- 
 tilleries, and the great milling establishments. 
 
350 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 2. Organization of public employment-registries for the 
 workers, with the assistance of the Bourses du Travail,' and the 
 workmen's organizations; and abolition of the private registries. 
 
 3. State organization of agricultural banks. 
 
 4. Grants to rural communes to assist them to purchase 
 agricultural machinery collectively, to acquire communal 
 domains, worked under the control of the communes by unions 
 of rural labourers, and to establish depots and entrepots. 
 
 5. Organization of communal services for lighting, water, 
 common transport, construction, and public management of 
 cheap dwellings. 
 
 6. Democratic administration of the public services, 
 national and communal ; organizations of workers to take 
 part in their administration and control ; aU wage-earners in 
 all public services to have the right of forming trade-unions. 
 
 7. National and communal service of public health, and 
 strengthening of the laws which protect it — those on unhealthy 
 dwellings, etc. 
 
 (10) Policy of International Peace and Adaftation of the 
 Military Organization to the Defence of the Country. 
 
 1. Substitution of a militia for the standing Army, and 
 adoption of every measiu-e, such as reductions of inilitary 
 service, leading up to it 
 
 2. Remodelling and mitigation of the mihtary penal codej 
 abolition of disciplinary corps, and prohibition of the pro- 
 longation of military service by way of penalty. 
 
 3. Renunciation of all oflfensive war, no matter what its 
 pretext 
 
 4. Renunciation of every alliance not aimed exclusively at 
 the maintenance of peace. 
 
 5. Renunciation of Colonial military expeditions ; and in 
 the present Colonies or Protectorates, witiidrawn from the 
 influence of missionaries and the miUtary regime, development 
 of institutions to protect the natives. 
 
 ' For the Boursa du Travail, q). p. 154. 
 
XXVI 
 
 PROGRAMMES OF THE ENGLISH SOCIALIST 
 ORGANIZATIONS 
 
 I. — The Programme of the Social Democratic 
 Federation 
 
 [Revised up to 1906] 
 
 The Social Democratic Federation is the oldest English Socialist 
 body. Various Radical clubs in London formed in 1881 the Democratic 
 Federation, and in 1883 this body declared for Socialism and took 
 its present title. Most of the leading English Socialists were for a 
 short while in its ranks. 
 
 OBJECT 
 
 The Socializatipn^.o£ the Jtl^ns of Produc^QBiJDistribijJipn, 
 and_ Exchapge,^_be_co2teoUgi hy a PppifflpTatig fAa.tp. in the 
 interests of the entire community, gsadJbc complete Emancipa- 
 tion of Labour from the Domination of Capitalism and Land- 
 lordism, with the establishment of Social and Economic 
 Equality between the Sexes. 
 
 The economic development of modem society is charac- 
 terized by the more or less complete domination of the 
 capitalistic mode of production over all branches of human 
 labour. 
 
 The capitalistic mode of production, because it has 
 the creation of profit for its sole object, therefore favours 
 the larger capital, and is based upon the divorcement of the 
 majority of the people from the instruments of production 
 
 3SI 
 
352 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 and the concentration of these instruments in the hands of 
 a minority. Society is thus divided into two opposite classes : 
 one, the capitaHsts and their sleeping partners, the landlords 
 and loanmongers, holding in their hands the means of produc- 
 tion, distribution, and exchange, and being, therefore, able to 
 command the labour of others ; the other, the working-class, 
 the wage-earners, the proletariat, possessing nothing but their 
 labour-power, and being consequently forced by necessity to 
 work for the former. 
 
 The social division thus produced becomes wider and 
 deeper with every new advance in the application of labour- 
 saving machinery. It is most clearly recognizable, however, in 
 the times of industrial and commercial crises, when, in conse- 
 quence of the present chaotic conditions of carrying on 
 national and international industry, production periodically 
 comes to a standstill, and a number of the few remaining inde- 
 pendent producers are thrown into the ranks of the proletariat. 
 Thus, while on one hand there is incessantly going on an 
 accumulation of capital, wealth, and power into a steadily 
 diminishing number of hands, there is, on the other hand, a 
 constantly growing insecurity of livelihood for the mass of 
 wage-earners, an increasing disparity between human wants 
 and the opportunity of acquiring the means for their satisfaction, 
 and a steady physical and mental deterioration among the more 
 poverty-stricken of the population. 
 
 But the more this social division widens, the stronger grows 
 the revolt — more conscious aoroad than here — of the prole- 
 tariat against the capitalist system of society in which this 
 division and all that accompanies it have originated, and find 
 such fruitful soil. The capitalist moie of production, by massing 
 the workers in large factories, and creating an interdependence, 
 not only between various trades and branches of industries, 
 but even national industries, prepares the ground and furnishes 
 material for a universal class war. That class war may at first — 
 as in this country — be directed against the abuses of the system, 
 and not against the system itself; but sooner or later the 
 
ENGLISH S.D.F. PROGRAMME 353 
 
 workers must come to recognize that nothing short of the 
 expropriation of the capitalist class, the ownership by the com- 
 munity of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, 
 can put an end to their abject economic condition ; and then 
 the class war will become conscious instead of unconscious on 
 the part of the working-classes, and they will have for their 
 ultimate object the overthrow of the capitalist system. At the 
 same time, since the capitalist class holds and uses the power 
 of the State to safeguard its position and beat off any attack, 
 the class war must assume a political character, and become a 
 struggle on the part of the workers for the possession of the 
 political machinery. 
 
 It is t his struggle for the conquest of t he political powe r 
 of the State, in order to effect a" social tr a^Iormation. wKich 
 International Social Democracy carries on in the name and 
 on befialfof the working-class. Social Democracy, therefore, 
 is the only possible political party of the proletariat. The 
 Social Democratic Federation is a part of this International 
 Social Democracy. It, therefore, takes its stand on the above 
 principles, and believes — 
 
 1. That the emancipation of the working-class can only be 
 achieved through the socialization of the means of production, 
 distribution, and exchange, and their subsequent control by 
 the organized community in the interests of the whole people. 
 
 2. That, as the proletariat is the last class to achieve free- 
 dom, its emancipation will mean the emancipation of the 
 whole of mankind, without distinction of race, nationality, 
 creed, or sex. 
 
 3. That this emancipation can only be the work of the 
 working-class itself, organized nationally and internationally 
 into a distinct political party, consciously striving after the 
 realization of its ideals ; and, finally, 
 
 4. That, in order to ensure greater material and moral 
 facilities for the working-class to organize itself and to carry 
 on the class war, the following reforms must immediately be 
 carried through : — 
 
 2 A 
 
35+ MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 IMMEDIATE REFORMS 
 
 Political. 
 
 Abolition of the Monarchy. 
 
 Democratization offfi^GovernmentaXmach^^^ viz. aboli- 
 tion of the House of Lords, payment of members of legislative 
 and administrative bodies, payment of official expenses of 
 elections out of the public funds, adult suffrage, proportional 
 representation, triennial parliaments, second ballot, initiative 
 and referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizen- 
 ship after two years' residence in the country, without any fees. 
 Canvassing to be made illegal. All elections to take place on 
 one day, such day to be made a legal holiday, and all premises 
 licensed for the sale of intoxicating liquors to be closed. 
 
 Legislaticmi by feg.pg.opJ.g.in such wise that no legislative 
 proposal shall become law until ratified by the majorfty of the 
 people. 
 
 Legislative and administrative independence for all parts of 
 the Empire. 
 
 Financial and Fiscal. 
 Repudiation of the National Debt. 
 
 Abolition of all indirect taxation and the institution of 
 a cumulative tax on all incomes and inheritance exceeding 
 
 Administrative. 
 
 Extension of the principle of local self-government. 
 
 Systematization and co-ordination of the local administrative 
 bodies. 
 
 Election of all administrators and administrative bodies by 
 equal direct adult suffrage. 
 
 Educational, 
 Elementary education to be free, secular, industrial, and 
 compulsory for all classes. The age of obligatory school 
 attendance to be raised to i6. 
 
ENGLISH S.D.F. PROGRAMME 355 
 
 Unification and systematization of intermediate and higher 
 education, both general and technical, and all such education 
 to be free. 
 
 State maintenance for all attending State schools. 
 
 Abolition of school rates j the cost of education in all State 
 schools to be borne by the National Exchequer. 
 
 Public Monopolies and Services. 
 
 Nationalization of the land and the organization of labour 
 in agriculture and industry under public ownership and control 
 on co-operative principles. 
 
 Nationalization of the trusts. 
 
 NationaUzation of railways, docks, and canals, and all 
 great means of transit. 
 
 Public ownership and control of gas, electric light, and 
 water supplies, as well as of tramway, omnibus, and other 
 locomotive services. 
 
 PubUc ownership and control of the food and coal supply. 
 
 The establishment of State and municipal banks and pawn- 
 shops and public restaurants. 
 
 PubUc ownership and control of the lifeboat service. 
 
 Public ownership and control of hospitals, dispensaries^ 
 cemeteries, and crematoria. 
 
 Public ownership and control of the drink traffic. 
 
 Labour, 
 
 A legislative eight-hour working-day, or 48 hours per week, 
 to be the maximum for all trades and industries. Imprison- 
 ment to be inflicted on employers for any infringement of the 
 law. 
 
 Absolute freedom of combination for all workers, with legal 
 guarantee against any action, private or public, which tends to 
 curtail or infringe it. 
 
 No child to be employed in any trade or occupation until 
 16 years of age, and imprisonment to be inflicted on employers, 
 parents, and guardians who infringe this law. 
 
356 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Public provision of useful work at not less than trade-union 
 rates of wages for the unemployed. 
 
 Free State insurance against sickness and accident, and 
 free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and dis- 
 abled workers. Public assistance not to entail any forfeiture 
 of political rights. 
 
 The legislative enactment of a minimum wage of 30J. for 
 all workers. Equal pay for both sexes for the performance of 
 equal work. 
 
 Social, 
 
 Abolition of the present workhouse system, and, reformed 
 administration of the Poor Law on a basis of national co- 
 operation. 
 
 Compulsory construction by public bodies of healthy dwell- 
 ings for the people ; such dwellings to be let at rents to cover 
 the cost of construction and maintenance alone, and not to 
 cover the cost of the land. 
 
 The administration of justice and legal advice to be free to 
 all; justice to be administered by judges chosen by the 
 people; appeal in criminal cases; compensation for those 
 innocently accused, condemned, and imprisoned ; abolition of 
 imprisonment for contempt of court in relation to non-payment 
 of debt in the case of workers earning less than J^z per week ; 
 abolition of capital punishment. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 The disestablishment and disendowment of all State 
 churches. 
 
 The abolition of standing armies, and the establishment of 
 national citizen forces. The people to decide on peace and 
 war. 
 
 The establishment of international courts of arbitration. 
 
 The abolition of courts-martial; all offences agamst disci- 
 pline to be transferred to the jurisdiction of civil courts. 
 
ENGLISH I.L.P. PROGRAMME 357 
 
 II. — The Programme of the Independent 
 Labour Party (1906-7) 
 
 The Independent Labour Party was founded in 1892-3, mainly by 
 Socialists in close touch with the trade-union movement. It held its 
 first congress on January 13 and 14, 1893. It must be carefully dis- 
 tinguished from the Labour Party (see p. 364), the federal body to 
 which since 1901 it has been afQliated and which it has done so much 
 to inspire. 
 
 Name. — " The Independent Labour Party." 
 
 Object. — An industrial commonwealth founded upon the 
 Socialization of land and capital. 
 
 Methods. — The education of the community in the principles 
 of SociaUsm. 
 
 The industrial and political organization of the workers. 
 
 The independent representation of Socialist principles on 
 all elective bodies. 
 
 Programme. 
 
 The true object of industry being the production of the 
 requirements of life, the responsibility should rest with the 
 community collectively, therefore — 
 
 The land, being the storehouse of all the necessaries of life, 
 should be declared and treated as pubUc property. 
 
 The capital necessary for industrial operations should be 
 owned and used collectively. 
 
 Work, and wealth resulting therefrom, should be equitably 
 distributed over the population. 
 
 As a means to this end, we demand the enactment of the 
 following measures : — 
 
 1. A maximum forty-eight hours' working-week, with the 
 retention of all existing hoUdays, and Labour Day, May i, 
 secured by law. 
 
 2. The provision of work to all capable adult applicants at 
 recognized trade-union rates, with a statutory minimum of 
 sixpence per hour. 
 
358 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 In order to remuneratively employ the applicants, parish, 
 district, borough, and county councils to be invested with 
 powers to — 
 
 {a) Organize and undertake such industries as they may 
 consider desirable. 
 
 {b) Compulsorily acquire land ; purchase, erect, or manu, 
 facture, buildings, stock, or other articles for carrying on such 
 industries. 
 
 {c) Levy rates on the rental values of the district, and 
 borrow money on the security of such rates for any of the 
 above purposes. 
 
 3. State pensions for every person over fifty years of age, 
 and adequate provision for all widows, orphans, sick and dis- 
 abled workers. 
 
 4. Free, secular, moral, primary, secondary and university 
 education, with free maintenance while at school or university. 
 
 5. The raising of the age of child labour, with a view of its 
 ultimate extinction. 
 
 6. Municipalization and public control of the drink traffic. 
 
 7. Municipalization and public control of all hospitals and 
 infirmaries. 
 
 8. Abolition of indirect taxation, and the gradual trans- 
 ference of all public burdens on to unearned incomes, with 
 a view to their ultimate extinction. 
 
 The Independent Labour party is in favour of adult 
 suflfrage, with full political rights and privileges for women, 
 and the immediate extension of the franchise to women on 
 the same terms as granted to men ; also triennial pariiaments 
 and second ballot. 
 
ENGLISH FABIAN PROGRAMME 359 
 
 III-— The Programme of the Fabian Society 
 
 _ The Fabian Society dates from January 4, 1884. It differs from 
 other Socialist bodies in not trying to enlist the mass of its converts in 
 its ranks, and in encouraging its members to join and permeate other 
 organizations. It exists for purposes of co-operation in research, 
 internal discussion, and external propaganda. It does not bind its 
 members to a programme, but only to a basis ; this is, however, here 
 supplemented by one of the lists of questions, which it has formulated 
 to meet every variety of popular election. 
 
 Basis oftfie Fabian Society. 
 
 The Fabian Society consists of Socialists. 
 
 It therefore aims at the reorganization of society by the 
 emancipation of landaad industrial capital from individual and 
 class ownership, and the vesting of them in the communityTbr 
 the general benefit. In this way only can the natural and 
 acquired advantages of the country be equitably shared by the 
 whole people. 
 
 The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private 
 property in land arid of the consequent individual appropria- 
 'fion, in the form of rent, of the price paid for permission to 
 use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils 
 and sites. 
 
 The Society, fiirther, works for the transfer to the com- 
 munity of the administration of such industrial capital as can 
 conveniently be managed socially. For, owing to the monopoly 
 of the means of production in the past, industrial inventions 
 arid the transformation of surplus income into capital have 
 mainly enriched the proprietary class, the worker being now 
 dependent on that class for leave to earn a living. 
 
 If these measures be carried out, without compensation 
 (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as 
 
}6o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will be 
 added to the reward of labour, the idle class now living on the 
 labour of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality 
 of opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action 
 of economic forces with much less interference with personal 
 liberty than the present system entails. 
 
 For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks 
 to the spread of Socialist opinions, and the social and political 
 changes consequent thereon. It seeks to promote these by the 
 general dissemination of knowledge as to the relation between 
 the individual and society in its economic, ethical and political 
 aspects. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR PARLIAMENTARY 
 CANDIDATES 
 (Revised September, 1900.) 
 Will you press at the first opportunity for the following 
 reforms : — 
 
 I. — A Labour Programme. 
 
 1. The extension of the Workmen's Compensation Act to 
 seamen, and to all other classes of wage earners ? 
 
 2. Compulsory arbitration, as in New Zealand, to prevent 
 strikes and lock-outs ? 
 
 3. A statutory minimum wage, as in Victoria, especially for 
 sweated trades ? 
 
 4. The fixing of "an eight-hours' day" as the maximum 
 for all public servants ; and the abolition, wherever possible, 
 of overtime ? 
 
 5. An Eight-Hours' Bill, without an option clause, for 
 miners ; and, for railway servants, a forty-eight hours' week ? 
 
 6. The drastic amendment of the Factory Acts, to secure 
 (a) a safe and healthy work-place for every worker, (b) the 
 prevention of overwork for all women and young persons, 
 (r) the abolition of all wage-labour by children under 14' 
 
ENGLISH FABIAN PROGRAMME 361 
 
 {d) compulsory technical instruction by extension of the half- 
 time arrangements to all workers under 18 ? 
 
 7. The direct employment of labour by all public authorities 
 whenever possible ; and, whenever it is not possible, employ- 
 ment only of fair houses, prohibition of sub-contracting, and 
 payment of trade-union rates of wages ? 
 
 8. The amendment of the Merchant Shipping Acts so as 
 (a) to secure healthy sleeping and living accommodation, {b) to 
 protect the seaman against withholding of his wages or return 
 passage, {c) to insure him against loss by shipwreck ? 
 
 II. — A Democratic Budget. 
 
 9. The further taxation of unearned incomes by means of 
 a graduated and differentiated income-tax ? 
 
 10. The abolition of all duties on tea, cocoa, coffee, currants 
 and other dried fruits ? 
 
 11. An increase of the scale of graduation of the death 
 duties, so as to fall more heavily on large inheritances ? 
 
 12. The appropriation of the unearned increment by the 
 taxation and rating of ground values ? 
 
 13. The nationalization of mining rents and royalties? 
 
 14. Transfer of the railways to the State under the Act 
 of 1844 ? 
 
 III. — Social Reform in Town and Country. 
 
 15. The extension of full powers to parish, town, and 
 county councils for the collective organization of the (a) 
 water, (^) gas and (c) electric lighting supplies, (d) hydraulic 
 power, {e) tramways and light railways, (/) public slaughter- 
 houses, {£) pawnshops, (Ji) sale of milk, (i) bread, (J) coal, 
 and such other public services as may be desired by the 
 inhabitants ? 
 
 16, Reform of the drink traffic by (a) reduction of the 
 number of licences to a proper ratio to the population of each 
 
362 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 locality, {b) transfer to public purposes of the special value of 
 licences, created by the existing monopoly, by means of high 
 licence or a licence rate, (c) grant of power to local authorities 
 to carry on municipal public houses, directly or on the Gothen- 
 burg system ? 
 
 17. Amendment of the Housing of the Working Classes 
 Act by {a) extension of period of loans to one hundred years, 
 treatment of land as an asset, and removal of statutory limitation 
 of borrowing powers for housing, {b) removal of restrictions on 
 rural district councils in adopting Part III. of the Act, (c) 
 grant of power to parish councils to adopt Part III. of the 
 Act, {d) power to all local authorities to buy land compulsorily 
 under the allotments clauses of the Local Government Act, 
 1894, or in any other effective manner? 
 
 18. The grant of power to all local bodies to retain the 
 freehold of any land that may come into their possession, 
 without obligation to sell, or to use for particular purposes ? 
 
 19. The relief of the existing taxpayer by (a) imposing, for 
 local purposes, a municipal death duty on local real estate, 
 collected in the same way as the existing death duties, {b) 
 collecting rates from the owners of empty houses and vacant 
 land, (<r) power to assess land and houses at four per cent, on 
 the capital value, (d) securing special contributions by way 
 of "betterment" from the owners of property benefited by 
 public improvements ? 
 
 20. The further equalization of the rates in London ? 
 
 21. The compulsory provision by every local authority of 
 adequate hospital accommodation for all diseases and accidents? 
 
 IV. — The Children and the Poor. 
 
 22. The prohibition of the industrial or wage-earning 
 employment of children during school terms prior to the age 
 of 14? 
 
 23. The provision of meals, out of public funds, for 
 necessitous children in public elementary schools ? 
 
ENGLISH FABIAN PROGRAMME 363 
 
 24. The training of teachers under public control and free 
 from sectarian influences? 
 
 25. The creation of a complete system of public secondary 
 education genuinely available to the children of the poor ? 
 
 26. State pensions for the support of the aged or chronic- 
 ally infirm ? 
 
 V. — Democratic Political Machinery. 
 
 27. An amendment of the registration laws, with the aim 
 of giving every adult man a vote, and no one more than one 
 vote? 
 
 28. A redistribution of seats in accordance with population ? 
 
 29. The grant of the franchise to women on the same 
 terms as to men ? 
 
 30. The admission of women to seats in the House of 
 Commons and on borough and county councils ? 
 
 31. The second ballot at Parliamentary and other elections? 
 
 32. The payment of all members of Parliament and of 
 Parliamentary election expenses, out of public funds ? 
 
 33. Triennial Parliaments? 
 
 34. All Parliamentary elections to be held on the same 
 day? 
 
XXVII 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE LABOUR PARTY 
 
 As Revised under the Authority of the 
 London Conference, 1906 
 
 The Labour Party arose (under the name of " Labour Repre- 
 sentation Committee ") out of a conference held in 1900, and held its 
 first annual conference in February, 1901. In succeeding years it 
 won several by-elections, and at tiie general election of 1906 it 
 captured 29 Parliamentary seats, to which 2 were added on the 
 morrow of the election. In that year it adopted its present name. It 
 must be carefully distinguished from the Independent Labour Party 
 (see p. 357), a purely Socialist organization which is affiliated to it. 
 
 ORGANIZATION. 
 
 I. — Affiliation, 
 
 1. The Labour Party is a Federation consisting of Trade- 
 Unions, Trades-Councils, Socialist Societies, and Local Labour 
 Associations. 
 
 2. A Local Labour Association in any constituency is 
 eligible for affiliation, provided it accepts the constitution and 
 policy of the party, and that there is no affiliated Trades 
 Council covering the constituency, or that, if there be such 
 council, it has been consulted in the first instance. 
 
 3. Co-operative Societies are also eligible. 
 
 II. — Object. 
 
 1. To organize and maintain a Parliamentary Labour 
 Party, with its own whips and policy. 
 
 2. To secure the election of candidates for whose 
 
 364 
 
CONSTITUTION OF THE LABOUR PARTY 365 
 
 candidatures an affiliated society has made itself financially 
 responsible, and who have been selected by a regularly 
 convened conference in the constituency. 
 
 III. — Candidates and Members. 
 
 1. Candidates and members must accept this constitution ; 
 agree to abide by the decisions of the Pariiamentary party in 
 carrying out the aims of this constitution ; appear before their 
 constituencies under the title of Labour candidates only ; abstain 
 strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the 
 interests of any party not eligible for affiliation ; and they 
 must not oppose any candidate recognized by the Executive 
 Committee of the party. 
 
 2. Candidates must undertake to join the Parliamentary 
 Labour party, if elected. 
 
 IV. — The Executive. 
 
 The executive shall consist of thirteen members, nine 
 representing the Trade-Unions, one the Trades-Councils and 
 Local Labour Associations, and three the Sociahst Societies, 
 and shall be elected by ballot at the annual conference by 
 their respective sections. 
 
 V. — Duties of the Executive. 
 
 The Executive Committee shall — 
 
 1. Appoint a chairman, vice-chairman, and treasurer, and 
 shall transact the general business of the party ; 
 
 2. Issue a list of its candidates from time to time, and 
 recommend them for the support of the electors ; 
 
 3. Report to the affiliated organization concerned any 
 Labour member, candidate, or chief official who opposes a 
 candidate of the party, or who acts contrary to the spirit of 
 this constitution ; 
 
 4. And its members shall strictly abstain from identifying 
 themselves with or promoting the interests of any party not 
 eligible for affiliation. 
 
366 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 VI. — ^The Secretary. 
 
 The secretary shall be elected by the annual conference, 
 and shall be under the direction of the Executive Committee. 
 
 VII. — ^Affiliation Fees and Delegates. 
 
 1. Trade-Unions and Socialist Societies shall pay i^s. per 
 annum for every i,ooo members or fraction thereof, and may 
 send to the annual conference one delegate for each thousand 
 members. 
 
 2. Trades-Councils and Local Labour Associations shall 
 P^y £^ lo^' per annum, irrespective of membership, and shall 
 be entitled to send one delegate to the annual conference, but 
 tii^_may send one addjtional delegate f or every additional 
 los. paid as affiliati6irfee._ 
 
 ~ 3". in addition to these payments a delegate's fee to the 
 annual conference may be charged. 
 
 VIII. — ^Annual Conference. 
 
 The Executive Committee shall convene a conference of 
 its afifiliated societies in the month of January each year. 
 
 Notice of resolutions for the conference and all amend- 
 ments to the constitution shall be sent to the secretary by 
 November 20th, and shall be forthwith forwarded to all affiliated 
 organizations. 
 
 Notice of amendments and nominations for secretary and 
 executive shall be sent to the secretary by December isth, 
 and shall be printed on the agenda. 
 
 IX. — Voting at Annual Conference. 
 
 There shall be issued to affiliated societies represented at 
 the annual conference voting cards as follows : — 
 
 I. Trade-Unions and Socialist Societies shall receive one 
 voting card for each thousand members, or fraction thereof 
 paid for. 
 
CONSTITUTION OF THE LABOUR PARTY 367 
 
 a. Trades-Councils and Local Labour Associations shall 
 receive one card for each delegate they are enjidedjo send. 
 Any delegate may claim to have a vote taken by card. 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY FUND. 
 
 I. — Object. 
 
 To assist in paying the election expenses of Labour 
 candidates and in maintaining members of the Parliamentary 
 Labour party. 
 
 II. — Amount of Contribution. 
 
 Affiliated societies, except Trades-Councils and Local 
 Labour Associations, shall pay a contribution to this fund at 
 the rate of id. per member per annum, not later than the last 
 day of each financial year. 
 
 III. — Trustees. 
 
 The Executive Committee of the party shall, from its 
 number, select three to act as trustees, any two of whom, 
 with the secretary, shall sign cheques. 
 
 IV. — Expenditure. 
 
 I, Maintenance. — All members elected under the auspices 
 of the Labour party shall be paid from the fund an equal 
 sum not to exceed ;^2oo per annum, provided that this pay- 
 ment shall only be made to members whose candidatures 
 have been promoted by Societies which have contributed to 
 this fund : provided further that no payment from this fund 
 shall be made to a member or candidate of any society which 
 has not contributed to this fund for one year, and that any 
 society over three months in arrears shall forfeit all claim to 
 the fund on behalf of its members or candidates, for twelve 
 months from the date of payment. 
 
368 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 2. Returning Officer^ Expenses. — ^Twenty-five per cent, of 
 the returning ofiScers' net expenses shall be paid to the candi- 
 dates, subject to the provisions of the preceding clause, so long 
 as the total sum so expended does not exceed twenty-five per 
 cent, of the fund. 
 
 3. Administration. — Five per cent, of the annual income 
 of the fund shall be transferred to the general funds of the 
 party to pay for working expenses of the fund. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 ELECTION ADDRESSES OF 1906 
 
 I. — Of the German Social Democrats for the 
 Reichstag Elections, 1907. 
 
 Published in the Vorwarts, December 16, 1906, and signed by 78 
 Social Democratic members of the dissolved Reichstag. ObserTe 
 that 'while the fall Socialist programme is only briefly aUnded to at 
 the dose, the general straggle of the party against dass-goveimnent, 
 militarism. Imperialism overseas, Protectionism, and irresponsible 
 bmeaacracy is presented vividly and with argmnent. This is a 
 regnlar characteristic of the German party's mamfestoes, but too 
 mnch stress should not be laid on it, for the assertion of SodaUst 
 formnls by tiie paitj may be conadered a matter of common know- 
 ledge, of which few G«inan electors need now to be reminded. 
 
 Electors, 
 
 As yoa aie aware, the Reichstag was dissolved on 
 December 13. Fresh elections are in prospect, and are to 
 take place on Jannaiy 25, 1907. 
 
 Why was the Reichstag dissolved? Because there was 
 not a majority willing to vote the additional expenditure in- 
 corred in the budget-year 1906 over the disastrous revolt in 
 Soutb-West Africa, at the figure demanded by the federated 
 Governments, — the figure of nearly i| millions sterling in 
 addition to that of nearly 4 millions already voted this year for 
 suppressing the revolt 'While part of the Reichstag (the 
 Conservatives, die anti-Semites, the National Liberals, the 
 Radicals, and the People's party) was ready to vote for the 
 
 369 2 B 
 
370 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 Government's demands,' the Centre * preferred a resolution 
 granting only i million sterling, and demanding also the speedy 
 ydthdrawal of the greater part of the troops, reducing their 
 numbers by March 31, 1907, from the 8,000, men contemplated, 
 down to 2,500, men. As neither the resolution of the Radicals 
 nor the proposals of the Government secured a majority, the 
 dissolution resulted. 
 
 You have now to choose new deputies at the polls, in 
 accordance with your opinions, not merely upon the position 
 German i° South- West Africa, but upon our entire policy at 
 Militarist home and abroad. The situation is serious, very 
 ° '^^' serious. After a thirty-five years' existence the 
 
 German Empire finds itself in almost complete isolation. For 
 the last fifteen years there has been no lack of speeches and 
 trips made in many potentates' countries, no lack of presents 
 made to the most diverse nations. But the result of all these 
 unsought assurances of love and affection is, that to-day 
 German policy is regarded with distrust by almost every 
 foreigner, and Germany instead of friends has scarcely any but 
 covert or overt enemies. Consequently the world-situation is 
 such, that despite all the peace-loving assurances, which ruling 
 sovereigns give on occasion after occasion, armaments by land 
 and sea are continually reinforced, the debts of the nations 
 and their loads of taxes are continually moimting up, and a 
 feeling of anxiety, as at the advent of an immense catastrophe, 
 continually strengthens its hold on the civilized peoples, and 
 forbids their peacefully enjoying the fruits of their labour. 
 
 We Social Democrats resisted from the beginning the policy 
 which was bound to lead to such results. We demanded that 
 — instead of these incessant armaments, which only excite the 
 mutual distrust of the different States, and stimulate them to 
 more and more rivalry in these armaments, and cannot but end 
 with a world-wide catastrophe, — those in power should invite 
 the civilized nations to a common conference, to set a limit to 
 this perilous state of things. We have incessantly demanded, 
 ' The Roman Catholic clerical party of Germany. 
 
ELECTION ADDRESS FOR GERMAN REICHSTAG 371 
 
 and we once more demand, that the civilized nations should be 
 rivals, not in the building up of great armies and fleets and the 
 discovery and estabUshment of the most perfect man-slaying 
 machines^ but in works of peace and civilization. The earth is 
 large and rich enough to make happiness and well-being 
 possible for all, and establish them on a footing of peaceful 
 emulation in the works of civihzation and culture. 
 
 Instead of this we see the ruling classes, and their solution 
 "If you want peace, you must be armed for war," with which 
 they carry on their policy of embittering nations in order to 
 maintain their own class-rule in domestic affairs. The military 
 and naval armaments serve to enrich them. Besides, they 
 cherish the thought on the sly, that nations kept in constant 
 anxiety about a grasping and warlike foreign neighbour, do not 
 apply themselves to improve their social conditions, as they 
 otherwise could and would. This policy of international ruin, 
 m which Germany to-day sets the pace, we have hitherto most 
 decidedly opposed, and we shall continue to oppose it. 
 
 The dissolution of the Reichstag has, in the first instance, 
 preserved the nation from coming to know the fresh sacrifices 
 which await it. It is our duty to acquaint it with The eost of 
 them, that at the polls it may decide about them, muitarism. 
 The Budget for 1907, which in consequence of the dissolution 
 could not be introduced, requires a very considerable increase 
 of the financial burdens corresponding to the policy described 
 above. The Army estimates, including extraordinary and 
 capital expenditure, amount to about 40 millions sterling, or 
 over 2\ milUons in excess of last year's. It is an open 
 secret, that the War Office asked the Treasury for even more, 
 because it thought, that in view of the deplorable financial 
 position of the Empire it had been too modest in recent years. 
 The Admiralty is demanding altogether about xi,\ millions, — 
 x\ millions more than for 1906. The pubUc Pensions List 
 requires j^S, 175,000, which, excepting some ^^130,000 for 
 civil servants, is spent exclusively on the pensioners of the 
 army and navy. The Imperial Debt requires for interest in 
 
372 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the year 1907 ;^6,825,ooo,— nearly half a million more than in 
 1906. Over three-quarters of this interest is paid upon debt 
 incurred for military and naval objects. Since 1888, the year 
 when the present Kaiser ascended the throne, the Imperial 
 Debt has risen from 36 millions to 200 millions, and neverthe- 
 less the Budget for 1907 requires a loan of ;^i3,2oo,ooo, so 
 that we shall soon reach 250 millions of debt. This burden of 
 debt grows in spite of the great increase effected by the 1902 
 Customs Tariff in the duties upon the barest necessaries, and 
 in spite of the new excise duties voted in the current year. 
 The latter include the increased beer-duty, the stamps on 
 freightage and deeds, the duty on cigarettes, the duty on 
 railway-tickets (to which will be added next spring the abolition 
 of return tickets and of free baggage), the motor-car tax, the 
 board of inspection's rates and the death duties, the increase 
 of district postage for cards and printed matter. In spite of 
 all, the Empire remains, as it was, in the greatest embarrass- 
 ment for money. Moreover, the capitation assessments, — that 
 is, the contributions which the separate States have to pay 
 proportionately per head of population to the Imperial Ex- 
 chequer to supplement the Empire's own receipts from taxes 
 and loans, — have been fixed far higher than the so-called 
 financial reform contemplated. For this wretched state of 
 Imperial finance all the bourgeois parties in the Reichstag 
 must bear the blame, for they all assented to the Imperial 
 Budget, 
 
 There cannot be the least doubt, that the new Reichstag 
 must concern itself to find new sources of revenue. We are 
 Reform of firmly convinced that this b,ad fig^apicial^ manage- 
 taxation. ment can only be rectified, if ,thpse_ classes yhich 
 must be regarded as the mainstays of the prevailing jj^stem, 
 are in future made to contribute according to tEeir property 
 and income towards bearing the burdens of the Empire. 
 Hitherto the comfortable method pursued has been to devolve 
 the burdens of the Empire principally upon indirect taxation 
 by way of excise and customs on the bare necessaries of life of 
 
ELECTION ADDRESS FOR GERMAN REICHSTAG 373 
 
 the masses. The masses have hitherto borne the chief part of 
 these burde nsT Our TepresenfafiVes in the Reichstag will 
 reiterate our old demand — for the burdens to be imposed on 
 those who most easily can bear them, and whose professed 
 patriotism mduces them constantly to vote fresh additional 
 estimates for armaments and unproductive objects, while 
 keeping a close fist on their own spoils. We demand the 
 introduction of an Imperial progressive income-tax on all 
 incomes over ;^2 5o, and a progressive property-tax on all who 
 possess over ^^2,500 property. Further we demand the 
 raising of the Imperial death duties, which instead of the 
 ;^i,8oo,ooo in the Budget for 1907, can easily yield more 
 than six times that amount. If those who hitherto have been 
 the mainstays of the Empire's policy are compelled to make 
 sacrifices corresponding to their tall patriotic talk, we are 
 convinced that they will harp on a new string. 
 
 Electors, it is for you, by your votes on January 25, 1907, 
 to see that those hitherto responsible for German policy 
 disappear from the Reichstag. 
 
 As we have hitherto opposed the foreign policy of the 
 Empire, so we have opposed its Imperialist policy beyond the 
 seas.' The German colonies (with one quite overseas 
 isolated exception) neitlier~ repay the money imperial- 
 sacrificed upon them, nor afford a' subsistence fdr ^"'' 
 any number" of German emigrants worth mentioning. The 
 sums, which the Empire sacrifices annually for the colonies, 
 are in no sort of accord with the profits to be drawn from 
 them. The trade with the colonies, after they had belonged 
 to us for twenty years, reached in 1905 the inconsiderable 
 figure of ;^3, 2 00,000 for imports and exports combined. Of 
 this ;£'2,32 5,000 was for exports to the colonies, which chiefly 
 went in the form of supplies for the German officials and 
 garrisons. For this trifling trade we pay in Imperial subsidies 
 alone to the colonies, including Kiao-chow, but without 
 reckoning the expenditure on native risings, some i| millions 
 ' KolonialpoUHk, 
 
374 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 annually. The world-commerce of Germany in 1905 reached 
 the colossal sum of ;^663,9oo,ooo. Therefore the trade with 
 the colonies amounts to less than one-half per cent, of it. 
 
 To the sums regularly thus sacrificed on the colonies must 
 be added the special sacrifices occasioned in the last ten years 
 by native risings, and particularly by the rising in South-West 
 Africa, which has already lasted nearly three years. Electors, 
 no honourable man can deny, that the cause of these risings 
 is the treatment, which the natives have experienced from 
 most of the colonists and from the policy of very many of the 
 officials administering the colonies. In particular that can be 
 proved with chapter and verse as regards the rising in South- 
 West Africa. Robbed of their property, often ill-treated, 
 almost without rights, given over to be despised and exploited, 
 the natives have eventually resorted to their very last shift, 
 and attacked their oppressors. Already the sums expended 
 on the revolt in South-West Africa, including that by which 
 the 1905 estimates were exceeded, and including the supple- 
 mentary estimates eventually laid before the Reichstag, amount 
 to twenty millions. Nevertheless, the Budget for 1907 
 requires over ;^3,3oo,ooo to suppress the revolt; and even 
 after its complete suppression lai^e financial sacrifices are 
 demanded for unnumbered years. We are threatened in so 
 many words with the establishment of a colonial army. 
 
 We regard a campaign so foolish and, on General Von 
 Trotha's own admission, so cruel, as a serious blow to the 
 national prosperity and honour. We distinguish between an 
 Imperialism, which comes to foreign and less civilized peoples 
 in order honourably to educate them, to teach them to take 
 advantage of and enjoy, for themselves and for all mankind, 
 the resources of their soil, and to introduce to them all the 
 achievements of civilization in a manner corresponding to 
 their lives ; and on the other hand an Imperialism, which aims 
 at the oppression, the spoliation, or even the extirpation of 
 the natives,— natives in whom for all their far lower civilization 
 we still see human beings, who must be treated as such. The 
 
ELECTION ADDRESS FOR GERMAN REICHSTAG 375 
 
 colonial scandals and risings have been showing us for the 
 past fifteen years, that our pretended work of Christian 
 civilization is often in harshest contradiction to everything that 
 is Christian or humane. Lastly, we see in the German 
 colonies not a gtrecgtbening but a weakening of Germany, 
 {•rince Billow himself said in the Reichstag on November 14th 
 of this year : " Our situation would to-day be securer and 
 easier than it was in the 'eighties if we had not in the interval 
 started our overseas policy. . . . What to-day renders our 
 situation complex and difficult, are our relations and interests 
 overseas. If we were not engaged in this direction, if we 
 were not vulnerable in this respect, we should not have 
 much to fear on the continent. Then, too, it would be 
 easier than it is to-day to avoid clashing and friction with 
 England." 
 
 The questions which we have discussed so far, are however 
 not the only ones, which occupy the future Reichstag. The 
 Governmental policy of taxing and excluding ppoteetion 
 foreign imports, supported hitherto by an Agrarian and dear 
 majority in the Reichstag, has induced an unpre- °° ' 
 cedented rise in the cost of necessaries, especially of meat. 
 This policy throws over fijty millions-a year -into the laps of 
 our Agrarians at the expense of the non-agrarian population. 
 This policy means not only continual dear food, but 
 increasingly dearer food, because the population of Ger- 
 many grows by about a million annually, and the pro- 
 duction of food within the Empire cannot keep pace with 
 it. While thus the Agrarian chiefs reap gigantic profits, 
 and are in the seventh heaven of delight, want and misery 
 come into millions of German families, the pieces of meat on 
 the tables of our workmen, our lower middle-class, and our 
 lower official class grow smaller and smaller, and hundreds of 
 thousands cease to eat meat at all. The result is chronic 
 underfeeding of millions of human beings, with all that it 
 implies, — diminution of physical strength and capacity for 
 effort, multiplication of illnesses, and shortening of lives. At 
 
376 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 the same time the budgets of the State and the local authorities 
 are rapidly swollen by increased expenditure on poor relief, on 
 hospitals, infirmaries, and prisons of all kinds, on maintaining 
 soldiers and sailors, etc. And that in turn means a further 
 rise in the duties. Not only meat, but also bread, butter, eggs, 
 and above all milk, — the principal food for our children, — have 
 risen greatly in price aheady, and the leaders of Agrarian 
 organizations are already considering how they can further 
 take advantage of the situation, in order to make life still 
 harder for the poor and the very poor in town and country. 
 If another great crisis comes,_ the misery of the masses, that 
 proceeds from the maintenance of our" Agrarian and Pro- 
 tectionist poUcy, will be beyond all computation. If you do 
 not wish the hunger-whip of the Agrarian chiefs swung yet 
 further over your heads and the heads of your families, elect 
 representatives who will make an end of this starvation policy, 
 — elect Social Democrats. Away with the food-taxers. 
 
 Social Reform in^ttie sessions of the Reidistag from 1903 
 to 1906 has fared piteously. The one "great tmdertafi^," 
 for which the Government has roused itself, has 
 been the Bill on the legal capacity of trade-unions, unions, 
 and this Bill offers stones instead of bread to our 
 workers. It is inspired by the most reactionary labour-policy 
 imaginable. To see that in the next session of the Reichstag 
 neither this Bill nor any Bill like it becomes law, is one of the 
 first objects which the German working-class has to secure by 
 its votes at this election. A. legally fixed working- social 
 dayj the protection of home-workers J the assurance reforms 
 of the right of combinationj a law of free pub lic *'°*° * 
 meeting and assembly, worthy of a civilized State and 
 recognizing at last the equal right of agricultural labourers 
 and women; the extension of the franchise lo women; the 
 extension, simplification, and amplification of the State 
 Insurance legislation ; these and many others are the demands, 
 for whose realization the Social Democratic representatives 
 in the next Reichstag will have to fight 
 
ELECTION ADDRESS FOR GERMAN REICHSTAG 377 
 
 The liberties of the subject and the political rights of the 
 citizen, freedom of speech and freedom of opinion, are quite 
 insufficiently secured in Germany, Excesses on poutiealand 
 the part of the police and their inadequate punish- Judicial 
 ment are constantly arousing fresh indignation. '*^^<""™^' 
 More and more frequent are judicial sentences, which the 
 people resent as class-judgments, because they see in them 
 the ideas and prejudices of the bureaucracy and the governing 
 classes prevailing over the popular sense of justice. So far as 
 these conditions can be improved by unvarnished criticism 
 and by motions regarding criminal law, criminal trials, and 
 the liability of officials to punishment for illegal acts, the 
 Social Democratic representatives in the Reichstag have 
 thoroughly done their duty ; and the more of them you elect 
 to the Reichstag, the more vigorously will they be able to 
 do it. 
 
 Electors of Germany, we know that everything which we 
 
 can attain to-day is mere patch-work compared to what ought 
 
 to be attained. We know, that a fundamental _ 
 
 ^, , , ■• c The Socialist 
 
 reform reqmres a thorough revolution of our Revolution. 
 
 economic and social conditions, that complete 
 
 human freedom and equality in the State and in society, 
 
 complete participation in the fruits of civilization for even 
 
 the last among us, can only be achieved by the steadfast 
 
 will and clear intelligence of the great majority of the nation. 
 
 But we know, too, that the conditions, which prevail to-day 
 
 and grow daily more acute, are bringing to pass, thanks to the 
 
 unintelligence of the governing classes, the revolution in men's 
 
 heads; that is, are creatbg the intelligence and the will to 
 
 transform society on Socialist principles. The stress of the 
 
 times is teaching men to think. Relying on this revolutionary 
 
 influence of things, we go with a good courage into the 
 
 electoral battle. We ask you, so far as your social, your 
 
 economic, and your political interests, or your ideaUsm, impel 
 
 you to the side of the Social Democrats,— and the great 
 
 majority must be so impelled,— to adhere to us, and on 
 
378 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 January 25, 1907, to vote every man for the Social Democratic 
 candidates. 
 
 Our watchword, and yours, for the election is : Down with 
 our bungling gaolers ; down with everything that opposes the 
 march of mankind towards the full noonday of civilization. 
 Up with Social Democracy. 
 
 Berlin, 
 
 December 14, 1906. 
 
 II. — Of the French United Socialists, 1906. 
 
 This (published in the HumaniU, April 16, 1906) was issued for 
 the whole metropolitan department of the Seine for the general 
 elections to the French Chamber in May, at which the United 
 Socialists secured 54 seats. The candidates, whose names follow it, 
 include such various types as Paul Brousse, G, Rouanet, E, Vaillant, 
 P. Lafargue, and Marcel Sembat. 
 
 Citizens, 
 
 For the first time all the Socialists in France are going 
 into the political fray closely united, arrayed against the 
 many-labelled bourgeoisie and asserting all the claims of the 
 proletarian class. The international congress at Amsterdam 
 decided that, as there was only one proletariate, so there should 
 be only one Socialist party ; and our recent national congresses 
 have added, that whoever was not with us should be fought as 
 a foe. Therefore in every constituency of the Seine, as every- 
 where in the provinces^ there is only one candidate, in voting 
 for whom you are invited to express your desire to set men 
 wholly free through the realization of the Socialist ideal. 
 
 Keener and harsher than ever you see the struggle on foot 
 in the society of to-day between the idle class of propertied 
 capitaUsts and the toihng class of propertyless wage-earners. 
 On the one side misery, despair, and disease thin the ranks of 
 the workers, who create all the wealth; on the other, the 
 
FRENCH ELECTION ADDRESS, 1906 379 
 
 profits and the claims of capital are growing under our eyes. 
 The more the workers produce, the more miserable they make 
 tKeir position. Anarchy reigns" supreme in the economic 
 system of to-day, and leads fatally to crises of cruel unemploy- 
 ment. Thus the wage-earners are exposed to every uncer- 
 tainty in life, and it is they who suffer from the system of free 
 competition so dear to bourgeois economists. Nor does 
 freedom exist for the proletarian enslaved in factories, work- 
 shops, or great shops; for property, — the fruit of toil, the 
 guarantee of independence, — is the privilege of a class which 
 uses it as an mstrument of tyranny. The laws of to-day, 
 accumulated in the bourgeois codes, aim only at securing for 
 those who detain the nation's wealth the supremacy over those 
 who produce it, and the political and economic power which 
 settles how these laws shall be applied. 
 
 This state of things cannot last much longer. You have 
 only to make up your minds. Already you are the many, and 
 every day the agglomerations of capital increase the multitude 
 of those left without property. Moreover, you have on your 
 side science ; you have on your side the observation of facts 
 in history, and the progress of capitalistic production, which is 
 collectivizing labour. 
 
 The Socialist party, to whicb you ^ill come, proclaims that 
 all have' the ji^t to Uye^ andj,Jl who are able to be producers 
 have the duty to work. With us you will wish to give every 
 man his dignity and freedom, in enabling him to own his 
 means of work; and thus you will create the economic and 
 social equality, without which the pretended equality before 
 the law and political equality are shams. With us you will say 
 that you want peace, in which to seek and win your com- 
 plete emancipation; you will say that you have sacrificed 
 yourselves enough, and that the day is over when " the rich 
 get the poor to fight their wars for them." You will protest ' 
 against a militarism which squanders so much money and 
 so many lives. In a word you will pin your faith to 
 the principles of Socialism : — the workers to agree and act 
 
38o MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 /internationally; the proletariat to organize, politically and 
 
 j economically, as a class party to capture the Government and 
 
 / to socialize the means of production and exchange, that is to 
 
 transform capitalistic society into a coUectivist or communist 
 
 society. 
 
 With us you will stand to realize the society of harmonious 
 production, fair distribution, and brotherly solidarity ; and you 
 will say so if you vote for the candidates which the Federation 
 of the Seine puts forward. 
 
 Ill, — Of J. R. Clynes, M.P., and G. D. Kelley, 
 M.P., 1906. 
 
 This address is interesting^ for a special reason. In Manchester 
 the Labour Representation Conunittee ran two candidates: Mr. 
 Clynes, a Socialist nominated by the Independent Labour Party, and 
 Mr. Kelley, a decidedly old-fashioned trade-unionist, nominated by 
 the Lithographic Printers. They both subscribed the following 
 address, which may be taken therefore as embodying the points 
 of agreement between the newer and the older schools. It will be 
 seen how distinctively Socialist the thought throughout is, despite 
 the absence of revolutionary phrases. 
 
 Having accepted an invitation from the representatives of 
 organized Labour to come forward as a candidate in this 
 election, I now appeal for your votes for the principles and 
 policy which I support These principles aim at removing 
 conditions which at present give the greater part of Labour's 
 produce to a few privileged landowners and capitalists. 
 
 The Jotal wealth of the^ country increases yearly, but th e 
 
 mass of the people who make it remain poor. The load of 
 
 „ , , , Labour becomes~heavier,'iiid the" dread of beins 
 Principles. , , • , ^ . , 
 
 unemployed is greater than ever. Increasing trade 
 
 and greater power to produce should mean greater comforts 
 
 and better pay for the industrial classes. Unfortunately, the 
 
 landlords and syndicates have reaped the rewards, and kept 
 
 the wage-earners dependent on them for daily bread. Improved 
 
MR. CLYNES, M.P., AND MR. KELLEY, M.P. 381 
 
 conditions for workers mean better conditions for shopkeepers, 
 
 traders, and other business people, whilst high rents, charged 
 
 by the landlords for the liberty to live, to trade and work 
 
 on the land, hinder the trade and commerce of the country and 
 
 injure the whole community. 
 
 Better conditions can only be attained by great changes in 
 
 ift g-^^1 ^Qd to effect these changes different men must be sent 
 
 toj^^T^m." In ]usfice,T pTace the r^s bftfie pouoy. 
 
 people before the claims of party, and believe the 
 
 interests of a community can best be served by a new force in 
 
 politics, which will act on independent lines and be free to 
 
 oppose or support any Government just as the good of the 
 
 people, and not the interests of a section, may require. 
 
 S supBQI t Free Trade, because trading is better if free from 
 
 the tariffs which Protectionist countries impose. Protection in 
 
 other lands has not given better conditions to the _ ... 
 
 ° Free Trade, 
 
 workers. It would not keep goods out of this 
 
 country, but would make them dearer, increase our cost of 
 
 living, and further hamper the trades of the country, particularly 
 
 the cotton and machine trades of Lancashire. The protection 
 
 the trades of this country require is protection against trusts and 
 
 monopolies, a crushing of landlordism, and the burdens of 
 
 heavy railway rates, mining rents and royalties. 
 
 I support the principle of useful emplaymfint being found 
 for willing workers whom other employers do not engage. 
 All waste labour is lost wealth, and all persons Un- 
 should have not merely a chance of receiving employed, 
 charity when destitute, but the certainty of earning an honest 
 living. 
 
 I support the claim of Trade Unions for legislation which 
 will place them on an equal legal footing with employers. The 
 present law prevents workmen domg what employers Trade Union 
 are free to do, and it permits employers to secure Law. 
 damages from unions who act only in persuit of their members' 
 interests, whilst unions are unable to obtain damages for losses 
 sustained by them. 
 
382 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 I beUeve inlreland feeing_goxenjgi.j££Qrding to Irish 
 
 ideas. Ot£er ideas have been the means of driving Irishmen 
 
 from their own country, and have given neither 
 
 prosperity nor satisfaction to it. We prize the 
 
 right to rule at home, and our colonies are a good example 
 
 of the loyalty and contentment which follow Home Rule. 
 
 I am prepared to support measures Jo end the disgraceful 
 use of^ cheap Chinese labour in South Africa. The heavy 
 Chinese price paid in men and money for that territory 
 labour. should cause us to seek the natural development 
 
 of its agriculture and industries by white labour, instead of 
 permitting a few mineowners to make fortunes rapidly at the 
 cost of enduring harm to the country. 
 
 I beUeve in a system of education maintained by the State 
 
 which will give equal opportuniHes'to all, free from 
 
 sectarian bias, controlled by the directly-elected 
 
 representatives of the people, and making provision to prevent 
 
 children from starving. 
 
 Pensions are now given to the rich. I am in favour of 
 
 Pensions. extending this principle to the poor, and increasing 
 
 the national income by readjustment of taxation, 
 
 so as to obtain for the community aU land and other values 
 
 created by the public themselves. 
 
 J am ^^inst existing taxes on the common necessaries of 
 life, and believe that, without the Toss of any needful safe- 
 Taxes guards. National Expenditure can be reduced. I 
 am in favour of enlarging the powers of Municipal 
 bodies, so that the Housing question and other important 
 domestic subjects can be better dealt with. 
 
 I will support an eight-hours' working<lay in our various 
 trades, believing it to be equally right for the law to restrict 
 working hours as it is for employers to fix prices 
 and conditions. I am in favour of making the 
 land of this country the people's land, and extending and 
 improving the Workmen's Compensation Act. I will support 
 electoral reform which will ensure votes for persons and not 
 
MR. WILL THORNE, M.P. 383 
 
 for property, and also a reform of the Corrupt Practices Act 
 which will prevent men from buying seats in Parliament by 
 means of big donations and grants of money. 
 
 Should you return me to Parliament, I shall do my utmost 
 to justify your confidence and to serve the best interests of 
 the division and that of the community in general. 
 
 IV.— Of Will Thorne, M.P., 1906. 
 
 Mr. Thome, who captured South-West Ham by a majority of 
 5237, is the only member of the Social Democratic Federation to 
 obtain a seat in Parliament. He was elected under the auspices of 
 the Labour Representation Committee, being nominated by the Gas- 
 workers' Union, of which he is general secretary. 
 
 At the unanimous request of the West Ham and District 
 Trades and Labour Council and of the Socialist and Labour 
 organizations of the borough, and that request having been 
 endorsed at a number of public meetings held in all parts of 
 the division, I venture to again appeal for your support and 
 suffrages in the interest of Labour and Social Democracy. I am 
 a resident in your constituency, and I have now for a good 
 many years lived and worked in your midst, and I claim to 
 understand something of your wants and aspirations. For the 
 past 15 years I have been a member of the town council of West 
 Ham, and during that time I have assisted in every public 
 movement which had for its object the uplifting and improve- 
 ment of the great working-class population of this borough. 
 
 My sympathies are with the mass of the people, and I feel 
 keenly the hardships and sufferings which the majority of my 
 fellow-workers have to endure in their^struggle for the means 
 of existence. 
 
 During my lifetime I have worked hard to reduce the hours 
 of labour, to raise wages, to improve conditions, and to place 
 within the reach of all, more of the social comforts and 
 enjoyments to which their labour entitles them. 
 
384 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 As a Social Democrat, I am convinced that that question 
 which Thomas Carlyle once called " the condition of England 
 question" is the most important problem which is before us to-day, 
 and that the final emandpaHon of thejtopkjtdji, never be_aMeved 
 mUil the means cmd imlrMtients of produdion^ tU stributton ^and 
 exchange are taken over and wgtbA collectively j^irjbe^ common 
 good of all. 
 
 As one who has taken an active part in every advanced 
 Social and Labour movement for the past twenty-two years, I 
 am amazed at the depth of industrial and economic misery 
 brought about by the reactionary legislation of the late Govern- 
 ment, especially in the direction of curtailing the rights of the 
 people in the control of Education, in the absolute disregard 
 of public opinion, as expressed in the Chinese Labour Ordin- 
 ance, which again introduces the principle of chattel slavery 
 into British administration, and finally by their obvious attempt 
 to cover all this infamy by juggling -with the Fiscal arrange- 
 ments of the country. Needless for me to say, I am a 
 determined opponent of all attempts to curtail the rights and 
 liberties of the people, in Education, Colonial Administration, 
 and the imposition of any Tanff burdens on the food of the 
 people. 
 
 Whilst declaring myself against all reactionary legislation, I 
 also suggest that a mere poUcy of negation will not carry us 
 very far in the direction of social progress, therefore : — 
 
 I am a strong advocate for a Legal Eight-Hour^ Day ; State 
 Maintenance of all children in our public schools, thereby pre- 
 venting the physical deterioration now so evident in our large 
 towns and cities; extended powers being given to local 
 authorities to deal with the Housing of the working classes in 
 a more efficient manner than is possible to-day. I am also 
 strongly in favour of altering the present system of distraining 
 for rent — rent debts should be collected in the same manner 
 as other debts, in order to take from the landlord the powers 
 he now possesses to sell up the workers' homes ; Nationalisation 
 of the land, canals, railways, tnine rents, and mineral royalties. 
 
MR. WILL THORNE, M.P. 385 
 
 the private ownership of which acts as the real barrier to British 
 industry in tJie markets of the world ; the strict enforcement 
 and extension of the Cheap Trains Act, in order to prevent 
 the overcrowding and general inconvenience to the workers 
 of this and all other districts. As a member of the Trades 
 Union Congress Parliamentary Committee, I am conversant 
 with the defects of the present Workman's Compensation Act, 
 the Factory Acts, and the law affecting trade-unions, and 
 will support every effort to amend such Acts, in order to make 
 them of more benefit to the workers as a whole. 
 
 The unsatisfactory conclusion of the Committee on Old 
 Age Pensions shows how reluctant the politicians of both 
 parties are to do anything for the workers, and I pledge myself 
 — if elected — to support pensions for all those who, through 
 old age, mental or physical infirmity, are unable to maintain 
 themselves. 
 
 The most pressing problem of the present day is un- 
 doubtedly the question of Unemployment, and in common with 
 all Socialist and Labour representatives, I shall endeavour to 
 secure the amendment of the present Unemployed Workmen 
 Act in such manner as will ensure that the Government shall 
 provide all moneys necessary for wages, etc., which at the 
 present time depend entirely upon voluntary contributions, and 
 to remove the obnoxious and degrading clauses contained in 
 the orders of the Local Government Board. 
 
 So far as political questions are concerned, I stand for the 
 most advanced programme : — Universal adult suffrage, shorter 
 parliaments, second ballot, payment of members and election 
 expenses out of the national exchequer, graduated taxation of all 
 incomes over ]£^oo per annum, taxation of land values, extension 
 of the principle of graduated death duties, nationalization of the 
 poor and education rates, free, secular, and compulsory education, 
 and the abolition of all hereditary authority. I have always been 
 an advocate of the legislative independence of Ireland, and should 
 give my hearty support to any proposal for complete Home 
 Rule that may be brought forward. 
 
 2 c 
 
386 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 On the question of temperance reform, I advocate the 
 municipal ownership and control of the liquor traffic. 
 
 I am entirely opposed to compulsory vaccination, and 
 regard the present state of the law as illogical and absurd. 
 
 In foreign poUtics, the policy of the late Government has 
 been one of bluster and bolt where the great Powers have been 
 concerned, and of arrogant aggression towards the weaker 
 nationalities. It is to the interest of our class that British 
 foreign policy should be firmly and definitely in the direction 
 of international peace, and against all aggressive wars and 
 expeditions. 
 
 It is impossible within the hmits of this address to deal at 
 length with all matters of pressing interest at this time, but I 
 hope during the course of the election to have the opportunity 
 of explaining my programme more fully. My past work on 
 behalf of my class is a guarantee of my bona-fides in this 
 election, and I can only assure you that, whatever party may 
 be in power, my support will be given to any measures, no 
 matter by whom brought forward, which make for the benefit 
 of the people, and my strenuous opposition will be offered to 
 anything which is against their interests. 
 
 In this election, you, the working-men of South-West Ham, 
 have your own cause, your own interests in your own hands. 
 You are the arbiters, you have to decide whether you will 
 elect one who, during the whole of his active life, has been a 
 strenuous advocate of your interests, or one of those who, by 
 upholding the present system, help to keep you in poverty and 
 misery. 
 
 I only ask you to remember that a vote given to me is a 
 vote on behalf of the down-trodden and oppressed, a vote on 
 behalf of the famished children in our schools, and of the dis- 
 inherited in our pauper bastilles. It is a word of hope to the 
 struggling masses in all parts of Great Britain, and of encourage- 
 ment to all who suffer under the iron heel of Capitalism; a 
 blow struck for the workers in that war between Capitalism and 
 Labour, which mtist be waged relentlessly until the emancipation 
 
MR. WILL THORNE, M.P. 387 
 
 of the workers is achieved by the abolition of the Capitalist 
 sy stent. 
 
 In the hope that these things will be remembered by you 
 in this election, I leave the matter in your hands, confident in 
 the result if you do your duty to yourselves and your class. 
 
XXIX 
 
 THE FUTURE 
 By Anatole France 
 
 From the novel :" M. Bergeret a Paris.'' The adhesion of Anatole 
 France to Sodalism is remarkable, because he is the lineal successor 
 of Voltaire and Diderot, and represents a linking of the old revolu- 
 tionary criticism to the new. His visions may also be suggestively 
 compared with those in William Morris's News from Nowhere. 
 
 " We shall all be happy, papa." 
 
 "No. Divine pity, which is the beauty of souls, would 
 come to an end when suffering ended. That will never be. 
 Moral evil and physical evil, unceasingly resisted, will un- 
 ceasingly share with happiness and joy the empire of the world, 
 as the nights follow the days. Evil is necessary. Like good, it 
 has its spring deep in nature ; the one could not be dried up 
 without the other. We are only happy because we are unhappy. 
 Suffering is the sister of joy; the breath of these twins passes 
 over our harp- strings and makes them sound in harmony. If 
 happiness alone blew on them, they would give out a monotonous, 
 tedious sound, like silence. But to the inevitable evils, to those 
 evils at once common and august which result from the state of 
 mankind, there shall no more be added the artificial evils, which 
 result from the state of our society. Men will no more be 
 deformed by an unfair labour by which they rather die than live. 
 The slave will come out of the ergastulum, and the factory 
 no longer eat up men's bodies, by millions. 
 
 388 
 
ANATOLE FRANCE 389 
 
 "^For this deliverance I look to machinery itself. Machi- 
 nery, which has crushed so many men, will come gently and 
 generously to succour soft human flesh. Machinery, first 
 cruel and harsh, will grow kindly propitious, friendly. How 
 will it change its spirit? Listen. The spark which sprang 
 from the Leyden jar, the little subtle star which manifested 
 itself last century to the wondering physicist, will work this 
 marvel. The unknown which has let itself be conquered 
 without letting itself be known, the mysterious captive force, 
 the intangible of which our hands take hold, the tame thunder- 
 bolt bottled and discharged upon the innumerable wires which 
 cover the world with their network — electricity, will carry its 
 strength, its succour, wherever it is needed, into the houses 
 and rooms, to the home where father, mother, and children 
 will be separated no more. It is no dream. The stern 
 machinery, which shatters body and soul in the factory, will 
 become domesticated, homely, familiar. But it is nothing — 
 no, it is nothing that pulleys, cogs, connecting-rods, cranks, 
 grooves, and flywheels should be humanized, if men remain 
 iron-hearted. 
 
 " We look for, we call for, a change more wonderful still. 
 What does the employer say to-day ? That he is the thinking 
 spirit, and that without him his army of workers would be like a 
 body deprived of understanding. Well, if he is the mind, let this 
 honour and joy be enough for him. Need a man glut himself 
 with wealth because he is the mind that thinks ? When the 
 great Donatello cast a bronze statue with his companions, he 
 was the soul of the work. The price which he received from 
 prince or citizen he used to put in a basket which was slung 
 up by a pulley to a beam of the workshop. Every companion 
 untied the rope in his turn, and took from the basket according 
 to his needs. Is there not joy enough in producing through 
 one's understanding, and does this advantage dispense the 
 master-worker from sharing the profit with his lowly fellow- 
 workers ? But in my republic there will no longer be profits 
 or wages, and everything will belong to us." 
 
 3 c 3 
 
390 MODERN SOCIALISM 
 
 " Papa, that's collectivism," said Pauline, quietly. 
 
 " The most valuable things," replied M. Bergeret, " are 
 common to all mankind, and were always so. Air and light 
 belong in common to everything that breathes and sees daylight. 
 After selfishness and greed have toiled for centuries, in spite of 
 the violent efforts which individuals have made to seize and keep 
 treasures, the private wealth which even the richest among us 
 enjoy is trifling in comparison with what belongs to all men 
 without distinction. Even in our own society do you not see that 
 the pleasantest or the most splendid properties — roads, rivers, 
 forests that once were the king's, libraries, museums — belong 
 to every one ? No rich man possesses any more than I do this 
 ancient oak of Fontainebleau or that picture of the Louvre. 
 And they are more mine than the rich man's, if I know better 
 how to enjoy them. Collective ownership, which people fear 
 as a distant monster, surrounds us already under a thousand 
 familiar forms. It is alarming, when you announce it ; whereas 
 the advantages which it procures are already in use." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agrarianism, Socialism and, xxv, 
 xli, xlii ; Vandervelde's views, 
 198 et seq. ; German views, 220 
 et seq. 
 
 America, Norlh. See United States 
 
 Anseele, biographical note, 285 ; 
 on Socialism and Co-operation, 
 285 et seq. 
 
 Arbitration, compulsory industrial, 
 xxv, xxvi, 102, 360 ; cp. 60, 61 ; 
 Millerand's "Strike Bill," 157- 
 160. See Industrial tribunals 
 
 Archimedes, 293 
 
 Argyll, late Duke of, 236 
 
 Armaments, Socialist opposition to, 
 173, 370-372. See International- 
 ism 
 
 Asquith, Right Hon. H. H., 93 
 
 Australia, Socialistic legislation and 
 parties, xxv, xxvi ; Victorian 
 wage-boards, I02, 360 ; studied 
 on the Continent, 159 
 
 Austria, position of Socialism, xiii ; 
 xxiii; j^arty's programme, 334 
 et seq. 
 
 Avenir de Plaisance, at Paris, 295 
 
 B 
 Babeuf, 339 
 Bakunin, Michael, xvi 
 Bastable, Professor C. F., 231 
 Bebel, August, biography, i ; on 
 Utopianism, 1-3 ; on Theory of 
 Increasing Misery, 189 ; on the 
 General Strike, 191-197 ; 2I9. 
 
 222 
 
 Belgium, character of Labour Party, 
 xxiv ; its check superficial, xiv ; 
 its programme, 323 et seq. ■ 
 
 general strikes in, xxxiv «. ; 
 agriculture in, 198 et seq. ; union 
 of Socialism with Co-operation 
 in, 285 et seq. 
 
 Bernstein, Eduard, xlvi, 189 
 
 Bismarck, 138 et seq. 
 
 Blanc, Louis, xxxi 
 
 Bomelburg, 192 
 
 Booth, Charles, 313 
 
 Bordeaux Congress, 163-184 
 
 Bowley, Professor A. L. , 116-118 
 
 Briand, Aristide, xiii 
 
 Brousse, Paul, 378 
 
 Burns, John, biographical note, 
 265 ; on municipal Socialism, 
 265 et seq.; his L.C.C. pro- 
 gramme, 282 ; his Parliamentary 
 programme, 283, 307 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Right Hon. 
 Sir H., 314 
 
 Capital, concentration of, xxvii n. 
 effect of private ownership of, 
 xxviii ; two methods of expropri 
 ating, xxviii. See passim, eS' 
 pecially 14 et seq., 90 et seq. 
 
 378-379 
 Capitalist class, Morris on, 76-79 
 
 et seq. ; Kautsky on, 127 et seq. ; 
 
 risks from its emigration, 239, 240; 
 
 money capitalists, 1 28 et seq. 
 Capitalist system, 1^ et seq., 50, 
 
 71-80 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 384 
 Chamberlain, Right Hon. J., 134, 
 
 31S 
 Chambers of Labour, 145. See 
 
 Labour Councils 
 Chelsea Board of Guardians, 246 n. 
 
 39 » 
 
392 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Classes, abolition of. See Pro- 
 letariate, rdle of 
 
 Class- State, Sarraute on, 165-167 ; 
 Jaures on, 168-170 ; cp. 379 
 
 Class-war, economic basis, xxviii, 
 xxix ; first seen by St. Simon, 
 xxxi ; as basis of a party, xxxiii, 
 XXXV ; Liebknecht on, 4-8, 10 ; 
 Kautsky on, HJ et seq.; Jaures 
 on, 167 et seq. See Revolutionary 
 Socialists, Historical Process, 
 Proletariate 
 
 Clemenceau, Georges, xii, xiii, 56 
 
 Clericalism, Socialism and, xxv, 
 xxviii 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 235, 236 
 
 Colins, 214, 215 
 
 Collective bargaining, private, xliv- 
 xlvi, 99, 100 
 
 Collectivism, contrasted vrith Com- 
 munism, 83-88; its growth to- 
 day, 50, 249 et seq.; cp. 399 
 
 Combination, right of, 145 ; general 
 strike, might be employed to 
 secure, 190, 192 
 
 Commune, the Parisian, 35 
 
 Communism contrasted with Col- 
 lectivism, 83-88 
 
 "Communist Manifesto," origin 
 of, 35 ; programme suggested in, 
 36, 186, 187 
 
 Companies, joint-stock, 27, 130-132 
 
 Conseils du Travail. See Labour 
 Councils 
 
 Constitutionalism, xxxiii, xxxiv, 49, 
 54. 63 
 
 Contracts, wage-clauses in public, 
 xlvi, 148, 152, 246 et seq.; cp. 
 Fair Wages Movement 
 
 Crises, commercial, Marx's theory 
 of, 25 
 
 D 
 
 David, Dr. Eduard, 186, 225, 228 n. 
 Democracy, its effect on Socialism, 
 XX, xxi, 165, 168 et seq.; cp. 61-62 
 Denmark, xiv, xxii, xlii 
 Direct employment, 241 et seq. 
 Donatello, 389 
 
 Drink traffic — 
 Local option, 284 
 Public ownership and control, 
 
 328. 355. 358, 362, 386 
 Gothenburg system, 362 
 High licence, 362 
 
 Education, xxix, 58 et seq. See 
 Minimum, policy of national. In 
 programmes — German, 320 ; Bel- 
 gian, 326, 331 ; Austrian, 337 ; 
 French, 347 ; English— S.D.F., 
 3S4, 355 ; I-L.P., 358 ; Fabian, 
 362-363 ; in Mr. Clynes's ad- 
 dress, 382 
 
 Emerson, 248 
 
 Employment agencies, 148, 154 
 
 Engels, F., biographical note, 14 ; 
 doctrine, 14-37 > '87 
 
 England, her evolution following 
 the German, 132, 133 ; compared 
 with the United States, 90 et seq. 
 
 Entrepreneur, elimination of private, 
 261-264 
 
 Erfurt Programme, 317-322 
 
 Expansion of markets, why de- 
 manded, 24 
 
 Exploitation of proletariate, 15 
 et seq., 1\ et seq. ; still increasing, 
 115-119 
 
 Fabian Society, note on, 359 ; basis, 
 359 ; questions for Parliamentary 
 candidates, 360 ; on direct employ- 
 ment, 242 et seq.; xi, 90 
 
 Factory regulation, why need for, 
 95-98 ; conduces to efficiency, 
 249 ; less important to regulate a 
 given industry for all nations 
 than to regulate all industries for 
 a given nation, 234-235 ; 59, 146, 
 1 55. See all programmes 
 
 Fair Wages movement, 243-249. 
 See Wage-clauses in public con- 
 tracts ; Wages, regulation of 
 
 Farrer, late Lord, 231 
 
 Fatalism, alleged Marxian, 10 
 
 Ferri, Enrico, xvi, xliii «. 
 
 Financiers. See Money capitalists 
 
INDEX 
 
 393 
 
 France, position of Socialism, xii, 
 xxi, xxxvi ft., 48 ; " French 
 Socialist Party," its Tours pro- 
 gramme, ■^l^etseq. ; its Bordeaux 
 debate, 163 ct seq. ; the " United 
 Socialists," 337, their election 
 address, 378 et seq. ; social reform 
 in France, 150 et seq. 
 
 France, Anatole, 388-391 
 
 Franchise, general strike might be 
 employed to defend the, 190 et 
 seq. ; universal adult, see all pro- 
 grammes ; immediate extension 
 to women on same terms as to 
 men, 358, 363 
 
 Free Trade, Socialism and, xxxix- 
 xli, 229 etseq., 375, 381, 384 
 
 G 
 
 General strike, the recent preaching 
 of the, xv-xvii ; previous recent 
 history, xliv n. ; Jena resolution 
 on, 189 et seq. ; Bebel on, 191 
 et seq. ; cp. in French programme, 
 
 343-344 
 
 George, Henry, 209, 214 
 
 Germany, position of Socialism, 
 xxii, xxiii ; the Anti-Socialist 
 Law, 138.; history since, 140 et 
 seq. ; compared with England, 
 132-133 ; agrarian question, 
 220-228 ; party's programme, 
 317 ; election address, 369 ; atti- 
 tude on general strike, 189 et 
 seq. ; on militarism, 370 et seq. ; 
 on Protective tariffs, 372, 375 ; 
 on Imperialism overseas, 373- 
 
 375 
 German Emperor, the present, 142, 
 
 143 
 Ghent, Co-operation at, 298. See 
 
 "Vooruit," Anseele 
 Gladstone, 133, 134 
 Great Eastern Railway Company, 
 
 257 
 "Great Industry." See Industrial 
 
 revolution 
 Guesde, Jules, 48, 170. 17°. is'. 
 
 339 
 
 H 
 
 Hardware trade, integration of 
 industries in, 260, 261 
 
 Health, public, 90, 172. See 
 Minimum, policy of national 
 
 Hegel, influence of, xxxii 
 
 Heine, 120 
 
 Herve, G., speech of, 163 
 
 Higgling of the market, 94 
 
 Historical process, Marxian view 
 of the, 4-1 1, 15 et seq. ; cp. 50, 
 68 et seq. ; affinned in pro- 
 grammes, 317, 324, 334, 339, 352 
 
 History, " materialist conception " 
 of, 14 
 
 Holland, xxxiv n. 
 
 Hours of labour, no. III, 145, 148, 
 151. See the programmes 
 
 Housing, III, 141, 172, 282, 283, 
 362, 382, 384 
 
 Hyndman, H. M., 307 
 
 Hypothesis, Collectivism as a, 52, 
 S3. 57. 58 
 
 Imperialism (overseas), xxxviii, 308, 
 
 373-375 
 Independent Labour Party, genesis 
 and history, 305-308 ; programme, 
 357-358 
 Industrial revolution, xxix, xxx, 15 
 
 et seq. 
 Industrial tribunals, 14S, 153, 329 
 Inspection of factories and mines, 
 59, 97, 145 et seq. ; workmen 
 inspectors, 147 
 Insurance, workmen's, 138, 152 
 Integration of industries, 255 etseq.; 
 
 cp. 27 
 "Intellectuals," 77, 121-123, 288 
 Internationalism and Socialism, in 
 St. Simon, xxxi ; in Marx, and 
 since, xxxvii, xxxviii, 11, 55 5 '° 
 German programme, 319 ; Bel- 
 gian, 324 ; Austrian, 336 ; French, 
 345 ; S.D.F., 3S3 
 Italy, position of Socialisni, xiv, 
 xxi ; recent party split, xvii 
 
394 
 
 INDEX 
 
 J 
 
 Jaures, Jean, his point of view, 167- 
 180 ; debate with M. Clemenceau, 
 xii ; leadership of the " French 
 Socialist Party " (reformist), 339 ; 
 formation of the " United Social- 
 ists," XV, 339 ; the " poet of 
 Socialism," 53 ; xxxvi, xxxviii, 
 48, 293, 301 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 91, 98 
 
 Joint-stock companies, 27, 130-132 
 
 Junkers, the Prussian, 144, 220 n. 
 
 Kautsky, Karl, 114 et seq., 187 et 
 
 seq., 215, 227, 228 n. 
 Keir Hardie, J., biographical note, 
 
 303; far-seeing views in 1894... 
 
 303 et seq. ; in 1903. ..305 et seq. 
 
 Labour bureaux, 148, 154 
 Labour Councils, 155. See Cham- 
 bers of Labour 
 Labour Electoral Association, 306, 
 
 307 
 
 Labour Party (formerly Labour 
 Representation Committee), con- 
 stitution and objects, 364 ; history 
 till 1903, xliv, xlvi, 310 et seq. ; 
 position in 1907, xi-xii ; election 
 addresses, 380-387 
 
 Labriola, xvi 
 
 Laisser-faire, 99, 136 et seq. 
 
 Land. See Agrarianism. Land 
 nationalization, 214-216 ; see all 
 programmes 
 
 Lassalle, Ferdinand, biographical 
 note, 38 ; his " brazen law," 38 
 et seq. ; view of working-class 
 " misery," 42 et seq., 1S7 ; uni- 
 versal suffrage as instrument, 44- 
 47 ; xix, xxxi, xxxii, xxxix «. 
 
 Liberty and property, 49 
 
 Liebknecht, Wilhelm, on trade 
 unions, xliii ; on political prin- 
 ciples, 4-13 ; 53, 222. See Inter- 
 nationalism 
 
 London County Council, 242 etseq. 
 
 London School Board, 242 
 London and North-Western Rail- 
 way Company, 256, 25* 
 Liibeck Congress, 185-188 
 Luxemburg, Rosa, xvi 
 
 M 
 
 Markets, expansion of, 24 
 Marshall, Professor Alfred, 246 
 Marx, Karl, theory, 14-34 ; cp. 4- 
 13 ; early programme, 35-37 ; 
 xix, xxxii, xxxix «., xli, 115, 124, 
 132, 164, 185, 187, 271 
 Marxists. See Revolutionary So- 
 cialists 
 " Materialist conception " of his- 
 tory, 14 
 Midland Railway Company, 257 
 Mill, J. S., 198, 237, 246, 306 
 Millerand, Alexandre, account of 
 his measures, 150-162 ; views in 
 1896.. .48; in 1903. ..56; his 
 policy in first Ministry discussed, 
 164 et seq. ; entrance into Cle- 
 mencean Ministry, xiii ; xxi, xlvi, 
 
 135. 332 «• 
 Minimum, policy of the national, 
 
 109 et seq., 236 et seq. ; need not 
 
 be international, 237 
 Misery, theory of increasing, 114, 
 
 115, 185-188 
 Money capitalists distinguished from 
 
 industrial, 128 et seq. 
 Morris, William, 65 et seq., 307, 
 
 388 
 Municipalization, xxi «., xlvi, 27, 
 
 51, 249 et seq., 282, 283. See the 
 
 programmes 
 Municipalized industry, in London, 
 
 249 et seq. ; Birmingham, 252, 
 
 253 ; Liverpool, 253 ; Manchester, 
 
 253, 254 ; Battersea, 274-282 
 
 N 
 
 Nationalism. See Internationalism 
 Nationalization of industries, 27 ; 
 o{\3.ad,2i4etseq. .SV^ programmes 
 National minimum. See Minimum 
 New Zealand,xxv,xxvi, 102, 159,360 
 Norway, xiv 
 
INDEX 
 
 395 
 
 O 
 
 Owen, Robert, xxx-xxxii, 236 
 
 Paepe, Cesar de, 323, 332 «. 
 
 Parasitism, industrial, loi, 229 et 
 seq. 
 
 Peasantry, 126, 198 a seq., 220 et 
 seq 318, 334, 341, 344, cp. 330, 
 and see xli-xlii 
 
 Pensions, Bismarck's workmen's in- 
 surance, 139, 140 ; at the " Voor- 
 nit," 292 ; in election addresses, 
 382, 38s ; cp. 60 
 
 Petty-bourgeoisie, 123-125, 288- 
 290 
 
 Petty industr>-. See Industrial re- 
 volution 
 
 Posadowsky, Count, 143 
 
 Potter, B^trice, 90, 262 n. See 
 Webb 
 
 Prhioyance sociale. Ministry of, xiii 
 
 Production, cost of, contrasted witb 
 expenses of, 229 et seq. 
 
 Proletariate, Socialist view of, 
 xxviii, xxix, 72, 73, 317, 318, 
 
 324, 334, 33S. 339-342. 350-352. 
 3S9. 378-380; history, 18-20; 
 Mandan view of its file, 30-34, 
 35-37 ; proletarians as hired men, 
 90-98 ; their interest the real in- 
 terest of the community, 172, 
 182 ; rural, 218, 221, 227 
 
 Property, historical development 
 of its forms, 4 et seq. ; associated 
 with liberty, 49 
 
 Protection, Socialism and, xrxdx- 
 xli, 229 et seq., 375-381, 384 
 
 R 
 
 Radicals, their weakness against 
 
 the Whigs, 304 
 Reeves, Hon. W. P., xxv, xxvi 
 Referendum, 283, 320, 325, 336, 
 
 346. 354 ^ , 
 
 Reformist Socialists versus Revolu- 
 tionaries, xxxiii-xliii, xv, 163 et 
 seq. ; doctrine in France, 5^-64 ; 
 in England, 90 et seq. ; spring 
 from the " intellectuals," 123 
 
 Regulation. See Factory regulation 
 
 Renaudel, 17S 
 
 Reserve-army of industry, 23 
 
 Revolutionary'SociaJists versus Re- 
 formists, xxxiii-xliii, xv, 163 rf seq. 
 
 "Revolutionary trade-unionism," 
 xvi 
 
 Rodbertus, 120 
 
 Rowntree, B. S., 313 
 
 Russian Socialism, xiii, xxiii 
 
 i Sanitation, 90, 97, 99, in, 172 
 j Sarraute, Joseph, 164 et seq. 
 
 Scientific, claim of Socialism to be, 
 xxxii, 13 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 236 
 
 Shipbuilding, inte^ation of indus- 
 tries in, 258, 259, 
 
 Smith, Adam, 91, 94, 98, 240, 
 246 
 
 Social Democratic Federation 
 (English), programme and note, 
 351; 65. 307 
 
 Socialism, theory, xxvii-xxix ; gene- 
 sis,xxix, xxxiii ; its broad synthesis, 
 53, 172 ; organization of workers 
 its essence, l6l ; cp. 293 
 
 Socialist League, 65, 307 
 
 Solidarity of classes, xxxv, 61, 62 
 
 Spain, Anarchism eclipsing Social- 
 ism, xxiv 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 256, 263 «. 
 
 St. Simon, XXX, xxxi 
 
 State, the, its poUce character due 
 largely to its class character, 30- 
 31. 79. 83 ; to be replaced by 
 industrial character, 83, 87, 324. 
 See Class-State 
 
 Strike, the general. See General 
 strike 
 
 "Strike BiU," Millerand's, 157- 
 160 
 
 Stumm, Von, 144, 149 
 
 Suffrage, universal adult, 283, 319, 
 
 j 325. 336. 346, 354. 358. 363 ; 
 
 ! general strike might be employed 
 
 I to defend the, lof} et seq. ; imme- 
 diate extension to women on 
 same terms as to men, 358, 363 
 
 I Sweated trades, loi et seq.; injure 
 
39^ 
 
 INDEX 
 
 the non-sweated trades, 230 et 
 seq. ; cannot be dealt with by 
 Protection, 232 et seq. 
 
 Sweden, xiv, xxiv 
 
 Syndicalisme rhjolutionnaire, xvi 
 
 Taff Vale, and other decisions, 
 xliv, 309, 381 
 
 Tests of a good society, Morris's, 67 
 
 Times newspaper, its criticisms of 
 Municipal Socialism criticized, 
 265 et seq. 
 
 Trade-unions, xii, xliii et seq., 60, 
 99, icx), 153, 161, 294, 309 ; in 
 public interest, 146, 159 ; co- 
 operation of factory inspectors 
 with, 146, ISS 
 
 Trusts, advent of, 90 et seq. ; pro- 
 spects and dangers of, 106 et seq. ; 
 cp. Integration of industries 
 
 U 
 
 United Kingdom, position of So- 
 cialism in, xi, xii, xxvi, xxvii, 
 xlvi, xlvii ; compared with that 
 in France, xxxvi n. ; following 
 Germany, 132, 133 ; compared 
 with America, 90 et seq. 
 
 United States, backwardness and 
 recent growth of Socialism, xxvi, 
 xiv ; general situation, 90 et seq. 
 
 Utopian Socialism, xxxi, xxxii, 1-3 
 
 Vaillant, Edouard, 48, 378 
 
 Vandervelde, Emile, biographical 
 
 note, 198 ; on agriculture, 198- 
 
 219, xlvii, 52 
 Verelendungsiheorie. See Misery, 
 
 Theory of Increasing 
 Viviani, Rene, xiii 
 VoUmar, G. von, note, 13S, on 
 
 social reforms, 135 et seq., xxxvi 
 
 «., 220, 225 
 "Vooruit," of Ghent, 285, 291, 
 
 292, 293 
 
 W 
 
 Wages — 
 
 Regulation of, no, 141, 237, 
 
 241 «., 243 et seq. 
 Wage-clauses in public contracts, 
 xlvi, 148, 152, 247 et seq. See 
 Fair Wages Movement 
 Wage-boards, 102, 360 
 Wages-movement, 116-118 
 
 Waste, social, 25, 70, 76-79 
 
 Webb, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney, note 
 on, 90 ; on industrial problems, 
 90 et seq. ; on Free Trade, 229 et 
 seq. ; xl, xliii »., xlvi, 133, 242 
 >!, See Potter 
 
 Whigs, their hold over Radicals, 
 
 305 
 Wise, B. R., 231 
 Women's Suffrage. Sei Suffrage 
 Works Department of London 
 
 County Council, 250 et seq., 273 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Zola, Emile, 286 
 
 THK END 
 
 rKINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES ANO SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 

 
 
 
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