THE'NEW' LIBRARY'OF' SOCIAL- SCIENCE THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM J. BRUCE GLASIER .r^' CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY From the Library of V. F. CALVERTON Cornell University Library HX246 .G54 1920a The meaning of socialism olin 3 1924 030 334 266 THE NEW LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE Edited by J. Kamsay Macdonald The subjects to be dealt with in this series concern the vital issues of the day— political, social and industrial. The most important questions which confront society in these critical times will be treated boldly and ade- quately by recognized authorities who can write clearly and entertainingly. The series is intended to appeal, primarily, to the gen- eral public, to every intelligent man and woman, but it is hoped that it will also prove of value to the students of sociology, politics and economics. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030334266 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM BY J. BRUCE GLASIER WitJi an Introduction By J. A. HoBSON, M.A. w NEW YORK THOMAS SELTZER 1920 Copyright, 1920, By Thomas Seltzer, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America PREFACE For good or ill, the Socialist movement is a tre- mendous fact in the world, and the probability of the universal coming' of Socialism is either civi- lization's greatest hope, or its greatest peril. Alike for those who desire and for those who dread that event, the subject of what Socialism means as a political movement and as an aspect of social and moral evolution is therefore one of the most important that can engage the attention of thoughtful minds. It has been the author's aim in the following pages, not only to present a viey of the main political and economic objects of Socialist agita- tion and revolution, but to discover the true origin and nature of Socialism, what is its permanent direction, and, so far as we can discern it, what is its final goal. But he confesses freely, and his work must bear whatever detraction the confes- sion places on it, that he has pursued his task with a lover's fervor and enthusiasm — believing, as he does with all his heart, that Socialism is not only right, but good and beautiful, and is the only system of society in which mankind can attain to true freedom and true human grace and dignity. 3 4 PEEFACE Several of the chapters in this volume origi- nally formed part of a series of articles which appeared weekly in the columns of the Laboub Leader. These chapters have, however, all been revised, and several of them almost completely re- written. The substance of the Socialist teaching which the author has by pen and speech been promul- gating in the country during the past forty years is contained in this book. Whence he derived his earlier ideas of Socialism he does not know. There was then no Socialist movement in the country and no Socialist literature ; but he finds, on referring to notes and MSS. of his earlier lec- tures, that his general view of Socialism — ^its principles, its practical policy and the faith in- spiring its idealism and enthusiasm — ^has re- mained unchanged, except on minor points of in- terpretation and application, since he first began his apostleship. While he has since read all the more important works on Socialism by British and foreign writers, and has derived immense instruction from them, he has not found cause to alter his earlier conceptions. This is probably also the case with most Socialists who arrived at their Socialist con- victions not by the word from -without, but by the word within. The influences which have done most to color and enrich his conception of Social- ism have been above all his early association with PREFACE 5 William Morris, his later association for over twenty years with J. Keir Hardie, his colleagues in the Independent Labour Party, and his closest comrade and colleague, his wife. He is indebted to Edward Carpenter, Bellamy, Bernard Shaw, Hyndman, Bax, Wells, Macdonald, Snowden, Kantsky, and other well-known Socialist writers for many fresh points of insight and criticism alike of Socialism and of existing society. The author does not claim for this book that it is an authoritative statement of Socialism, or of the views of any Socialist school or party. There is, and can be, no authoritative statement of Socialism. Certain inferences concerning the future evolution of industry and society have been drawn from history and biology by promi- nent Socialist thinkers, notably by Karl Marx, which have been denominated "Scientific Social- ism." But these inferences, like all other sup- positions concerning the probabilities of human action or events, have no validity other than the conviction they bring to each mind. The Socialist organizations in every country have each drawn up statements of principles and programmes of Socialism. These, while in gen- eral accord on basic principles and in their prac- tical schemes, show many diversities of thought resulting from differences of racial temperament, of economic situation, and of political custom. The author can, however, he thinks, claim that 6 PEEFAOE the general view of Socialism which he puts for- ward in these pages, agrees in the main with the general teaching of British Socialists, though there are points no doubt on which representatives of British Socialist thought, who have earnest followers, may disagree with him, even as they may disagree with one another. Wherever this disagreement appears to affect vital issues, he has endeavored to indicate the personal character of his point of view. The author is greatly indebted to Mr. J. A. Hobson for kindly furnishing an introduction to this volume. He regards it as a high honor that his pages have been so generously commended by one of the most eminent political economists and finest public spirits of our time. He is also grate- ful to his friends, Miss Laura Gibbings and Mr. H. V. Herf ord, for much help with the proofs ; and it is a joy to him to express, even in this formal way, his gratitude to his wife, but for whose en- couragement, assistance, and loving care during long months on a bed of pain, these chapters would never have been written. J. B. G. September, 1919. CONTENTS chapter page Introduction 9 Paet I. — ^After Long Ages I. The Ascent of Man 17 II. The Hope of Socialism: Ideals and Portents 27 III. The Great Inheritance : the Land . 34 IV. Exploitation : the Stores of Wealth 41 V. Landlord and Capitalist .... 46 yi. The Parable of Andrew Carnegie . 51 VII. Is the Capitalist Necessary? . . 56 Part II. — The Epoch of Freedom VIII. The Reward of Labor : I. Sources of Wealth .... 65 IX. The Reward of Labor : II. The Value of Labor ... 72 X. The Reward of Labor : III. Wages : False and True . . 78 XI. The Reward of Genius : I. Genius and Society .... 86 XII. The Reward of Genius : II. Genius and Pots of Gold . . 95 XIII. Freedom of Work 107 XIV. Freedom of Life 116 XV. Freedom of Education .... 121 XVI. Freedom of Old Age 133 XVII. Socialism of Private Property . . 137 7 8 CONTENTS Pakt III. — Socialism in Existing Society CHAPTER PAGE XVIII. Forms of Social Growth .... 151 XIX. The Family, Friendship, and Work 155 XX. Church, College, and School . . 164 XXI. Municipal Socialism 169 XXII. Interlude: The Revival of Village Life 179 XXIII. National Ownership 181 XXIV. "The Plague of Officials" ... 186 XXV. State Socialism 194 XXVI. The State 198 XXVII. Liberty and the State .... 202 Paet IV. — Beyond All Frontibbs XXVIII. Nationhood 211 XXIX. Internationalism . . . ^ . . . 216 XXX. The International 220 XXXI. Socialism and "War 227 XXXII. Conclusion : Axioms and Prophecy . 236 INTEODUCTION By J. A. HoBSON There have been many impulses towards Social- ism and many entrances. The sense of the in- justice and needless suffering imder existing social institutions has doubtless been a common force, impelling people to imagine or accept from others a better order in which these evils shall be remedied. This genuinely Utopian impulse has underlain the reasoning and scheming of many past and living thinkers and workers who scorned the imputation of sentimentalism, or even ideal- ism, and claimed to apply a vigorous rationalism to their analysis of the processes of social evolu- tion, and to the policy of social conduct. But this suborj3ination of the Utopian impulse to the claims either of the so-called scientific Socialism, or of a Fabian tactical opportunism, or of a blind revolu- tionism, has been a grave error. For, though the earlier Utopians often dressed their ideas out in crude or impossible circumstances, or made in- credible demands upon "human nature," they had in them the roots of the matter, the creative spirit working in the framework of society, re- garded not chiefly as an industrial system, or a 9 10 INTRODUCTION method of government, but as a mode of human living. Those who have approached Socialism through the door, not of economics, or politics, but of art and morals, have done most to foster and to spread this vital spirit, both of criticism and of construction. Yet even artist and moralist are terms "which indicate a too confined treatment and method. In choosing words one would say that the most profitable labor for Socialism is in the field of "humanism." If the term sounds a little "pre- cious" or "pedantic" that can't be helped. It can and ought to be rescued from these contemp- tuous implications. For it is wanted to express the need and demand that Society shall be so transformed as to furnish for all its members a fully human life. From such a Socialism there easily and inevitably falls away the charge of materialism, based upon an over-stressing of dis- tinctively economic conditions, the charge of regi- mentalism and loss of liberty based on magnify- ing the State, and the charge of proletarian vio- lence as the instrument of reform. It is the high and peculiar merit of this book of Bruce Grlasier's, that it expresses more fully, more freely, and, I think, more successfully than any other of our time, this humanist interpreta- tion and outlook. Though the writer disclaims the title of an expert economist, he exhibits a well- INTRODUCTION 11 informed and thorough grasp of the stmcture and operations of onr productive system, including in it not only the arrangements for turning out ma- terial -utilities, bnt the professional, official and artistic equipment of society. His informal and illuminating incursions into many fields of activ- ity are never of a merely critical or destructive nature. What he is "after" is the human powers and faculties, which at present are repressed, abused, or unused for genuinely human purposes. By a series of different routes he gets to the same goal of a full human personality. Social- ism, from the standpoint of politics and economics, is envisaged as the set of just a?^ reasonable arrangements which make this goal attainable for aU. But it is the spirit of free personality and comradeship, the harmony of individual and social will, which must inhabit this new domain. Is the spirit of man equal to the achievement? Is he inherently too selfish, too greedy, too lazy, too brutish for the successful effort? Bruce Glasier makes a splendid vindication of the nature of man. His refutation of the allegations, that men of genius, invention and initiative, will not render their high social services except for high private gain, that ordinary work must always be so dull and repellent that ordinary workers wiU only do their necessary share under the spur of economic necessity, and that Socialized in- dustries would be eaten up by a plague of officials 12 INTRODUCTION needed to force workers to do their social duty, is a most effective piece of controversy, shot through Avith sayings of penetrating -ftdt and wis- dom, such as this, that "Palaces are more fatal to genius than prisons." He laughs to scorn the scoffers who begin with their: "Human nature being what it is" — as if human nature from the beginning of history were not always adapting itself to a new environment, which was in increas- ing measure its own creation. But a chief merit of Bruce Glasier's book is that it is full of vision. He is aware that man is not mainly and never will be, a reasoning animal. It is on that account that scientific Socialism has so little driving power, even were the science more intellectually convincing than it is. The imaginative faculty of art, working with knowledge upon the awakening desire for a better life, and presenting with liter- ary power the image of that better life, is of supreme importance. It is the gift of the seer, the prophet. Glasier has much of this virtue, some the product of his own musing, some nobly borrowed from his master, William Morris, and with it he paints for us bright pictures of the better life he thinks attainable. It will not be given to all to share fully his faith. It is a difficult task just now to support one's faith in the redemption of man. Bruce Gflasier indeed offers us no easy or quick panacea of social ills. The service he renders is far more INTRODUCTION 13 profitable. For the great vision is held out to ns, not as the result of an inevitable process, but as a continuation of the great experimental work by which mankind has climbed with pain and diffi- culty from the brutes to be as yet considerably lower than the angels. The book is an ambitious one. For it touches not only principles, but many applications. Though it does not profess to be a philosophic sys- tem, it is inspired by a truly philosophic spirit. The vision is not complete, but it is of many glimpses. And, what is best, the argument is con- ducted in so fine a temper that no hardened capit- alist or fanatical individualist could read it with- out conceiving a better and a juster opinion of Socialism than he had before. The ambition of the writer is therefore justified of his child. PART I AFTER LONG AGES THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM CHAPTER T THE ASCENT OF MAN CoTTLD a savage from the far back ages when man lived wild in woods and eaves be recalled to life, he would require to be kept in a cage like a gorilla. We should find this primeval man less sociable, less human in many respects, than our finer domestic animals. The dog, the horse, and the elephant, so far as their physical limits per- mit, show more sociability than would this strange fellow-creature from primitive times. It would be impossible to make this resurrected ancestor of ours a public-spirited citizen or a Socialist. It would not perhaps be hard, after a time, to make him eager to grab money, to take to gamb- ling, to drinking, or to riding in a motor car. Nor perhaps would it be difficult, were he trained and put to hard work, to persuade him, once he began to realize his position, to take part in a strike or revolt against his masters. Or were he, as he conceivably well might be, a successful gold or 17 18 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM diamond seeker, he might give handsomely of his fortune to public charities or party funds. But in none of these cases would his action be prompted by motives of moral duty or social obli- gation, but solely by motives of crude self-inter- est. The good of others, the hope of helping to reconstruct society in the equal interests of all, would have no meaning for him. Herein the essential difference between the character of the ancient savage and civilized man begins to come into view. Let us look more closely at this dif- ference. It is true that men and women to-day, rich and poor alike, endeavor to grasp for themselves, almost mercilessly, the fruits of the toil and suf- fering of others. It is true that they struggle in many ways for existence and wealth almost as fiercely and violently as would the primitive man. It is true that in many ways they still live brutish and selfish lives. These things are true, but they do not sum up the motives, the feelings, the whole purpose of civilized life to-day. The straggle for existence and wealth which we see going on in the industrial and commercial world represents only one aspect of present-day society life. There is, as we shall notice more fully in these pages, a vast amount of co-opera- tion and mutual help going on also. There is an astonishing amount of kindness, comradeship and self-sacrifice. THE ASCENT OF MAN 19 For — let us note well the fact — it is chiefly in the first scramble for wealth, the first rush for its distribution, that the hateful struggle of man against man takes place. Once the workman gets his wages or the capitalist his profits, and steps out of the factory or office, at the end of the day or the end of the week, he leaves much of his greed and selfish disregard of his fellows behind him. He becomes, in many respects, a changed being. He spends his wages or profits often lib- erally in giving enjoyment to others. He makes his property to no small extent the common prop- erty of his friends. He feasts them, he gives them the best of his house, he puts himself to no end of trouble and expense to make them happy. He gives away generously in promoting many public and humane objects. He is not infrequently almost as unselfish in giving away his wealth as he was grasping in obtaining it. This better self manifests itself even among the keenest combatants in the commercial and indus- trial struggle. It was said of Mr. H. H. Eogers, the Standard Oil ndllionaire, that he was "merci- less in business as a tiger," but one of the most genial and generous of men outside of it. He was one of Mark Twain's warmest friends. Similar instances are within the knowledge of all of us of men who, while grasping and unfeeling in busi- ness, are kindly and generous in private life, often bestowing their wealth profusely on public objects 20 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM and displaying a high appreciation of the nobler things in nature, literature, and human char- acter. There was in the North a professional athlete who disgraced himself by his meanness in grasp- ing money for his performances. Yet this man was prodigal in helping his less fortunate com- panions, and on eight occasions rescued people from drowning at the risk of his own life. And who has not heard of (many of us have seen) the men at the docks tearing and trampling each other to get jobs, and a few moments later patheti- cally sharing their last crust or penny with their bruised and disconsolate comrades? My readers will now understand why I recalled our primeval ancestor upon the scene. He repre- sents our ignorant, unsocial selves — the selves that once were our only selves, perhaps, and still survive only too strongly in most of us. He marks whence we came, and the distance that our social evolution has brought us from the savage to the civilized man. He, the primeval brute, still afflicts us with the seven deadly sins. He is our "dark companion," but is no longer alone in us. The social being, the highly humane spirit, the God- like man, is within us also. ' In his strange story of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Eobert Louis Stevenson exhibits in an impressive, even if improbable narrative, this dual nature of man. Dr. Jekyll is a most admirable THE ASCENT OF MAN 21 and humane citizen, always seeking the good of his fellows. But by means of a secret drug which he has discovered he is able to subdue completely or hypnotize this higher self, and he at once be- comes a fierce, diabolical human monster, made inconceivably wicked and cunning by the use of the resources of his highly educated brain.* Differences of heredity, education, and other circumstances create infinite variations in the relative strength and activity of the two natures among mankind. But we are, everyone of us, in some degree the ancient savage and in some de- gree the modern socialized man. One or the other may remain, really or apparently, almost unawak- ened in us — but they are both there. But it is the better self, as we have seen, that gains vantage as civilization grows. It is by the gradual ascendancy within him of the better self * It may be that the two natures, the savage and the social, are not, as suggested by Mr. Stevenson's story, manifestations of two separate personalities in us. Both may be but the one personality acting under the influence of different "complexes" of emotion. On the other hand, there are psychologists who regard man as a compound or congeries of personalities, which, for the most part, lie hidden or dormant in the subconscious part of his being, except when called forth in hyper-normal states. The whole question of what man's personality or being consists of is now the subject of highly interesting scientific investigation and philosophical discussion, and very remarkable evidence and theories relating to it will be found in the works of Du Prel, Freud, Binet, Bergson, Lodge, J. A. Thomson, Jay Hudson, Maeterlinck, Carpenter, and other scientific and "New Thought" writers. 22 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM that man himself ascends towards the kingdom of man. And to what heights of moral enthusiasm and sublime self-forgetfulness and sacrifice may he not by it attain — nay, let us rather say, has he not already in countless instances in past and present history attained? And strangest and most prophetic fact of all, his most supreme self- abnegation and endurance have often been dis- played, not as one might expect, in struggle and suffering for the beloved ones of his household, his wife and children, and parents, or his friends ; nor, indeed, for any acquisition or purpose from which he might hope to obtain for himself material happiness or reward. No, not for these : but for invisible and intangible things — ideas and faiths, beliefs and principles — for something he called God, Truth, Justice, Freedom, which he did not know, or for his country, which maybe had only bestowed on him an existence of poverty and oppression. **My mother," cries Enjolras in "Les Miser- ables" — "my mother is the Republic!'* And for that idea the Parisian student was ready to fight, suffer, and die. What, indeed, will the true man not do for the mother of his soul's devotion, as for the mother of his heart's affection? Will he not work and wear himself away to the very marrow? Will he not forget that life has any value except what it may give for Tier? And does not history THE ASCENT OF MAN 23 tell us that it is just in this thriftless throwing away of all he has, even of life itself, for his love and faith that man has attained to the king- dom of man? This is the great counterblast of martyrdom, revolt, romance, yea, of conmion life affections and sacrifice, to history's long chronicle of man's selfishness and brutality, man's inhumanity to man. The hero for the craven, the martyr for the oppressor, the apostle for the hedonist, the truth seeker for the knave. See, down through the ages, the shining stream of men and women moving, pale-faced and red-eyed, to exile, to prison, to the burning stake, and to the scaffold, faithfully enduring the utmost torment and un- grudgingly yielding up their last breath for the Cause imperatively beckoning their souls. Nay, we must not fail to reckon this great fact to the credit balance of mankind, while sternly record- ing, as we rarely forget to do, the blackest in- famies of human knavery and oppression. And not less is this strange and mysterious power of self-sacrifice manifest in our own day, despite the canker of materialist ambition that has wormed so deeply into the heart of modern life. Hark! There is a cry of Freedom somewhere in the streets. And lo, out rush men and women from their homes, hastening to greet Freedom, heedless of all else. They struggle towards her 24 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM through shearing sheets of fire and lead, with glad hearts to embrace and defend her — Freedom, whom they have never seen! They fall, these infatuated fellow creatures of ours, their poor bodies shattered into shreds, in pools of blood on the paving stones. Listen again! In a little stifling room are gathered a group of peasants. One rises with a far-away light in his eyes, his face spectral-looking, like that of Christ in Verestchagin's pictures, and he says quietly to those around him, "We must get freedom or die." And the rest answer simply, "Yes, we must get freedom or die." They sepa- rate each to his own hovel, to meet to-morrow to get freedom or die: and by noon the soldiers or police are shovelling away their shapeless bodies in carts. Of what land or people do I speak? Of any land, of any people, maybe: of men and women of any religious creed, of any political faction. In every land men and women now, as in times past, throw themselves away, lavish their lives for Freedom — for the Cause. What madness, what heroism, what exaltation and glory of man has there not been in it all! What triumphing of the newer self of the spirit over the older self of the flesh! It is on this better nature, this higher self, that the only true hopes of human progress and civi- lization depend. It is in the conviction — in the THE ASCENT OF MAN 25 faith, if you will — that this better nature will triumph more completely, and more universally than it yet has done, except in rare instances, that Utopists have dreamed their dreams and cher- ished their hopes of the earthly paradise. Are these dreams, think you, wholly fanciful and irrational — these hopes that men and women generally may become, if not supermen or angels, at any rate much more truly civilized, more nobly natured human beings? Is it not, indeed, reason- able to suppose that just as the average man of to-day has evolved from his Pithecanthropus or Cro Magnon prototype of the caves and woods, so may the average civilized man of the future rise above the type of the average man of to-day? But how: by means of what virtue and per- suasions? By none other than those that have been instrumental in transforming the troglodyte of the glacial age into the modern citizen — those that have enabled him to acquire power over his environment and to become in some instances a Socrates, a St. Paul, a Marcus Aurelius, a St. Francis, a Pascal, a Leonardo da Vinci, a Shakes- peare, a Newton, a John Woolraan, a Hegel, a Shelley, a Tolstoy, a Walt AVliitman, a William Morris. Alas! even so, it may be said, but consider how long it has taken, how many thousands of years, to accomplish that miracle! Indeed, so it has. But let us also consider how 26 THE MEANING- OF SOCIALISM wonderful have now become man's powers of mastership over the conditions of his life, and, if only he sets himself earnestly to the task, his powers of mastership over himself. Consider how exhaustless are now the resources of wealth possessed by him ; how marvellous are the realms of science, art, and literature which he has ac- quired ; how vast his opportunities of moral, social and political co-operation. Surely, with all these acquisitions he is now become almost god-like in his dominion over the destiny of his own life, so that a day may be with him as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day? And of such is the prophecy of Socialism. No reader will, I hope, regard what is said in the foregoing chapter or elsewhere in these pages concerning society as the creator of man, as implying a denial of the existence of a spiritual nature in man. The fact of man's physical ascent from the animal kingdom is accepted nowadays by virtually ajl thoughtful religious, as well as by all scientific, minds. Alfred Russel Wallace, than whom there was no stronger upholder of the doctrine of man's spiritual existence, was the co-discoverer with Darwin of the law of natural selection, and one of the most ardent protagonists of the doctrine of man's physical and social evolution from the animal kingdom. The affirmation that man has been "made by society," in the sense spoken in these pages, in no wise conflicts with the "belief either that man is essentially a spiritual being, or that evolution itself, physical and social, is spiritual in its source and power. It is open for us to assume that man has evolved as a social being because of an inherent spiritual impulse or self within him leading him into society as a means of unfolding his spiritual nature, and therefore that society is but an outer expression of his inherent spiritual self ; or, on the other hand, we may take the view that THE ASCENT OF MAN 27 society is the medium or source of his spiritual endowment. But whatever be our idea of the nature or origin of man's mind, consciousness or spirit, the fact remains that it is only by means of society, or communion and co-operation with others that man's higher and distinctively human powers become manifest. Ex- cept for society, man would possess no speech, no science, no art, no civilization in fact. Thus the late Professor Henry Drummond, who was not only a strong believer in man's spiritual endowment, but an evangelical Christian, and who, in his remarkable book "The Ascent of Man," following the line of observation in Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid," assigns the "struggle for the life of others" as the main factor in human evolution, affirms that "like all other energy, spiritual power is contained environment. Powerless is the normal state apart from environment." There are, I know, many who would place above all material conditions of human happiness the increasing knowledge and use of man's psychic or spiritual powers. I speak particularly of thinkers like Maeterlinck and Edward Carpenter, who while accepting the teaching of science with respect to the physical and social evolution of mankind, nevertheless believe that there are possibilities of the unfolding within man of higher powers than those concerned with physical or sensory experience. This likewise is the view taken by Eastern thought. Attractive and significant as this conception may appear to many readers, it belongs to a realm of speculation outside the scope of our pres- ent investigation. I am here dealing with man and society solely on the plane of physical and social environment. CHAPTER II THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM My task in these pages is to speak of Socialism — its ideals, its hopes, and its practical aims. Socialism! — the name is so new in the world, yet 28 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM already it is above all other names in political fame. It was unheard in the French Revolution ; Shelley, one of its sweetest and sublimest herald singers, never heard it. It was first spoken in the Chartist agitation, but it hardly came into po- litical notice until the Socialist movement began to show itself at parliamentary elections in 1885^ In Mr. Gladstone's famous Midlothian speeches (1879-1880), in which he dealt with every political topic then in public view, the word Socialism was not once mentioned. Now it rings from every platform, from every newspaper, and is the topic of discussion in every Parliament, every work- shop, every drawing-room and fireside through- out the political nations of the world. Socialism! There are those who hate it; there are those who fear it ; there are those who doubt it. But there are millions who hope for it, rejoice in it and work for it. No propaganda has ever made such rapid and far-spread progress in the world. The whole political movement of Social- ism has come into being within the memory of liv- ing men. It was not until 1869 that the first Socialist political organization was formed in Germany. No definitely Socialist organization existed in England until 1884. Now the move- ment grows apace in every land, and has become the most formidable political agitation that the world has ever known. Even as I write these words, its revolutions are tossing monarchs from THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM 29 their thrones and shaldng the foundations of the political and social structure of every European State. But it is not only, nor perhaps chiefly, in these political perturbations that the growing power, the real evangelism of Socialism is most prophet- ically seen. Political agitation and upheaval, as we know, so often subside leaving but little trace ; doing no more than shake a few twigs or branches from the stem of the great tyrannies and wrongs. It is in the spread and potency of the Socialist idea itself, everywhere inspiring the hopes and re-creating the social imagination of mankind, everywhere moulding constructively the thoughts and aptitudes of the people — rich and poor, think- ers and workers, Christians, Jews, Gentiles and Agnostics — it is in these less noisy, but more creative and enduring modes of activity that the transforming power of Socialism is most authenti- cally manifest. In these directions, it is hardly too much to say. Socialism is operating like a new natural law come into civilized life. Like the outburst of spring, it is giving new color and conformation to life. It presses forth in innumerable forms of in- dustrial co-operation, mutual aid societies for health, for sustenance, for science, and for recrea- tion, in all manner of leagues, associations, and joint enterprises, and more strikingly than all, perhaps, in the remarkable growth of municipal 30 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM communism and collectivism, and State organi- zation and control. A certain school of mystics entertain the notion that from the sun there had first to come the heat to fashion the earth as a ■wonderful habitation for man. All the infinite evolution of land and sea, and bird and beast, down through the countless ages, has been but a preparation of the "world as a fit and radiant place for man, and a rough shaping of man into human form. That accom- plished, there is now coming a spiritual radiation by which man will be re-created in mind and heart, and made fit for his higher destiny "in earth as in heaven." This transcendental theory is not likely to win wide acceptance among scientific minds; but, fanciful though it may be, it has much plausibility as a "working theory" of the phenomena of the world and mankind around us. For to those who can see through the surface of things, does it not seem as if there were indeed pouring into the world a new influence — a power that is shaping the hearts and ways of men against their own will and strivings, shaping them for a new society, a new relationship of life? A new power, did we say? — No, not new: the power has long been grow- ing in the world, but now, at least, it seems to have burst forth suddenly as -with, full naked glow. ■\^Tiat! some will cry, what idle prophecy is this ! A new power of progress and brotherhood THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM 31 come into the world ! Where, indeed, shall we see it ? In the awful apocalypse of the European War, and its hardly less murderous sequel of revolt and repression? In the fratricidal strife and unabashed dictatorship of Eussian and German Eevolutions glorying in the Socialist name? In the monster power and ogreish greed of million- aire capitalism with its rapacious monopolies and profiteering? In the seemingly hardly less selfish and inconsiderate strike outbreaks and boycotts of the working class? In the everywhere mani- fest spirit of militarism, reaction, and political cynicism? Is it in achievements such as these that we are to discern the beneficent advent of Socialism? Not in these things indeed. These things are not new. Except in outward shape, they are very old. They have been from the beginning. Murder and lies, tyranny and fraud, have not come into the world yesterday or to-day. They have afflicted humanity since history began. But shall dictator- ship and oppression, and the universal wounds and diseases of society, hide from our sight the signs of better things: of healing and transfor- mation? Shall we, because poor mankind still writhes in the many torments of his long captiv- ity of hunger and fear, fail to see a new glow of 'health on his face, a kinder murmur in his voice, a clearer look in his eye, and a less savage move- ment of his limbs? Murder and robbery and 32 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM lies— these are old. But the growth of a nation- wide, yea, a world-wide conscience and activity, not merely against open, brutal violence and plun- der, but for the permanent elimination of the covert and more subtle, and often more inhuman forms of callousness and greed, and above all for the extinction of the causes, the poisoned streams of social wrong — this is not old, it is new. The clustering of citizens building up collective wealth in our towns, the blending everywhere of private interest in co-operative and community interest, the heart of the nation beginning to beat its tide of sustaining blood far and mde, to heal and nourish every part — these things are not old — these things are new. And need I mark as one of the most positive gains to civilization, the advance of Avomen into political life and social freedom — a change out- reaching perhaps in its probable effects that of any other change in the political structure of western civilization. These things are not only new, but laden with hopes that brighten us with the promise of the spring, our outlook on all the coming days. "Were it not so we might well say with "William Morris that the world had better not go on at all. The light of the sun, the wonder of the seasons, the joy of knowledge, literature, and our human affections, would be but as a great mockery — ^as a grim garlanding of the feast of death. Who has THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM 33 not at some time or other been struck "ft-ith thfe brilliant phosphorescent hues of certain sub- stances undergoing corruption? Many, perhaps, have seen the strangely iridescent colors shown on plates of medical books illustrating the erup- tions of loathsome diseases, the rainbow glisten- ing sections of diseased kidneys, the startling patterns as of beautiful flower wreaths in leprous erosions of the body. What sickness they strike into the heart! If there be devil's beauty at aU, it must be beauty like that. Even so would all the lustre of life and of the great glowing frame of earth and sea and sky be to us, were we to believe that here — even in this little speck of the universe — the cry of the poor, the groan of the overburdened, the mirth of tyrants, the havoc of Empire and slaying of men and nations, were to endure forever. Nothing would comfort us. For then, indeed, would prog- ress have no meaning; our noblest feelings be but aberrations; our ideals be but lying dreams. But let us lift up our eyes and see. Men still go forth to kill; but no less do men and women go forth to heal. In propaganda, in education, in organizing life for the sick, the cripples, the blind and the consumptive, and in making pleas- ant days for the children, do we not see the fore- shadowing of better deeds ? The sweater sweats, but the anti-sweater is in- tent upon his track. The slum owner thrives, 34 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM but the garden village enthusiast is stalking him down. The millionaire rolls his monster coils about the nation and fouls our cities with his wealth, but the young Perseus is preparing his spear, and soon wiU flash as from the sun the annihilating stroke. Uplift, then, our eyes and uplift our hearts. Taste and see what in the world is good. Not one but ten thousand dragons devouring and foul- ing the earth there may be, but Socialism, lo ! its light is in the world and its triumph is heralded in every wind. It is the advent of peace, the epoch of man released from the brute, the reign of equality. That is the word and power of Socialism arising in the world. The word and power which in Bussia and Germany at this hour are leading the people through revolution, and it may be, much anarchy, much terror, much suffering, much fratricidal strife — as a host of fire through free- dom's gate. CHAPTER III THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE: THE LAND Such are the hopes and ideals of Socialism — mere day-dreaming, many who are usually favor- able to advanced ideas think them — dreaming on the mountain top, in which the far-spreading THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE 35 clouds below are fancied to be the glowing hills and valleys of the solid earth. Indeed, I shall not lament should many of my readers for the pres- ent so regard them, provided they accompany me through the further chapters of this book There they will, I am persuaded, find themselves on the solid enough ground of indisputable economic and political fact. For our purpose now is to consider whether the Socialist indictment against the present-day eco- nomic and social conditions is true, and what the plans and means are by which Socialists propose to remedy those conditions and realize their own ideals and hopes. What, then, is the main political purpose of Socialist agitation to-day? The main purpose of Socialist agitation is to place the means of wealth under the control of the community, in order to liberate the working class from the power of land- lordism and capitalism. It is around this pro- posal that the chief political controversy concern- ing Socialism beats and breaks. It is against this proposal that those who are opposed to Socialism direct their chief controversy, their political oppo- sition, their anger and abuse. Let us therefore look closely into the statements which Socialists put forth in support of their proposal. Socialists declare that the land is monopolized. Socialists declare that capital, by which they mean the factories, machinery, mines, railways, 36 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM and other collectively produced means of making wealth, is monopolized. Socialists affirm that this monopoly of the means of wealth is nnjnst, and imposes poverty and oppressive toil on the mass of the people. Socialists affirm that public ownership and con- trol of land and capital is the only system by which this poverty and oppressive toil can be removed, and social justice and equality estab- lished. Are these propositions true? First let us deal with the land. Who own the land! Do the people generally, or the farmers or laborers who work to produce wealth from the land own it? Let us inquire for ourselves, using our own eyes and ears. Let us go into the coun- try, where we can see the land. Here is a great agricultural region in Shropshire. We will ask this old laborer at his cottage door, who has worked all his life on the neighboring fields, if he owns the land upon which he has spent his fifty or sixty years of daily toil. He tells us No. He owns nothing, he says, not even the wretched old cottage which he makes trim and tries to keep in repair where he and his family have lived all their lives. He can be dismissed any day, and turned out of the cottage on a week's notice, with nowhere to go but the workhouse. We hail the farmer on the road, and ask him if he owns the farm. He shouts, "Bless you, no; the farm belongs to the THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE 37 Duke of Sutherland." And the next farml — the Duke of Sutherland. And the next farm to that —the Dulce of Sutherland. This Duke of Suther- land, he assures us, owns the whole land about for many miles, and every farm and laborer's cot- tage upon it. He points to a palace gleaming far away on a wooded hillside beside a river; that, he tells us, is where the Duke lives for a few weeks each year; but he has several more palaces and great estates in other parts of the country. We go up for a holiday in the Highlands; we cross by raU, starting from Golspie, fifty or sixty mUes from sea to sea across the mainland of Scot- land. We pass through innumerable valleys and glens; we swing under great mountains, piercing into the mists, with wonderful streams and water- falls flashing down their sides. We ask the sta- tion-master and postman as we start out: To whom does the land of this town and those hills about it belong? The Duke of Sutherland. At the next station we ask the porter and a shepherd on the platform, to whom do all the beautiful val- leys, hills, woods, and streams belong? The Duke of Sutherland. We put the same question at every station on our way until we reach the sea on the other side of Scotland, and we get always the same answer — ^the Duke of Sutherland. We try the mining districts. We meet a crowd of Durham miners, returning black and dripping with sweat from the pit, where they have been 38 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM working all night. We inquire to whom does the pit belong? Lord Joicey. And to whom does that other pit half a mile away belong? Lord Joicey. And all those other pits which we can see smok- ing at various points around the horizon? With one or two exceptions they belong to Lord Joicey. We turn to the towns. There we get the most startling facts of the enormous value that life and labor give to the land ; but at present we are con- cerned only with the question of the ownership of the land. Do the people of the toAvns own the land of the towns? Do the majority of the people own any land whatever in the towns ? Shall we ask the people of Buxton to whom does the land of Buxton belong? Put the question to any man in the street, to the town clerk, to the shopkeepers or hotel proprietors; and from one and all we shall get the uniform reply — the Duke of Devonshire. The Duke, they will tell you, owns not only all the land, but owns, or will own, virtually all the town itself when the building leases fall in. And the hills round about that are being hacked and hewn away by the limestone quarries — ^who owns them? The Duke of Devon- shire owns them also, and owns all the ground and everything beneath the ground for miles around. We go to Eastbourne, on the South Coast, two hundred miles away. This, also, is a fashionable town. We ask who owns the land of Eastbourne? And lo, we discover that Eastbourne also is owned THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE 39 by the Duke of Devonshire. Marvellous Duke! In the larger industrial towns, where the land has been sold or fenced for railways, factories, and building speculations, Landlordism and Capi- talism have become so mixed up that it is difficult to separate the one from the other. Nor is it worth while attempting to do so, as they are both but different forms of the same evil power. It is, however, common knowledge that the Duke of "Westminster owns the greater part of Westmin- ster, that the Duke of Norfolk owns a consider- able part of Sheffield, and that the Earl of Derby owns a large portion of Liverpool, Preston, and Bury. But though we inquire ever so diligently among the tens of hundreds of thousands of working- people in our cities, towns and villages, we shall not find one among them in a thousand who owns even so much as a yard of land, except it be in the churchyard or cemetery. Gro where we will in any part of England, Scot- land, or "Wales, we find that the land, the woods, the streams, the mines and quarries belong not to the many who work and produce wealth from them, but in most instances to the few who do absolutely no work at all. The monopoly of the land is therefore a fact, and one of most appalling dimensions, too. The land is owned by the landlords, who form but a small part of the conununity. A few dozen 40 THE MEANINGf OF SOCIALISM landlords, in fact, own about one half of the whole surface of these islands, while a few thousand individuals in all, out of a population of nearly fifty millions, own nine tenths of the surface. The landlords did not create the land, or help in any way to create it. They did not and could not create a single grain of sand, or particle of clay, rock, or coal, or a single blade of grass. Shakespeare evidently had this thought in his mind when he makes Cloten, the British prince in Cymheline, reply to Csesar's envoy: "When he can hide the sun in a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, I'll pay him rent." Nor do the landlords create, or help to create the crops or other produce of the land. All the landlords do (as landowners) is to take their rents from the produce or use of the land. "Were there no workers on the land, or community to use the land or materials derived from it, there would be no rent. The land would be economically value- less. Nor do the landlords in return for their owner- ship of the land do anything useful for the nation. This the Dulce of Northumberland frankly ad- mitted in his evidence before the Coal Commis- sion, May, 1919. Asked by Sir Leo Money, ' 'What particular service do you perform for the com- munity as a coal owner?" the Duke replied: " As a coal owner I do not perform any service for the community. I look after my property to EXPLOITATION 41 tHe best advantage. I do not know whether you call that service." CHAPTER IV EXPLOITATION: THE STORES OF WEALTH The people do not own the land. But neither did they create it. Neither did the landlords create it : who own it, nevertheless. But the people — the workers, at any rate — do create, or help to create wealth: without their labor, there would, in fact, be no wealth created at all. It is by means of their toil that not only all the stores of wealth which keep the life of nations going, but all the factories, machinery, railways and other instruments requisite for the production of those stores of wealth, have any existence. Do, then, the people as a whole, or the workers, own these great stores of wealth and the factories, machinery, railways, etc., which are the offspring of their labor? Let us inquire : In pursuing our inquiry concerning the owner- ship of land we appealed only to such knowledge as everyone can obtain by his own observation. We quoted no authors and gave no statistics. It is part of the scheme of these chapters to show 42 THE MEANINO OF SOCIALISM that the facts upon which the Socialist argument rests are facts which everyone may know from his own direct knowledge. Our inquiry need not take us far beyond our own door, especially if we happen to live in Glas- gow, Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford , or any large industrial town. Early every morning thousands of men and women pour along our streets on the way to their work, and every evening may be seen the same stream of toilers returning from their work. We meet hundreds, and often thousands, of workers flooding into or out of a single factory. These workpeople do not go there for enjoyment. They are not idle, they are busy as bees. The majority of them are upon piece-work — that is to say, they only earn according to the amount of work they do. They are so numerous, so busy, and so strangely bound down to their tasks, and often s(t begrimed and soiled by the material they use, that when we see them in the mass we can hardly recognize them as human beings at all. We can hardly think of them as men and women with hearts and souls. We can hardly think of them as being fellow-citizens with the well-dressed, unsoiled and pleasantly occupied or unoccupied people who come down from their mansions dur- ing the day to the shops and entertainments of the town. It seems almost impossible that these weary-looking, toil-doomed creatures can be the EXPLOITATION 43 fathers and mothers, the comrades and friends whom we know and love. Here in this street, in the blistering heat of a summer day, or the wet and stinging blast of win- ter, are workmen on the walls and joists of a building, some of them clinging to the scaffolding of high towers. The walls and towers grow up before our eyes. We see the labor of the men making them grow. When the men stop working, the building stops growing ! From street to street we go, and the buildings seem to have no end. We pass shop after shop, warehouse after warehouse. What amazing va- rieties of things are displayed and stored within them — all made and placed there by the industry of workers ! The magnitude of human labor begins to appal us as with a sense of infinitude. Far away in the outer wilderness of the town we enter a region of vast workshops. As we glance through the gateways, vision upon vision starts upon our eyes of men, machinery, fire and steam, swirling and wrestling together as in some surviving chaos. Onward we step to the wharfs and raUway sidings, and lo ! forth from the whirl- ing and flaming factories come great boilers, shafts, wonderful machines, locomotives, and mighty ships, as from a mighty horn of plenty, outpouring bounteously upon the world. Labor everywhere — ^Labor working its miracles 44 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM — creating things of fabulous might and cunning, far outreaching the powers of all the gods of Greece or Eome ! Surely, now is the mystery of Labor revealed — here in our own town, before our very eyes. No need have we to go to books or colleges or to philosophers or politicians, to tell us the secret of wealth-making. Here is labor creating the wealth before our eyes. But for whom is labor working with all this prodigious energy? To whom do all these things which Labor creates belong? Do the workers own the wealth they produce? Do the workers own the factories and workshops, the railways and the shops? Do they own the machines they use, or the machines they make? Do they own the goods they pack and distribute in the shops? Do they OAvn the houses they build or the houses in which they dwell? Let us ask any one of the 8,000 or so men and women who pour out of the Singer's sewing- machine factory at Clydebank, near Glasgow, if they own the factory, or anything inside of it, or the sewing-machines which they make? No, we are only working people, they will tell us; the factory and everything belongs to the company. Who are the company? They do not know even that, bijt they think they are American capitalists. The company has big works in the United States also. EXPLOITATION 45 We cross the river, and inquire of some of the, 4,000 or more women in the great Coats' Thread Works, in Paisley, whether they or any among them own or have any part in the ownership of the mills? They langh: what a question to put them! Does not everybody know that the mills belong to the Messrs. Coats, of the Coats-Clark combine, who own all the thread mills, not only in Paisley, but in Great Britain; and also own nulls in America, Eussia, Germany, and many other lands ? In Newcastle we can see any day the remark- able spectacle of some 15,000 or more workmen streaming out from the different gates of the Elswick Engineering and Shipbuilding Works. Again we inquire to whom does this vast estab- lishment belong? To the Armstrong- Whitworth Company, which owns great works in Manchester also, and in other places, including Genoa in Italy. In every to"svn we meet with similar replies. The hundreds of thousands of men and women who pour out of the Yorkshire and Lancashire mills, the potteries in Staffordshire, the lace and boot factories in Nottingham and Leicester, repeat the same brief story. Do they own the factories in which they work, or the things they produce in them? No, they are only workers; the factories, and everything within them, belong to their masters. These, the miracle workers of the world — the 46 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM men and "women whose toil creates all the visible fahric of our cities, all the houses, the shining towers, the thundering wheels, the tremendous enginery, endowed with the strength of a myriad giants and speed beyond the swiftest wind of heaven — these, the workers, are poor. They own in the great majority of instances, little beyond their household effects (and not always these), and at most a score or two of pounds in the sav- ings banks or co-operative stores. All else be- longs to their masters. Their masters ! Who these wonderful masters are we shall presently inquire. Meanwhile, the fact of the monopoly of the means, not only of wealth, but of life itself, grows appallingly before us on every side as we pursue our inquiry. CHAPTEE V THE LANDLORD AND THE CAPITALIST There is a widespread notion that the capitalist occupies a more defensible position than does the landowner. This notion, like most widespread notions, has a certain amount of justification in fact. Land monopoly was one of the earliest forms of monopoly, and the name of landlord and land-robber has come down to us in history and tradition associated with outrage and spoliation. LANDLORD AND CAPITALIST 47 Capitalism in its highly organized form of whole- sale exploitation of collective industry is of com- paratively modern growth, and it has been asso- ciated with many improvements in industrial organization and cheaper processes of manufac- ture. The landlord's appropriation is obvious. The capitalist's appropriation is subtle — it is hid- den under many apparently useful functions. Henry George, in his remarkable book, "Pro- gress and Poverty," did much to bring landlord- ism into special disrepute. No man made the land, he said; therefore anyone who holds land as a private possession is claiming something he has not made, and something no one was ever entitled to sell to him. It was different with capital. Capital, said Mr. George, is made by Labor. Evidently what man makes by his labor, man may justly own or sell. Therefore, capitalism stands on quite a different foundation from landlordism. Neither of these arguments is sound, though they both express a relative truth. They express a relative truth in so far as they ascribe to the capitalist in many instances a certain agency, or apparent agency, in producing capital, while the landowner does nothing at all to produce land. But the arguments are unsound, because with respect to the landowner his claim to rent from the land is simply a claim upon labor, and if the capitalist may acquire a right, through his agency 48 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM as a capitalist, to exploit labor, so may the land- owner acquire a similar right either by purchase or by some real or supposed military or other ser- vice to the State. Besides, as we shall see later on, the social right to wealth of any kind cannot be exclusively determined by the question as to whether the possessor has worked for it or not. A child, for example, performs no labor; a dis- abled person may perform no labor; yet every Socialist is agreed that these have a right to the fullest measure of sustenance, and even non- Socialists admit that children and the infirm must be sustained. Mr. George 's arguments are, there- fore, defective. There are, however, further distinctions be- tween land and capital which we may notice. Land is practically a fixed quantity. It does not visibly increase or diminish except in the vol- canic islands of the South Seas. Land does not, except in rare instances (and in the case of quarries and mines), appreciably deteriorate in value A^ith age, or even with much use. It does not rust or decay, nor is it destroyed by fire or flood. Capital, on the other hand, is not fixed in quan- tity, and it is usually perishable. It has con- stantly to be renewed or replaced. It deteriorates by age and use, and may be completely destroyed by fire, flood, or other accident. A ship, for example, may be lost at sea, a factory may be LANDLORD AND CAPITALIST 49 demolished by fire, a store of corn may rot and become worthless with damp or age. Machinery, whether used or not, rusts away or becomes worn out and obsolete after a certain number of years. The capitalist has, therefore, as a rule to give attention to his monopoly either in person or through someone acting in his behalf. The land- lord as a rule need give no other attention to his monopoly than to receive the payment of his rent. The landlord may, therefore, be described as a passive, and the capitalist as an active, monop- olist. But however much we distinguish the position of the capitalist from the landowner, they are in essence the same. The capitalist extracts for him- self by means of profit, even as the landlord extracts for himself by means of rent, wealth which the workers, aided by the genius and co- operation of society, create by their labor. The one uses his monopoly of capital, the other his monopoly of land, as his instrument of extortion. The landowner is lord of the raw material of wealth, the capitalist is lord of the manufactured material of wealth. The land is really a factory where food and raw material are obtained by labor. Mines, factories, machinery, and shops are really pieces of trans- ported land modified by labor. Neither land nor capital is of any use to its owners except so far 50 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM as it enables them to command the labor and ex- tract the produce of labor from the workers. The extortion of the capitalist is, however, as I have already said, usually hidden in the useful function of the manufacturer or merchant. In its elementary form the capitalist exploitation can hardly be discerned at all. Thus the packman tramping over the hills with his wares, the small shopkeeper working hard aU day, the small master buying his raw material and employing only one or two men, or perhaps only his own wife or son — in these and similar cases, it would be hard to say whether or not the capitalist was obtaining more than or as much as a fair reward for his own actual labor. Practically the exploiting function of the capi- talist only becomes apparent when the capitalist buys and sells the labor of others so as to make a profit of their labor over and above what may be regarded as a fair reward for whatever useful services he is supposed to perform as a practical manager, manufacturer, or merchant. Yet it is just here that the subtlety of capitalism has so cunningly deceived the world. Few people would think of denouncing publicly the injustice of a small employer who employed only one man, and made a profit of only 5s. a week off that man. Yet most people begin to feel some sense of injustice against the great capital-" ist who employs 10,000 men even if he only makes PARABLE OF ANDREW CARNEGIE 51 a profit of half-a-crown a week off each of them. Yet the small capitalist is in this instance the worse exploiter of the two. CHAPTER VI THE PARABLE OF ANDREW CARNEGIE Let us consider more closely the means by which the capitalist obtains his grip on the work- ers and accumulates his wealth. This we can per- haps best do by taking a typical instance of "how millionaires are made." I select the late Mr. Andrew Carnegie, who, though an American citi- zen, was a fellow countryman of my own by birth, alike because he was in the time of the zenith of his business activity the largest direct employer of labor in the world, and because his name is in- scribed on scores of public libraries, and because he was in his day the most out-spoken member of his millionaire class. In his speeches and writings Mr. Carnegie chal- lenged discussion on the question of the rightful- ness of his position as a capitalist, and has sought to justify the capitalist system in opposition to Socialism. Let me add, in fairness to Mr. Car- negie, that, apart from his capitalist vocation, he was a man of wide public sympathies and of demo- cratic views, and both by precept and example, 52 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM acknowledged the social obligation which, he felt rests upon wealthy men like himself to devote a large part of their fortunes to the educational and social advance of the conmiunity. Mr. Carnegie was of pure working class stock, and received only an elementary school education. His father and family emigrated to Pittsburg, in the United States, when he was a boy. From being a poor working lad he became, by the time he was forty years of age, one of the richest men that have ever been in the world. What Mr. Carnegie's fortune eventually amounted to I do not know, but twenty years before his death it was stated to be not less than $400,000,000, and that, too, after his having be- stowed at least $60,000,000 on Free Libraries and other educational institutions. Mr. W. T. Stead, after interviewing him about that period at Skibo Castle, declared that Mr. Carnegie had told him that he meant to dispose of $300,000,000 in public benefactions before he died — an intention which he is said to have fulfilled. He had then but re- cently sold to the American Steel Corporation his great iron, coke, and lime works at Homestead, Pittsburg, for which he had received $250,000,000 in five per cent bonds. He had many other in- vestments. We may, therefore, estimate Mr. Carnegie's income at that time at no less than $15,000,000 a year — a sum which works out at $300,000 a week. PAEABLE OF ANDREW CARNEGIE 53 or equivalent at that time to the wages of 60,000 British laborers! Does anyone believe that Mr. Carnegie ^as in any imaginable sense as capable or useful -as 60,000 hard-working men? I had occasion to meet Mr. Carnegie and heard him speak in public at that period. He was not a giant, nor did he display any marks of genius. He was a little, energetic, pushful, positive-looking man. He had fought his workpeople relentlessly ; he had fought other capitalists relentlessly; he had used political influence and the tariffs to beat out competitors and extend his monopoly. He had written several books; they were clever, gossipy, and interesting. Free copies of them have been given to many hundreds of our public libraries. Yet this one man possessed as much wealth as a whole city full of people. He was richer than all the men of genius in Europe and America put together. Nay, were we able to estimate the money reward obtained by all the greatest men in his- tory — prophets, philosophers, writers, artists, scientific discoverers and heroes — including Homer, JEschylus, Phidias, Socrates, Plato, Seipio, Virgil, Dante, Titian, Raphael, Gutten- berg, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Handel, Washington, Goethe, Schiller, Burns, Shelley, Watt, George Stephenson, Nelson, Wel- lington, Wagner, Darwin, and Victor Hugo — 54 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM these and a thousand more, their whole reward totalled up together would not, we may assure ourselves, amount to as much as that of this one man, Andrew Carnegie, the Pittsburg ironmaster! And how did Andrew Carnegie obtain this vast wealth ? By what marvellous means, what magic, what miracle did this man, who was but a poor lad fifty years before, accumulate such an almost unmeasurable abundance of wealth? There is, indeed, no secret, no magic, no miracle whatever in the matter. Andrew Carnegie ac- quired his millions by just the same means as that by which every master, every capitalist, ac- quires his profit and wealth, however great or small it be. He obtained his wealth not by his oAvn efforts, but by the efforts of others. He obtained his wealth not by saving the fruits of his own genius or labor, but by getting hold of part of the fruits of the labor of 40,000 other men endowed with the knowledge, skill, and co-operation which 10,000 years of social progress has made available for them. How did Mr. Carnegie acquire his great Pitts- burg forges and mills? He did not build them, nor did he invent or make the machinery within them. But did he not pay money for the building and making of them? Yes, maybe. But where did he get the money? He had no money to buy mills or machinery when PARABLE OF ANDREW CARNEGIE 55 he worked as a boy employee stoking a furnace. He had no money to buy or pay workmen for building steel furnaces and mills and fitting them up "with machinery when he worked as an em- ployee, telegraphist or clerk. He was then stiU a poor man, as all mere wage-earners are. So long as he was a workman he received only a workman's wage. It was not until Mr. Carnegie had acquired a large salary as a railway superintendent, and had received a large portion of the profits made by pushing a sleeping car invention, which he did not invent, and had obtained a share of the big profits of an oil creek property speculation, that he began to have money wherewith to buy or get mUls erected and employ labor. It was, in fact, not until he ceased being a workman and began to derive his income, not from his own labor, but from the labor of others, that he became a capi- talist. Thereafter Mr. Carnegie was on the high road to making his fortune. As soon as he made profits from the labor of one set of workmen, he was able to use those profits to buy or build mills and employ more workmen, and obtain profits from them also. These profits he in turn used for the purpose of getting more workmen to build stiU more works for him, and to employ still more workmen in producing profit for him. And thus the process went on until Mr. Carnegie became the biggest direct employer of labor in the world. 56 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM It was always with the profits of labor thai he was able to further employ labor. In other words, it was from the labor of his workpeople, not from his own labor, that he obtained his capital. CHAPTER VII IS THE CAPITALIST NBCESSAEY? We have seen the process by which the capi- talist gains possession of his capital. We have shown, in the case of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, how men may rise from the working class into the capi- talist ranks and become millionaires. We have shown that their vast fortunes are derived not from their own ability or labor, but from the labor of their workers and the community. But, it may be asked, does the capitalist render no service at all to the workers or to the com- munity? Does he really do nothing to create the profit which he receives? This question cannot be dismissed by a mere denial or a jibe. There is, as I have already said, a deep-seated notion among not only capitalists themselves, but among the working-class, that the capitalist does in some way assist industry, and is entitled to profit as his reward. Profit is not, it is frequently said, obtained by underpaying labor or overcharging the community, but is the incre- ment of value which the capitalist gives to labor IS THE CAPITALIST NECESSARY? 57 by his organizing ability and comnaercial skill. It is, for example, pointed out that were a work- man to work by himself alone mthout the assist- ance of capitalist organization of any kind, and were he to sell the things he made at the same price as that charged for similar articles made by capitalistic firms, he would probably remain poorer than any workmen employed at the same trade under capitalists. And that is quite true. If, then, that be true, how can Socialists justify the statement that capitalists obtain their profits by exploiting labor? Because without the exploitation of labor there could be no profit, no capital. The capitalist by himself, without workmen, would cease to be a capitalist, and would himself have to become a workman simply. But granting that the capitalist does not of him- self create his profit or capital, may it not stiU be maintained that neither does labor by itself create that profit or capital? Is not the capitalist the chief factor in giving to workmen's labor the ad- ditional value which the capitalist appropriates? Does not, for example, a present-day workman who works nine hours each day produce more in a factory by his labor than his great-grandfather could do working nine hours a day in a small workshop a hundred years ago? And is not this additional production which the present-day work- man's labor yields due, not to his working harder 58 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM or with more ability than did his great-grand- father, but to the increased knowledge of machin- ery and organization which capitalism has brought into play? That also is in the main true. But the truth affords capitalism little justification. Capitalism has, in the providence or improvi- dence of things, been undoubtedly an agency in developing industrial organization and in bring- ing into use important labor-saving processes. But the capitalist himself, in so far as he has played the part of an organizer of industry, has only done so by thrusting himself into a place of vantage in the industrial system which the evolu- tion of s6ciety has created. He has merely antici- pated for his own benefit the application of science and collective methods to production which social progress has created. The capitalist, in so far as he has been an active agent in industry, is only as one in a vast army moving forward — he, more selfish or more adven- turous, perhaps, than the rest, steps a bit ahead, while the others are clearing a path through the forest, and lays claim to the territory through which all must immediately pass. The truth of this statement is easily shown. Suppose present-day capitalists were deprived of the knowledge of industry and science which they have obtained from this age, and were put back into the conditions of a hundred years ago — ^the IS THE CAPITALIST NECESSARY? 59 majority of them would find it impossible to be- come capitalists at all. Suppose they were put back five hundred or a thousand years, they would possess absolutely no knowledge or means of capi- talist organization — except by devoting them- selves to highway robbery. It is the world-wide development of science, industry, social co-operation, and civic govern- ment which provides capitalists' enterprise with its opportunity. The capitalists who scoop in-the advantages of these improvements have not created them. They have merely grasped posses- sion of them. Do Socialists, then, allow no claim at all on the part of capitalists to the profits which they appro- priate? None whatever, except so much as may be re- garded as a fair payment for actual services of management; and it is not those services that constitute the capitalist's claim to profit. His supposed right to the profits of labor is derived solely from his possession, not of ability, but of capital. The capitalist himself recognizes this; for does he not, even when taking no active part at aU in his business, claim the entire profits to himself simply as his right as the owner of the capital? Whatever services the capitalist may render as a business man are services of manage- ment, such as a tramway manager or postmaster may render in community undertakings in which 60 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM they have no capitalist claim, and from which they only receive pay as employees. This is clearly seen in the case of Limited Lia- bility companies where the two functions — ^those of capitalism and business management — are separated. In these companies the general body of capitalist investors take no part in the business at all, but hand over the control of it to a few of their number as directors who receive fees for their services. The directors in turn usually ap- point one of their number as managing director, who receives a special salary for acting in that capacity. In thus effacing themselves, the investors ack- nowledge that they have no part in the function of wealth production. It is their capital not them- selves that counts and operates. So wholly are they without any instrumentality in the business or industry from which they derive their profits that they possess no right whatever to interfere in the concerns of the company, except when once a year, or half-year, they assemble to appoint directors. In no other way are they differently related to the undertaking of which they are the proprietors than are the members of the general public. If, for example, the undertaking be that of a railway company, they must pay their fares like other passengers when travelling on its lines ; or, if it be a drapery company, they must pay the usual rates for their purchases. Nor may they IS THE CAPITALIST NECESSARY? 61 enter any office or department of the company from which the public are excluded. They may one or all be disabled from work of body or mind ; they may live abroad ; they may be inmates of a lunatic asylum, or under lock and key in prison ; but the business of the company is unaffected by the circumstance. They may die, but their profits run on for the benefit of their heirs, who may be, as yet, unborn. The essence of capitalism is, I must repeat, the possession simply of the power to exploit the labor of the community. The capitalist does so directly through the workmen he employs. Through them he exploits not only the science, skiU, and co-operation of existing society, but the heritage of toil and genius handed down to us from all bygone generations of men. Had capitalism not intervened, we must not suppose that human thought, science, and inven- tion would have ceased to go on, or that the wealth of the world would not have increased. There was wonderful moral and social and intel- lectual achievement before modern capitalism came. The principle of co-operative enterprise was far more widely adopted and more highly organized than that of capitalist enterprise until two hun- dred years ago. All the greatest achievements in industry, architecture, and public service in Greece, Rome, and mediaeval Europe were na- 62 THE MEANING OF SOCTALTSM tior^L nnmieipal, or otLer ':'j'.vf^srh tmdertak^.Cf-;. T]' e idea of great 'ivoj/^rat^ve Hc?ieTi:es of ^Ta- rr.-;z.:t7 l^Lor, appivir-g' r/r.'-:L':h '■/i 'izA-^^^jr/, ar.d oth'ijvi^e ir.erea.vir.^ t?.e LealtL, "eajth ar,d hap- T,i::e:-^ of t?.e ^rbolh j/eople. prec^'ied t?.e ideja of •yir.^r.'.h^, of ';ai/:'tVjTe's 'Utopia'' ar.d Lord Ba-^'H^Xe^ .itla't:^" pre- %ded Adam Srrift/i's ''-^hC-l hi :'at:o7i=-" and Ma]:':!!^' "La~ of Poprj^^tioru" Sa'::t Simttii'* "S^sleiTje J'^d^-trifil ' T,re%^ded Arjcre^'' Ci.,'- ue^ie's ''TriTmiphaiit Derr.oeracv," ar.i Robert Cn^e::'.? -'e~ L&r..ar> indu "rial coTi.r.'. :;r..'t7, "Rijidli x..r '^T^ded for the o:d ar.d "onrir. pre^^-eded t:ie irodeTn caijit&jiit de^';^ of d^-.:r.ar?:::g r.'.eri as t: 7 old at forty, 71ie Roo-l.dale picaie^rt 'I'-.'-fitr^ tie advar.ta^e of the "orrern c^jr^lolrjiiig' for the corr.rr. '.r. good hefore ':ap;tahHt= d-vo^"ere^d the ad~artage of c'jiobmir.g to exploit the p^hlio. Ca:.!tal:^Tri r.'-ay ha~e r'ayed a:!j ;'r.'portar,t par ir. social e~ol-t:or, : h~.t "ho r.h^H .^a^r, vher. "e koJ: at ^/^e rearl^J ha^o- it M.= "s-rotight ^th \r:zi.hz. iife a:Li hjappir-e?-5, ar.d ita — c-eft:' degra- darior of art, honor, ar.d rohie a-r.iratiori. that its a'':hie"rerL,eT^t h>a'^ been a '.--::.--/r.^:h:.\ ore? V'Tiat- e"er ir.oT-ro^eroei-t h^% tazerj T-'^a''--' *^ "'^e '"''Oi^^' tt ~ei:-r.e:ri' dtir:r.i' trie pa-t tT«ro :r.z.'..r-rl year:- ^i^'- beex ti-e o-'t.ne not of oapita^r-r... fcat .'atiier «>f tiie Hoaal ari. legtil rtstralLt of tr.e capitalist pc— er. PART II K.IMHUI Oh' Kl MOM DOM CELAPTER VIII THE EEWAED OF LABOR I.— SOURCES OF WEALTH It is manifest then that the landlord and capi- talist enrich themselves from the toil of the workers. Therefore it is that Socialists speak of the landlord and capitalist as the exploiters and oppressors of labor, and declare that the plight of poverty and hardship, the state of general meanness and degradation of the lives of the wage-earners and their families are the inevitable result of the evil dominion of the landlord and capitalist system. In speaking thus Socialists are not speaking wildly. The indictment, though it rings some- times with over-vehemence, and with an unphilo- sophic personal note from Socialist platforms, is, in broad terms, true and indisputable. Nevertheless, it is essential to the full and clear understanding of the Socialist position, that we should look deeper than we have yet done into the roots of wealth production, of which our million- aires are the crowning fruit. For the question presents itself — the question 65 66 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM raised by the more discerning apologists of the present system and the critics of Socialism — ^Do the landlord and capitalist derive their rents and profits wholly from the depletion (or robbery) of the wage-earners? Granted, it is said, that all, or for the most part all, economic wealth is pro- dnced through the instrumentality of the labor of the wage-workers : — granted, also, that the land- lord or capitalist does not by any individual labor of his own hands, or any exertion or skill of his own mind, produce or create the actual products from' which he derives the rent or profit which he ienjoys — ^is there no other store or fund of wealth from which his rent or profit is drawn than that which can be claimed by the workers as the un- aided produce of their own toil, and, therefore, rightfully belonging to themselves as the reward of their labor? In a word : Do the landlord and capitalist rob the worker as a worker? Are their rent and profit extracted wholly or mainly from the unpaid labor of the wage-earners? In order to answer that question clearly it is necessary for us to consider by what means wealth is actually produced. Of what elements are the products composed which constitute wealth? Commonly, we speak of three things — ^land, capital and labor — as being essential to wealth production. That is true so far as it goes, but it does not carry the analysis far enough. THE REWAED OF LABOE 67 What is meant by the word "labor" in this con- nection? Does it mean simply the "work pnt into production, singly or together, by the workers employed in the actual processes of manufacture? In quite primitive forms of production that might be so. It might be said, for example, in the case of the cave-man in the stone age chip- ping his spear-heads from the flints found near his dwelling, or in that of the present day South Sea Islander gathering with his own hands cocoa-nuts or bread-fruit from uncultivated pahn trees that the labor involved in the act of production was the single labor of the single producer: though even in these instances one traces in the skill of the cave-man chipping the flints, and in the freedom which enables the South Sea Islander to obtain his food so simply, an element belonging to tribal practice or bygone collective agency. In the highly organized and highly cultivated conditions of modern civilized life, labor, in that primitive sense, is non-existent, or if it exists, has no economic value. Not even in the simplest and most personal con- cerns of life can anyone produce, or even do, any- thing by his or her own exclusive skill and labor. Every article or tool which anyone of us handles, is the product of socially created labor, and every skilful act that anyone of us does is the product of socially created labor, or knowledge, or both. The schoolboy carving with his pocket knife a toy 68 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM boat, or hewing a cricket bat out of a piece of wood found by the wayside; the lonely crofter striking his spade into his potato patch, or casting his net into the sea, and the housewife baking or sewing in her home, are alike indebted for the material, tools, and skill which they employ to the collective industry and skill of the community. In workshops and factories, especially on a large scale, an apparently additional element enters into the composition of manufactured products. This is the momentous factor in production which is termed capital, and consists of specially ap- pointed buildings, machinery, engines, manage- ment, etc., and (though invisible perhaps to the worker's eye) the banking, commercial agencies, and general means and resources by which the or- ganization and disposal of the production of the factory is carried on. We may, therefore, discover in the composition of modem wealth production the following factors or elements: Land. — Including soil, and the timber, coal, min- erals, water, and other materials of the earth, created by nature. Manual Labob. — (1) The simple labor energy and intelligence of the individual worker, which he finds in his own body and mind. And (2) the increased effectiveness of that labor THE EEWAED OF LABOR 69 resulting from the co-operation and sub-divi- sion of tasks in the factory. Social, Organization and Cultuke. — The general knowledge, skill and invention derived from the past and present co-operation and experi- ence of the whole community. Community Labor. — The general means of com- munication and transport, making easy and safe the procuring of materials and the dis- tribution of production, partly in private and partly in public possession, such as roads, bridges, railways, shipping, water and light supply, the post and telegraphic system, etc. Capital. — i.e., the immediate implements of manu- facture in the workshop and factory, such as buildings, machinery, motive power, manage- ment, etc., and the trade agencies outside con- nected therewith. I do not claim for the above that it is a scien- tific definition or analysis of wealth production. It is a layman's definition; and I beg of Mr. J. A. Hobson and other experts in economic science, who may happen to cast their eyes upon it, to believe that it is not put forward pretentiously. I am setting it down simply as a means of getting in my own way at the substance of the process of 70 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM wealth production, so as to display what I con- ceive to be the essential, even if inextricably- blended and disproportionately mixed, elements operating in it. It may be asked why have I not included money under the heading of capital? Is not money, after all, the prime factor in capital? "Withont money how conld the buildings, machinery, etc., be pro- vided, and the wages of the workers be paid? I have not included money among the elements operating in the production of wealth, for the simple reason that money does not enter into the production of wealth of any kind. Money pro- duces nothing, except strife and misery maybe. Money is merely a means of exchange, not of goods themselves, but of the ownership of goods. It is true that under existing conditions money is required by the capitalist in order that he may procure buildings, machinery, material, etc., and pay his workpeoples' wages; but neither the money itself, nor the possession of the money, enters into or aids in the actual production of any kind of commodity or form of wealth whatever. As a means of promoting the exchange of goods, money, whether in coin or paper, cheques or pro- missory bills, is immensely serviceable, so much so that it is more than probable that so long as wealth is limited (as in many of its forms it is likely always to be) : so long, at any rate, as the bulk of wealth is not communized, money of some THE REWARD OF LABOR 71 kind will be in general use. But money itself, I repeat, is not wealth, nor does it create wealth. Nor (a scandalous omission!) have I mentioned the capitalist. For, needless here to say, capital and the capitalist (or capitalism) are quite dif- ferent and not necessarily connected things. The community cannot do without capital (as here defined), but it can do, and in many instances as in State, municipal, and industrial co-operative concerns does do, without the capitalist. The capitalist (simply as capitalist) contributes nothing contained in or produced by himself, to the material or process of wealth production. He merely uses, or permits to be used, his claims upon a certain quantity of already produced, or yet to be produced, buildings, machinery, etc., for their assemblage together in some given place and pur- pose. Every particle of the buildings, machinery, and other implements which are thus put in opera- tion by his command or consent (with the object of his obtaining a profit from their employment) has been created without his labor or skill. Whatever he does do in the way of useful direction or man- agement is independent of his function as capi- talist. Such direction and management are, as a matter of fact, performed, nowadays in almost all large and highly profitable concerns, such as mining, shipping, great engineering and textile factories, by superintendents, managers, and fore- men, who are themselves not capitalists, but em- 72 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM ployees working for salaries or wages. And, as need hardly be pointed out, the services of such managers can as readily be obtained by the com- munity itself for the nndertakings carried on solely for the public use as by capitalists for undertakings carried on for private profit making. CHAPTER IX THE REWARD OF LABOR 11— THE VALUE OF LABOR We may now consider, in the light of the fore- going chapter, what value belongs to the labor of the present-day worker or workers generally, per- formed by them in the production of wealth. Needless to say the workers ' labor plays no part in the actual production of land or the raw ma- terial derived from it. The workers, simply by means of their own individual and self-contained energy and intelli- gence (without which, it is true, no material wealth can be produced at all), contribute but a small part to the general energy and skill which they are instrumental in bringing into operation in the factory. What proportion the labor of the individual worker bears to the work and skill, which is contributed by the general social organi- zation and culture of society, it is impossible to say. THE EEWAKD OF LABOR 73 We may guess at it, perhaps, by asking our- selves the question (which is, indeed, as ridicu- lous as it sounds) — ^how many pairs of boots, how many yards of cloth, how many knives, or spades, or chairs, or watches, or electric motors, could a present day worker produce in a week, a month, or a year, working eight or nine hours a day, were he as destitute of the advantages of social co- operation and culture as was the primitive cave- man or a jungle-boy like Kipling's Mowgli, brought up from babyhood outside human society? And even if we credit to the present day Avorker the knowledge and skill which he has obtained by education and experience from civilization, how much in the way of wealth production of any kind could he produce in any given time by his own labor were he unsustained by all kinds of socially created food, clothing and shelter, and unaided by socially created means of production and trans- port — ^machinery, railways, etc.? Finally, to sum up quite categorically the result of this part of our inquiry, we may say that: 1. The labor of each worker, in a workshop or factory, by itself alone is valueless. Thus, by him- self alone, a workman in an engineering shop, a shipyard, a mine, a spinning factory, or on a rail- way, could produce nothing fit for use. 2. The labor of all the workpeople assembled in any given factory or employment, would by itself, without the labor of workpeople in other factories 74 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM or employment, be valueless — or more correctly speaking, impossible. Thus, the work of engi- neers would be impossible without the work done in the mines, the iron smelting works, and on the railways ; and would bfe valueless without the work of distributors and the other workpeople who make use of the tools and machines produced by the engineers. 3. Similarly, the labor of workpeople in any given trade, craft, or occupation, would be impos- sible and valueless, were it possible, without the labor of workpeople in other trades, crafts and occupations. Thus, the labor of turners and fitters in an engineering shop would be impossible and, were it possible, useless without the labor of the enginemen, the draughtsmen, and the pattern- makers, together with (afterwards) the labor of the carters, railwaymen, and other distributors. So also the labor of engine drivers or signalmen, or clerks, or platelayers, separately on the rail- ways would be impossible and futile without the labor of all the other trades, crafts and occupa- tions connected with the railways. This is seen whenever a strike takes place in one department of an industry : soon or late the strike if not set- tled compels a .stoppage of work in all other departments. 4. Likewise with respect to the products of labor themselves. No single product, however complete in itself, would be of any appreciable THE EEWAED OF LABOR 75 value without the use of other products, except in a comparatively few instances, such as bicycles, chairs, watches, spectacles, and the like self-suffi- cient articles. Thus, a pen is of no use without paper and ink; a needle or sewing machine with- out thread ; a locomotive without a railway track or properly constructed road ; a fire grate or pot without coal or other fuel; a candlestick without a candle, a motor-car without petrol, an electric lamp, telephone or tramcar without a dynamo and generating station. Once more, therefore, we see that without the existence of the general community, and its collec- tively created science, skill, affections, wants, and policy of life, labor and production, as we know and use them in civilized society, would be impos- sible, and even if possible (as by magic or a miracle) useless and valueless. And the right understanding of all this matter constitutes the distinction between the position and social outlook of the Socialist and that of the mere Laborist. It is with the community as with the human body. Without the separate cells, organs and parts, the body could neither have life nor exis- tence. Yet, nevertheless, all these cells, organs and parts would not, together of themselves, form a human body or create the senses, intelligence and capacity within it, without the collective or- ganization and the common life and mind which 76 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM belong not to the cells or parts, but to the primal germ and the whole existence of the body as an organism. In certain instances it doubtless may fairly be said that the capitalist does obtain a portion at least of his profits from the nnder-payment of his employees. Very likely he does so in the specially sweated industries, or where indentured coolie and Chinese labor or the like is employed, when the standard of life of the poor wretches falls, if not beneath that of the cave-man, at any rate, far below that of the free, self-employed worker of pre-capitalist days. But, broadly speaking, it is clear from our investigation that the profits of the capitalist are not derived from the spoliation of the individual worker whom he himself actually employs: hut from the spoliation of the xohole mass of the workers, not so much in their capacity as workers as in their capacity as members of the community. Not only have we found an answer to the ques- tion: "From whence does the capitalist derive his profit?" but we have found a principle which throws an important light on the question: "Is not the worker entitled to the fruits of his labor?" If by his "own labor" is meant his own labor only, our reply surely must be that he is fuUy entitled to every particle of the fruits of it. But heaven help him and civilization as weU, if THE EEWARD OF LABOR 77 he, as a citizen, as a civilized man, is entitled to, and is going to be content with no more than the fruits of his own individual labor as a worker! He is poor enough as it is, but his condition would, in most instances, be even more deplorable were he and his family to obtain in food and com- fort no more than the exact measure of what he could or what he does produce by his own unaided intelligence and strength. As things now are he, in all probability, receives twice or thrice as much as that. What the worker does not receive, and what the workers in the mass do not receive, is their share as members of the commmnity, of the socially created increment of wealth. And to that share he and they are entitled, not simply because they are workers, but because they are men, citizens, members of the brotherhood of society, or the nation. The worker is, in all truth, robbed grievously by the capitalist. But the robbery though per- petrated in the workshop, pillages him not so much, if at all, of the fruits of his own labor as a worker, but of the share that belongs to him, as a member of the brotherhood of the community, of the collective produce of the collective labor, genius and skill of the whole of society. This the capitalist does by paying him a wage which is not equivalent to the full share of the collectively pro- duced wealth to which he, as a member of the 78 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM community, is entitled, but only to a share of so much of that wealth as remains after the capitalist has considerably depleted the store by his rent and profit. And in fighting, as the worker is now beginning to do (chiefly as the result of a better understand- ing of his own and his fellows' plight, and of the hope of deliverance from it, which he has gained from Socialist teaching) he is fighting, not really, as he imagines he is doing, for the mere fruits of his own labor, as a wage-earner, but for the com- mon fruits of social co-operation, progress and civilization which are his own and his fellows' heritage and right as members of the common- wealth. CHAPTER X THE REWARD OF LABOR III.— WAGES: FALSE AND TRUE But the stage of Socialism, or perhaps I should say Communism, requisite for the realization of ideal conditions of wealth distribution, is not likely to be reached until Socialism has evolved a considerable change in the character and habits of the generality of men and women. Before that high stage of social equality is reached society will doubtless have to pass through many inter- THE REWARD OF LABOR 79 mediate stages, during which labor in different trades and of different qualities will possess a different exchange value or price. Highly skilled workers, and workers possessing greater strength and fitness than the average of their fellows, will for some time yet command higher wages or salaries than the general run of workers. It is hut right also to say that many Socialists, while not denying the possibility of the realization of complete social equality, do not, in speaking of Socialism, speak of a system in which work and wage distinctions will have ceased altogether to exist. "We shall proceed, therefore, to consider briefly, for that is all we need attempt to do at this stage, the practical application to transitionary stages of Socialism, of the general principle respecting the wages of labor arrived at in the two preceding chapters. How important it is that we should possess a right understanding on the subject of wages, and have a grasp of true Socialist principle to guide us in present day industrial trou'bles is manifest on every occasion of a wage dispute. Rarely does one hear, either from the em- ployers' side or the workpeople's, an argument or plea which is not wholly opportunist in character and does not bristle with economic fallacies. More rarely still does one hear a speech from a strike platform, unless the speaker happens to be a 80 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Socialist emancipated from the narrower dogmas of his creed, in which the claims of the strikers are based on a clear conception of the true posi- tion and claims of the worker in relation to the general commonwealth. The following letter addressed to me a few years ago in the Labour Leader, and replied to at the time, is an example of the misconception of which I speak, and provides a suitable text for the application of the principles I have been set- ting forth: — Sir, — Will you kindly answer the following question, if rele- vant, in the correspondence column of the Leader? Socialism says labor creates wealth, and that the laborer is entitled to the product of his labor. Now, I am a laborer in a law office, and my master dictates on an average ten letters a day, and I write them, for which he gets 5s. each — that is iZ 10s. for the lot. Will a Socialist say I am entitled to the £2 10s., or, if not the whole, how much? — Thanking you in an- ticipation, yours respectfully, C. B. McK. We shall resist the temptation to discuss whether or not either lawyers or lawyers' clerks would be necessary among us had we attained to a state of society in which social justice, not merely with respect to wages, but all other condi- tions of life was established. "We shall take "C. B. McK.'s" case as he puts it, and assume (grudgingly perhaps) that both he and his em- ployer represent useful forms of service to the community. THE REWARD OF LABOR 81 Now, in the first place, it should be observed that "C. B. MeK." overlooks an important item in stating his case. He assumes, virtually, that the letters which he writes from his employer's dictation are the products of his (the clerk's) labor. That is self-evidently not the fact. The letters are the joint production of himself and the lawyer; and, as things go, the lawyer's part in them is the more valuable part. It is the legal advice contained in, or supposed to be contained in, the letters, not the manual labor of merely writing them out, which gives them their present price value. Without the legal advice which the lawyer dictates the letters would have no value at all, no matter how much labor "C. B. McK." put into them. It is obvious, therefore, that "C. B. McK." cannot claim that he is entitled to the price obtained for the letters as the reward due to his own labor alone. What, then, is the product of real social value of "C. B. McK.'s" labor in writing out the letters referred to, assuming the letters are useful? It is impossible to say. The advice given in them is not his. The paper, pen and ink, the office, gas and coal which he uses are not his, nor were they made by his employer, who nominally provides them. "C. B. McK." and his employer also use food, clothes, education, and a thousand other things which are the product of the labor 82 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM of countless generations of workers with hand and brain. There is, in truth, as we have already shown and said, no means known under heaven, whereby we can tell now, or to all eternity, what the exact product or social value of any person's labor is as a separate item. No man's labor can be weighed and valued as a thing by itself. As well attempt to say what is the labor value of any one living cell in the human body as against that of all the other cells. Without the co-operation of the other cells no single cell would be of any use or value in the body at all. We do not, in fact, attempt to estimate the value of anyone's labor. What we do is to estimate the price of obtaining a man to perform that labor. What is that price ? That price is determined by the law of supply and demand under capitalist monopoly and competition. If there are many clerks competent to write letters from dictation (as there indeed are), the price will be low. If there are few, the price will be high. Similarly, if there were many competent lawyers and very few clerks, and especially if lawyers were quite incapable of writing letters themselves, then the price of lawyers would be low, and the price of clerks high. It is, therefore (allowing for education and skill, legal or Trade Union restriction of admission to professions and trades), the quantity of men in THE REWARD OF LABOR 83 the market who are capable of doing any required labor that decides the price that will be paid for their services. The actual value of the labor it- self is not considered in the price at all. Price is merely the ratio at which the products of labor exchange with one another, and that price in regard to things in ordinary use is decided not by the social value of the thing exchanged, but by the market price of the workers and merchants, with- out whom the things cannot at present be obtained. We must turn now from the lawyer's clerk's query to the larger question: What will deter- mine the standard of wages during the period of Socialist transition? As Socialism advances the law of supply and demand, while still continuing to operate, will, we cannot doubt, do so in an ever lessening degree ; but so long as that law does operate the rates of wages will remain subject to its influence. But many new laws, economic and political, will, as time goes on, intervene to modify the effects of supply and demand. Among these will be: 1. The establishment of minimum or "living" wages in all State and municipal and, perhaps, in all private employment. 2. The equalization of skill and ability as the result of education, improved physical and mental powers, and social opportunities. 3. The increased competition in intellectual 84 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM spheres of labor following from the foregoing, tending, eventually, as Bernard Shaw has pnt it, greatly to enhance the price of manual labor, so that probably artists, actors, editors, doctors, and lawyers and scientific men will be easier to get and be paid less than the bricklayers and miners. 4. The growing socialization of the people which will tend to make them less desirous of possessing wealth above their fellows, and to make them more glad to engage at less pay in public services for all than at higher pay in serving masters or rich customers. 5. And, above all, the general increase of com- munal wealth, such as "free" water, electricity, trams, railways, medical service, meals for school children, old-age pensions, the endowment of motherhood, and all other additions to the means of collective well-being. These in time will begin to dwarf completely the importance and need of things which wages, high or low, will enable the people to obtain. Perhaps the most important — ^because it is the one likely to penetrate most deeply and most potently into the social structure — of all the remedial changes indicated above, is that of the endowment of motherhood. If adequately ac- complished this provision will liberate, almost at one stroke, not merely mothers themselves, but the family group from the most grievous anxiety THE EEWAED OF LABOR 85 and most baneful oppression of the existing wage system. But if, as I hope, the aim of human progress is to make society a real civilization; if the prophecies of ages are to be fulfilled, and this planet of ours is ever to become something like a heaven upon earth, assuredly there can be no halt- ing until the wage system is completely swept away. Then shall every man and woman, whether they work as producers of wealth which possesses market value; or whether, as in the case of mothers, nurses and teachers, their work is of a nature that brings forth no ponderable wealth at all, but nevertheless serves for the sustenance and life of the nation; or whether, as in the case of children, the weak, the disabled and the infirm old, they are unable to work or serve their fellows in any material way at all — then, I repeat, shall every man, woman and cliild in the community, what- ever be his or her work or inability to work, be entitled to share equally and fully in all the means of life and happiness of the commonwealth, so long as they are deemed fit to be allowed to live in the community at all. And that is the only final solution of the Labor problem. It is the only true Socialist answer to the question of what are the wages Avhich now or hereafter the worker is entitled to receive. And that, moreover, is a prime Socialist pre- scription which not only denies the arrogant 86 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM assumption on the part of capitalists to the right to oppress the workers and plunder and intimi- date society, bnt which also denies and rebukes the pretensions of workers as individuals or sec- tions to overawe or penalize other sections of workers, or the general community, in asserting for themselves (as happily they rarely do) claims or privileges which could not be equally claimed and enjoyed by all sections of the workers and all members of the nation. CHAPTER XI THE REWARD OF GENIUS I.— GENIUS AND SOCIETY The question of the reward of genius is one which excites great interest in connection with Socialist discussion. Workmen, even of the most poorly rewarded class, who mil oftentimes turn away impatiently from discussions upon their own economic position, will usually listen spellbound Avhen the subject relates to the position and reward of men of genius. This intense sympathy with genius is a wholesome sign. It is an indica- tion of the idealism which grows deep down in the hearts of the people — an idealism in which they discern, however dimly, the truth that mere work and wealth are not all-sufficing things for man. Thus, even amongst those who have had the REWARD OF GENIUS 87; hardest lives there upwells an emotion of love for whatever helps to give beauty and honor to the purposes of life. The opponents of Socialism are alive to the value of this sentiment, and seek to put it to account in the defence of capitalism. So, when- ever the injustice of the inequality of rich and poor is pressed hard upon them, they exclaim: What! shall genius have no reward? Is there to be a dull, dead level? Are the great thiiikers, the great inventors, the men of extraordinary ability, to have no incentive to excel their fellows ? Must a Shakespeare, a Newton, a James Watt, be no better paid than the dullest and laziest of his fellows? Now we may reply to this objection by asking how, as a matter of history, the great thinkers and doers of ancient and modern days have been rewarded? Is it not a fact that many of the most wonderfully gifted men the world has known were allowed to live and die in poverty? Have we not seen, on the other hand, how one single modern capitalist, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, may pile up a fortune that vastly exceeds in amount all the re- ward in gold which the greatest prophets, poets, painters, philosophers, inventors, and heroes have altogether received since the world began? It is, as we shall presently see, one of the chief injus- tices of capitalism that it makes no provision for the reward of genius at all. 88 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM And let us in passing also note that whatever the claims of genius to reward may be, the capi- talist, as such, need have no genius at all, except it be the genius for beggaring one's neighbor— a species of ability which in simpler and perhaps more honest days brought many an enterprising rogue to the gallows. But the subject of genius and its reward is so interesting in itself, and affords such a convinc- ing test of the validity of our Socialist principles, that I propose to discuss it on its own merits, though indeed it is but a particular aspect of the general subject of wealth and wages, which has been the theme of our three preceding chapters. And if the discussion leads us, as indeed it must do, over ground, past and present, already fre- quently traversed in these pages, it will, I hope, do so by fresh and instructive paths. We shall first consider what the origin and con- ditions of Genius are. And that we can perhaps best do by my laying down in the form of three affirmations or postulates the main thesis of my argument. I. The first postulate is, that Genius is not self- acquired by the individual possessing it. Genius comes to him with his birth, and whatever be its primal source, is derived by him, and can only be developed in him, through society. It is, in- its manifestations at least, a product of social evolu- EEWARD OF GENIUS 89 tion. Man is himself created by society;* all his human powers, his speech, his erectness of stature, the shape and capacity of his head, fingers, and limbs, are the results of long genera- tions of social co-operation. Genins, and all su- periority of mind and body, are derived from, or only come into manifestation through the special race or stock and social conditions to which the man of genius belongs. In other words, the man of genius does not create his genius. He does not create himself. He has had absolutely no say as to his own mak- ing; no choice as to when, or where, or how he should be made. He has not even had the selec- tion of his parents — a most serious deprivation from an individualist standpoint, as it very largely depends upon who our parents are who we our- selves shall be. The fact that a man is born with the capacity to be clever or stupid is no more a * See note at end of Chapter I. I may, however, to prevent misconception, repeat that the statement that "society creates man" must not be regarded as opposed to the belief held by a vast number of religious and philosophical minds, that man's evolution and the evolution of society itself are but the unfold- ment of the spiritual power (Plato's divine idea) within him. What is affirmed above is that whatever be the nature of the soul, or the primal essence of mind or life in man, it is only through the existence and agency of society that man (or his physical and mental faculties) as we know him has evolved from the brute to the human or civilized man. Without society, man, be his inherent spiritual capacity or his final destiny what it may, would remain in his paleolithic stage of mental and emo- tional development 90 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM merit or demerit on Ms part than the fact that he is born dark of fair, strong or weak, handsome or ngly. Grenins of certain kinds is more frequently dis- played among some races or peoples than among others. Thus the ancient Greeks gave the world poets, philosophers, and sculptors, who have never been excelled. Mediaeval Italy gave ns great painters; while modern Germany has given us great composers ; and Britain and America great inventors. In nations where art, poetry, science, and invention have not been cultivated through many generations, great artists, poets, scientists, or inventors rarely, if ever, arise. No Plato, Kepler, or Holbein, for example, has ever been discovered among the Congo negroes, or the Es- quimaux of Kamschatka, nor has an Angelieo, a Mozart, or a Kelvin yet made his appearance in Turkey, Morocco, or Paraguay. These facts prove that genius is not self-created, but is derived from certain qualities of race and social organization inherited through parentage. That being so, we are entitled, no matter how high our admiration for genius may be, to say that the man of genius is as much indebted to society for the creation of his genius as society may be to him for anything which he in turn may create. II. My second postulate is that society educates and shapes genius, and gives to it whatever means it possesses of expressing itself at all. REWARD OF GENIUS 91 Consider what would become of genius were it not for the knowledge, skill, science, art, materials and tools which society provides ! But for these, genius would perish as a flower deprived of soil, sunshine, and rain. The child born Avith poetic genius, but without the language, the traditions of romance and song which society preserves would never become a poet. The child born with artistic genius, but never seeing any art, and never having instruction or even the use of pencils, colors, or paper, would never become a painter. And so likewise the child born with inventive genius, did he never obtain knowledge of science, never see any mechanical operation, and never have tools or manufactured material given him, would never become an inventor. Were it conceivable that a Dante, a Victor Hugo, or a Burne-Jones could be bom among the aborigines of Australia or the ryots of India, it is inconceivable that he would ever become a Dante, a Victor Hugo, or a Bume-Jones. We have only to read the lives of these and other men of genius to see how every turn of their minds and achieve- ment of their hands was determined by the cir- cumstances and events of the civilization around them. Genius may, therefore, be regarded as the rarer blossomings on the historical stems or branches of intellectual culture. So that we may say that had there been no Phidias and ApeUes there would 92 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM have been no Michael Angelo or Eaphael, or Van Eyck or G. F. Watts; had there been no EuoHd and Archimedes, there would have been no Coper- nicus, Newton, or Faraday; and had there been no Homer and Aeschylus there would have been no Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, or William Morris. m. The third postulate is that society bestows upon the works of genius whatever economic value these works possess. This proposition is self -evidently true. Were it not for society, there would be no work- men capable of making, and no workmen capable of using, the steam plough, steam engine, power loom, or any other invention. Were it not for society, there would be no people capable of under- standing or appreciating books, pictures, science, or great works of any kind. Were it not for society, men of genius would have no time or opportunity for poetry, art, philos- opsy, or science; they would be obliged to give their whole energies, like primitive man, to finding food and shelter to keep themselves alive. Were it not for society, there would be no accu- mulated wealth, and, therefore, nothing whatever to give authors and inventors in exchange for their works. Therefore, whatever ''exchange value" the pro- ducts of genius may have under existing condi- tions is a value created by society. Works of REWARD OF GENIUS 93 genius would have no exchange value if there were nobody who esteemed them of value. These are my three propositions. They bring into view the social origin, power, and value of genius. They divest genius of every individual- istic pretension. They show that genius is but as the visible stream flashing down the mountain side, wherein are gathered the rains and dews col- lected on every pebble and leaf, from the dim sum- mit high in the clouds down to the far shimmering valleys below. In this respect, genius typifies, as we have al- ready seen, aU degrees of ability and all kinds of manual labor. Behold the peasant who cultivates his own land. He toils in the field even as did his primitive ancestor. He tills the soil, sows the seed, and swings his scythe into the crops. As the golden grain falls joyously from his scythe, see, we ex- claim, what abundance this one man's labor has brought forth! He has prepared the soil in the winter, he has sown the seed in the spring, and now in the summer he reaps the harvest — ^the fruits of his own unaided toil. His own unaided toil! How thoughtlessly and ungratefully we speak! The worker in the field reaps much more than the fruits of his own toil. He reaps the fruits of the labor and experience of all the generations of husbandmen and craftsmen since the world began. 94 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM His spade, his plougli, Ms scythe — he did not make these. No living man has made them. They have grown up and taken shape in men's hands from century to century. Two thousand years ago there were no steel spades, or ploughs, or scythes — there were only crooked spears and tree-trunks cleft into rude ploughshares, and clumsy reaping hooks. Only out of infinite experience and adap- tation have the finely-shaped and efficient agri- cultural implements of our day been designed, and only by the labor of miners, engineers, wood- men, and carpenters, are these tools made and provided for the farmer's use. So, too, with the crops themselves. There was a time when the utmost skill and labor could bring forth no rich crops. There was a time when no fields of tall-stemmed, many-eared corn awaited the harvester, in Egypt or elsewhere; when no edible potatoes or cultivated vegetables of any kind could be found on the face of the globe. It has taken many thousands of years of stubborn toil and dearly-won knowledge of plants, and soils and seasons, to produce the generously yielding crops and fruits which grow in our fields and gar- dens to-day. And this saying might be repeated with respect to the domestication and breeding of the horse, the cow, the sheep, the poultry, and all other creatures useful to man. Thus we see that the farmer of our day, when he reaps his fields and rears his stock, has co- REWARD OF GENIUS 95 operating with him the labor and skill not only of the workmen in the fields and cities around him, but also that of millions of workers whose dust has long been mingled with the motdd of his fields. And what is true of the farmer is similarly true of the carpenter, the ironworker, the weaver, the author, and inventor, and all workers by hand or brain. There is not a building, a machine, a pic- ture, a book, or a piece of music produced in our midst to-day but has stored within it in some measure the genius, the experience, and the toil accumulating from age to age in the human race since the very dawn of human intelligence. Like the human body, civilization constantly renews its substance as it grows, and acquires higher powers. Not all the genius or wealth then existing in the world could have provided Solomon or Alfred the Great with the electric light, the railway service, the steamships, the aeroplanes, the newspapers, the surgical sMU, or any of the innumerable mod- ern wonders of science and invention which even the humblest woi'ker of our day may enjoy* CHAPTER Xn THE KEWARD OF GENIUS II.— GENIUS AND POTS OF GOLD I HAVE, I hope, brought clearly into view the social descent of genius, and its brotherhood with 96 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM aU degrees of skill and labor. "With genius thus revealed in its full human significance, we are now in a position to consider how genius should be rewarded. And first let us make sure that we realize how genius is dealt with as an economic factor to-day, for unless we keep before us the position of genius under capitalism we shall argue in vain as to whether genius will be better or worse off under Socialism. Mr. Mallock, the ex-Kaiser of Germany, and other more or less distinguished apologists of capitalism, have alleged that Social- ism would deprive genius of its stimulus by deny- ing it due recompense in coin of the realm, We shall see if this be true. How is genius rewarded with wealth to-day? The reply to that question is a startlingly simple one. To-day genius as such is not re- warded at all. There is no legal, no religious, no moral guarantee of recompense to genius. There is no obligation whatever on the part of the State or of you or me, or anyone, to provide genius with even a penny or a crust of bread in reward for anything genius may achieve. If you or I were to write a most wonderful book, paint one of the greatest pictures, or invent a most useful machine, there is nobody in all the world who is bound either to buy our work or pay us a farthing for having produced it. When an author, painter, or inventor produces REWAED OF GENIUS 97 a woi'k, he has to endeavor, like any fishwife or huckster, to sell it in the market. He may make a good bargain, and obtain a handsome price for it — especially if he can, like an enterprising manu- facturer, get his reputation advertised; he may make a poor bargain and get less than a laborer's wage for the mere time spent upon it ; or he may get nobody to buy it — the most likely occurrences of all if the work possesses highly original merit, or if its main idea is in advance of the times. Ruskin has assured us that really great artists have little or no chance of selling their pictures until their lives are worn out, unless they have influential friends, or themselves possess a keen commercial faculty — a faculty that has no relation to artistic genius. Few of the great men of genius in modern times have made as much by their works as the common- place la^w^^ers, merchants, or courtiers of their day. It was not as an author, but as a business manager, that Shakespeare compiled his little for- tune. Sir Isaac Newton — the greatest name in modern science — ^made practically nothing by his writings and discoveries, and only received a Gov- ernment sinecure towards the close of his days at the solicitation of influential friends. Wagner, the great composer, was rescued from a pre- carious existence by the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria — and owed to this mad king the oppor- tunity of eventually placing his works before the 98 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM world. But mad kings are an uncertain provi- dence. Millet, the French painter, one of whose pictures was bought many years after his death for $125,000, did not receive a fourth of that sum during his lifetime for all his paintings. The history of genius is, indeed, largely one of tragedy — of brilliant and sensitive spirits struggling against poverty and discouragement, enduring constant humiliation, and often hurried to the end broken in body and mind. The lives of the composers, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Berlioz were made wretched and cut short by the hardship of their struggle for bread, as were also the lives of the painters, Masaccio, Watteau, Barry, and many others. Mozart's works brought him applause and fame but little remuneration, and he died in poverty, was buried as a common pauper, and his grave is unknown. Eembrandt, though his masterpieces were highly appreciated while he lived, died in misery and neglect. Columbus, whose great dis- coveries were famed over Europe, and Camoens, the national poet of Portugal, also died in pov- erty and obscurity. The fates of Tasso, Otway, Chatterton, and Burns are proverbial. Blake's poetry and designs were little known or heeded in his own day, though he reached a ripe age; and he and his wife lived in a single room in humble circumstances, but he despised money-making, and rejoiced in his spiritual vision and hope, and was REWARD OF GENIUS 99 not unhappy. Milton received altogether only $75 for his ' ' Paradise Lost. ' ' Neither Shelley nor Keats obtained any money from the publication of their poems; and Wordsworth declared in his old age that for many years poetry had not brought him in "enough to buy his shoe laces." Industrial invention, one might have supposed, would prove a particularly fortunate sphere for genius. Here, if anywhere, the enlightened self- interest of capitalism had an opportunity of play- ing the part of fairy godmother to genius. Labor- saving inventions, unlike poetry, paintings, and music, are productive of marketable commodities. Yet in no other domain of creative skill and in- dustry has genius been so heartlessly and sys- tematically (so one might almost say) ill-requited, plagiarized and defrauded. The pages of in- dustrial history teem with instances of inventors who have gone to the grave humiliated and de- spoiled. Richard Roberts, of Manchester, whose numerous inventions enormously developed engi- neering manufacture, died a poor man. Henry Cort, whose inventions, Samuel Smiles tells us, made gigantic fortunes for ironmasters, never received a shilling of royalty for any of them, and was only saved from dying in destitution by a pension from the Government. And what student of science and mechanics is not familiar with in- stances within quite recent experience of in- 100 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM ventors and investigators who have received little or no reward for their valuable discoveries? How often, too, has the inventor to suffer the morti- fication of seeing his inventions evilly misused for the disservice rather than employed for the benefit of mankind? How then under Socialism will genius be rewarded ? And by Socialism must here be understood com- plete Socialism, wherein all the essential means of wealth will be collectively owned, and no one will work merely to enrich himself, but all will work for the commonweal and the commonweal will be for all. In this way everyone will receive the fullest measure of wealth and freedom that society can bestow. That under such a system enough and abun- dance will be provided for all, hardly needs argu- ment. Even as things are to-day there is wealth enough produced to amply supply everyone were it rightly distributed, notwithstanding the ter- rible waste resulting from competition, unemploy- ment of rich and poor, unproductive work of all kind, and expenditure on armies, navies, and other destructive services. That being so, it is evident surely that under a system in which there was complete co-operation and production for use, and where everyone would take part in the duties of the State, more than enough could easily be pro- duced to satisfy plentifully the needs of everyone, EEWARD OF GENIUS 101 old and young, strong and weak, capable and in- capable. Wealth for public and private use would abound. When therefore everyone has enough, what more than that shall we give to men of genius ? The notion that genius is entitled to be re- warded with pots of gold or with extra beefsteaks at dinner, or with palaces and flunkeys, is a notion which betrays the barbarism which still clings to our minds and social customs. It is obvious, of course, that under existing conditions, in which no one has any means of living except what labor of his own he can sell, or what labor of others he can steal, the man of genius, like everybody else, is justified in seeking to get the most he can for his works. Socialism would, however, heaven be thanked, expurge that horrible thieves' market custom from civilized life. Besides, what need has genius for special re- ward? Does the man of genius require greater provision for the health and happiness of him- self and his family than does his less accomplished brother, who sweats in the mine and the factory? Does he require more food or better clothing? Surely not. True, the great composer, Handel, used to order dinners for two when he dined by himself, and was in the habit, it is said, of regal- ing himself with good wine while giving his guests inferior liquor; but Handel was as exceptional in his appetite as in his musical capacity. Byron 102 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM was a very small eater; and Edison, the great American inventor, takes, he tells ns, less than half the quantity of food usually consumed by other men. As a rule, too, men of genius have been sublimely careless in the matter of dress. Shelley occasionally went about without any cloth- ing at all. But whatever his taste may be, the man of genius cannot sleep in two beds at a time, nor travel in two trains at once. And what else would the giving of extra money or wealth to men or women of superior ability mean in a Socialist community but the bestowing upon them of superfluities which would cloy and' encumber their own lives while imposing extra toil upon the lives of their fellows? What else indeed do riches accomplish to-day? The rich can mul- tiply around them the outward means of comfort and pleasure, but they cannot apply to their own use more than a portion of their abundance. They cannot multiply their limbs or their senses. They cannot add a minute to the length of the hours of their day. Palaces are more fatal to genius than prisons. Earely or never has any great work of art or invention come out of them. It was not because Kobert Burns was without a lord's income that his life was made memorably sad, but because the hard conditions and tempta- tions of his task of winning bread broke him down, Sir Walter Scott, more fortunate, had a EEWARD OF GENIUS 103 palace built for himself, but he only used one or two rooms in it, and his straining to make money to build it and purchase a landed estate eventuated in a misfortune that shadowed the light of his career. The majority of great thinkers and workers in the world, even when they have owned considerable wealth, have themselves lived very simply. Our answer then to the question. What reward wiU genius have under Socialism? — is, That genius, like virtue, will be its own exceeding great reward. And there never has been and never will be any other right reward for genius than that. The joy of discovering or of creating new things, the joy of affording new joy to others — that is the supreme happiness and reward of genius. Like love, like faith, like heroism, like life itself, genius can have no other recompense than the pleasure of fulfilling itself. Socialism will afford genius opportunities of growth and achievement such as the greatest riches have never been able to give. Genius which under such conditions would demand to be bribed with moneybags and the selfish mono- poly of others' labor is genius which the world can well afford to do without. True genius, indeed, has never sought any other reward than the joy of fully and freely using its powers. What other reward than this had the great Greek philosophers, poets, heroes and athletes? 104 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM "Was not the simple crown of bay leaves, the ap- plause of the people, or the acceptance of their works the highest expression of gratitude that they hoped to obtain ? What other reward did the innumerable monks and craftsmen of the middle ages seek who built the magnificent cathedrals and filled them with every device of art and praise that their hearts and minds could invent? What other reward had the countless unknown poets and musicians whose songs and tunes have be- dewed with joy the hearts of lovers, and soldiers, and workpeople down through thousands of sum- mer and winter nights and days? Was it for money that Milton wrote his "Paradise Lost," that Burns wrote his "Tarn o*^ Shanter" and "Mary Morrison," that Sir Isaac Newton wrote his "Principia," or that Gr. F. Watts painted his great pictures which he gave to the nation as a free gift? Sir Humphrey Davy, the inventor of the safety lamp which has been the means of saving the lives of thousands of miners, gave the invention free to the nation, though he could have made a fortune by patenting it. Bertholet, the famous French chemist, though receiving only a small salary from his professorship, refused to accept any payment for his discoveries which benefited French in- dustry to the value of many millions of pounds. Scheele, the renowned Swedish chemist, was simi- larly nobly-minded, and sought no reward for his REWARD OF GENIUS 105 great discoveries which did so much to advance chemical science and to improve chemical pro- cesses of manufacture. The poet or painter (as Ruskin, I think, said) who would not, while in prison and fed on bread and water, write verses or make designs, though he could publish them no further than prison walls, is no real poet or painter at all. Many famous works were, as we know, written in prison when the writers had little expectation of ever seeing them published. Cervantes wrote the first part of "Don Quixote" in prison, as did also Sir Walter Raleigh his "History of the World," Cam- panella his "City of the Sun," Lovelace his beau- tiful "Lucasta" lyrics, Bunyan his "Pilgrim's Progress," and Voltaire the first part of his "Henriade." Ernest Jones, the Chartist poet, wrote his poem, "The Revolt of Hindustan," when in solitary confinement in gaol, where, hav- ing no ink, he used instead, it is said, blood drawn from his own arm. Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi, and other great Italian painters who were monks painted their pictures without thought or possibility of accepting any payment for their work. Correggio when a lad, but already mar- vellous with his brush, begged a rich nobleman to give him only food and colors and he would cover his stateroom with pictures. Genius will out and assert itself in the face of poverty, or unpopularity, or of persecution, if only 106 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM it has a chance to come to life at all. So far from asking for or being in need of the inducement of premiums or prizes, true genius, once it realizes its powers, will strive to exercise them, in spite of almost overwhelming discouragement. Like love, like strong religious faith, genius, if it hut fledge its wings, will seek flight in the face of all ob- stacles, though it break its wings dashing against cage or prison bars. Our chief indictment against existing social con- ditions with respect to genius is not so much that genius, when it manifests itself, is so often dis- couraged and repressed, especially if it takes new or unfamiliar paths. That truly is a serious enough matter. But Avhat is far more serious is that under existing conditions genius, or variety of natural talent, must in countless instances be blighted while yet only in the germ, and thus never have an opportunity of coming into bud or mani- festing itself at all. Who can say how many men and women now doomed to a life of dull toil in factories might have displayed high gifts of mind had those gifts but had a fair chance of growth and of unfolding themselves in childhood? Therein lies one of the deepest wrongs of present-day society. Socialism will not starve, or curse, or imprison genius. It will nourish it and set it free. It will be to genius as sunshine and warmth and refresh- ing shoAvers are to the woods and fields — ^bring- EEWAED OF GENIUS 107 ing it forth, sustaining it, and providing it with a world in which it can unfold its glowing hues. Let none, therefore, be afraid of Socialism lest it should destroy or discourage genius. Socialism comes to deliver genius. It comes to endow men and women with new capacities and opportunities for creating beauty and gladness. Capitalism cannot do this. Capitalism has never inspired any exquisite creation or noble deed. Genius and valor and generosity are of the diviner spirit in man — they cannot be bought with gold; they spring, as I have said, as a fountain from the social well of life in the race. And so long as chil- dren with eager fingers and creative fancy play at our feet, and the mother sings to the baby on her knee, and the lover has song in his heart for his lass — so long, indeed, as the skylark fills the morn- ing with melody and the flowers spread their glory to the sun — there will be abundance of genius and art and song and invention under Socialism. CHAPTER XIII FREEDOM AND VARIETY OP WORK Important and necessary as are many of the measures which are put forward as a present day means towards socialism, and although for con- venience sake we may call them socialist measures, 108 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM it must not be supposed that they represent the policy of life which would prevail were socialism in anything like a complete form attained. Many of them indeed, are of a nature which would, I am convinced, be unendurable in a socialist com- munity. Nor do I doubt that the circumstance that these proposals figure so prominently in political discussions, as though they were of the very essence af Socialism, has done much to turn many thoughtful and imaginative minds against Socialism altogether. The measures of which I here speak are those which seem to imply that Socialism will consist largely of rules forbidding or restricting freedom of personal taste or choice of work and mode of living, and that life generally will be regulated on a "mass" or regimental system — a herding of the people in barracks and the like, with little or no privacy of life. Typical of such measures are those for enacting a universal eight-hours working day, the public feeding of school children, and the compulsory attendance at school or college of all boys and girls under 16 or maybe 18 years of age. But are not these measures integral parts of all Socialist political programmes? — it will be asked. In truth they are. There was no choice but to put them there. They are necessary steps out of the bondage of capitalism into the freedom of Socialism. But they are not of themselves FEEEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 109 Socialism, nor do they form part of the permanent elements of Socialist policy. They are not Socialism: they are merely hos- pital or ambulance measures designed to bind up the wounds and heal maybe some of the worst sores of the capitalist system, and so sustain the people through the period of transition from capi- talism to socialism. But we should bear clearly in mind that , State interference with the oppression and results of capitalism is not Socialism. Let us consider, for example, the eight hours proposal. The demand for the reduction of the hours of labor to eight hours or less a day was put forward by Socialists as a necessary means of liberating the workers from hours of toil which at the period when the Socialist agitation began (1883) generally ranged from 10 to 12 hours a day, and sometimes to 14 or more hours a day. The establishment by law of a minimum eight- hours day was necessary, Socialists declared, not only to release the workers from the overstrain of these long hours and to afford them more leisure and rest, but in order to absorb where possible unemployed labor, and at the same time break in some degree the capitalist power of so-called "free contract" over the wage-enslaved workers. But under any right social order, work will not be carried on for an undue period of hours ; nor will it be regarded as a penalty, as a thing to be 110 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM got rid of, if possible, altogether. Work will, I hope, be looked upon instead by the generality of healthy men and women, as it often was in pre- capitalist days of our history, and as it is to-day looked upon by the few luckier people who have work to do congenial to their taste and free from the terrorism of employers, not as a hardship, but as an enjoyment. So far from desiring to be rid of work, even arduous work, except such as is mechanically monotonous or dangerous to health or limb, they will to a great extent make it a means of recreation. For were work as it might be, as William Morris, the greatest craftsman of his day, so constantly insisted it ought always to be : work (1) worth doing, (2) not exhausting, (3) varied in nature, and (4) carried on under pleas- ant conditions and surroundings, it would be in- deed one of the great pleasures of life. While, therefore, the fixed hours of work required for the needs of the community as a whole might be no more than four hours a day or less (as might, indeed, be the case to-day, despite the wasteful- ness of so much of it)* the majority of citizens would wish to employ a large part of their leisure ♦William Hoyle, a well-known Lancashire manufacturer and reformer (but not a Socialist) calculated in his book, "Our National Resources," published in 1882, that not more than VA hours work a day would be necessary for each person were every able-bodied person to share equitably in the work, and were demonstrably useless and wasteful work eliminated from our industrial system. FEEEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 111 time in pursuing crafts and occupations pleas- ing to their tastes, thus working maybe not four hours, but, if they wished, nearer fourteen hours a day. For, I repeat, once work is freed from capitalist exploitation and tyranny, and the workers no longer work for the enrichment) of the capitalist and their own enslavement, but for themselves, their fellow citizens and the commonwealth; once men know that by working beyond a given span of hours they will not be excluding other men from jobs or wages; once work is made not a misery but a pleasure — ^will not both men and women, think you, be eager to work freely and without regard to length of hours for the enjoy- ment of exercising their strength and skill and adding to their own comfort and as a free gift to the commonwealth? Will they not wish to give a considerable part of their leisure hours to their gardens, to rebuilding, decorating and furnishing their homes, to building public halls for art and science, to working in municipal craft-workshops and scientific laboratories, or to getting up con- certs, plays and other means of education and entertainment? For you do not, I hope, really believe that the citizens in a Socialist community will want to spend one half of the day doing nothing except engaging in idle chatter, loafing at street corners, or watching other people make themselves happy by exercising their energies 112 THE MEANING- OF SOCIALISM and abilities at games and other performances — as, alas, so many people do to-day, knowing no better how to pass the time? Hear "William Morris speak on this point: And I may say that as to that leisure, as I should in no case do any harm with it, so I should wish often to do some direct good to the community with it by prac- tising arts or occupations for my hands and brain, which would give pleasure to many citizens ; in other words, a great deal of the best work done would be done in the leisure time of men relieved from any anxiety as to their livelihood, and eager to exercise their special talent as all men, nay all animals are.* Socialism comes not, therefore, to restrict or repress men and women in the wholesome exer- cise of their energies and freedom. It comes to liberate them, and to afford them such scope as never yet has been for the growth and use of their bodily and mental powers. It is rarely the amount of work that exhausts the strength or injures the health. It is the mono- tony or pace of it; it is the poison of the spirit and body that comes from the worry and injustice of having to work all day, and day after day, at the same dull task, which, even when not in itself unhealthy or over laborious, is often wholly mechanical, uninteresting and unnecessary. But with due changes of occupation, and with work made interesting, as in most instances it might be, * "Signs of Change" lecture on "How We Live and How We Might Live." FEEEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 113 by its obvious usefulness, and by its affording the worker a means of self-expression — ^how different it all would be. It was this variety of occupation which helped to make life in the olden time so often pleasurable, despite the many grievous bur- dens which the workers had to endure. It was by changing from one kind of craft or piece of work to another after a reasonable spell of work at each, thus bringing into play fresh thoughts and energies, that the great master craftsmen of history were able to exercise their great gifts and to accomplish their marvellous achieve- ments. Leonardo da Vinci was at once a great painter, sculptor, craftsman, engineer, natural philos- opher, anatomist, musician, poet and states- man. Our own William Morris, who, as Theodore Watts Dunton said, accomplished the work of six men of genius in his day and, as his doctor said, expended the energy of ten ordinary men, did so by turning, as need or inclination demanded, to writing poetry, designing and making tapestries and furniture, painting stained glass windows, dyeing beautiful fabrics, printing beautiful books, writing essays and romances, doing gardening work and preaching Socialism at indoor and out- door meetings. Morris' own testimony on the subject of variety of work of which he could speak with the author- 114 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM ity of his unique powers and experience may well be cited here : To compel a man to do, day after day, the same task, without any hope of escape or change, means nothing short of a prison torment. Nothing but the tyranny of profit- grinding makes it necessary. A man might easily learn and practice at least three crafts, varying sedentary occupa- tion with outdoor — occupation calling for the exercise of strong bodily energy, for work in which the mind has more to do. There are few men, for instance, who would not wish to spend part of their lives in the most necessary and pleasantest of all work — cultivating the earth.* Listen also to his further testimony on the sub- ject of work and leisure : Well, so much for my claims as to my necessary work, my tribute to the community. I believe people would find as they advanced in their capacity for carrying on social order, that life so lived was less expensive than we now can have any idea of, and that, after a little, people would be rather anxious to seek work than to avoid it; that our working hours would rather be merry parties of men and maids, young men and old, enjoying themselves at their work, than grumpy wearisome as it mostly is to-day. Then would come the time for a new birth of art, so much talked of, so long deferred ; people could not help showing their mirth and pleasure in their work, and would be always wishing to express it in a tangible and more or less endur- ing form, and the workshop would be once more a school of art, whose influence no one could escape from.f * "Signs of Change" lecture on "Useful Work versus Useless Toil." t "Signs of Change" lecture on "How We Live and How We Might Live." FREEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 115 Consider how different from the present-day system of toil was that of pre-capitalist days. Then the weaver conld rise from his loom and relax himself in tilling his garden, or in fetching fuel from the wood, or water from the well, or in mending his cottage roof, in harvesting or in sal- mon fishing in the river, or maybe in poaching in the king's or baron's deer forest! Even up to quite recent times, in some of the country districts especially, men were often "handymen" in quite a wonderful way, and while never ceasing appar- ently to be occupied from early mom till night, were usually happy and often long-lived men. A grand uncle of my own, for example, a peasant farmer in the Western Highlands, who reached over 90 years of age, and was active almost to his last hour, was not only a good farmer and sea fisherman, but built his own house and farm steadings, did the joinery and thatching, made tables and chairs, and cupboards, could forge horse shoes, and mill his own corn, mend harness and repair boots, and knit stockings, was a good violinist and bag-pipe player, and could dance, sing and tell stories with the best of them! Socialism, then, I repeat, comes not to fetter men's energies or destroy their aptitudes, but rather to call them forth and give them abundant opportunity and freedom. It comes not to en- courage idleness and vacuous leisure but to make work a joy and recreation and a means of giving 116 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM fulness to life and of enriching the common- wealth. CHAPTER XIV FREEDOM OF LIFE The idea that Socialism consists in what is called "herd," or "pack" or mass life of some promiscuous kind, is, however, so widespread that we must consider a little further the argument of our previous chapter. For were that a true con- ception either of Socialism itself, or of the form of society which Socialists might in a mistaken zeal for social equality attempt to bring about, the new social order would, I doubt not, be as much disturbed with strikes and rebellion, and as embarrassed with conscientious objectors as our present-day regime. Socialism means freedom — the highest freedom that is consistent with the principle that all should alike share the duties and obligations of the com- monwealth. Even then, I should hope, a Socialist community would not seek to impose universally or forcefully any duty or restriction which, while being such as its members generally willingly ac- cepted for themselves, was clearly oppressive to the capacity or the conscience of some of its mem- bers. It will not, indeed, be a real Socialist com- FEEEDOM OF LIFE 117 munity at all, no matter how radically it social- izes material wealth, if it does not rely upon the assent and goodwill of all its members rather than upon any coercive laws or forceful compul- sion. Socialism does not mean uniformity of mode of living, or mere levelness of life of any kind, other than levelness or equality of liberty, rights and duties. The more diversity of life and character the greater will be the freedom, the happiness and the progress of the community. And most as- suredly Socialism does not mean that aU are to be housed, fed or clothed alike, or squadded in pub- lic institutions. It is good for all men and women and for chil- dren also, that they should occasionally, perhaps frequently, not only meet together, but feast to- gether, in public assembly. And it is most prob- able that in Socialist communities, many people will, from free choice, prefer to live (as do many people to-day) in associated homes, or guest houses, with common dining rooms; and that there may be many schools in which children will be brought up during part of their childhood boarding together with their teachers, or guar- dians, as they do in many instances to-day. But it is wholly false to imagine, therefore, that So- cialism or democracy implies as a principle with respect either to children or adults, the elimina- tion of the family (which ought to be the purest 118 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM fount of social culture), or the breaking down of privacy of association generally, and the sub- stitution of a universal system of herding or squadding the people in masses or of regimenting their personal ways of life, as in an army, a hos- pital, or a workhouse. Democracy, rightly understood, does not, in fact, consist in mass living, mass thinking, mass working, or mass action at all. Democracy is not a pack or a mob, but a society. Its virtue is not in aggregation, but in association and organiza- tion — in the interflowing of thought and emotion through all its members. Never are men or women so dissociated from each other, so really isolated and at the same time, so completely bereft of their individuality and means of self-expres- sion, as when massed together in large numbers. Deeply true as is the old belief in the spiritual benefit, as well as political need, of public as- sembly — the old prescription that "wherever two or three are gathered together" a higher spirit of wisdom and love may come among them — it is, nevertheless wholly erroneous to think, therefore, that mass or pack life is the true form of expres- sion of society or democracy. All experience goes to show that we get closer to the real heart of so- ciety, to the soul of democracy, by keeping in con- stant touch with the community through groups of those with whom we are in friendly relations, or with whom we are for the time being sympa- FREEDOM OF LIFE 119 thetically associated in work, study or play, than by mixing in indiscriminate crowds, or by being regimented with onr fellows in large aggrega- tions. Never do we feel so lonely, so far away from companionship as in large cities where we have no particular friends or associates; never are our hearts less humanly drawn towards our fellow creatures than when we are thrust among them in huge crowds, or see them swarm in a black, endless throng in the streets. Nor must I fail to recall the fact, so profoundly significant, that in all ages and climes men of creative minds and of intense energy, no less than men of religious and philosophical mood, have almost without exception craved for and sought frequent periods of retirement from concourse, even with their friends, secluding themselves either in the privacy of their homes, in cloisters, or in the woods and wilds. It is not in their mere aggregations of human- ity that the true benefit of cities and nations con- sists. It is rather in the greater opportunities which they afford, as compared with villages or clans, of getting into touch with a wider variety of those with whom we can intimately associate in friendship, study, work and play. Cities and nations, beyond a certain size in area and population, varying, of course, with race, stage of social development, and other circum- stances, not only cease to be helpful to social inter- 120 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM course, education, and progress, but become posi- tive hindrances to them. It is for this reason, in great part at least, that small nations and cities have so often attained a higher civilization than large nations and empires. Thus we find a small kingdom like Palestine bringing forth a religion and a race of people that have outlasted all the majestic empires of the ancient world; that Athens, being small, was yet so great; and that Eome, Venice and Florence, when they were small republics, and Antwerp, Paris and Oxford, when they were virtually little independent states, were so rich in genius and fame in their day; and that London, three hundred years ago, had within its then small population, more poetry, more philo- sophy, more mirth than the whole British nation to-day. Similarly, as surely every one of us has experi- enced, small companies of friends are usually more enjoyable, and small committees more effi- cient than large ones; and workshops in which only a small number of workers are associated to- gether are much more cheerful and agreeable to work in than large factories, where scores or hun- dreds, maybe, are all busy in one shop. And so also with respect to children. It is found, as all thoughtful observers are agreed, that large school classes are much less educational than small ones, and that the more children are free to form their own little groups of associates, and eat FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 121 and play according to their own tastes and prefer- ences, the happier they are, the more bright and intelligent they become, and the more do they tend to conserve and develop their own individuality and genius. Away, then, with any notion that Socialism means that either adults or children are to have their meals or be put to bed or dressed and herded every day in battalions ! Away with all that dead levelism of routine, habits, tastes and thinking, which already, alas, as the result of modem fac- tory life and crowded working conditions in our towns, has done so much to destroy the initiative and extinguish the idealism of children and the nation. CHAPTER XV FREEDOM OF EDUCATION As a present-day expedient, the compulsory provision of meals in school for children hardly needs vindication. The nation must not allow its children to go unfed, either at school or at home, no matter whether their privation be due to the misfortune or the neglect of their parents. And if no better way can, in the present state of public opinion, be found of ensuring that the children have at least a minimum of food than by providing 122 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM meals for them at a common table at school every day, then in God's name let there be tables enough spread for them from Land's End to John o' Groats. But let us not, therefore, assume that either school feeding, except where convenient as a midday meal, or barrack life of any kind, repre- sents the Socialist idea of how children should be reared under right conditions of society. It is unnecessary, after what has been said in the previous chapter, to dwell upon the undesir- ableness of overdosing either children or adults with assembly life. Nor need I do more than em- phasize the fact already referred to that the most earnest educationists speak as with one voice against the disadvantages of large classes, and all ''wholesale" methods of dealing Tvith children. I may, however, remind my readers of the wide- spread feeling that the nowadays prevalence in an almost endemic form of all manner of chil- dren's diseases, is in great part the result of the close confinement of large masses of children in schoolrooms and playgrounds. More doubtful, perhaps, is the impression possessed by many parents that their children suffer callosity of feel- ing and a certain vulgarization of behavior, espe- cially in the larger public schools. My purpose in these observations is not, as I have said, to dissociate Socialism, or my own views of Socialism, from the desirableness or FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 123 necessity of present-day measures for providing public meals for children. Hungry and neglected children, I repeat, must be fed, and school meals appear to be the most simple and efficient means at hand for accomplishing that object. Nor do I see the least objection, either under existing or under better conditions of life, to children having meals in common at school, where it is found to be the most convenient way of feeding them with their own and their parents' consent. What I am contending against is the erroneous assump- tion that because of either of those circumstances, the idea should be entertained that systematic pub- lic feeding, or public living of any kind, whether of children or adults, forms part of the Socialist or democratic conception of the general policy of life. No less erroneous is the idea that in the Social- ist Commonwealth, children will be forbidden to engage in any useful work, and be compelled to stick at mere schooling until they are grown well into manhood and womanhood. Yet this idea is a natural enough inference from the prominent place given in Socialist, as well as many Labor programmes, to the compulsory full time atten- dance of children at school or college until 16 or 18 years. The "Workers' Educational Association demands that compulsory full time schooling should be extended at least to the age of 16. Here, again, as in the case of the feeding of children, the 124 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM proposal is, perhaps, justifiable as a means of rescuing children from the results of the capitalist system. But is it really necessary, we may well ask, that the lives of the children should be maimed in order to save them from capitalist exploitation? Is not the remedy hardly less harmful than the disease ? The belief that education consists wholly or even chiefly in learning lessons in school is a relic of the times when illiteracy was general and books were few, and when the only way for children to acquire any knowledge beyond what was possessed by their parents or was common in the neighbor- hood, was to go to schools under teachers who had themselves acquired special instruction. But these days are gone, and with them ought now to go the idea also that mere school education is at all as important an acquisition as it was and is still generally supposed to be. "Learn by doing" was the precept of the great Froebel, but the apparent aim of modem education (though there are dawning signs of better things) is to prohibit boys and girls from attempting to do any- thing useful at all until they have reached an age when their faculties and fingers have become too stiffly set to learn anything with facility or pleas- ure. Can it astonish us that so many of the great creative thinkers and doers in history have been FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 125 men of little or no school education! Among the more familiar instances of famous men who had but elementary schooling and who acquired what learning they needed or desired chiefly by pursu- ing their own bent or during leisure from work, we need only recall in literature the names of Shakespeare, Bunyan, Eousseau, Chatterton, Bums, Blake, Dumas, Cobbett, Dickens, Whit- man, Mark Twain, and Maxim Gorki. Science and invention give us Palissy, Brahmah, Jacquard, Arlcwright, Franklin, Sir Wm. Herschel, "Wedg- wood, Watt, George Stephenson, Sir Humphrey Davy, Farraday, and Edison. Navigation and discovery give us Columbus, Pizarro, Sir John Hawke, Captain Cook, and Sir John Ross. Nelson entered the Navy when only 12 years of age. Most of the famous mediaeval and many later-day painters began their studio training as children, with no more than the rudiments of schooling (and some of them without even that), among the typical instances being Giotto, Donatello, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Diirer, Watteau, Hogarth, Rom- ney, Opie, Barry, Etty, Turner, and Walter Crane. Many of the great composers began their musical careers also in childhood, and had only a fragmen- tary school education. Haydn, Mozart, Bee- thoven, Rossini, Verdi, and Dvorak are notable examples. Among famous reformers and liber- ators who had little or no school training were St. Francis d'Assisi, George Fox, John Woohnan, 126 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Tonssaint I'Ouverture, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Garibaldi. Joan of Are had no school education at all.* And if, in accordance with general precept, we are to reckon the capacity for business success as a kind of genius, and "making money" as a de- sirable aim in life (and our educational system is based on that supposition), then we are faced with the startling paradox that the most success- ful contractors and manufacturers of the last three or four generations were what is termed uneducated or self-taught men. Almost without exception the millionaire capitalists of this coun- try and America have been men who rose from the ranks of the working class, and who began * A careful reading of biography would reveal many additional instances of men and women of genius and remarkable character whose school education was under rather than above our pres- ent-day elementary standard. I do not know whether my readers generally are disposed to regard the capacity for political agita- tion and democratic apostleship as coming within the rank of genius. But it is a significant fact, surely, that so many of the leaders of democratic opinion in recent times have been men of the working class, who, possessing but a scanty school education, have displayed high intellectual gifts and striking individuality of character. A page might be filled with examples, but I need only mention at random a few typical instances : Thomas Paine, George Jacob Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh, Lloyd Garrison, Henry George, Michael Davitt, Keir Hardie, John Burns, Robert Blatchford, Eugene Debs, and Robert Smillie. Richard Cobden, though belonging to the business class, had only some four years' schooling, and Lord Beaconsfield had almost no regular schooling at all. FEEEDOM OF EDUCATION 127 work in boyhood with at best only a few years' elementary school instruction. What, we may well wonder, would have hap- pened in the case of the majority of the great painters and musicians, who began the full-time practice of their arts while yet in their childhood, had they been compelled instead to attend routine school classes until they were 16 or 18 years of age? What in such a case would have been the achievement of Turner, who exhibited his first Eoyal Academy picture when only 15 years of age ; or of Mozart, who was already a virtuoso at 10 years of age; or of Paganini, who, as a child practised his violin ten hours a day and was famous on the concert stages of Europe at 11 years of age? And can we believe that it would have been any benefit to themselves or the world had Brahmah, George Stephenson, Nasmyth, Brind- ley or Eichard Eoberts been kept at ordinary school attendance until an age at which they had already become highly-skilled mechanics and were working out some of their remarkable inventions ? Cramming the mind with school or college learn- ing, has in truth, never been a means of the real education of men and women or of the progress of mankind. The Athenians were, it is universally acknowl- edged, the most accomplished people of antiquity, and have not been excelled in intellectual and aesthetic capacity by any modem nation. Their 128 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM art, poetry, and philosophy remain the admira- tion of the world. In citizenship and in warrior- ship they were alike pre-eminent. Yet, so far as we can ascertain, their education, though reck- oned of the highest quality, was exceedingly sim- ple in character. In range of subjects it did not exceed that of onr present-day elementary school standard. Of Alcibiades, who was one of the most brilliant as well as one of the wealthiest of its citizens, his friend Socrates says that he had learned his letters (reading and writing), and to play the guitar, and was well trained in wrestling and other athletic accomplishments. Plato's edu- cation by the time he was twenty years of age had chiefly consisted in writing poetry and practising athletics. These subjects, together with rhetoric, appear to have formed the regular curriculum of Athenian education. Sculpture, painting, geom- etry, and philosophy were studied by those who wished to qualify themselves specially in these pursuits. It was a proverbial saying in Athens that for the true Athenian the days of his learning were never done. Old men frequently joined in the special studies of the philosophical schools. The word school itself is derived from the Greek word for leisure. Nor did scholarship and learning in Europe until quite recent days consist of many studies. Even during the Eenaissance period, which gave the world so many famous thinkers and pioneers FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 129 of science, school and college instruction, was not of a multiform or congestive kind. Reading, writ- ing, simple arithmetic, and Latin were the staple subjects of instruction in the best schools, while in the universities, students could proceed with mathematics, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, and such slender and mostly inaccurate science as was then possessed. "Whatever special learning such famous scholars and philosophers as Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Copernicus, Erasmus, Montaigne, Pascal, Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes possessed they owed chiefly to their own studies. This was likewise the case with John MUton, Leibnitz, and Newton. It is an unnatural — ^I was almost saying a monstrous — idea that young lads and girls should be regimented in schools and their minds stuffed with mere book-learning at a time when their whole being cries out for physical activity, and when their arms and fingers should be acquiring deftness and skill for work and handicraft. It is an idea of education that may accord with the middle-class notion of making boys into black- coated "gentlemen"; it does not accord with any true idea of making boys into men. It is an idea that has unfortunately ensnared the minds of the working class. Not one word said here will, I hope, be construed as a plea for "half -timing" or any other system of employing children in miUs or factories for 130 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM profit-making or capitaliat exploitation of any kind. Better children were never bom than that they should be degraded into tools of human greed or made slaves to machinery. One need not agree with Bernard Shaw's whole- sale indictment of our modem school system in order to sympathize with his pronouncement that "if the advance of civilization is to mean nothing more than the widening of the net of the child prison and boy-farm until none of us can escape from it, we had better abolish it altogether." Nor need we accept literally William Morris' account in his "News from Nowhere," of how he fancied children should be educated, in order to feel per- suaded with him that under right social condi- tions children would, if allowed a reasonable measure of freedom, to a large extent educate themselves. There are, I believe, a growing num- ber of Socialists and educationists who feel that were boys and girls, once they had acquired the primary elements of education, reading, writing, arithmetic, and perhaps some inlding of history, literature and science, allowed to have the free run of the woods and meadows and of the muni- cipal and guild workshops, laboratories, libraries, art galleries, etc., and were they not discouraged from beginning to practice work as soon as the desire to do so grew in them, they would thereby learn by "doing" much sooner and better than by mere schooling. It would be surprising indeed, FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 131 if tinder such conditions they did not grow up with far more highly developed capacities for life and happiness than do the majority of boys and girls to-day, ..after passing through Secondary and Higher Grade Schools. In saying this I do not pretend to know what the true way of education is. Nor do I find that the thoughtful and eclectic educationists among us are at all certain that they themselves have discovered the true path, if indeed any universally true path is discoverable. But what many of us do believe we have discovered, for the fact cannot escape the observation of those who observe at all, is that the conventional present day path is not the right one, and that there is grave danger in the nation attempting to impose more than a minimum of compulsion on the children and a minimum of uniformity in its system of education. All the most fruitful reforms that have recently come into public notice have originated in heretical ideas and officially discountenanced methods — as, for example, the remarkable open-air nursery school at Deptford, founded by Margaret McMil- lan* and her sister Rachel, and now carried to * See, both for information regarding Miss McMillan's school and for her many highly instructive and suggestive ideas, her books, "Education through the Imagination" (Swan Sonnes- schein and Co.) and "The Child and the State" (National Labour Press). Nothing more luminous has been said about child education than some of the ideas in these books. There is much, too, that is thoughtful and promising in Mr. Edmond Homes' "What Is and What Might Be" (Constable and Co.), where a fascinating account is given of a Utopian School. 132 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM such a point of success und-er the most discourag- ing conditions. And I must again affirm my con- viction that whatever ideas or systems of educa- tion may evolve in the future, experience and So- cialist principles alike wholly discountenance the notion that all children, irrespective of aptitude or inclination, or of prospective vocation as work- ers by hand or brain, are to be forbidden work, whether work of skill or of strength, until they have passed beyond the golden years of aptitude and acquisition. And lastly, let us not forget that children are entitled to their rights and liberties as well as are their elders. Who are we who arrogate to our- selves the right to assume that we know better than our children how they should grow up in mind and body, prompted and guided by their own wonderful intuitions? Are not we ourselves only just beginning to emerge from the bondage of our own ignorance, fear, and folly? How little do we know about educating ourselves, not to speak of our children? Happily, the children — ^the elder boys and girls at any rate — ^whom we are resolved to keep in school imprisonment till they are 16 or 18 years of age, may have themselves something to say on this subject ere long. Nor let us be surprised if one of these days we see them caught up in the spirit of freedom and boldly break out of FREEDOM OF OLD AGE 133 school, make a bonfire of their granunars and text- books, and make off to the hayfields and the work- shops, or to the ships and the far-horizons beyond the reach of our ignorance and folly! CHAPTER XVI FREEDOM OF OLD AGE Nothing searches more keenly into the heart of a nation's civilization than the question of how the aged workers fare in its midst. The treat- ment of children goes together with the treatment of the old, but it is a less certain test. The preservation of children appeals to the economic self-interest of a community, as well as to the self-affection of its members; but the care of the old people when done with as wealth earners is a burden for which there is no apparent economic reward. Here in Western civilization we have begun the provision of old-age pensions for the workers ; and no one who realizes the plight of poor old men and women to-day can but feel that any decent pension is a great social boon. But do we realize that even at best a pension is a poor makeshift for the means of comfort and happiness, and the personal human service, that should be possible for the men and women of the working class in their older years? Nay, do we reflect that in this 134 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM respect, at least, the old people of our time, what- ever pension may be given them, will be less well provided for than were the old people of the work- ing classes in former times ? I speak particularly of the older village life, where families were all neighbors, and when workmen owned their work- shops and tools and were their own employers, and worked as much or as little as they liked. Often, too, the more destitute old people were pro- vided with cottages or almshouses by the guilds or Parish Church, and might spin or weave at home, or work for a neighbor, or otherwise employ their time as they wished. Merely to have the means of livelihood is not to have much. Merely to survive is not to live; it is but to die slowly, however humanely relieved from want of food or shelter the period of dying may be. It is not a himian fate at all for old people to be provided for only as outworn ani- mals during the eventide of their lives. Old people, unless we regard their old age as a crime disqualifying them from our human affection and fellowship, need more than mere sustenance of food, clothing, and shelter. In the days of "Merry England," the bulk of the population dwelt in the country or in small towns, with the members of their family either around them or not far away. Their old age brought no sudden or perceptible change in their FREEDOM OF OLD AGE 135 relation with their surroundings or everyday duties. Old age, indeed, instead of being a marked disadvantage, was in many instances no disad- vantage at all, except from its natural deprivation of energy and excitement. The old farmer, if less vigorous and lithe than his son, had at least more experience concerning the crops and animals and seasons, and his wisdom was often of more im- portance than the young man's ardor or strength. So it was in all the crafts. The old blacksmith or builder might not be able to do so much heavy or hasty work as the younger man, but he could do more skilled and more difficult work. The old tailor always got the more important garments to make, and the old shoemaker the special pairs of shoes. The old gardener was invaluable from his experience in the habits of plants and in making cuttings and graftings, and the old tanner and saddler and cabinetmaker were similarly of high account in their line. There are still to be found in some districts old men of seventy-five and eighty years and more who are not only strong in body, but able in their occupation to do innumerable skilful and impor- tant things that none of the younger generation can do. But in our large cities all is different ; and the bulk of old men are now imprisoned there. Once discarded from the factory because they cannot keep up the raw speed with younger men, their 136 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM life is well-nigh done. There is little more for them to do or to live for. Their skill and experi- ence are reckoned of no value to employers, and can be put to no account for themselves. What can a mason, or blacksmith, or saddler, or wheel- wright do in a town if he cease to find a master? Nothing at all, and for him an old-age pension is simply a means of sustenance until such time as he will need it no longer. For nothing is more certain than that sudden cessation of activity is sentence of death. An active man cut off from occupation speedily falls into dotage and second childhood. His body and his brain creep in. Many a hundred thousand old men to-day are feeble- looking, inane beings at 70, who, under right con- ditions, would be full of intelligence and capacity for work for ten or twenty years more. Is not this a pitiful fate? Is it not one of the most shameful wastes of human body and soul that modern life has familiarized us with? To think that just at the period when men have gained most wisdom and most expertness and tenderness and care of purpose they should be cast aside to wither away ! Surely, then, the hope of Socialism for old age is one of its brightest and most humane promises. "With the means of industry within the reach of all; with the test of mere strengh and haste abol- ished; with the homes of the people spread out into the country; and with gardens, work-shops, SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 137 and provision for individual occupation always at hand — ^what an opening up of new life to the old and the young there will be, and what a great in- crease of real wealth for the community ! CHAPTER XVII SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY Does Socialism involve Communism, and, if so, the abolition of private property? Recently Mr. Victor Berger, a prominent Amer- ican Socialist, came out with a strong protest, which was widely reproduced in the Socialist Press, against the assumption that Socialism is Communism. Communism, he declared, means the abolition of private property ; Socialism means the collective possession of land, and those means only of wealth production which are collectively produced and used — such things, for example, as mines, railways, factories, machinery, and na- tional capital. A popular Catholic priest has, on the other hand, been warning his hearers against Socialism, because, he says. Socialism means Communism and the complete abolition of private property. It will thus be seen that the Catholic priest con- demns Socialism for being something which Mr. Berger declares is not Socialism at all — Com- 138 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM mnnism and the abolition of private property. Which of these statements is correct? Or is neither? The question is one of much interest and of great importance in Socialist discussions, and it is highly desirable that we should all be quite clear upon it. While there is nowadays considerable sympathy, even outside the Socialist ranks, with the idea that the nation should collectively own the great monopolies such as mines and railways and general public services, there exists much preju- dice against the Communist conception of Social- ism as generally understood. There is, it might be said, a deeply instinctive repugnance to the idea that we should, none of us, possess anything that we could call our own, but that everything used by us should belong equally to everybody else. Now, the idea of Communism is not a product of modern Socialism at all. It is an idea en- grained in religious sentiment and in political idealism, as well as in family custom, from the earliest times. It doubtless had its origin, partly at least, in the facts and traditions of primitive Communism. In early times, in quite undeveloped conditions of society, there was often practically no private property distinction at all, except, per- haps, in weapons and articles of personal adorn- ment. The tribes and single communities were virtually families or families of families, whose possessions were mostly few and perishable, SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 139 Their sense of personal autonomy was conse- quently slight, and little need or inclination existed for discriminating between what things belonged to any one person and what should belong to his neighbors. The growth of the desire for private property undoubtedly corresponded with the growth of individuation of character, occupation, and ability — with civilization, in fact. Whether, as certain writers (Socialists among others) have affirmed, it was impossible for man- kind to reach the higher stages of civilization without the disruption of the early Communist system, is a question we need not discuss. A good case could be stated on the other side. But this at least we know that in ancient folk-lore, poetry, and myth, the passing away of the simple tribal or village fratemalism, and the incoming of strife for property and selfish advantage, is uniformly lamented as a misfortune to mankind. There can be no question but that the idea of out and out Communism and the extinction of the selfish sentiments of "mine and thine" was deeply rooted in the religious thought of the early Christians. Communism was, indeed, reckoned an essential condition of brotherhood, not only in the Apostolic Churches, but in most religious com- munities in the East. Nor can there be any ques- tion but that Communism was the recognized polity in mediaeval monasteries and among many of the reformed communities such as the Albi- 140 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM genses, the Anabaptists, the Moravian Brethren, as it has been also among certain modern reli- gions sects. Konsseati and many idealists before and after him, in their schemes of a perfect society, have more or less insisted on the principle "that all things should be held in coromon. ' ' But they have usually insisted also upon a return at the same time to "natural" or primitive conditions of life. Proudhon, the French anarchist communist, de- clared that "property is theft." And so also did Marx in his Communist Manifesto, issued before he wrote his "Das Kapital," but he explicitly de- clared that he meant only "bourgeois private property," and not the property won by the ar- tizan or peasant as "the fruits of his own labor." And, finally, for the present sununary, our own William Morris — and, indeed, John Euskin, who called himself "a reddest of red Communists" — looked to some form of voluntary Communism as the goal of society. In the face of these facts, then, are not alike Socialists and the enemies of Socialism justified in declaring that Socialism and Communism are closely related? Indeed they are ; but, as we shall see, neither Socialism nor Communism in the Socialist use of these terms involves the denial of personal property rights. Modern political or "scientific" Socialism, has, as we have said, never set forth the complete SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 141 abolition of private property as one of its aims or principles. Karl Marx, as we all know, levelled the whole of his attack upon capitalism, not on the ground that capitalism instituted or sanctioned private property, but on the ground that it de- prived the workers of the property which they created, and that it yielded to the capitalist class a monopoly in the means of wealth, and so de- prived the community generally of the right of wealth or property altogether. And that undoubtedly is the main contention of modern Socialists, whether they agree with Marx's method of reasoning out his proposition or not. Socialism as it is advocated politically to-day makes no affirmation that there shall be no private property. It declares that there shall be no rob- bery by one class (the capitalist class) from an- other class (the working class) of the wealth or property which the working class or society col- lectively produces; and that there shall be no monopoly by any one class of the means— ^land and capital — ^without which no wealth can be pro- duced. For Socialism, is not going back either to primi- tive or barbarous conditions. The state of human feeling which, as among the Esquimaux, makes it tolerable for several families to occupy one hut, without separate bedrooms, picking their food with their fingers from one pot, and breathing intensely foul air, is a state of feeling from which civiliza- 142 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM tion is removing us further at every step. More and more do we discern that cleanliness, the due separation of our clothes and persons, the regard for each other's special articles of use and for each other's self-respect, are essential conditions alike of health and comfort, and of the growth of aesthetic taste and higher social sympathy. The truth is that Socialism, instead of abolish- ing private property would, for the first time in history, really endow every member of the com- munity with property which they could use as their own, knowing it had not been obtained by the unjust deprivation of others. It is important, however, in considering the future of property rights, that we bear in mind what existing property rights are. The notion that property is, or ever has been, sacrosant or inviolable is a delusion. No race or nation has ever sanctioned absolute private rights in property of any kind. Every particle of property in a nation may be lawfully appropriated by the State for the defence of the State, and all estates and incomes may be levied by taxation to whatever extent required for the upkeep of the State and public services. Kings and parliaments composed of property holders have expropriated wholesale the property of churches and classes of the community without compensation or compunction when it has suited their interests to do so. SOCIALISM AND PEIVATE PEOPERTY 143 In universal theory and practice children and members of a family have a claim on the property of parents or those possessing property in the family. In all religious systems the people are under a moral, and often legal, obligation to yield up a portion of their property to the Church or for the succor of the poor. In our own country the land is still legally not private property at all, but held in usufruct to the State. The laws of primogeniture and entail on the one hand, and the law of hypothec on the other, limit the property rights of both landlord and tenant. The Income Tax and indeed all forms of taxation are acknowledgments of the State's claim upon the private possessions of the citizens. There is, therefore, let its agree, no absolute right of property recognized either in civilized or primitive States. The right of private property has always been a limited and conditional right. It is a right that .may be cancelled in case of na- tional urgency altogether. It is right, too, that is always held to be subject to proof that the prop- erty in question has been honestly, or, at least legally acquired. Public sentiment and law can always determine the right or wrong of any pos- session whatsoever. Bearing these facts in mind, let us see in what way Socialism would invade existing customs of private property. Socialism declares that no one has a right to 144 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM hold as his private property those sources of wealth supply that are collectively created and are collectively required by the general commun- ity. It declares that no one has the right to monopolize any means of wealth production in such a way as to deprive other members of the community of the opportunity of enjoying equally the benefit of those means of wealth, or in such a way as would enable one man to compel others to work for his own advantage and to their detri- ment. Socialism declares, therefore, that land, fac- tories, railways and all publicly required means of wealth shall become national or social property, and that these things shall only be for private use in so far as the private use of them is con- sistent with the equal rights of all. But Socialism no less emphatically proclaims that those things which in the common interest are needed, or can be afforded to each person or family, shall be private property, and inviolable so long as they are used and are not wasted to the unjust deprivation of others. In the late war we saw prosecutions for the waste of private property, i.e., food, petrol, uncultivated land, etc. Communism is, in truth, not the wild revolu- tionary thing that many people suppose it to be. It is not new — it is old. It is not bad — it is good. The family is a communistic group. Our towns are already in a considerable measure Commu- SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 145 nistic organizations. Our roads, streets, and bridges are common property. Our municipal public parks, water supply, free libraries, mu- seums, hospitals, and elementary schools, are ex- amples of actual Communism in our midst. These services belong to us all equally. We all con- tribute to their maintenance, according to our sup- posed ability through the rates. We can all use them freely and equally without money or price. No one has private property rights in them. On the other hand, our municipal gas supply, our trams and electric light are coUeetive, not Communist possessions. They are collectively owned, but are not communistically used. No one may use them beyond the price he or she pays for the use of them. But trams will probably be conmiunized at no distant date, and the railways, too, once they are nationalized — even as roads and bridges have been. Collectivism in general public services de- velops into Communism in proportion as the recognition of the common need and advantage of the equal freedom of their use grows. The municipal supply of bread and coal and milk will probably be coUectivist at first and Communistic later on. It is in this sense that the term Communism is used nowadays in Socialist writings. Primi- tive Communism, in which little or no distinction whatever was made between the personal belong- 146 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM ings of one or another, is a thing of the past. It could only exist, as has already been said, under primitive conditions. As social organization de- velops, and as men and women grow in self-respect and intellectual consciousness, the area of their needs and rights extends. The growth of public freedom does not reduce but expand personal freedom. The growth of public health does not lessen but increase personal health. So the increase of public or collective wealth will not take away, but add to, the private wealth of everyone. From the fields and factories there will then come into every home the collectively produced wealth. The house that a family inhabits wiU be theirs. The food within the house, the clothes they wear, the soap and the towels they use, the bicycles, razors, mnbrellas, all things which they require for personal and family use, will be theirs — more absolutely their own than any property can be to-day. For to-day the private wealth of one may be taken away from him by a bad bar- gain, by misfortune or by fraud at any moment. Under Socialism all production will be for use, and the user will use it without fear lest any Avill take it away, or doubt lest any might be in greater need of it than himself. We may sum up, therefore, by saying that: (1) Socialism merges insensibly into Communism, (2) Communism does not deny the right to possess as SOCIALISM AND PEIVATE PROPERTY 147 private property things required for private use : it denies the right to appropriate as private prop- erty things that are required for the common needs and use of the community. (3) Communism aims to secure for the community generally the fullest means of wealth for the common use of all, and to the individual the fullest means of wealth for personal or family use. PART III SOCIALISM IN EXISTING SOCIETY CHAPTER XVIII FORMS OP SOCIAL GROWTH It is often said that Socialism is a highly beau- tiftil conception, but that it is impracticable ; that it never has been and never will be. And it is quite true that Socialism in the com- plete sense has never been. But it is not true to say, therefore, that Socialism never has been. As well say that because we have never had complete freedom, or complete justice, or complete knowl- edge that therefore freedom, justice and knowl- edge have never been. If freedom, justice and knowledge have never been then they never will be ; for things that have no existence in some form now will never exist. If Socialism never has been, not even in rudi- mentary shapes, then the sweater and the tyrant may rejoice, for in that case Socialism can never be. But Socialism has existed, exists now, and will continue to exist with increasing power and per- fectness as humanity progresses. Were it not for the existence of Socialism in, at least, elementary forms, civilization itself would not exist ; for what- ever is truest and best in the common life of the 151 152 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM world is the ontcome of fellowship and co-opera- tion. Look at the fruit tree in the early spring. Its stems are almost bare, only here and there we may see a tiny germ point or bud. (If none of these be there, then the tree is dead.) But when the summer comes, behold the tree is magically transformed, and it pours forth its leaves and blos- soms as a fountain of beauty and sweetness over the shining grass. Therein is the promise of Socialism pre-figured to our eyes. Whe^, therefore, Socialists say that they are working to achieve Socialism, they do not mean to imply that there is no Socialism whatever to- day; they mean that they are endeavoring to bring about the complete realization of Socialism — ^that they are seeking to abolish capitalism and all forms of individualism that obstruct the growth of Socialism, and are hastening the adoption of all the means of collective service by which the Socialist commonwealth will be fully realized. It is important that we should look with an earnest eye into the forms of Socialism which have already grown up in the common life of all civi- lized nations. This we shaU do in the chapters which follow; meanwhile, to make clearer the pur- pose of my present argument, these forms of social growth may be conveniently brought into view under their historical emblems. FOEMS OF SOCIAL GROWTH 153 The Hearth. (The family.) . The Feast Hall. ( Social intercourse and friend- ship.) The Workshop, Market, and Guild. (Industrial and commercial organizations.) The Church, School and College. (Eeligious, benevolent, and educational associations.) The Village and Town. (Municipal co-opera- tion and enterprise.) The Nation. (Defence, law, and government.) In all these, as indeed in innumerable other interlacing forms of association, we shall discover that the cohesive principle which creates and sus- tains them is the Socialist principle of mutual help and collective effort. We shall find indeed that incomplete and deeply indented with selfishness, capitalism, and every mark of individualism as these forms of co-operation in many of their mani- festations are, there are nevertheless diffused among them so many elements of Socialism that it might fairly be said, were they all put together and organized,' not for sectional advantage, but for the good of the whole, they would be enough to establish complete Socialism in our midst. Indeed, whether we regard the present political Socialist movement as working towards gradual, or what is called revolutionary, change, its pur- pose may quite accurately be described as that of bringing all existing elements of Socialism na- tionally together and eliminating from among 154 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM them every devouring and corrupting element of individualism. In making iron we do not make anew the ma- terial of which the metal is composed, or attempt to alter the laws of attraction and repulsion of its particles ; we merely fuse and bring these particles together, casting out the foreign matter in the process. Or, to take a closer illustration : When the warring clans of Scotland, and eventually the kingdoms of Scotland and England, were consti- tuted into one nation, so that instead of per- petually fighting against each other, to their mutual injury and loss, they combined for their common protection and well-being, no new ma- terial of population and no additional self-abne- gation were required for that purpose. The people of the countries concerned were the same people as before, and the self-sacrifice required of them in the way of self-restraint and contribu- tions for defence purposes and the maintenance of the State, was not greater but less than before. So it is with Socialism. Bad as we all may be, there is yet enough good among us, were that good organized so as to keep the bad out, to make a fairly good start as a Socialist community. And, as I have said, the function of the Social- ist to-day is to help in that task. It is to arouse and give voice to the Socialist inclinations of the people. It is to give national shape and scope to the existing accumulation of methods of co- FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 155 operation, and to eradicate completely every form of capitalism. Fifty years ago ships were sailing on every sea, but the journey from Britain to Bombay was eleven thousand miles. Then, as with the stroke of a pen, a way was cut for the water and ships through the isthmus of Suez, and the journey was shortened by half its former length. A century and a half ago there were wagons and iron and steam. But they did not know each other. Then came James Watt, George Stephenson, and a far stretching line of inventors. They brought the steam, the iron, and the wagons cleverly together, and lo! space and time were changed as by an almighty hand. Socialists are the engineers and inventors whose purpose it is to make a short cut to the accom- plishment of the Social Revolution; to bring to- gether the elements of Socialism; and, as far as possible abolish the time and space that separate us from the full realization of the national and international commonwealth. CHAPTER XIX THE FAMILY, FEIENDSHIP AND INDUSTRY We now proceed to glance at those associations and customs in present day (and past) society, which not only reveal, as has just been said, the 156 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM growth of Socialism in society, but also witness to the fact that Socialism is the very essence and power of society itself. "We shall see, in fact, that those institutions which constitute the true pillars of society and civilization owe their utility and desirableness solely to their Socialist struc- ture and nature; and that just in proportion to the degree in which they are Socialist in their nature so is both their beauty and the happiness which they afford us. And this precept applies, I believe, to all things and actions in life. Noth- ing that acknowledges itself to be imsocial or unsocialistic is finally agreeable to us. No action or conduct, for example, that violates our inherent sense of social justice or equality is ever regarded, save by vulgar taste or convention, as right or good, or what we term "gentlemanly" or "lady- like." And first, let us consider those associations and customs pertaining to the hearth or family. THE HEARTH (THE FAMILY) The family in its truest examples is a small Socialist community in which each is for all and all are for each. Within its circle those who are able to work contribute to the common store, while the young, the weak, and the aged share equally with them in the common wealth of the home. There is no degree of sacrifice — even to FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 157 the extent of the voluntary relinquishment of life —which members of a family have not made for each other in tens of millions of instances in the world's history. The family has evolved feelings which still represent to us the deepest social affection and devotion of Avhich mankind and the higher mam- mals are capable. We have derived from it our ideal of the brotherhood of nations and our high- est conception of the unity of mankind. Nor does the fact that the family is held to- gether by blood relationship, or what is termed "physiological ties," or that its primary motive is redirected self-interest, lessen its significance as an example of mutual help. Blood relationship does not establish the family; the family estab- lishes blood relationship. Where there is no fam- ily life, as amongst lowly-organized creatures, there is no recognition of blood relationship, not even between mother and offspring. In the Socialism of the family the rule of indi- vidualism is void. When the table is spread all gather round, as in Burns' "Cottar's Saturday Mght." None are excluded, none are abased. None are asked to fare upon the scraps that fall from the table. Nay, in every true family the feeble in strength and age are all the more kindly served because of their greater needs. Do we not know how the love of a mother goes out to her cripple child, and how the solicitude of all 158 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM is shown towards a delicate brother or sister? The old arm-chair in the cosiest nook by the fireside — consider what meaning of love and honor that symbolizes for ns in all true types of family life. It is the throne of the home provided for the worn-out father and mother who have in their day toiled for their parents and children, and whose children now in turn ungrudgingly afford them the utmost comfort that they can give — ^labor and affection inseparably flowing from life to life. Does not, indeed, the old arm-chair prefigure the provision of Old Age Pensions, cot- tage homes, and kindred benefits for the aged, which, mainly as the result of Socialist agitation, our own and other nations are now beginning to grant to the elders of the working class? Factory and commercial conditions have in modem times made great havoc with the solidar- ity of the family, and have deprived many chil- dren of the "breeding" (in the right sense) which home training formerly bestowed upon them. Do we not see in the hooliganism of our cities the direct effects of the blight on the finer sympathies and grace of behavior of so many young men which results from the premature rupture of the family? And do we not see also in the bargaining as to payment for board between parents and chil- dren, which has become customary in many fac- tory districts, the destroying effects of capitalism upon family fellowship? And where, among any FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 159 people above the savage state (if even tHere), except where commercialism has rotted the very roots of family life, do we find parents abandon- ing their children, or children their parents, to destitution so long as they could, by sharing their last crust or by working the flesh from their fingers, avert that inhuman extremity? THE FEAST HALL (FRIENDSHIP) Beyond the family circle comes the wider circle of friendship. In some respects friendship is even more distinctively a sign of social culture than family affection. It springs less immediately from economic needs, it is more voluntary, and is preserved by no legal obligations. Many ani- als display intense family affection, that neverthe- less show no capacity for friendship with other members of their tribe. Friendship is essentially community of feeling. And it is important to note that this feeling ex- presses itself immediately and chiefly in com- munity of goods. From the earliest times the breaking of bread together has been the sacra- ment of comradeship — a comradeship in which the utmost degree of Socialism is often exemplified. Thus the feast hall, where many make merry in common, is the temple of friendship, as the hearth, where the few sustain life in common, is the shrine of the family. 160 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Amongst every race and in every age friendship has called forth the warmest altruism of mankind. History, romance and poetry are blazoned with the red hnes of the wine and blood which have flowed, not always Avisely or well, in friendship's name — from the heroic affections of Achilles and the Greek companions, and the chivalries of the knights, down to the pathetic devotion of com- rades in modern days on fields of battle, in ship- wrecks on sea, lonely wildernesses, and black suf- focating mines. And how, too, the roofs have rung in mighty chorus down the ages with the mirth and pledge, the song and dance of companions — rattling as it were the very bones of death, and scaring the ghosts of individualism into the shadows of the night ! Where true friendship is, there Socialism is also. The measure of the one is the measure of the other. Friendship establishes between friends social equality, and abolishes between them all separations of class and creed, and within varying limits, of property use and even owner- ship. Friendship permeates every rank and range of society with this leaven of Socialism. Consider what is implied in the well-used and often mis- used compliment — "a gentleman in his own house." "What else but this, that the said gentle- man treats his friends and even dependents in his house as his equals, bestowing upon them FAMILY, FEIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 161 bounteously every comfort of his home as though they were his own brothers and sisters'? Among poor and rich alike this communism widely prevails. In cottage and castle so soon as friends cross the threshold of the door they enter into a communist society, where indivi- dualism is treason and is punished with banish- ment. Even men of the type of the late Lord Wemyss and Lord Avebury, who were ardent champions of Individualism against Socialism, practise "the detestable principles of Socialism" whenever they invite their individualist friends to spend a week- end with them in their houses or yachts — in order, maybe, to discuss how best to resist the Socialist proposals of the Labor Party ! THE WORKSHOP, THE MARKET AND THE GUILD {Industrial and Commercial Co-operation) It is unnecessary for me to dwell upon the growth of mutual help and co-operation which has signalized every department of industry and exchange from ancient to modern days. This sub- ject forms part of the general argument of Social- ism which is either directly affirmed or implied in every economic statement of Socialism, and it has already been presented in many aspects in the course of these chapters. 162 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM I shall here only remind my readers that the whole measure of the difference between the wealth produced in the aggregate by the people to-day as compared with the aggregate wealth (if such it can be called) of onr far-back ancestors in the stone age, is simply the measure of increased co-operation of thought and labor involved in modern industry. The stone axe and bone needle were virtually (though not actually) individual productions, for individual use ; the steam engine and the power loom are the result of the inter- national co-operation of invention and labor, and are only made useful by the co-operation not only of whole factories of workers, but of national and international community exchange. Were it conceivable that the creative and multi- plying power of co-operation were suddenly to be extinguished in industry, the whole fabric of modem cities and commerce would disappear and the nations perish. Not a single industrial or commercial function is possible to-day by individual effort alone. Capitalism itself is only made possible by almost infinite cohesions of co-operative responsibility and labor. Without workshops, railways, ex- changes, banks, insurance offices, consular ser- vices, and (as we shall see later on) national laws, courts of justice, and armies — all of which are modes of co-operation — capitalism in its present form, and indeed in any gigantic form at all. FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 163 conld not exist. Capitalism is, in truth, little more or less than individual exploitation of col- lective organization. Similarly, all working-class methods of so-called "self-help" are really methods, not of "self" help at all, but of collective or mutual help. Thus in joining Trade Unions to raise their wages, Co-operative Societies to obtain the most (pre- sumably) for -what they spend, savings banks to keep safe and increase their savings, friendly societies to help them or their families in case of sickness or death — in joining any or all of these the "self-help" "workmen are but acknowledging that "self" help is a delusion, and that collective help is a reality. In other words, the workman who wishes to be what is called "independent" must cease absolutely to be independent. He must depend as much as possible, not upon his own means of support, but upon the collective means of support of his fellows. Restricted and exclusive, and even selfish as, therefore, may be their primary motive, every one of these forms of industrial, friendly, and com- mercial co-operation derives whatever virtue it possesses from the elements of Socialism con- tained in it. The Trade Unionist or the Co-oper- ator who opposes Socialism is denying the very principle and purpose for which his Trade Union or Co-operative Society exists. The capitalist who opposes Socialism is denying the principle 164 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM that provides him with all the means of wealth and security which he has nnjnstly appropriated. CHAPTER XX THE CHURCH, COLLEGE AND SCHOOL We have seen how essentially Socialistic is the principle operating in, and giving vitality to the family, friendship and industrial organization. We shall discover the same principle operating in our religious, educational, and civic and political systems, and general customs of public life. Our inquiry will first deal with institutions which are not commonly regarded as of a political nature. THE CHURCH, THE COLLEGE AND THE SCHOOL . (RELIGIOUS, EDUCATIONAL AND BENEVOLENT ORGANIZATION) "Whatever our views as to creeds may be, we cannot ignore the vast social importance of reli- gious organizations; as well attempt to deny the whole history of mankind. Temples, priesthoods, and religious societies, missions, and propaganda are, perhaps, of all the primitive human institu- tions the most distinctly human. Animals have their families, their friends, their economic co- operation, and even their towns, and, it might be said, their nations; but only amongst mankind do religious associations exist. To assert that what is universally the habit of mankind is, or has been, always useless to man- FAMILY, FEIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 165 kind is to deny the rationality not merely of man- kind, but of social evolntion. Religious associa- tion has in many instances superseded, as among the Mohammedans, political association, and in earlier times it is probable that religious combina- tion often preceded political organization — as among the Jews, Buddhists, Druids, and in the Christian Church in the Middle Ages. The circumstance that religious zeal or bigotry has frequently roused persecution and war, and that every human vice has flourished under even the strictest public observance of religion, must not blind us to the immense influence that religious ideas and fellowship have had on the moral and social development of mankind. Wars, persecu- tions, lies, lust, and robbery were not created by religions ; they belong to the barbarism of the race. A band of friends, an enraged city, or nation, may perpetrate plunder or massacre, but we do not therefore say that friendship, citizenship, or na- tional self-government provoke these crimes. Nor, again, is it to the purpose to allege that in the majority of cases religious communities have been moved by a selfish hope of blessing or fear of punishment in this or another world, rather than by a purely altruistic desire for the happiness of their fellows. For if we begin to in- quire deeply into the origin of any form of social sympathy or mutual help — including modern So- cialism itself — where else will our inquiry lead us 166 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM but back either to selfishness (transformed latterly into social interest), or to obedience to a com- mand, whether social or religions, which overawes our self-seeking and "makes for righteous- ness." Many and wonderful have been the forms of fellowship which have been manifested under the impulse of religious feeling and sense of duty. Every highly evolved religion affords us examples of people foregoing all the usual self-interests of their class and opportunities, to dwell in more or less complete terms of equality with their asso- ciates. The Jewish book of law relating to the land and social conduct of the people was, with all its defects, essentially colleetivist in its pur- pose. The intense and often fantastic sacred com- munities which were formed in the East ; the early Christian Churches, where all things were held to be in common ; the innumerable brotherhoods off- shooting from the Catholic Church, in which, until they became corrupt with wealth and power, every duty of manual toil and service of charity and mercy was cheerfully performed; the many strange semi-Socialist religious communities which have sprung up in all parts of the Western world in more recent centuries — these and similar examples which might be cited from the history of all religions, east and west, must surely be ac- cepted as at least buddings of the growth of So- cialism in mankind. FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP, INDUSTRY 167 Then, too, the magnificent collective genius and emotion which inspired and provided the work which shaped out of nothingness the Greek and Roman temples and academies, and the great cathedrals and abbeys and colleges of the Middle Ages — shall we not account these also as mani- festations of the Socialist spirit bursting through the fetters of the individualism and barbarism of their times? It should be borne in mind that the great churches, cathedrals, and colleges (as well as Town and Guild Halls and other important buildings) of the Middle Ages, which are the admiration and despair of architects and art lovers to-day, were all the products not only of co-operative workmanship but of co-operative de- sign. They were designed and built in most instances by co-operative groups of guilds of workmen. The leading Society of Cathedral builders was that of Comocine Brethren, who were bound together by the strictest rules of appren- ticeship, work, and conduct. It is from this re- markable fraternity that (so it is believed) the modem institution of Freemasonry derives its origin or descent. Religion, in the sense of sacerdotal beliefs, represents only one aspect of the intellectual fratemalism of mankind. All forms of educa- tional and benevolent propaganda, all pleadings and preachings of ideas of right against wrong, of truth against error, are related to religious 168 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM idealism. Political Socialism in our own day inevitably assumes a religious complexion in the minds of its more earnest advocates. And whence the philanthropic and propaganda spirit in mankind at all? Whence the burning desire to proclaim our religious beliefs and our conceptions of justice and truth? Whence our hatred of ignoble conduct on our own part or on the part of others ; our desire for the educational enlightenment of our fellows; our zeal for social and political reform? Why should we wish to instruct others at all, or risk our own peace and lives in battling against what we conceive to be error, superstition, and ignorance? Why did Socrates, Bruno, and Servetus, who had no expectation of the "martyrs' crown" in another world, die for their conceptions of truth which affected in nowise their own material happi- ness? And what secret power led forth St. Francis d'Assisi, John Woolman, Dr. Livingstone, Father Damien, and all the hosts of warm-hearted And succoring men and women who have devoted their lives to wrestling with the poverty, the plagues, the sin, the ignorance, and the oppres- sion of the people? What is it that has from the beginning of society stirred men to forsake their own comfort, and plunge into the hard, thorny ways of reform and the scorching furnaces of revolution — ^the John Balls, the William Wallaces, MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 169 the Toussaints, the Winkelrieds, the John Browns, the Sophie Perovskayias ? Think of these things — these nrgings, aspira- tions, and sympathies which have hurst forth in religions, humane, educational, and political devo- tion — ^think of all they have meant, of nohle purpose and sacrifice of every sweet and dear interest in life ; think of all the amassed service of man to man in hospitals, village schools, and plague-stricken cities, and of all the glad leaping forth of heroes and martyrs breaking their poor hodies in great causes — ^let us think, I say, of all these wonderful deeds of selfish man, and will not the answer throb loudly in our hearts and braina — ^lo ! these are heraldings of the coming universal reign of Socialism? CHAPTER XXI MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM We turn now to forms of public co-operation, which are more distinctively political in their origin and nature than those we have just been considering. It is from the creation of villages, towns, and cities that civilization in the proper sense is de- rived. It is from the necessary co-operation and communion in building, provisioning, and defend- ing these collective dwelling places that mankind 170 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM has attained a practical, economic intelligence be- yond what has been nurtured in family life. Indeed, all our wider industrial powers, as well as our capacity for national life, have grown up from our corporate training as citizens. Nomad or wandering tribes and isolated herd- ing peoples make little or no intellectual or social progress. This fact itself is rife with the meaning of Socialism as opposed to individualism. Indi- vidualism is only, strictly speaking, possible or logical for individuals who live individually — ^that is to say, outside of society. Socialism, on the other hand, is the inevitable outcome of associated life. The arts and sciences, and the higher powers of man were all cradled, so to speak, in the cities. Philosophy, astronomy, sculpture, painting, the drama, music, commerce, manufacture, schools, and legal government first became known to us in history in Thebes, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, Athens, and Rome. Thence they have come down to us, receiving fresh birth and increasing powers on the way, and spreading their influence over the hills and plains, through Constantinople, Venice, Florence, Antwerp, Geneva, Paris, London, and other great mediaeval towns. In many of these ancient and mediseval cities, as in many of our early English villages and towns, collectivism developed to quite a remarkable ex- tent. Walls, streets, bridges, baths, schools, halls, MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 171 markets were built by collective enterprise, and oftentimes the towns carried on collective trade with foreign ports, and bonght and sold important produce for the citizens. The sense of civic equal- ity and the recognition of public rights were thus developed to a high degree. The rise of modern Capitalism broke up the community feeling and habits of the towns to such an extent that about 100 years ago public rights almost entirely disap- I)eared, and individualism ravaged life like an epidemic. To-day we are re-creating municipal Socialism on a higher and wider plan. Municipal enterprise may be divided into two classes — one, reproductive and trading, and the other non-productive and non-trading. To the first belong all undertakings which produce com- modities for sale or provide services for which payment is charged at competitive rates. The chief of these are water, gas and electricity, tram- ways, markets, and housing. To the second be- long aU such services as education, hospitals, art galleries, concerts, road up-keeping, sanitation, public parks, and the like. The latter, though non-productive, are essentially Socialistic, and the cost of their upkeep is usually defrayed out of the rates. Both in regard to reproductive and non-pro- ductive services there is the further distinction that some are communistic and some simply col- lectivist. Those services, the use of which is 172 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM allowed free of charge, and which all, rich and poor alike, may equally enjoy, are communistio — as, for example, the water supply, elementally education, roads and streets, art galleries, etc. On the other hand, gas, electricity, and tramways are at present simply collectivist undertakings — that is to say, they are collectively owned by the townspeople, but the use of them is not free., They are paid for in proportion to use, and those who are rich can afford to use and enjoy the ad- vantage of them to a greater extent than those who are poor. There is, however, it should be noted, an evolu- tionary tendency in certain forms of collectivism towards communism. Thus formerly a toll was levied on passengers, cattle, and vehicles for the use of roads and bridges, and parents had to pay a fee for every child sent to school. Now these services are free for the use of all. In time to come no doubt the use of tramwa,ys and the sup- ply of gas and electricity will be free, and per- haps, as some Socialists like Bernard Shaw and some Radicals like M. Clemenceau have urged, the provision of bread also. The provision of free meals for children and free medical atten- dance leads directly that way. It would be manifestly impossible within the limits of our space in the present section to give a complete account of municipal ownership and enterprise. The following table may, however, MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 173 serve our purpose quite as well, if not better. It gives what may be termed a ^* Bird's Eye View," showing tlie general variety and range of under- takings which have now come within the sphere of municipal ownership and operation. The survey is confined to Great Britain. Municipal collectivism is much more advanced in several countries abroad, notably in Germany and Denmark, than in Great Britain, but it will be simpler and more convincing to restrict our view to examples of municipalization within observa- tion from our own doorstep, so to say. A "BIRD*S-EYE VIEW" OF MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE Land, Farms, Etc. Farms Forests Allotments Watersheds Town Buildinf? Sites, etc. Buildings. Etc. Market Halls Public Halls Commercial Buildings Workmen's Houses Model Lodj^in^s Women's Homes Churches Communication Roads. Streets Bridges, Docks, and Harbors River Improvements Ferries Tramways Light Railways Telephones Education Colleges Technical Schools Elementary Schools Secondary Schools Libraries and Reading Rooms Museums Art Galleries Health Town Oeansing _ Sanitary Inspection Milk Supply Food Inspection Hospitals Sanatoria, etc. Free Medicine Children's Nurseries Maternity Homes Lunatic Asylums Baths Laundries Mineral Wells Meals for School Chil- dren Recreation, Etc. Public Parks and Gar- dens Gymnasium Playgrounds Golf Courses, Bowl- ing Greens, Race- Courses, etc. Tennis Courts Bands Concerts Etc. Food. Tea Rooms Refreshment Kiosks Restaurants and Din- ing Rooms Public Services Gas Lighting Electric Power Gas Cooking Heating Coal Depots Fire Brigades Markets Weighing Machines Abattoirs Cold Stores Public Clocks Burying Grounds and Manufactures Tram Carriage Build- ing Gas Stoves Paving Stones, etc. Banks. Etc. Savings Banks Fire Insurance 174 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Considerable progress has been made in recent years by municipalities in regard to the provision of better housing for the working class, and great schemes of municipal housing assisted by State funds are now in contemplation ; but how far when carried out they will prove encouraging examples of public enterprise from an economic or artistic point of view remains to be seen. Considerable advance also, one is glad to acknowledge, has been made by public authorities in beginning to regu- late the planning of towns with the object of mak- ing them not only healthier and more convenient for traffic, but more beautiful of aspect. Why, indeed, we may ask, should not the conununity build all its own dwellings co-operatively, and why should not our towns, which are the greatest works of our hands, be made also our noblest works of art! One word must be said about work and wage conditions in municipal employment :- Composed as the majority of town and city councils are of members who are imbued with capitalist ideas concerning labor, and (what is more important to remember) representing as they do a public, including, in most instances, a majority of working-class voters, who still regard the workers as by nature an inferior class, it is not to be expected that the wages and other con- ditions of municipal employees will show much improvement, if any, over those that prevail in AN INTERLUDE 175 ordinary employment. Nevertheless, partly as the result of the growth of a better public con- science, but mainly as the result of Socialist and Trade Union pressure, the conditions of workers in municipal employment have greatly improved in recent years, and now generally compare favor- ably with those in similar employment under pri- vate firms. CHAPTER XXII AN INTERLUDE: THE REVIVAL OP VILLAGE LIFE The land calls the people, and the people, un- bound, hasten to the land. Look and see on a holiday morning, and con- sider the marvel of it. A shout of joy greets the daybreak, and the gates of the cities burst open. Forth, as from prison, the people fly, panting for breath. Multitudes and multitudes of them, many of them grievously misshapen, many of them sadly poor ; but all making a brave show of gaiety with new dresses, or old ones brightened up anew. Forth they come, struggling forbearingly Avith each other for standing room in the crowded tram and train and steamboat. In tens of thousands they speed together, several millions of them in all — ^lads and lasses, fathers and mothers, with children flocking by their side shouting gleefully, and worn-out grandparents, vying with the chil- 176 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM dren in their enthusiasm, all eagerly expectant, their pale faces aglow. Whither? To the green fields and the open sky! East and west, north and south. The sunshine and the winds alone seem to guide their flight. Forth they go, speeding headlong and happy to the fields, the woods, and the seashore, seeking a brief taste of Elysium, a draught from the cup of life. Follow the children — freedom and wisdom are in their Avays. The chains of oppression fall easily from their soft limbs, and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Joyously they plunge into the meadows, rolling on the grass and revelling among the wild flowers. Down to the brooks they swarm, and knee-deep, bestrew the pools with a thousand fragmentary ships. Like sea-gulls, they spread themselves on the beach, digging their fists and spades into the sand with Herculean might; like merlings they splash out into the waves. Have these things, think you, not a great mean- ing for us ? Do they not tell us more of the secret of human happiness than all the precepts of po- litical economy? Break the chains, set the people free, and the people will return to the land. The children Avill lead them. The fields and the valleys call us. They also know the bitterness of the oppressor; they are grown stunted and feeble and barren. They are AN INTERLUDE 177 hungry for our hands; they plead for our com- panionship. They call on us to come, bringing with us freedom and knowledge and co-operation. They call on us to come, and they will yield our toil a hundredfold, and bless our children with health and joy and shapeliness of body and soul. Break the chains and set the people free ; break the chains and set free the land! Then will the prophecy of the ages be fulfilled, and the valleys rejoice, the barren places burst into bloom, the hillsides become richly clad, and the streams flow sweet and glad through meadow and city. The towns and cities will also rejoice. They, too, are in chains, and cry to be free. They are compressed, overcrowded, and foul. They cry for air, light and space, and for release from devour- ing landlordism. The restoration of the land to the people and of the people to the land will not impair, but re- create and greatly sweeten and brighten the towns. They will no longer be the enemies of the villages and the fields, but will become friends with them, co-operating and each benefiting mutually by the other 's help. The towns will re- energize the country, and the country will refresh and nourish the towns. The towns will spread themselves out into the gardens and fields, and the fields and gardens will stretch pleasantly into the towns. That is the law of adjustment which Socialism will fulfil. 178 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Village life will be restored, invigorated, and enriched. The knowledge, the intellectual energy and collective aptitude of the towns and cities will be diffused into the remotest valleys, and the countless means of modern communication and transport will act as nerves and arteries, stimu- lating the activities and interchanging the sus- tenance and sympathy between town and country. Agricultural villages nowadays are^usually hope- lessly dull and lifeless, and the notion that they ever have been or ever can be made desirable places to work and live in, endowed with splendid craftsmanship and public spirit, seems almost fan- tastic. Nevertheless in former times the villagers were often intellectually abreast of the cities, and famous for their local industries, arts and political championship; woolen, flax, leather, blacksmith- ing, pottery, and cabinet-making industries flour- ished in them. The towns possessed little ad- vantage in knowledge or social organization over the villages, and the villages as the result of the closer interests and more stable traditions of the inhabitants were in many respects better or- ganized communities than those of the large towns. The growth of modern factory industry and the universal private monopoly of the land, have left the villages derelict — the former by destroying the village handicrafts and compelling the villagers AN INTERLUDE 179 to seek employment in factories, and the latter by the confiscation of the parish lands and other com- munal possessions. It should be remembered also that in former days the farmhouses and plough- men's cottages were not spread far away from the villages, but formed part of them. The creation of large farms with steadings, far removed from the villages, is a custom which has grown up with, and is really a complementary part of, the modern capitalist system. Thus the farmer and his ser- vants have lost touch with society and civic life, and as a result have become the most selfish and unprogressive section of the population. So, therefore, the villages and farmhouses are lifeless and dreary. The jolly miller, the jovial farmer, the melodious blacksmith, the blithe cob- bler, and the merry milkmaid are no more. Often when I have walked through English villages or passed farmhouses on the wayside in the evening, when outdoor work has ceased for the day, I have felt as if I were in a deserted or plague-stricken land. No note of song, not even of a mother crooning to her child; no mingling of voices in conversation; no sound of social com- munion whatever, imless on the rarest occasions, has greeted my ear. The fiddle-bow is never lifted, and dancing and merry-making are as if they never had been known, or had been forbidden by public decree. Even the village alehouse is usually silent except for an occasional brawl or 180 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM the advent of some soldier or sailor revisiting the home folk after many years. It was not, as I have said, always so. Merry England was once a reality, though not, maybe, such a reality as would please us nowadays. The villages were alive — even more alive than our towns now are. The people gathered out of doors on the summer evenings, and on the winter nights they assembled in each other's houses and made merry at supper time. There were numerous holy-days, festivals, fairs, games, and entertain- ments. Every season brought a changed succes- sion of pleasant ceremonies and observances — the May festivals when the milkmaids and plough- men held carnival, the feasts of midsummer night, the harvest-homing, All Hallow's Eve, and the great mid- winter festival of Christmas. The pub- lic affairs of the locality excited wonderful inter- est, and there were old men famed for their wisdom, and young men highly reputed for their feats of sldll and strength, their musical talents, and their gallantries. Have my readers ever considered what wealth of song and story, of dance and games, of folk- lore and of wisdom concerning the seasons, the nature of plants, and the habits of animals and birds, was possessed in older days by the country- folk and handed down from children to children, and how impossible such a heritage of genius and knowledge would have been had country life al- AN INTERLUDE 181 ways been as listless and sodden as it is to-day? Think you, did the beautiful melodies, the quaint verses, and the dances which Mr. Baring Gould and Mr. Sharpe have been gleaning from the fast- disappearing traditions of the "West Country come from a spiritless and loutish peasantry? And did the marvellous songs of the Border minstrelsy, the Highland lays and reels, the unsurpassed fiddle tunes of Neil Gow, and the songs of Robert Burns come from a dull-brained, witless people such as we see on the farms and in the agricultural cot- tages to-day? What song heard nowadays in London musie- halls can compare for humor, or tenderness, or bravery, with the old country songs of the "West of England, of Scotland, and Ireland of a hun- dred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago? CHAPTER XXIII NATIONAL 0"WNERSHIP In a previous chapter I dealt with the forms and growth of Socialism in the public life of our vil- lages and towns. Socialism of this description is usually called Municipal Socialism. We must now glance at the developments of collective ser- vice and enterprise in the wider sphere of the State, which bears specially the name of State Socialism. The term nationalization is commonly 182 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM used to denominate the process of bringing pro- perty, industries and services into the ownership and control of the State or nation collectively. It is to this State Socialism or Collectivism that the name of Socialism is most frequently applied in political discussion, though obviously public ownership of this kjnd is in principle no more Socialistic than is municipal or town ownership. The only difference is that in the one case the sphere of ownership is the whole nation, whereas in the other it is local. So far as it has been yet developed. State owner- ship is as a rule less Socialistic in actual result than is municipal or local ownership. For in most instances of town ownership, as in the case of water, gas, and electricity supply, tram service and public parks, baths, art galleries, etc., the benefits derived are such as are estimable as forms or means of wealth. As yet apart from the postal system, and in other countries the railways, State enterprise has been confined mainly to the provi- sion of military defence, public justice, and educa- tion. Nor should it be necessary to point out that State ownership, like many forms of municipal ownership, is as yet for the most part a form of State Capitalism. Labor and wage conditions and all other things connected with it, are based upon the usages of capitalist employment. Nor could it well be otherwise in the present stage of transi- NATIONAL OWNERSHIP 183 tion, for were the State to show marked favor in wage and hour conditions to its own employees there would be general resentment and reaction against public enterprise. The main difference at present between private ownership and State ownership is that in the latter there is no waste- ful competition, and that the profits derived from the undertaking, when it is a profit-making con- cern, go, or wiU eventually go, to the National Exchequer instead of into the banking accounts of a few (or many) private shareholders. But the public ownership of land and capital forms the economic basis of Socialism. Until the means of production and distribution are owned by the nation, the nation cannot control and use them for the national benefit. If, when owning them, the nation or the people do not see to it that their possessions are used and carried on in the right way and for the right purpose, the fault lies not in the principle of public ownership, but with the people themselves. National or State ownership is potentially the most important development of collective prop- erty and enterprise, as it is likely to include the land, railways, mines, and all the great controlling industries and means of transport. It is also for the most part the more recent development of public ownership and service. This lateness of development of the economic function of the State is to be accounted for chiefly by the fact 184 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM that the State itself in a highly organized form is of comparatively modern growth. For though Kingdoms and even Empires have existed since the earliest ages of civilization, their function, until quite modern days, consisted mainly in sub- serving the military power and personal aggran- dizement of monarchs and oligarchies. The nation or State was in fact a dominion rather than an organic community or democracy. Thus, while in mediasval England the towns and villages were often highly organized co-operative communities, the State or central government was little more than an instrument for providing military service and taxation for the monarchy. It is only indeed within the past hundred years or so, and chiefly during the past fifty or sixty years, that the State has begun to develop its functions as the instrument of the economic well- being of the collective nation. As lately as sixty years ago, the State performed virtually no econo- mic service for the nation beyond owning and keeping in repair certain highways, carrying the public post, and enacting and enforcing, mostly in the interests of the landlord and capitalist class, the Poor Law system and certain rudimentary factory and health regulations. Even as yet, in Great Britain, differing in this respect from some continental countries, and more notably from Australia and New Zealand, the collective enterprise of the State has been confined NATIONAL OWNERSHIP 185 mainly to services which, however nseful and important in themselves, such as public health provisions, education, Old Age Pensions, and National Insurance, are such as do not entrench upon the property and the rent and profit-making interests of the landlord and capitalist class. For the most part they are services which involve heavy State outlay, but bring in no income or economic return to the State. I write these pages while England and the great States of Europe are still reeling from the economic and political effects of the great war. That vast developments of State owner- ship and enterprise are likely to take place as the result alike of intense economic and political pres- sure, not only in Russia, Germany and other States, which have undergone Social Revolution, but in our own and probably all other States, is highly probable. I can, however, only speak his- torically of things as they were before the out- break of the war. As already noted, State enterprise has attained a high degree of development in Australia, largely as the result of Socialist agitation and the coming into power of the Labor Parties, alike in the Com- monwealth and the various State Parliaments. The railways and large portions of the land have been nationalized, and the State has embarked upon shipping, banking, mining, engineering and many other industrial and coramercial undertak- 186 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM ings. Wages and hours of labor alike in private and public occupations have been brought under State regulation ; and Old Age Pensions, pensions for widows and fatherless children, and other en- dowments of a like kind on a comparatively generous scale are bestowed by the State. In New Zealand, the railways and a number of coal mines are nationalized and many important com- mercial duties in the common interests of citizens are discharged by the State. In Europe the rail- ways were already nationalized in most countries before the war. And in several countries, notably Germany, State enterprise had reached a much wider range and higher degree of efficiency than in Great Britain. CHAPTER XXIV THE PLAGUE OP OFFICIALS The cry that Socialism would bring upon the nation a huge "plague" or "flood" of officials whose duty it would be to police and dragoon the people at every turn is constantly repeated by the opponents of Socialism. Herbert Spencer gave this accusation great authority and currency in his later days. Nor need we be surprised if pub- lic experience during the recent war-time of a harassing and corrupt bureaucracy has given weight to the objection in many minds. Officialism is not beloved of the people. And THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 187 small ■wonder. AU down history officials have represented the oppressive power of monarchs, lords, class governments, landowners, and capi- talists. Thus the very name of official has become synonymous in the public mind with interference, insolence, and extortion. But when the people are no longer under the rule of monarchs, class governments, landlords, masters, and monopolists — ^what then? How, then, shall officials oppress the people? What motive then will officials have when they no longer act as the instruments of oppression and greed to torment and humiliate their fellows? From whom will they derive authority or power to order and interfere with the people at any and every turn? These are questions which those who resound the cry against Socialism have evidently not con- sidered; nor have they realized how easy it is to show how much more vexatiously the people are ordered about and coerced by the officials of landlords and capitalists, by rent collectors, bailiffs, gamekeepers, managers, foremen, and flunkeys, than by the public officials of the Grovernment and municipalities. The accusation that Socialism will flood the nation with officials is one that can be turned with crushing effect against the present system. For the "plague of officials" is not a terror of the future— it is an actuality to-day. The lives 188 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM of the people are already well-nigK suffocated with officialism which is in no sense intended to subserve any real purpose of national well-being, but solely to sustain the selfish interests of the miling classes. Every movement of the workers during the working hours, which absorb the greater portions of their everyday existence, is under the surveillance and control of managers, directors, and foremen, who have virtually abso- lute power to order employees to do whatsoever their masters wish them to do. Every morning of the week some twenty ntiil- lions of men and women, boys and girls, pass entirely out of the realm of such public freedom as the State and its officials allow them, and are regimented into the innumerable fields, factories, workshops, warehouses, shops, and offices where capitalism and its officials have full dominion over their every action all day long, until the day's strength of their bodies and minds has been exacted from them. Notcnerely must the workers do whatever work their masters and officials re- quire of them, but they may not do anything else — not even manifest the existence of their immor- tal souls or mortal bodies, if so be their masters forbid them. They may not speak or sing, or laugh or weep; they may not move about the place or leave it for any purpose without permission. They are watched by official all-seeing eyes from morn till THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 189 night. Nay, do we not hear that in some work- shops there are officials with cunning lenses, tak- ing tell-tale photographs should the workpeople but so much as rise from their benches to stretch their cramped limbs or to open their lungs for a breath of fresh air — these photographs being pre- sented to them at the week-end, together with a note of deductions from their pay, as punishment for their temerity? Even the physical calls of their bodies may not be attended to (such is the freedom to which capitalism has evolved poor humanity!) without official sanction and registra- tion! Let us not fail to remind the exponents of capi- talist freedom against Socialist officialism of these patent facts — facts which the workers know, facts which rule out quite diabolically God's own images from the primal laws of living creatures, not to speak of the beatitudes of the Gospel. Socialism will not increase officialism. Social- ism will enormously reduce the number of officials of every kind in the State. Socialism will do away with the need and the purpose of the great major- ity of the functionaries employed alike by the Government and by the industrial masters of the people, to sustain the present unjust and waste- ful system of capitalist monopoly and exploita- tion. Under Socialism there will, indeed, be officials, but they will be relatively few compared with the 190 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM hosts of agents, inspectors and foremen wlio are employed to-day. The officials will then he the servants or comrades of the people. It will he their duty and interest — it will, I helieve, he their joy — not to hnrt or hinder the people's lives, hut to help and enrich them. Officialism will then he hut another name for the due and orderly carrying on of the nation's industry and the supervision of the general wel- fare. The officials will he the equals and neigh- bors of the people, sharing all the common duties of citizenship, and removable should they culpably neglect or exceed their duties. In order that we may, at a glance, form some idea of the magnitude of the number of officials who have power — great or small — over the people in present-day society, and in order also that we may in some degree realize how great a clearing out, so to speak. Socialism will make of officialism, let us scan the following much epitomized sum- mary of the officials who "flood" and "plague" the present day life of the nation : — GOVERNMENTAL CAPITALISTIC Kin^ and Cabinet Railway Directors Parliament Managers Army and Navy Inspectors Government Departments Sub-Inspectors Civil Service Officials Foremen Post Office Officials ^ Stationmasters Excise and Customs Oificials Judges and Law Officers ,.. _^. , Police Officials '"'"" Directors Prison Officials Managers Asylum Officials Engineers Poor Law Officials Foremen School Teachers Deputies THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 191 GOVERNMENTAL School Inspectors School Attendance Officers Factory Inspectors Mine Inspectors Health Officers Sanitary Inspectors Milk Inspectors Mea.t Inspectors Weights and Measures Inspectors Magistrates Magistrates' Clerks Gas, Water, and Tram Inspectors and Collectors \rt Gallery, Free Library, Baths, and Park Officials CAPITALISTIC Shipping Directors Managers Officers Harbor-Masters Police Bank Directors Managers Inspectors Agents Insurance Directors Managers Inspectors Agents Collectors General Industry Companies Masters Managers Foremen Chief Clerks Cashiers, etc, etc. Landlords Agents Factors Bailiffs Rent Collectors Property Inspectors Gamekeepers Flunkeys Religious and Philanthropic Bishops, Deans Qergymen, Ministers Churchwardens Deacons Collectors Caretakers Charity Organizers Committees Agents Inspectors Collectors Cruelty to Animal Inspectors Cruelty to Children Inspectors Trade Unions Committees Secretaries Treasurers Collectors Organizers Co-operative Societies Committees Managers Foremen Friendly Societies Committees Agents Collectors 192 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM The above list but faintly indicates the tre- mendous army of officials of all kinds who, under the present system of class government and capi- talist industry, tax, order, and dragoon the people at every turn. Let me put the matter in a more arithmetical way. There are, apart from the Army and Navy and the general Government service of the coun- try, some 25,000,000 or more people engaged in work of some kind or another in Great Britain, Of these, at the very lowest estimate, there are one in ten, or, say 2,500,000, who are employed as managers, inspectors, foremen, or other officials. Let us now see how Socialism would reduce the above quite appalling number of functionaries. Consider, first, what effect the transformation of the Government of the country into an indus- trial democracy would have in doing away with the necessity for the present vast staff of Govern- ment officials. We may leave out of account at present the Army and Navy, hoping that when Socialism becomes international there will no longer be any pretence for the need of armies and navies of any kind. The greater proportion of law officers, whose duties result chiefly from disputes relating to property, contracts, and criminal eases arising from existing social injustice, would be dispensed with. The Customs staff would also be unneces- sary, as would also be the greater portion of the THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 193 Government and Municipal staffs engaged in tlie levying and collecting of taxes and rates, and the enforcement of regulations of capitalist condi- tions. A considerable portion of tlie police force and aU the battalions of Poor Law, factory, food inspection, charity, cruelty to children, and, let us hope, prison officials, would be transferred to more pleasant employment. In industrial employment, following upon the abolition of the innumerable private companies, with their competition, driving, account keeping, and espionage in the interest of private profit- maMng, a no less sweeping change would be made. Managers and foremen would still be required, but in much fewer numbers, and the great mass of agents, inspectors, and collectors would disap- pear. The enormous staffs of officials of insur- ance companies, private banks, and middlemen would have more useful vocations provided them. On the other hand, the displacement of private enterprise and the increased service of the State would involve an augmentation of officials in cer- tain departments. The Post Office (let us say), by taking over whatever functions remained of banking, insurance, and the like, might require an additional staff. Our educational system would be greatly extended, and there would be more teachers and smaller classes. Except, however, in these and a few other de- partments, there would be no increase in officials, 194 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM and such increase would be hardly appreciable as compared with the vast decrease of officials in the present industrial and Governmental departments of the nation, who, I must again remind my read- ers, are chiefly needed because of the necessity for interference with the anarchistic conditions of capitalist society. CHAPTEE XXV STATE SOCIALISM Socialism wUl doubtless assume widely differ- ent forms and customs among different races and nations, especially those widely separate from each other in physical type and climatic and other natural conditions. One can hardly suppose, for example, that Socialism in Japan will present quite the same external features as Socialism in Great Britain, or that Socialism in Palestine or Egypt will be identical in its customs with Social- ism in Finland or Canada. Even in Europe, one may expect to see great variations in the type of Socialist system adopted in different countries. Already we observe in Eussia a great tendency towards Socialism of a decentralized communal type, whereas in Germany the tendency appears rather to be more towards centralized collectivism or State Socialism. STATE SOCIALISM 195 Here in Great Britain it is likely that Socialism "wiU take a more composite form than in either Russia or Germany — a form in which local or Municipal Socialism and National or State Social- ism will be more equally blended. In the British or so-called "Anglo-Saxon" character (which is ia fact very largely Celtic) there is a manifest com- promise between the disposition to preserve domestic and local autonomy and the desire for national uniformity and legal sanction. Thus our local government institutions thrive side by side with our national institutions, and seldom does any serious friction arise between them. But whatever be the particular type of Social- ism adopted in different countries, it is reasonable to suppose that there will be in all instances, and always, a blending together of State or centralized and local or decentralized functions — ^vary as they may in degree in each case. Certain fprms of property, industry and public service pertain from their nature specially to the people in their own localities and particular occupations, while cer- tain other forms of public property and enterprise relate from their nature to the common interests of the whole nation. Thus the ultimate ownership and control of the land, varying as it does so much in natural suitability of soil and richness of min- erals and water supply, will rest with the Central State in order that the land may, as far as pos- sible, be used for the equal advantage of the whole 196 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM commtinity. Eailway, shipping and general trans- port services, the mines, the post and telegraphs, etc., and the general scheme of industry, includ- ing the local allocation of wealth production and distribution, will similarly belong to the function of the Central State or bodies acting under its direct authority. On the other hand the local provision of dwelling houses, public buildings, parks and gardens, trams, lighting, baths, libraries, and the general means of distributing labor and wealth in each locality will belong to the functions of the municipalities and other locally appointed administrative bodies. Also, it is quite likely that Trade Unions or craft guilds, and other voluntary associations of workers, educationists, artists, scientists, and specialists and enthusiasts of all kinds will enjoy a large measure of freedom and autonomy in con- nection with their own particular occupations and pursuits. It m^y be found, for example, that by allowing, subject to the general system of State and local control, the building trades, the bakers, electric supply and tramway workers (to mention only one or two instances at random) to adopt, with little or no external interference, whatever method of organizing their work and rules of con- duct they choose, the best results may be obtained, both for themselves and the general community. So also, it may be found, as is largely the case at present, that groups of art, musical, and scientific STATE SOCIALISM 197 enthusiasts, building and gardening associations, swimming, cricket and football clubs and the like, can be entrusted to employ their abilities in their own way, with equal satisfaction to themselves and the public. Surely, in a word, it is plain that the object to be arrived at in adopting and carrying out any Socialist system, is to allow and encourage the utmost possible freedom of initiative and of self- government to every citizen, every associated group of citizens and workers, and every town, or locality, consistent with the general common- wealth scheme and supervision of the Central Grovernment? And surely there is little need of our meanwhile worrying greatly over the precise method or means by which this result may be mutually and harmoniously achieved? Many diffi- culties, many sharp conflicts of methods and opinions, many errors and failures there doubt- less will be ; and no end of occasions for political excitement and agitation over them. But what of that? Is there not more than enough occasion for agitation and strife under existing conditions ? Nor do any of us, I hope, object to agitation or even strife, so long as it is free from violence, oppression, and ignoble passion. It is indeed only by agitation and strife of the spirit that man discovers in himself and others the powers and ways to higher things. 198 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM CHAPTER XXVI THE STATE Nevertheless, there exists a wide-spread appre- hension that by greatly increasing the sphere of State ownership and public service, and conse- quently its power also, the State will become more and more autocratic and inimicable to per- sonal liberty and to all forms of local and indus- trial autonomy. And this apprehension is not confined by any means to those who adopt the extreme individualist standpoint against Social- ism which characterized the anti- State agitation of Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, and Lord Wemyss a generation ago; nor to Anarchist- Communists of the type of Kropotkin and Nieuen- huis. It is a feeling shared by many Socialists who are avowed CoUectivists, particularly by In- dustrial Unionists, Syndicalists, and National Guild Socialists, as well as by many of our Quakers and anti-militarist friends. As the matter is one which relates not only to the prac- tical politics of Socialism, but to questions which concern the deepest spiritual instincts of civilized man, my readers will not, I hope, tire of me if I devote the present chapter to the consideration of this subject. And first let us note that by the term State is THE STATE 199 usnally meant one of two things (or both). It is used to designate (1) the entire commtinity of the nation viewed as a politically organized body, and (2) not the conmmnity itself, but the political functions of the eommnnity exercised by them- selves or in their name, particularly those per- taining to and exercised by the central government of the nation. It is in this latter sense that the term State is generally used in political contro- versy, and will be used by me in my present argu- ment. The State is described and condemned, I ob- serve, as being a capitalist institution in some of the text-books of Industrial Unionism. Even were that accusation true, it would not necessarily in- volve the outright condemnation and rejection of the State by Socialists. There are many institu- tions, inventions, and forms of industrial organi- zation, which have originated under capitalism and were meant to serve capitalism, which are in themselves exceedingly useful and commendable. Capitalism, notwithstanding its multitudinous inhumanities, is nevertheless itself a human insti- tution, a product of society, a form of social evolution. This, indeed, is one of the main pro- positions of Marx's famous thesis in his "Das Kapital." The affirmation that the State is a capitalist institution is, nevertheless, untrue. The State, historically, is not of capitalist origin. It 200 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM existed in various forms before either landlord- ism or capitalism in any institutional form was in existence. It germinated, as did the village, the city and the nation in the clan, the tribe and the community settlement; and grew up and ex- tended with the growth of the community itself. In earlier times, the State, as it broadened out from the tribal or village group, did so in many instances as an expression of religious rather than of military or industrial hegemony, and was Theocratic or priestly rather than political in character. This was the ease in the Jewish State, and in the Tibetan, and in many of the Indian States, and in the early Mohammedan States. As tribes, villages and cities extended and enriched their domain, the control of the State fell into the hands of the dominant caste, tribe, or class, and hence began to assume more auto- cratic and dynastic forms : notably in the case of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Rome in the ancient world, in the feudal kingdoms of mediseval times, and in the political kingdoms of later days. The circumstance that the rapid growth of the functions and powers of the State in modem times is coincident with the growth of the capital- ist system, in nowise changes the essential prin- ciple of the State as the expression, however imperfect or erroneous, of the communal or national body politic, nor does it justify our re- THE STATE 201 garding the State as a capitalist institution. All modem achievements and institutions have grown tip under the capitalist system, and might quite as justly as the State be stigmatized as capitalist institutions. On such a precept as that we might call science, education, public health, political democracy, and even modem Socialism, capitalist institutions ! The simple truth is that the State always is for the time being very largely the instrument of the self-interest of the dominant person, faction or class in the community, whosoever they may be. If, as in the Middle Ages, the landlord class be in the ascendant, the State will necessarily be feudal or landlord in its character. If, as in later times, the capitalist class are in the ascendant, the State will be capitalist in its complexion and in the use of its powers. While if, as at the present moment in Russia, Germany and other revolu- tionary States, the Socialists or working class gain the upper hand, the State immediately begins to assume, autocratically maybe, a Socialist purpose and character. And that, as it seems to me, is the whole sub- stance of the matter. The State is and will be what the general voice or consent of the com- munity wish it to be. So likewise will the public customs, industry, education, freedom and all other circumstances and conditions of civilized life that are subject to human control. 202 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM CHAPTEE XXVn LIBERTY AND THE STATE But whatever view we take of the State — whether we regard it as essentially an evil and undesirable power, or as a necessary and poten- tially beneficent power — the fear lest with the growth of its power, both political and economic, the State will become oppressive of minorities, obstinate against new ideas and a constant menace to personal freedom and conscience, is a very general fear. Nor is it to be dismissed as mere political timidity. Nevertheless, if we look carefully at the matter, we shall find, I am convinced, that some of the apprehensions upon which that fear is founded are for the most part groundless. The belief, for example, that because the State becomes stronger and more important it is likely to become more arbitrary and vindictive is, I think, a mistaken one. The State can only become more powerful by becoming at the same time more widely repre- sentative and more highly organized, and both these changes will tend, not to inci^ease but lessen the disposition and temptation of the State to become inconsiderate and oppressive. Neither men nor institutions as a rule, become tyrannical because of strength, but chiefly from a sense of weakness or peril. The stronger and more demo- LIBERTY AND THE STATE 203 cratic the State becomes, the more sensitive, I hope, and indeed believe it will be to injury or pain inflicted on any part of its organism, and more tolerant towards opposition of opinion and action. For indeed, as a matter of history and fact, the modern highly organized State is not more, but less arbitrary and oppressive than the older State. (I speak not of the exceptional powers and actions of the State during the recent panic circumstances of the war. It would be most unfair — it would be false witness — to judge the State, or indeed nations, by their comportment during the anarchi- cal condition of war.) Not slavery, not the thumb- screw and the rack, not arbitrary interference with local self-government nor repression of po- litical or religious freedom, have characterized the policy of the State since it began its newer regime of social and economic activity. Eather has it been the sweeping away of slaveries, of religious and political disabilities, of barbarities and inequalities of law. That surely is a true and a greatly reassuring consideration. It is, in truth, not so much from the State, except in despotic countries, as from the tyrannies of custom, of public ignorance and prejudice; from conomercial interests ; and from, in many in- stances, illegal outbreaks of the populace, that in- novators, heretics and reformers have in these more modem days, suffered the greatest obstrue- tion and persecution. 204 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM It was not the State that compelled children to act as chimney sweepers, or to go down into the mines, or into the factories for sixteen hours a day. It was the State (capitalist though it was) that abolished these customs. It was not the State that bnrned down Joseph Priestley's home and valuable library and laboratory in Birmingham, and eventually compelled that noble-minded reformer and scientific discoverer to seek refuge across the seas. It was not the State that rioted and burned down, the houses and mauled the per- sons of pacifists in Great Britain during the Boer War. Nor during the recent European war was it the State, armed though it was with every resource of arbitrary power, that showed itself most hostile to dissentient opinion and freedom of conscience. It was the State that granted exemption to conscientious objectors to military service; it was locally appointed tribunals, com- posed of neighbors and fellow townsmen of the applicants that insulted them and denied them the benefits of the law. It was not the State that refused the use of public and privately owned halls for pacifist meetings and violently broke up Socialist and peace gatherings throughout the country. It is not the State that still lynches negroes in America with horrible tortures of burn- ing; nor was it the State that recently in Amer- ica tarred and feathered and burned alive paci- LIBERTY AND THE STATE 205 fists because they would not violate their con- sciences by cheering for the war. How few of the actual worries, hardships and despairs of our daily life come from any laws or interferences of the State! How many of them come from our fellows in business and occupation, and even from our chosen comrades and friends ! Have we not heard employers complain more bitterly against their competitor employers and against their workpeople and their Trade Unions, than against the State ; have we not heard work- men complain more bitterly against the tyranny of their masters and foremen — ^yea, of their fellow- workmen and of their own Trade Union officials — than against the tyranny of the State ? What is, I would suggest, an influence of far greater peril to freedom than is the increasing power of the State over the regulation of our ways of life, is the tendency observable in all classes towards a decay of thoughtfulness of opinion and a weakening of the public judgment. It is here we shall find the real source of our mis- givings ; it is here where lies the canker that leaves the nation exposed to hasty and violent appeals to popular notions. Not the State, but the public press, is the great menace which we have to face, and in some way overcome, in our immediate march freedomwards. That, however, is a sub- ject that I must not attempt to discuss in these pages. Only this will I say, that it is part of our 206 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Socialist faith and hope, that with the regenera- tion of onr whole social life which Socialism will bring, the people will become better, wiser and nobler alike as individuals and as a commnnity of citizens. That there exists, not perhaps as a new, or even as an increasing peril, grave danger of the adop- tion of hasty legislation, which may put sore pres- sure on the convictions and conscience of the more enlightened and sensitive spirits among us, must be acknowledged. This danger is all the greater because in most instances the object aimed at is, or appears to be, a desirable one, and commends itself to general approval. It is in the means of accomplishing the object, rather than in the object, that the peril most frequently lies. Such for example are the provisions of many of the educa- tion and public health proposals at present under discussion in Parliament. In these we find under the plea of physical culture in schools the intro- duction of military drill and the practise of weapons of war, the general compulsory inocu- lations of serums and anti-toxins, compulsory submission to surgical operations and medical treatment, and the enactment of powers to the police to arrest citizens for physical examination. To many among us ordinances such as these, of which military conscription is the archetype, are of the deepest essence of tyranny; decrees which many feel should be resisted to the point of im- LIBERTY AND THE STATE 207 prisonment or even death. But again let us re- mind ourselves that the real tyrant here is not the political State, but an ignorant or apathetic pub- lic. For, observe, one or all of the above mentioned decrees were already in compulsory operation with little, generally with no public protest in many schools, colleges. Friendly Societies, and commercial establishments before they even had been suggested to Parliament. The problem raised by the perils of these inva- sions of freedom and conscience is, therefore, one which involves the question of, not so much the character of the State, as the character of civi- lization itself. There is no solution of it except in the general enlightenment and moral improvement of the race. There is no effective recourse against it save in political agitation, and in the last in- stance (if need be) in the immemorial and glorious right of rebellion and martyrdom. PART IV BEYOND ALL FRONTIERS CHAPTER XXVm NATIONHOOD Nations are forms of social organization, and national or patriotic sentiment is an expression of social emotion. Nations (I speak of nations not of kingdoms) are not mere accidental lierdings together of peo- ple, though accidental circumstances of contact or conquest have in many instances determined their character and shape. Nor is patriotism an ignorant and selfish sentiment, though ignorance, selfishness, and the utmost knavery, often enough invoke it and batten on it. The folly and crime of quarrels and wars between nations no more prove the irrationality of patriotism or the inutility of nationhood than the strife between neighbors or political parties proves the futility of citizenship, or the misdeeds of capitalism or the misjudg- ments of juries prove the absurdity of industrial organization or of public courts of justice. Why have men in all ages and of all classes voluntarily given their lives for their country? Doubtless multitudes of them have gone into battle in the name of their country who were solely 211 212 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM actnated by the love of fighting and adventure, or the desire for plunder. But what of the mil- lions of men in histoiy who have risen to arms from peaceful pursuits; men who have had no love, but hatred and terror of battle, and yet have given away their lives freely and gladly, for what they believed to be their country's sake? Their country's sake! What was their country's sake to them, knowing they must die, and their fam- ilies almost certainly perish also? What was Russia's sake to the thousands of Russian revo- lutionists who gave themselves to death, or worse than death, horrible torture and imprisonment for Russian freedom? If we look rightly at this matter we shall see in it a revelation of the social spirit in mankind — the working of a spirit of devotion and altruism which leads men irresistibly to sacrifice their own small lives for the larger life and social progress of the race. Without this civic devotion or patriotism, the local evolution of society would, as far as we can discern, have been impossible, and Socialism on a large and effective scale would perhaps forever have been unattainable. The great benefits (doubtless with many draw- backs) to civilization which have resulted from the coming together of local groups of people into national combination may be seen by comparing the state of Britain during the early centuries, when each clan or settlement of people was a law NATIONHOOD 213 to itself, with the state of Britain afterwards when national unity was achieved. The frequent battles, the local friction, the deep prejudice of each locality against the customs of other locali- ties, the impossibility of co-operation for common defence or interchange of products, the entire lack of main roads or regular avenues of distant communication — made industrial and social pro- gress in the early centuries slow indeed. In Scot- land the history of civilization (apart from the older clan culture such as it was) practically begins with the combination of the towns and tribes into one kingdom under Kenneth. Simi- larly in England, it was not until Alfred laid down the framework of England as a nation that we find the means of social improvement beginning to grow and spread. In our own day we see how vast have grown the means of wealth and progress under national organization, notwithstanding the fact that the State has been largely an instrument of the capitalist classes. The great highways, the postal system, the general protection of life, the institu- tion of public means of education, the provision of powers for the extension of railways, and the development of great collective means of water distribution, sanitation, and constructive legisla- tion — ^these and innumerable other forms of col- lective well-being which inevitably tend towards universal Socialism could not have been achieved 214 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM without the existence of national organization. But the growth of communities into nations and of nations into larger nations, must be a natural or voluntary expansion, not a forceful one of con- quest and oppression, or there will be rebellion and constant provocation of war. Empires are almost always the result of conquest, not of the voluntary federation of nations. It would appear to be a law of social evolution that each community, small or large, must, in the interest of race progress, preserve, for a time at any rate, its individual characteristics — its blood, its language, its customs, and its beliefs. The preservation of these local diversities of social growth has, it would seem, been essential to the common means of the development of mankind generally. Peoples and nations of all kinds, there- fore, have fought passionately for their indepen- dence — that is to say, for their existence. Only under conditions that have ensured the preserva- tion of their blood and local customs until at least such time as these would be assimilated in a higher collective life have peoples ever willingly con- sented to resign their local independence. Patriotism, therefore, has been an essential ele- ment in civilization. Had patriots not died for their country, their country would not have lived. Ireland's fierce struggle for nationhood. has been justified even in its seeming defeat. She has sus- tained her national life by revolt long enough to NATIONHOOD 215 enable her to diffuse her blood, her genius and her character, not only among her conquerors, hut among all civilized races. Several important qualifications of this ap- praisement of patriotism must, however, be made. One is that witji the increasing organization of society nations have become more resistant to debasement or destruction by external conquest. Conquest, in fact, becomes less and less able to deeply affect the organic structure and modes of national life. A second is that the increasing development of institutional diplomacy and mili- tarism has more and more exposed the people to the danger of external aggression and weakened their power of resistance to an abuse of patriotic sentiment. Another is that, as we shall presently see, the growth of international conditions of civi- lized life has brought into view the possibility of eliminating the danger of conquest, and thereby of releasing nations from the function of national defence altogether. Nevertheless, Socialism comes not, I repeat, as the destroyer, but as the preserver and creator of Bocial sentiments and institutions. It condemns no moral or national sentiment that uprises from the right social aspirations of mankind. It comes not to destroy families, municipahties, or nations, but to vivify them and endow them with greater sustenance and freedom. It comes to harmonize heir^nterests, and widen, by the fullest national 216 THE MEANING OP SOCIALISM and international co-operation, their powers for their individual and collective ■well-being. Hence, therefore, Socialism is not only national- ist, but internationalist. CHAPTER XXIX INTERNATIONALISM Intebnationalism does not mean the extinction of nationhood. It means the bringing of nations together in the bonds of friendship and brother- hood. Important and necessary as has been, and still is, the function of nationhood, it no longer suffices for the needs and conditions, not to speak of the sentiments, of civilized life. Modern progress — for progress we must term it, despite all its baser accompaniments — has wrought a great change in the sphere of nationhood. Apart altogether from any preconceptions we may have as to the desira- bility on wide humanitarian or political grounds of an enlargement of social unity beyond the boun- daries of nations, we cannot fail to see that nation- hood no longer fulfils the whole purpose of community organization which it once fulfilled. The general tendency of modern civilization, espe- cially during the past hundred or so years, has been towards the wider interdependence of com- munities. The extraordinary development of the INTERNATIONALISM 217 means of transport and communication has to a large extent lessened the self-containedness of national economic life, and broken down the bar- riers of national reserve and enterprise. More and more all the means of wealth and the interests of life have begun to interflow between nations; so that, except for the barriers of language, na- tional custom, artificial tariff restrictions, and the limitations of the political autonomy of States, there has almost ceased to be any demarcation between one country and another. The general veins of life, so to speak, have begun to connect, and social blood to flow, across continents as freely as though national boundaries did not exist. Commerce, travel, art, literature, science, and general social intercourse have, in fact, to a great extent ceased to be national or racial, but have become international. I speak, of course, of things as they were before the war, and as they will be again when the normal course of civilization in Europe is re- sumed. We see, in fact, a process going on of expan- sion of the community from national to interna- tional co-operation and unity, similar to that which took place when clans and towns and smaller States began to merge into the larger co-operation and unity of the nation. Internationalism has therefore become, or is be- coming, a new and further stage of social integra- 218 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM tion. The nation is ceasing to be the largest, even if it still remains the chief, organ of commnnity life. This does not mean that nationhood is soon going to become, or will ever become, extinct; bnt it does mean that nationhood is no longer going to be the all-inclusive sphere of commnnity life that for the most part it hitherto has been. Extension of the commnnity circle from the smaller local into the wider national unity did not involve the destruction of the local unity. It was supplementary rather than derogatory to it. But it nevertheless became the greater and even- tually the more important of the two. So doubt- less, in turn, will it be worth the greater inter- national unity of the United States of Europe, and of the world. Socialist Internationalism is doubtless very largely the moral or political expression of these modern changes in the material conditions of civi- lization, as indeed is all effort towards ^ unity among nations. It also derives from these newer circumstances much of its logical appeal to the wider self-interest of the working class. But it is well to bear in mind that the sentiment or ideal of the international brotherhood is not a product of modern days. It did not originate in modern material developments, though it has been enor- mously quickened and spread by them. The senti- ment of universal brotherhood existed and found expression in the idealism of mankind in the INTERNATIONALISM 219 earliest ages of civilization. It has been latent apparently in man since his birth as a social being. Like the instincts of sex-love, of motherhood, of friendship, which slumber unfelt and unobserved in the child at birth, to come to awakening later on when conditions favorable to their exercise arise, the sentiment appears to have been pro- phetic in the social nature of men. "We find its syllables in the earliest poetry and precepts of religion — often indeed among peoples who had little or no material intercourse with outside races or nations, and who knew little of mankind beyond the limits of their own community, except as enemies and worshippers of alien gods. In the Hindu Laws of Manu, written at least 500 years before the Christian era, we read: "'This is my countryman; this other is a stranger' — so thinks the man of narrow mind and heart. The noble soul regards the whole world as his kin." To hasten, perhaps by many generations, the realization of that great ideal, alike as a means of the general social welfare of nations and progress of mankind, and as a means of destroying mili- tarism and war, and establishing universal peace, is the international mission of Socialism. Therein lies its proud claim to be "the hope of the world." "W^e must turn, therefore, to the International Socialist movement, and see how far its record 220 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM and present position justify its assumption of that high apostleship, that transcendent hope. CHAPTER XXX THE INTERNATIONAL The International Socialist movement did not prevent the European war. It could not. It was too weak in numbers, in organization, and in political power. It was only 25 years old. Its affiliated membership in all the belligerent countries totalled just about 2,000,000 souls. Ger- many alone accounted for half that number, the membership roll of the Social Democratic Party in that country being no less than 1,200,000. In France, the Socialist Party consisted of hardly over 100,000 enrolled members, though its political power was vastly greater than these figures indi- cate. In Great Britain the entire membership of the Socialist bodies affiliated to the International was under 50,000. In no country did the movement, even if we reckon in the electors who voted for Socialist Parliamentary candidates, count a majority of the people or, except in Finland and Germany, a fifth part of the electorate. In no country, therefore, did Socialists control Parliament, diplomacy or armaments. Was it conceivable that a movement as yet so young, so inexperienced, so loosely or- THE INTERNATIONAL 221 ganized, and without the means of rapid consul- tation and action, could possibly prove a match for the gigantic powers of Governments and mili- tarism, backed up, as these were, by the tra- ditions, passions and interests of thousands of years ? Nevertheless, some of us had, in our optimism, hoped the International might be able to prevent any general European conflict. And some of us (dreamers that we are!) still cherish the belief that had the crisis which precipitated the war been delayed for ten, perhaps even five years, the International might have achieved that great bene- faction and fame. International Socialism was not, however (we should bear in mind), the only self-appraised power for peace and civilization, which failed to prevent the war. Education and industrial prog- ress, political democracy and Trade Unionism, Liberalism, religion, and above all militarism, despite its vaunting itself as the only guarantee of peace, all failed to prevent the war. The Catholic Church, which alike by reason of its vast communion, its Christian Confession, and its international organization and great political influence, seemed the likeliest of all powers to present effective resistance to diplomacy and mili- tarism, failed to prevent the war. It had an enormous advantage over International Social- ism. Its communicants formed the vast majority 222 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM of the population in Austria-Hungary, France and Belgium, a third of the population of Germany, and a fifth of the population of Great Britain. It had rulers, cabinets and military commanders under its authority. It possessed the tremendous ordinance of ex-communication and anathema. Yet the Catholic Church failed as signally as the International Socialist movement to prevent the conflict, though the Pope personally appealed then and afterwards, with deep emotion, for peace. The International strove hard to avert war. It opposed the Government policies and armament rivalries that led the nations into it. For years it had made peace and anti-militarism the chief subject of its propaganda. It had held unprece- dented peace demonstrations in all the cities of Europe — from Lisbon to Bucharest and Salonika. It had organized fraternal delegations across all the frontiers, it had held a special International Peace Congress at Berne. On the eve of the out- break of the war it exerted its utmost powers by means of huge demonstrations in Berlin, Paris, London and countless other cities to avert the catastrophe. It called a special Congress to be held at Paris, in the hope that the Congress might, were the situation favorable, effectively intervene between the nations and diplomacy. The out- break of war prevented that Congress being held. The International did not and could not prevent THE INTERNATIONAL 223 the war. Nor, under the circumstances of the situation, could it prevent the armies moving into battle. No reproach can reasonably be laid upon it on that score. But how did the International itself withstand the shock? It gave way lamentably under the strain. Its ties snapped, and several of its great national sections ranged themselves on the side of their capitalist governments and took part in the fratri- cidal strife. Then, to our dismay and grief, we witnessed the woeful and affronting spectacle of Socialists pledged to international brotherhood, sworn to the high faith of comradeship, irrespec- tive of what rivers or hills divided them or kings ruled over them, being swept into battle to slay their comrades who, through no fault of their own, happened to be born in a different part of Europe from themselves. That was the tragedy of the International. But all this being acknowledged, it is but right to acknowledge also that the apostacy of the Socialist national groups was much less general than appears to be commonly supposed. In the first place the out-and-out pacifist groups held their ground splendidly. The Socialist Party of Italy stood out from the first in almost unbroken ranks against participation in the war, nor did it alter its attitude after Italy had actually joined in the struggle. There is reason to believe also that 224 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM the vast majority of Eussian Socialists remained resolutely opposed to participation in the war. The Social Democratic members of the Dmna were imprisoned and exiled because of their oppo- sition to the war credits, though, it is true, a num- ber of the well-known Eussian leaders who were refugees in other countries, such as Bourtzeff Eoubanovich, Pleckanoff and Kropotkin, at once became intensely patriotic and backed the war policy of the Imperialists. The majority also of the American Socialist Party stood out against the war on clear International ground. The Inde- pendent Labour Party (the I. L. P.), the largest Socialist organization in Great Britain, not only officially, but actually, with the exception of not more than a score of its several hundred branches, and a few individual secessions from the other branches, remained solidly and energetically op- posed to the war from the outset. So also did the majority of the branches of the British Socialist Party, as well as all the branches of the Socialist Labour Party. It may thus be said that the Brit- ish Socialist movement in the mass proved entirely faithful to International Socialist principles. Furthermore, and very important, we have to acknowledge that the International Socialist movement generally was the only political organi- zation that put forth any effort during the course of the war to bring about reconciliation and peace. The attempts made by the permanent committee THE INTERNATIONAL 225 of the International at the Hague, and by many of the national groups, including the minority sec- tions of the German and French parties, to stem the flood of war passion and unite the democracies in a movement to end the slaughter, stand out among the few redeeming political circumstances of the war. It will not be denied that these efforts did much to keep alive international idealism and to spread the agitation for peace. Most notable was the proposed Stockholm Conference in the autumn of 1917, which would have been held but for the refusal of the Allied Governments to grant passports. Indeed, but for the almost unsur- mountable barriers placed by the Governments against not only the assembly of any international conference, but against any communication what- ever between the Socialist bodies of the different countries, the International would, I believe, have been in full organized action for peace immediately after, if not before, the advent of the Russian Revolution. As it was, in spite of these obstacles, the more determined pacifist groups succeeded in holding an unofficial conference at Zimmerwald in September, 1915; while as early as March in the same year the women's section of the Interna- tional outwitted the governments and held a memorable gathering at Berne. In both instances representatives both of the Allied nations and of the Central Empires were present, and met each other in friendly accord. 226 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Lastly, though still broken into factions, the International remains in being. Its re-assembly, though in a mutilated form, at Berne during the Versailles Peace Conference, and the agreement displayed between the groups from the belligerent countries on the greater principles of a peace settlement, were reassuring signs. The fact also that arrangements have been made for keeping the international groups in closer touch alike for concerted action in case of need or opportunity, and that the more intensely pacifist sections appear resolved to have the International recon- stituted on a more representative Socialist basis, and with more definite pacifist aims, may well inspire us with hope that the International will ere long become not only the evangel, but the pal- ladium of the world's freedom and peace. What may be the outcome of the great revolu- tionary struggle now going on in Eussia and Ger- many and in a less manifest form in other Euro- pean countries, none of us can foresee. But if out of it all, despite its many recourses to violence and repression in the passion and terror of the hour, there does not come something in the nature of a perpetual concordat for peace among the democ- racies of Europe and the world, what has appeared to us to be the veritable dawn of a new epoch of human deliverance will prove no real sunrise at all, but merely a false zodiacal glimmer in the sky. SOCIALISM AND WAE 227 CHAPTER XXXI SOCIALISM AND WAR When shall the saner, softer policies, Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas ? Thomas Hardy. We must not, however, leave the subject of Socialism and war with an expression of hope merely. For war is the greatest of all crimes. It is the greatest of all crimes not only because it causes the greatest magnitude of suffering and is the most inhuman of all man's misdeeds, but because it involves and justifies every crime. It involves and justifies the violation of the decalogue, the beatitudes, all morality, and all human law. It glorifies blasphemy, murder, plunder, lies, the destruction of wealth and the most precious crea- tions of human skill and toil, espionage, the spreading of false reports, the suppression of truth, the abrogation of public liberty, the spread of disease, and recourse to every cruel, cunning and mean device of human fear and cowardice. In view, therefore, of the appalling conse- quences of war, and of the confusion which the late war brought among Socialists, and of the mili- tarist tendencies stiU lingering in the minds and 228 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM programmes of many Socialist parties, especially on the continent, it is important that we should discover what is the true and universal precept of Socialism on the subject of militarism and war. One of three positions is possible for Socialists in the event of war. The first is to refuse to take up arms whatever the alleged ground of the war ; the second is to fight only if convinced that their Government (or country) is in the right; and the third is to fight if their "country is in danger," no matter whether their Government or country be in the right or the wrong. I submit that the first position is the only sound International posi- tion. I submit that the third position is the only sound alternative position. The second position, which is the one professed by many Socialists who supported their Governments in taking part in the European war, is the least logical and the most dangerous. For if Socialists who believe in mili- tary defence are only going to fight for their coun- try when persuaded that their own Government is in the right, how grave is their responsibility! They, the Socialists, may be wrong in their judg- ment, and, in any case, are they going to allow what they call "their country, their freedom, and civilization" to be destroyed because their Gov- ernment has blundered? On the other hand, if, as in the third position, Socialists are going to fight against other nations, and their Socialist brethren in them, whenever their Government brings about SOCIALISM AND WAE 229 a war, irrespective of the right or wrong of its action, then is International Socialism a lie, and Socialists deluded and deluders. Yet this third position appears to have had wide acceptance among Socialists in the belligerent countries, especially in Germany, during the late war. It was on the plea of it that thousands of Socialists, who had denounced the war-like policies of their own Governments up to the actual mo- ment of war, justified their participation after- wards in the struggle. "We are patriots as well as Socialists," they declared, "and must defend our country and our liberties now that we are threatened with invasion and conquest. We are not, as Socialists, responsible for bringing about the_ war, but we are responsible as Socialists and citizens for the protection of our families and our nation." Thousands of pacifists who were not Socialists, but who had also denounced the war-provoking policies of their Government, justi- fied themselves in joining the fighting ranks on the same plea. In taking up that position Socialists commit themselves, as I have pointed out, to participa- tion in every war in which their country may be involved. For one's country is always in danger of attack and invasion, as much so when it declares war against another nation as when another na- tion declares war against it. And however defensible that position may be, it is wholly un- 230 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM necessary to impart a Socialist motive into it. Socialism has no more to do with it than has Christianity, Agnosticism, Eugenics, or scientific research. It is a position which appeals to men simply as men or patriots. French Socialists fight for France, as do their anti-Socialist fellow countrymen, because they are Frenchmen; Ger- mans similarly because they are Germans ; British because they are Britishers. They fight for the defence of their country, not because they discern that by so doing they are conforming to any Socialist principle or ideal, or because they hope thereby to hasten the advent of Socialism or uni- versal peace. They fight because they are im- pelled to do so by patriotic emotion and the appeal the fight makes to their fighting instincts — feel- ings which they share with the generality of man- kind. But happily, as we have seen, not all Socialists adopt this position : not by any means. The great majority of Socialists in England, in Italy, in America and probably in Eussia, as well as a large section of Social Democrats in Germany (larger than most of us were aware of at the time) stood out against participation in the war, even on the plea of national defence. What proportion of these did so on the ground of firm internationalist faith, and what proportion simply on the ground that the war was a capitalist war, we do not know. But whichever was their ground, they one and SOCIALISM AND WAR 231 all resisted the plea that the duty of National Defence should override their convictions or con- science. I am, I think, justified in saying that there is a large and growing number of Socialists in all lands who are now adopting resolutely anti-war principles. In Russia perhaps the majority of the Socialists, at any rate among the peasantry, notwithstanding their rallying to the support of the Social Revolution against foreign aggression, are ready to lay down their arms forever. A con- siderable section of Socialists in France before the war were similarly disposed to renounce arms. There is a strong movement in that direction in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. In Great Britain as the band of 7,000 conscience objectors, the greater part of whom were So- cialists, who suffered imprisonment rather than obey the Military Service Act, testifies, the reso- lute pacifist faith is also gaining wide adherence. Perhaps, too, I should not omit the significant widespread agitation against militarism in any shape or form in China, where communist and pacifist feeling has been deeply rooted for thou- sands of years among the rural population. Socialists who adopt the pure pacifist faith do not ignore the fact, so rightly insisted on by Ram- say Macdonald, that the primary political duty of Socialists is to oppose and destroy the imperial- ist policies and governments that create war. 232 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM Nor do they think that its adoption, even by the majority of Socialists, would render war impos- sible, so long as capitalist governments and armies and navies exist. The justification of their faith lies, they declare, in its potency as an affirmative of Socialist principle, essential to the life, truth, and comradeship, of International Socialism itself, and to the eventual deliverance of mankind, not only from war, but from all violence and oppression. Shelley in his "Declaration of Eights" affirms the anti-militarist position in short but funda- mental terms: "Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does it in uni- form : he only adds the infamy of servitiide to the crime of murder. ' ' And to those who are inclined to give ear to the so-called "biological" plea for war — the plea, namely, that warfare or combat is in man, as in the tiger or sword-fish, an instinct as natural as that of hunger, sex impulse, or any other feeling for which nature has made physio- logical provision — the observation of Erasmus, couched in theological phrase though it be, may be commended as scientifically apposite: "God made man unarmed. But anger and revenge have mended the work of God, and furnished his hands Avith weapons invented in hell." I may be reminded that in our chapter on na- tionhood I contended that the sentiment of nation- hood and the defence of one's country was a SOCIALISM AND WAR 233 product of genuine social emotfon and a mode of social evolution. True, but, as I also pointed out, that does not imply that the sentiment of belli- gerent patriotism must always remain so.- It may, with the growth of a wider social synthesis and a rebirth of social conscience, cease to be a useful sentiment, and may even become a positive hin- drance to the general social advance of nations and the race. And that is a stage of social evolu- tion "which many of us contend has now been reached. We believe that with the more highly organized conditions of society in all civilized countries, with the growth of international soli- darity, and, above all, with our clearer perception of and deeper trust in the spiritual powers of man, the danger of national extinction by military con- quest, and the need for protective barriers of all kinds between nations, have become obsolete. Just as the narrower patriotism of the clan and the city has given place to the wider patriotism of the nation, so the narrower patriotism bf the nation must give place to the wider patriotism of internationalism. And just as the clansman and the citizen had to rest in the faith that the real interests of his clan and his city would not suffer, but gain by the change, so must the nationalist to-day have faith for the welfare of his nation in the larger unity of internationalism. But, above all, our appeal, as Socialists address- ing Socialists on this matter, must be to the deeper 234 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM and more prophetic intuitions of onr Socialist faith. Whether or not we share the Tolstoyan or Quaker belief in the "inward light," the ' ' Kingdom of God within us, ' ' we must realize that there is a potency in peace, in refraining either from giving provocation or from receiving it, in trusting to the genius and power of human brotherhood, which is mightier for freedom and for the security of all we love of our country, than is any defence that recourse to armies can give. "The nation," said Keir Hardie at the Inter- national Socialist Congress at Copenhagen in 1910, "the nation that has the courage to be the first to throw away its arms will win for itself one of the greatest names in history." Nations and races have rarely been destroyed or elimi- nated by conquest from without. More often has the conquering nation fallen by its conquest than the conquered nation. Weakness of social soli- darity, corruption and tyranny within, have been the chief cause of the decline and disappearance of nations and races. What is really of the spirit in a race or nation, what freedom, genius and virtue it possesses in its heart, cannot be destroyed by external conquest. There is, we believe, in peace itself, a power of safety beyond what nations have ever yet known. War has been glorified and worshipped by com- munities for its own sake. Peace never, except by a few religious sects. Who Imows what peace SOCIALISM AND WAR 235 will do for nations that really trust in her? Hitherto when peoples have submitted to conquest rather than fight they have done so from cowardice or indifference, not from conviction and faith. How could they expect their conquerors to respect independence and liberties, which the people them- selves so little valued? But when men and na- tions deliberately disarm themselves and decline to fight, not from cowardice, but courage ; not from fear of being slain, but from willingness to lose their own lives rather than take the lives of others, their action will have a new significance, a new appeal, a new power. A tremendous in- hibitory influence will proceed from it — a sense of perpetrating unprovoked and cold-blooded mur- der which no civilized nation or soldier would nowadays be guilty of. "Because he does not strive, no one in the world can strive against him" — ^was one of the wisdom sayings of the venerable Chinese philo- sopher, Laotsze, twenty-five centuries ago. Man- kind may at last learn that this axiom is as pro- foundly true, of human conduct as it is of all the forces of the physical universe. But persuasive as these considerations be, there is yet for all true pacifists the imperative one of conscience — of that high reliance and faith, which is the loftiest endowment of the human spirit, and which has its final sanction in no perception of utility, or of eventual reward whatever, but solely 236 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM in its own sense of right-doing. It is on the Mler emergence and authority in each and all of ns of this "dweller in the innermost" of whose presence we are still but dimly conscious, that the validity of all our Socialist hopes of the redemption of the human race, must eventually depend. CHAPTER XXXII CONCLUSION: AXIOMS AND PROPHECY This brings me to the end of my present task, for in order that this book may fulfil the purpose desired of it, it is necessary that it should not be a big book, or be loaded with too many themes. I have written so much, and yet I seem to have said so little, or to have left so much still unsaid ! Almost it seems to me as if I had but begun my subject ; had only just unfolded some of its outer garments, so to speak. For Socialism is so great, so all-comprehensive, once we begin to grasp its full meaning, once we begin to see into its real depths. It is as when one becomes curious to know something about astronomy, in order maybe sim- ply to learn something about the wonders of the sky ; soon one discovers that the science of astron- omy leads into every other science, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, that it is related to all we know about the whole universe of life, energy and matter. CONCLUSION 237 So when one at first begins to look into the subject of Socialism. One thinks of it maybe simply as a subject concerned with the question as to whether it is desirable and possible to remedy the grosser wrongs of present-day social condi- tions, by bringing about the nationalization of land and the general means of wealth production and distribution. But as our enquiry proceeds we begin to realize that the principles with which we have to deal are fundamental and all-penetrating, that they affect our every action in life, our every relation to our fellows and to the whole world around us, our understanding of history, industry, art, literature, science, philosophy and religion. For once the full light of the meaning of Social- ism — ^its origin and nature as a growth or evolu- tion of Society, its pi'omise of change, its whole potency and idealism — dawns upon us, all the past begins to become new to us, and every human activity and achievement acquires for us a new significance and forecast. Nay, this is not hyperbole, nor mere literary effusion. It is true experience which all earnest Socialists feel in their own minds, and have found in others. How often have those of us engaged in propaganda had testimony of its truth from artisans in the big industrial towns — from miners in Scotland, Northumberland, Durham and South Wales ; agricultural laborers in Norfolk and Cum- berland; crofters in the West Highlands; fisher- 238 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM men at Grimsby, Yarmouth and Peterhead; and from school teachers, nniversity and art students, wherever we have talked with them? How often have they told ns how Socialism had changed completely their outlook on life; their feelings towards their fellows, yea towards their wives and children, maybe, and towards animals and nature ; their desires and hopes for the future — confess- ing, too, that religion, concerning which they had been indifferent or scornful, had acquired a fresh interest to them as something of real importance in the world? How often have miners, remote from public libraries, shown us the books they were now, as a result of their Socialist awakening, buying for their own bookshelves — ^books such as Plato's "Eepublic," Plutarch's "Lives," Bacon's "Essays," Mill's "Liberty," Carlyle's "Heroes" and "Past and Present," Euskin's "Unto this Last," Morris's "John Ball" and "News from Nowhere," Spencer's "Study of Sociology," Darwin's "Descent of Man," Huxley's "Essays," and volumes of the works of Emerson, Tolstoy and Eussel "Wallace, together with a goodly array of the poets. Usually, also, the collections in- cluded some present-day writers on social ques- tions and problems of belief. In not a few homes of Socialist workmen, I have found libraries of 500 or more volumes. And in almost every such instance I have been told that most, if not all the books, had been acquired since the workman be- CONCLUSION 239 came a Socialist, or that he owed to his posses- sion of them the ripening of his mind for the reception of Socialist ideas. And is not this intellectual and moral awaken- ing which Socialism brings to its real devotees a reassuring and hopeful sign for democracy, for civilization? Surely there can be no greater gain to the world just now than that working men and women, and our young men and women prepar- ing for intellectual pursuits, should have their minds awakened to a serious interest in the mean- ing of the world in which they live, and that their outlook upon it should be brightened by a real glow of social emotion, a radiance of social idealism? What hope else is there for democracy and civilization? Everywhere there are signs of great revolu- tionary change in the constitution of nations and in the structure of society itself. Already we see Eussia, Germany and the whole centre and east of Europe undergoing a profound social and political upheaval; while in England, in France, Italy and the northern states, there are unmis- takable signs of political and industrial revolt. This wave of revolutionary excitement will, of course, subside, as all orgasms of men and nations must do. But what tremendous changes and potentialities of change may meanwhile be brought into being? Doubtless the hastily ac- 240 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM complished social revolutions in Kussia, Grermany and elsewhere will not endure in their present form. It may even be that they will be over- thrown from without or from within. Nor need Socialists view such an event with any great feel- ing of disappointment and certainly not of despair. History has taught us to discount the mere upturnings of revolutions — ^but not to dis- regard the causes which engender them, or the forces set free by them. No Socialist thinker of repute has encouraged the idea that the trans- formation from capitalist to Socialist society can be accomplished at a stroke. Marx, William Liebknecht, Bebel, Morris, Jaures, and Keir Hardie, who are gone, all warned us against any such expectation or design. The true advance to Socialism will come, as I have insisted in a pre- vious chapter, not from acts of revolution them- selves, or from any processes of arbitrary change or violence, but from the growing forces of social- ization within society, of which political revolt is often only a temporary symptom. But though the new proletarian republics in Europe may be overwhelmed, or if they stand, do so only by greatly modifying, for the time being, their revolutionary schemes and policy; yet they are forerunners of the coming of universal Socialism in the world. For Socialism is inevitable. I do not repeat fthis Socialist shibboleth because I accept the crude CONCLUSION 241 Marxist dogma of historical materialism or eco- nomic determination. I repeat it because I believe that the intelligence and progress of mankind render the permanence of the capitalist system impossible, that short of destroying the thinking powers of the bulk of mankind, and of abolishing not only democracy, but education, art, literature, and society itself, the eventual realization of So- cialism cannot be prevented. In other words — I believe Socialism is inevitable not simply because of the economic and material factors of modern civilization, but because also of the spiritual factors of social evolution. It is inevitable less because man is an animal than because he is a thinking and spiritual being. Man is governed by his ideals as well as by his appetites. It will go hard with any political doctrine of which it can be said, as Nietzsche said of Darwinism — "Dar- win has forgotten the spirit." There is a mighty difference between a tiger or gorilla and a St. Paul, a Marcus Aurelius, an Alfred, a St. Francis, a Spinoza, a Dr. Livingstone, or a Mary Kingsley. The law of the jungle is not the law of the city — the law of human aspiration that gave us Athens and Florence, a Eouen and an Oxford. Socialism presents itself to us, as we have seen, mainly in a two-fold aspect. (1) As a process of social evolution transforming mankind from a state of loosely associated and often competing and warring families, groups and conmiunities. 242 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM into a complete co-operative commonwealtli, na- tionally and internationally. And (2) a political movement mainly of quite recent growth, having for its object the preparing of society for that achievement and the hastening of its advent. This political movement is itself but the expression of the ripening of the general mind and eircuni)- stances of society towards Socialism. The aim of the political Socialist movement can- not perhaps be better set forth than in the words of the statement of principles of the Independent Labour Party — ^viz. : that The object of the Socialist movement is the establishment of the Sociali&t Commonwealth. By Socialist Commonwealth is meant a state of society in which the straggle and competition for individual gain will give place to co-opera- tion for the collective good, and the highest well-being of each will be realized in the highest well-being of all. To this end the private appropriation of the means of labor and production, which results in the undeserved enrichment of the few and in undeserved poverty, over-work, and waste of life for the many, will give place to the collec- tive ownership and use of land and capital, in order that the public services and the general industry and provision of wealth may be carried on by the State, municipalities, and industrial associations, for the common and, as far as CONCLUSION 243 possible, the equal welfare and happiness of all.* Socialism, it will be seen, goes beyond all existing political systems, and ranks in precept with the higher religions. It belongs in ethical affirmation to the common stem from which the social idealism of religion is nourished. It defines man's duty towards man in terms of fellowship and love as well as of citizenship and justice : nor can there be true citizenship without fellowship, nor justice without love. We each must seek to harmonize our weal with the wellbeing of others ; our highest happiness must be in the happiness of all; our selfishness must be transmuted into unselfishness. Not the nation only, but the whole world must be our commonwealth. "Rightly understood," says Thomas Kirkup, a well- * Substantially the same is the definition of Socialism put for- ward in the "Manifesto of British Socialists" (1893) by the Joint Committee representing the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, and Hammersmith Socialist Society. "Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines, and the land. Thus we look to put an end forever to the wage system, to sweep away all distinction of class, and eventually to establish national and international communism on a sound basis." This statement, signed among others, by William Morris, H. M. Hyndman, Harry Quelch, Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Sid- ney Olivier, Walter Crane, and Belfort Bax, may be accepted as embodying the main principle of the political Socialist move- ment, not only in England, but in all lands. The Manifesto from which it is taken also included a definite repudiation of Anarchism. 244 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM informed and careful writer, in his History of Socialism, "Socialism will be seen to embody the highest conceptions of life, ancient and modern, and the highest aspirations of Christian ethics interpreted and applied by the experiences of the centuries." And, it should be said, not of Chris- tion ethics only, but of the enlightened thought of the Eastern world. For of Socialism also is the teaching of Laotsze, the father of Chinese Taoism, which declares that the seeker of the Heavenly Way "strives not, but conquers by love," "Blesses all and hurts none," and "com- pensates evil by goodness;" and the Wisdom of Buddha, which enjoins his followers to "Cultivate towards the whole world above, below, around, a heart love unstinted" and "Be ever suffusing the whole world with thoughts of love, far-reach- ing, grown great, beyond measure, void of anger and ill-will." Historically, indeed. Socialism is more closely related to religious than to political propa- gandism. It is from the prophets, apostles, and saints, the religious mystics and heretics, rather than from statesmen, economists and political re- formers, that the Socialist movement derives the example and ideals that inspire its nobler enthu- siasm and hopes to-day. Commonly we speak of Socialism as meaning the socialization of wealth. It indeed means that, but by wealth it implies not only land, capital and CONCLUSION 245 the general means of production and distribution, but all the means and opportunities of life and happiness — knowledge, art, recreation, travel and freedom of educating our powers and practising our strength and skill. Socialism means not only the socialization of wealth, but of our lives, our hearts — ourselves. In Socialist politics, it is true, the question of the distribution of material wealth, or the means of material wealth, figures as the all-important one. And indeed so it is, and must be, until such times as right conditions of wealth are estab- lished. That is not because Socialism looks upon material wealth itself as the only or even the chief object of life or means of happiness. It is be- cause, in the first place, the possession of a certain degree of material comfort is an essential condi- tion, not only of life and health, but of the oppor- tunities of leisure, art and general progress ; and because, in the second place, the just distribution of material wealth is the one indispensable condi- tion, a test condition in fact, of the just relation- ship existing between man and man in society. It is in the justice or equality of the relationship which it seeks to constitute, rather than in the degree or quantity of wealth itself, that the essen- tial principle of Socialism is found. Thus the great wrong of existing social conditions does not lie in the mere circumstance that many are poor while many are rich, but in the injustice and 246 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM degradation, in the assertion of superiority and inferiority, in the denial of brotherhood, which these conditions imply. Were all poor alike, the poverty might not only be quite endurable, but great fellowship and happiness might be possible with it. A community in which the standard of wealth for all was not more than equivalent to that provided by an ordinary artisan's or even a labor- er's wage, but in which there was complete co-op- eration and fellowship, would enjoy an incompar- ably higher degree of happiness and human dignity than would a community in which the standard of life for none was lower than that of our present- day middle class, but in which some of its members possessed vast excesses of wealth, and in which there was class separation and tyranny, selfish grabbing, and the absence of neighborly kindness and brotherhood. Socialism, it will be seen, therefore, does not mean mere working class revolt or acquisition, though the political Socialist movement is mainly a working class movement. Socialism naturally appeals most directly to the working class, because they are the people who suffer most under the existing industrial system, and are those whose material conditions will be most beneficially af- fected by the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth. Their emancipation is therefore the most neces- sary and urgent aim of the Socialist agitation, CONCLUSION 247 But the thought of Socialism — the desire for a state of social equality and co-operation, and the hope and faith in the possibility of realizing it — did not originate in the working class. Nor does Socialist teaching to-day find less ready accept- ance or excite more fervent desire among the working class than among the more thoughtful and right-hearted men and women of the "edu- cated" and higher classes. Fortunately there are to be found as many sincere Socialists in the ranks of literature, art, science, and perhaps even of the wealthy, as in the ranks of the wage-earners. All classes, rich no less than poor, are the pro- ducts or victims of their circumstances. It is true that the rich oppress and rob the poor, but except in so far as they do so consciously, knowing they are doing wrong, they are no more culpable in the doing of that wrong than are the poor in enduring it. In precisely the same sense that we speak, as did St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, of the rich as a class being "thieves," we may speak of the poor as being unsuccessful or unlucky "thieves." For the poor are not poor because they wish to be poor, because they prefer to be poor rather than rich. They would, if they could, be in the lucky position of landlords and capital- ists who now oppress and rob them. The trade unionist is not a worker because he desires to be a worker rather than an employer, but because he cannot help it. He does not consider (and even 248 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM if he did he could never find out) whether his wage represents less or more than he actually contributes to the wealth of his employer or the nation. He simply takes as much wages as he can get, even as his employer takes as much profit as he can get. He would take a hundred or a thou- sand pounds a week if he could get it — get it, I mean, without intentionally or knowingly doing any more wrong than his employer realizes he does when he obtains a hundred or a thousand pounds a week in profit. Poor and rich, wage-worker and capitalist are in fact both of one flesh, and "there is little difference between clay and clay," as Bossuet said when applying the precept as a re- buke to the rich. Socialism, in truth, consists, when finally re- solved, not in getting at all, but in giving; not in being served, but in serving ; not in selfishness, but in unselfishness; not in the desire to gain a place of bliss in this world for one's self and one's family (that is the individualist and capitalist aim), but in the desire to create an earthly para- dise for all. Its ultimate moral, as its original biological justification, lies in the principle, human and divine, that "as we give, so we live," and only in so far as we are willing to lose life do we gain life. Thus, once again, we see that fundamentally Socialism is a question of right human relation- ship and is essentially a spiritual principle. CONCLUSION 249 Socialism, therefore, is religion — not that part of religion that relates to onr beliefs concerning God, immortality, and the mystery of the unseen universe, but that part, the all-essential, practical part of it, that concerns the right state of our present lives, the right state of our relation to our fellows, the right moral health of our souls. Yet it may be better simply to say with "William Morris that Socialism is fellowship, and that fel- lowship is life, and the lack of fellowship is death. Fellowship is heaven and the lack of fellowship is hell. "Therefore, I bid you not dwell in hell, but in heaven, or while ye must, upon earth, which is a part of heaven, and forsooth no foul part." THE END / /