Cornell University Library 
 HX 246.M185 1908 
 
 Socialism and society 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 AT 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
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/cu31 924002401 580 
 
^ , Society -^^ 
 
 THE SOCIALIST LIBRARY. II. 
 
The Socialist Lib rary. — //. 
 
 Edittd by J. Ramiay MacDonald, M.P. 
 
 SOCIALISM AND SOCIETY 
 
 J. RAMSAY MACDONALD, M.P. 
 
 prop»=:rty of library 
 NEW YORK STATE mm 
 INDUSTRIAL AHO LABOR RElAl 
 
 CORNELL UNlVERSITf 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY 
 
 23 Bride Lane, E.C. 
 
 1908. 
 
EDITIONS 
 
 First, August 1905 
 Second, October 1905 
 Third, January 1906 
 Fourth, March 1906 
 Fifth, May 1907 
 Sixth, September 1903 
 
PROPERTY OF LfBRARV 
 
 NEW YORK STATE mm 
 INDUSTRIAL Af/D LALCR RfUTIONS 
 
 CORNELL UNIVCRSITY 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface. page 
 
 The British Electors' suspicion of theory ... xi 
 
 is mistaken because (i) historically, grand politi- 
 cal epochs coincide with grand religious and 
 philosophical epochs, ... ... ... xii 
 
 and (2) political practice and theory are as a 
 matter of fact inseparable. ... ... ... xir 
 
 This is particularly the case when politics become 
 constructive ... ... ... ... xiii 
 
 as they are to-day. ... ... ... ... xir 
 
 For constructive political work the organic con- 
 ception of society is the most fruitful. . . . xvii 
 
 As the Socialist alone considers not only the 
 individual but the social unit in his work he 
 must have a clear idea of what the nature of 
 the unit is. ... ... ... ... xviii 
 
 This necessitates a re-statement of the Socialist 
 conception of historical progress. ... ... xir 
 
 The circumstances under which the Sixth Edition 
 is being prepared... ... ... ... xxi 
 
 JLOOOO 
 
•Chapter I. — The Problem. 
 
 The Problem is Poverty, which is not merely 
 
 physical but mental and moral. ... ... i 
 
 Outward improvement may proceed along with 
 
 vital decay. ... ... ... ... 3 
 
 The question does not merely affect the workman, 
 
 but the capitalist ... ... ... ... 4 
 
 and the whole of society. ... ... ... 7 
 
 Individuality is rare under modem conditions. ... 7 
 
 The reason is that each function in society is 
 
 self-centred and competitive ; ... ... 8 
 
 hence, co-ordination is the task of the Twentieth 
 
 Century ... ... ... ... 10 
 
 •Chapter II. — Society and the Individual. 
 
 Political policies depend upon what view one 
 
 takes of the social type of unity. ... ... 11 
 
 Does the organic type correspond to facts ? ... 12 
 Individualist psychology exaggerates the free play 
 
 of the human will, ... ... ... 13 
 
 whilst the Socialist conception of function ... 14 
 and the dependence of the individual upon society 16 
 .as illustrated in the change of individual function 
 
 which follows social re-organisation, ... 18 
 
 ■axt in accord with the biological view of social 
 
 progress, viz : that it depends upon modification 
 
 of the social structure. ... ... ... 19 
 
 in which the supreme effort of individual will 
 
 through force, e.g.. Revolution, counts little ... 21 
 The purely individual functions in progress are : 
 I — Alterations of social structure by industrial 
 
 invention, etc. ... ... ... ... 35 
 
 2 — Alterations of social structure by effective 
 
 moral demand. ... .,. ... ... 26 
 
 To the race, however, belongs the inheritance of 
 
 the past, and the individual shares in that 
 
 inheritance through his communal group. ... 29 
 
" Individualism," so-called, is therefore an unreal 
 abstraction. ... ... ... ... 30 
 
 Further points in connection with the conception 
 of society as an organic type are (1) its form, 
 and (2) its self-consciousness. ... ... 33 
 
 Society is an organisation of the biological type, 
 and our ideas of the individual and the com- 
 munity must be formed accordingly. ... 36 
 
 ■Chapter III. — The Economic Period. 
 
 Society exists for purposes of mutual aid, ... 38 
 
 therefore a society whose functions are competitive 
 
 evolves into Socialism ... ... ... 39 
 
 Society develops through the political and the 
 
 economic stages to the moral one. ... ... 41 
 
 The political stage is governed by the necessities 
 
 of a nation-making period,... ... ... 42 
 
 develops democratic forms ... ... ... 44 
 
 and passes into the economic stage, ... ... 47 
 
 which is at first competitive and individualistic. 47 
 
 This stage is now complete, ... ... ... 50 
 
 because (i) sub-division of labour has gone about 
 
 asifar as it can, ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 as is illustrated in shoe-making and tailoring ; 52 
 
 (2) co-ordination of different trades has begun, ... 54 
 as is illustrated by the Steel Trust, etc. ; ... 54 
 
 (3) the power of capital, owing to facilities for 
 communication, etc., has been too much in- 
 creased to be socially safe, ... ... ... 55 
 
 as illustrated by the use of machinery, etc. ; ... 57 
 
 (4) competition is giving place to monopoly 
 within certain areas, and ... ... ... 62 
 
 {5) between others is developing into national 
 wars ; and ... ... ... ... 64 
 
 (6) the competitive state cannot meet certain 
 demands made upon it. ... ... ... 65 
 
So far we have only been solving the problems of 
 wealth production, ... ... ... 66 
 
 which have not necessitated a very complete 
 organisation of the organs brought into exist- 
 ence. ... ... .. ... ... 68 
 
 This process, regarded from a biological point of 
 view, is seen to contain safeguards against 
 cataclysms, ... ... ... ... 69 
 
 but it encourages parasitism, . . ... ... 70 
 
 as illustrated in -the Monarchy and the House of 
 Lords ... ... ... ... ... 72 
 
 The period also has its ethical characteristics, e.g. 
 
 Evangelicism, ... ... ... ... 74 
 
 and its political, e.^., Individualism, ... ... 78 
 
 the problems it has given us to solve. ... ... 81 
 
 Chapter IV. — Utopian and Semi-Scientific Socialism. 
 
 The mistake of the Utopia builders was that they 
 assumed that Society was an architectural 
 relationship which could be made and unmade 
 at the will of individuals. ... ... ... 82 
 
 Sir Thomas More and Robert Owen taken as 
 examples ... ... ... ... 84 
 
 to show that the criticisms of the Utopians seem 
 modern, ... ... ... ... ... 85 
 
 but they did not understand the influence of 
 Society. ... ... ... ... ... 86 
 
 When Owenllived, Society was beginning to solve 
 the problems of wealth production, ... ... 86 
 
 and in doing so had to sacrifice the interest of its 
 cells, the individuals. ... ... ... go 
 
 Modification of the social structure necessary for 
 progress, and this must be done in keeping with 
 Society's "law of being," ... ... ... gi 
 
 as shown in the history of the Co-operative 
 movement. ... ... ... ,,. 02 
 
I03 
 104 
 
 The functions of Society must be co-ordinated 
 before moral results can be attained, ... 96 
 
 but before this could be seen, biological science 
 had to be so far advanced as to establish 
 evolution on a sure foundation, ... ... 98 
 
 Philosophy, especially German philosophy, had 
 been speculating upon the same problem, ... 100 
 
 and Marx approached Socialism through Hegel- 
 ianism. ... 
 
 Marx's task was to weld rival Socialist dogmas 
 and methods, 
 
 but being a pre-Darwinian ... ... ... 109 
 
 he accepted Hegel's idea of growth ... ... 1 1 1 
 
 and the rational part of his dialectic, ... ... 112 
 
 and so was misled by thoughts of negation, 
 revolution, etc., ... ... ... ... 113 
 
 which the social condition of England at the 
 time encouraged. ... ... ... ... 119 
 
 Marx's conception of social growth is pre- 
 Darwinian and Utopian ... ... ... 121 
 
 Chapter V. — Towards Socialism. 
 
 The approach to Socialism through a class war 123 
 assumes a simple opposition of two economic 
 
 classes, ... ... ... ... ... 124 
 
 whilst the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are 
 
 themselves split up into economic sub-sections, 125 
 Interests of the same persons are complex, e.g., 
 
 influence of Co-operation and Building Societies 131 
 
 Class interests are personal, ... ... ... 135 
 
 have no constructive value, ... ... ... 135 
 
 are the basis of the pre-Socialist labour movement, 136 
 
 and cannot be merged into social interests. ... 137 
 
 The progressive impulse is intellectual, ... 139 
 and Socialism is inevitable not because Capital- 
 ism is to break down, ... ... 141 
 
but because man is a rational being. ... ... 143 
 
 The wage earners, however, are ripe for Socialist 
 
 experiment, ... ... ... 144 
 
 because in their condition they are most easily 
 
 influenced by Socialist thought ; ... ... 145 
 
 but the Socialist appeal is for a rational judgment 
 
 upon its conceptions of the community and the 
 
 individual. . ... ... .. 146 
 
 Chapter VI. — Socialism and the Political Organ. 
 A positive view of the State is essential to Socialism 149 
 In considering the political policy of Socialism, 
 one must not overlook the characteristics of 
 national political methods, because they vary in 
 different countries. ... ... ...--151 
 
 In this country progress does not advance by 
 revolutionary stages, ... ... 151 
 
 and parties are not dogmatic, but adopt experi- 
 mental methods. ... ... ... ... 153 
 
 Socialism, developing through the Spencerian 
 philanthropists, .. ... ... ... 158 
 
 Owenism and Chartism, ... ... ... 159 
 
 after a period of purely political interests, ... 161 
 
 has now reached the point when it becomes the 
 guiding idea of progress. ... ... ... 162 
 
 A new party then becomes necessary to deal with 
 the new problems in the new spirit, ... ... 164 
 
 e.g., through public control to co-ordinate public 
 
 services like the supply of houses and trams. .. 165 
 The immediate needs of organised labour, ... 168 
 
 the ripened harvest of the teachings of Carlyle, 
 Ruskin, Spencer, ... ... ... ... 168 
 
 and the definite Socialist organisations, ... 169 
 
 have united in forming the new pohtical organ. 170 
 Thus, the apparent re-action of recent years ... 171 
 really indicates the end of the Liberal period in 
 politics, ... ... ... ... lyj 
 
religion, ... ... ... ... ... 172 
 
 national finance, ... ... ... ... 173 
 
 social organisation ... ... ... ... 174 
 
 and belief in nationality. ... ... ... 175 
 
 Darwinism and Hegelianism are not the cause of 
 reaction... ... ... ... ... 178 
 
 This is shown (i) by the split-up of the Liberal 
 party, but more especially by (2) the rise of new 
 fundamental ideas in politics, and ... ... 183 
 
 (3) the spread of new germinal political growths — • 
 Municipal Socialism, ... .. ... 184 
 
 and (4) the anti-socialist campaign which followed 
 the Election of 1906. ... ... ... 185 
 
 The period of reaction has in reality been a tran- 
 sition from democracy in form to democracy in 
 power ... ... ... ... ... i86 
 
 Though there is not identity, there is continuity 
 between old and new progressive parties. ... 189 
 
 Socialism and the Labour Party. ... ... 191 
 
 The growth and decay of political parties. ... 192 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Land must be nationalised and ... ... 196 
 
 capital owned by the community. ... ... 197 
 
 It must also be emphasised that the social organ- 
 isation of production determines distribution, 198 
 that Socialism will not be a static industrial state, 200 
 and that its views upon distribution are biological 
 and not mechanical. ... .. ... 204 
 
 But the method of assimilation is not a priori but 
 
 experimentaL ... ... ... ... 204 
 
 The Socialist motto is not Sic Volo, but Snlvitur 
 
 Ambulando, ... ... .•• •■• 205 
 
 e.g., the Socialist view of property ... ... 207 
 
 and of the measure of value. ... ... ... 210 
 
 Socialism is not opposed to machinery. ... 210 
 
 Socialism would not destroy special groups like 
 
 Trade Unions, the Church, the Family. ... 212 
 
 Its key idea is transformation. ... ... 213 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SIXTH EDITION. 
 
 In a life the greater part of which has to be 
 spent in the noisy and dusty arena where 
 politics is a hand-to-hand battle, there are 
 few opportunities given for retiring into the 
 peaceful wilderness where one can think out 
 the more fundamental questions of govern- 
 ment, and see party differences justified and 
 explained in the light of theories of what 
 Society, the State, and politics are, of what 
 the function of Parliament in a community 
 is, of what progress means, and of what its 
 method must be. 
 
 Indeed, it is the habit of plain matter-of- 
 fact Britons to declare most sturdily that 
 these questions are of no great importance 
 to the man of affairs. British political life, 
 it is stated, moves by experience and not by 
 theory; and the British elector is supposed 
 to suspect any man who attempts to regulate 
 and develop political policy in accordance 
 with certain intellectual conceptions, such as 
 the evolution of the State and its relation to 
 individual happiness. That political method, 
 it is said, is foreign. It is the cause of revo- 
 
lutions. It is unpractical. The British elec- 
 tor glories in his distrust of ideas. I have 
 been taught since I became a member of 
 Parliament that for a man to claim that his 
 proposals are logical, is to condemn them 
 to be smiled at by " wise " men and re- 
 jected by his fellow members. 
 
 The re are two rep lies to the " prartiral " 
 elector who is inclined to believe f ^^* pf>liHr-<t 
 is the a rt ot hving from hand to mouth— :o f_ 
 muddlmg through. In the first place^every 
 titviA _rhflf Kntish"p?nitics has risen to heroic 
 prop ortions , if has been either inspired h v 
 I'eligibus fervour, as in Cromwell's day, or 
 strengthened by philosophical conviction, as 
 in the epoch of the individualist Radicalism 
 just closed. Though the British people may 
 have no love for theoretical politics, their 
 imagination must be lit up before they rise 
 to great political efforts. But, in the second 
 place, the most mediocre man who nas ever 
 g ained the confidence of a res pectable rnn- 
 s tituency on the gro und that he has no 
 f fighty nonsense about him, has, i n spite o f 
 himself , to take" sides on tundamental ques- 
 tions. 
 
 OiirTiappy-go-lucky disregard for theory 
 — theory being after all nothing more harm- 
 ful or dangerous than ext)erience systema- 
 tised and the broken visions of sight com- 
 pleted by the exercise of reason — threatens 
 to become a calamity. Far be it from me to 
 
join in the loud chorus of approval and* 
 amplification which, for too many years, 
 has been applauding Carlyle's dyspeptic 
 characterisation of Parliament as a talk- 
 ing shop, but if it were called a " job- 
 bing shop," truth would not be violated. Its 
 work is miscellaneous, scrappy, disorgan- 
 ised. It flies into panics, or goes quietly to- 
 sleep. It treats the most deeply-seated dis- 
 eases as though they were but skin deep. It 
 prunes when it should uproot; it patches- 
 when it should make anew; it refuses to see 
 beyond its nose when it should be scanning 
 the horizon. It is therefore the prey of any 
 partisan wirepuller who, whilst beating his 
 breast as a proof of his convictions, is laugh- 
 ing up his sleeve all the time at the credulity 
 of the people. 
 
 The consequences are serious. When its. 
 work was to liberate. Parliament could roam 
 like a Red Cross Knight, freeing any damsel 
 held in durance vile whom it happened ta 
 come across — from a Nonconformist who 
 wanted to wed and be buried in his faith, to- 
 an atheist or a Jew who wanted to represent 
 a constituency in Parliament. 
 
 But this period is over, and that of social 
 construction has begun. And how are we tt> 
 build? What plans are we to execute? 
 Empirical methods will not help us unless 
 they are used as tests of ideal systems. With 
 what idea are we to experiment ? The sheer 
 
pressure of clamour and need will force us 
 to take action. In what direction are we to 
 move ? All change is not progressive. Which 
 of the roads at present possible is the right 
 one? We must pass more factory legis - 
 l ation . But what is the constructive function 
 of factory legislation ? We must amplify our 
 laws of compensation to injured workmen. 
 But what is to be the relation between the 
 workmen, the employer and the community 
 in respect to the financial responsibility im- 
 posed by more perfect compensation laws? 
 We are beginning Old Age Pensions. But 
 are they given as~a right or granted 
 as a favour? We shall probably be 
 asked to interfere legisla tivpl y with 
 wages. How far will the system of 
 capitalism bear such interference? How 
 far will such interference open out the 
 way of further development to Society? 
 What must be the nature, the limits and the 
 ■direction of this interference, so as to allow 
 and encourage a more perfect system of 
 social relationships than that which is being 
 broken down? Th e feeding of school cju l- 
 drenjs. being undertaken^ Upon what prin- 
 ciple should it be done? Is the State to 
 supplant the family? Is the family to be 
 retained as a social unit in the future ? What 
 ought to be the extent of its functions and 
 duties ? The appeals of th e unemployed ha ve 
 ■compelled us to appoint committees and make 
 
legislative proposals. How far is it legitimate 
 for the State to provide work for men ? What 
 are the limits and nature of its responsibility 
 in this respect ? What comprehensive scheme 
 of t reatment for the unemployable fo llows as 
 a necessary consequence upon any State 
 recognition of the unemployed? The pro- 
 blems of rating and taxation are forcing 
 themselves upon us under conditions of 
 which the economists and statesmen ot the 
 last century had no experience. Do not the 
 principles of rating and taxation require re- 
 vision? Must we not reconsider what is the 
 real function and justification of both public 
 and private property? Even the machinery 
 of democracy is being questioned. What is 
 the best form of democratic orf j'anis ^tinn? 
 Hai the passing of the individualistic rights 
 of man from the active stage of politics 
 necessitated a revision of the conception of 
 <iemocracy which the eighteenth century 
 handed on to the nineteenth ? For instance, 
 is the great shibboleth of eighteenth and 
 nineteenth Century democracy: No Taxa- 
 tion without Representation : a sound basis 
 for popular government, or was it a mere 
 excuse for the enfranchisement of the 
 Middle Classes? Above all, we shall 
 have to consider ' how -far the State 
 «an protect its industry, and what steps a 
 modern industrial community should take to 
 secure for its producers a fair share of the 
 
world's markets, and for its consumers a fair 
 share of its aggregate wealth. This question, 
 crudely raised by the Tariff Reformers, has 
 been as crudely answered by the "pure and 
 simple " Free Traders. 
 
 These are but a few of the questions to thie 
 solution of which twentieth century states- 
 men will be called to contribute. And which 
 of them can be successfully dealt with by 
 merely yielding^to the pressure, the cry, the 
 passion, the fear, or the political exigency 
 of the moment ? One and all involve a con- 
 sideration of what is the nature of the organ- 
 ised community, what is its relation to the 
 individual, to voluntary combinations of 
 individuals, to trade and commerce, and so 
 on. 
 
 The danger of the theorist in politics is, of 
 course, apparent. Theory may be a blind 
 tyrant, a will-o'-the-wisp, a seductive syren. 
 It may create an unreal world through which 
 its bewitched victim rushes blindly to des- 
 truction. But it is the politician's business to 
 bring theory and experiment into the closest 
 touch, to prevent the one separating from 
 the other, to use the first to keep the second 
 intelligent, the second to keep the first sane. 
 " Let us learn a lesson from Cantillon," 
 wrote Jevons, " who, though he touches the 
 "depths of theory in one chapter, knows how 
 " to limit himself within the possibilities 6i 
 " practical life in the next."* 
 
 *Princifles of Economics, London, 1905, p. 175. 
 
At any rate, in view of the emergence of 
 these vital problems, we need to discover 
 some illuminating idea of social organisation 
 which will give each a natural order and a 
 relative importance — which will enable us to 
 find our place upon the map. 
 
 Such are the conclusions to which a pretty 
 intimate connection with the actual business 
 of politics has led me. In this volume I have 
 attempted to explain the conception of 
 Society which seems to n^e to accord with 
 observed fact and offer a guidance for the 
 consti uctive w^ork of legislation which lies 
 awaiting us. It perhaps does not deserve to 
 be called the work of the study. Rather is 
 it the jottings of spare moments saved with 
 much effort from the conflict in the arena — 
 the hurried summary of the principles of a 
 politician. 
 
 I accept th e organic type of organisation 
 as that to which society corresponds m its 
 essential characteristics, and also as that 
 which is most fruitful as a guide for political ' 
 experiments. But, far be it from me to claim 
 that all Socialists hold, or should hold, that 
 view. There is too much doctrinairism in 
 Socialism already. But we must work upon 
 some provisional hypothesis, if political 
 effort is to be anything but a pastime of the 
 useless classes. " It is often said," writes 
 M. Poincare as a physical scientist,* " that 
 * Science and Hyfofhesis, Lond., 1905, p. 143. 
 
" experiments should be made without pre- 
 " conceived ideas. That is impossible. Not 
 " only would it make every experiment fruit- 
 " less, but even if we wished to do so, it 
 " could not be done. Every man has his 
 " own conception of -the world, and this he 
 " cannot so easily lay aside. We must, for 
 " example, use language, and our language 
 " is necessarily steeped in preconceived 
 " ideas. Only, they are unconscious precon- 
 " ceived ideas, which are a thousand times 
 " the most dangerous of all." This is as 
 true of social as of physical science, of poli- 
 tics as of physics. Parliament is a labora- 
 tory; its legislative experiments must be 
 undertaken in precisely the same scientific 
 frame of mind as those of the chemist or the 
 physicist. 
 
 If any section of politicians demur to this 
 conception of their work, the Socialist at any 
 rate cannot. For a distinction between the 
 Socialist politician and all others is that he 
 thinks of the whole of Society as well as of 
 the separate individuals who compose it. Jt 
 i s. as impossible for him to t hink nf Man 
 a part from Society as it is for the Scientist tP 
 think of Man aOan from the Animal Kin^- 
 'duiii. To the Socialist, boci ety is a Unity. 
 
 ±Jut that does not carry us veryTarTBefore 
 the idea of a united Society can help as a 
 guide in legislation, we must make up our 
 minds as to the type of unity to which 
 
Society corresponds, because obviously upon 
 that depends the relation between Society 
 and the individual which legislation must ex- 
 press and must not violate. Having made 
 up his mind as to the type, the SociaUst is in 
 a position to co-ordinate and organise the 
 social problems pressing for solution, to co- 
 ordinate and organise the proposals he 
 makes regarding them. 
 
 I wrote this book hoping to be able to 
 state the Socialist position to readers in this 
 country in a way more in accord with British 
 mental and political conditions than has 
 hitherto been the case. Much yet remains to 
 be done before the statement is satisfactory. 
 Marx's co-ordination of historical fact and 
 explanation of historical movement from the 
 point of view of the Hegelian left wing, 
 brought the whole theory of Socialism from 
 the misty realms of vague desire, to the 
 clearly defined empire of science. But our 
 views of individual and social growth have 
 been profoundly modified since Marx began 
 his work. Moreover, the triumph of the 
 dogmatic and hard-and-fast methods — 
 which have characterised Marxians far 
 more than Marx — has not been alto- 
 gether a gain. The conceptions of social 
 evolution which Marx held, never have 
 been accepted by the majority of British 
 Socialists. Society in this country, with its 
 
iree institutions and machinery which can 
 respond to the least impulse of the popular 
 will so soon as the people care to express 
 themselves, progresses by an assimilation of 
 ideas and circumstances. The process of 
 organic nutrition is paralleled in the process 
 of social nutrition. Individuals formulate 
 ideas. Society gradually assimilates them, 
 and gradually the assimilation shows its 
 reflects on the social structure — on institu- 
 tions. The laws of organic assimilation 
 .apply in a specially simple way to our con- 
 ditions, our politics and our parties; and it 
 :is the operation of these non-catastrophic 
 and non-revolutionary laws which to-day is 
 causing social unsettlement and calling for 
 political readjustment. 
 
 Within the limits of this necessarily small 
 volume, I have been unable to show in what 
 Tespect the organic likeness of Society 
 requires special modification. The chief 
 •differences, so far as they pertain to this 
 study, are, that the social orgar ii srn is les s 
 ri gidly fixed than the biological organism . 
 ^ least m its tiigiier torms ; and that in social 
 experiments biological law becomes a prin- 
 ■cip^consciously understood and adapted to 
 •circumstances carefully selected and prepared 
 in such a way as to produce swift results — 
 though it mav be well to say that the swift- 
 ness is commonly exaggerated. 
 
This Edition is being prepared just after 
 the wild outburst of the anti-Socialist 
 clamour of the winter of 1907. Every 
 ignorant fear of the people is being 
 roused by carefully devised and de- 
 liberately selected calumny. Socialism, like 
 every pioneer movement, has had its indis- 
 creet advocates who have hailed every other 
 minority encamped in some solitary spot of 
 its own, as a fellow pioneer of the coming 
 golden age of liberty and reason. In addi- 
 tion to that, the minds of some Socialists 
 having become emancipated from the bonds 
 of habit, and having wandered into 
 the realms of pure idea like some 
 ancient colonist who had crossed the 
 frontiers of the settled world, find 
 delight in cutting themselves absolutely 
 adrift from even the precious inheritances of 
 civilised man. The Socialist pioneer has been 
 by no means the only man who has done this. 
 Religion, the family, the State itself — every 
 i nherited form of human y};ppri<'nr<> impng-— 
 i ng itself upon human conduct bv ri yid insti- 
 t ution and force of habit — have been 
 a nalysed down to their utilitarian and mean 
 beginnings and have been discarded by 
 eiglUeeiiLh — CS ntury rationalists, whose 
 doctrines are to this day in fundamental 
 opposition to Socialism, and by nineteenth 
 century scientists, whose only conception 
 of social progress was a grim struggle for 
 
iexistence on the part of individuals. But 
 a few Socialist writers have joined them in 
 their revolt, and when, for the meanest of 
 partisan purposes and the most ordinary of 
 commercialist motives, newspapers have- 
 raised their voices against the "Socialist 
 menace," these few writers, economically 
 quoted, carefully pruned, and occasionally- 
 added to, are held up to a public somewhat 
 ignorant of the intellectual history of their 
 century, as awful warnings of what Social- 
 ism must lead to. It is the fate of every man 
 who preaches unfamiliar doctrines to be 
 misunderstood, but the rise of a yellow press 
 which knows neither truth nor honour, now 
 lays him open to be grossly and deliberately" 
 misrepresented. The presentation of the idea 
 upon which progress now appears to be mov- 
 ing cannot, however, be finally condemned 
 or approved by the reckless folly of friends^ 
 or the bitter unscrupulousness of calumni- 
 ators. 
 
 The paragraphs of the book which were 
 evidently out of date since the victories of 
 the Labour Party in 1906, and the change of 
 Government that year, have been altered so- 
 as to reflect existing political conditions, and 
 in some instances the argument of the book 
 has been fortified by fuller discussion and 
 new illustrations. 
 
 J. Ramsay MacDonald. 
 August, 1908. 
 
SOCIALISM AND SOCIETY. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 THE PROBLEM. 
 
 Poverty still challenges the reason and 
 the conscience of men, and instead of be- 
 coming less acute as national wealth in- 
 creases, it becomes more serious. The 
 results of such investigations as those of Mr. 
 Charles Booth and Mr. Rowntree, and of 
 the Committees which inquired into the pre- 
 valence of child labour and the extent of 
 physical deterioration, shatter with the 
 rudest completeness the complacency that 
 one may have acquired from figures showing 
 the astounding totals of national wealth, or 
 the satisfactory averages of personal income. 
 It may not be true literally that the rich' 
 are growing richer at a time when the poor 
 are becoming poorer*; but it is an undeni- 
 able fact that the lot of the poverty stricken 
 
 « This depends upon the length of the period of 
 comparison. If we compare the i4.th century wi th 
 the 19th it is true literally; if we compare 1800 with 
 igoo it IS not true. 
 
becomes more deplorable as thf aHvan^p nf 
 the well-to-do becomes more mark ed, and 
 that modern conditions of life press with 
 increasing weight upon the propertyless 
 classes. Never was it more true than it is 
 to-day that two civilizations exist side by 
 side in every industrial country — ^the civiliza- 
 tion of the idle or uselessly employed rich, 
 and the civilization of the industrial poor. 
 
 Pauperism is p prhaps the Ipast alarming 
 form and the most misleading index of pov- 
 erty. Wrecks lifting their broken spars up 
 to heaven are less woful than unseaworthy 
 ships tossing helplessly on stormy waters. 
 Moreover, the existence of numerous charit- 
 able and subsidising agencies, together with 
 the increasing expenditure of municipal 
 authorities upon work which is in the nature 
 of relief, and the operation of Distress Com- 
 mittees working under the provisions of the 
 Unemployed Workmen's Act, show that the 
 flood of poverty has altogether overflowed 
 the embankments which the Poor Law has 
 provided to contain it. 
 
 When we survey modern conditions in 
 search of a point from which to begin and 
 trace out the tangled and tortuous" path of 
 poverty, we naturally fix upon the silent 
 village and the deserted field. Ou r riira\ 
 districts are depopulated; the rural districts 
 of- every commercial country are emptying 
 
their people into the cities, and as the sources 
 of healthy manhood are depleted, the reserve 
 forces of the race are drained ofif. Commis- 
 sions sit and report upon the physique of 
 the people, and their conclusions, bad 
 enough in all conscience, might be worse. 
 For, the nerves of the people, not being 
 subject to foot-rule measurement, or pound 
 avoirdupois vi^eighing, are not taken into 
 account, and the morals of the people are 
 left to be gossiped about by sensation 
 mongers, or be sported with by sectarians, 
 and are not made the subject of cold, im- 
 partial investigation.* 
 
 The whole subject of the vital condition of 
 the people is too often supposed to be 
 thoroughly dealt with when satisfactory 
 figures of death rates f and enticing photo- 
 graphs of improved houses are given, and 
 
 * Only the fringe of this question is touched in 
 the investigations which Mr. Booth has carried on 
 in London and Mr. Rowntree in York. Police Court 
 records and Lunatic Asylum reports form a consider 
 able literature upon the subject however. Durkheim's 
 Le Suicide : Etude de Sociologie ; Duprat's Les 
 Causes Social de la Folie and similar works on 
 social pathology enable us to understand the strength 
 of the inner currents in our present civilization flow- 
 ing towards destruction — currents which have a social 
 and not individual source. 
 
 t But, be it noted, that one of the most important 
 sections of vital statistics, the rates of infant mortal- 
 ity, shows no improvement for the last half-century. 
 
thus the fact is obscured that in spite of all 
 \ sanitary and similar improvements, the vital 
 I energies, the stamina, the mental cleanliness, 
 I the moral robustness of our race are suf- 
 l fering, not for this or that special reason, 
 \but because the complete setting of life is 
 uiarren, wearisome and exhausting to human 
 beings. 
 
 I I need mention but one cause of this. The 
 better organisation of the functions of pro- 
 duction has been of necessity attended by a 
 quickening of pace, and by a heavier draft 
 upon the energies of the producers. More 
 life is consumed in production — in fact, so 
 much life is consumed in this, that little is 
 left to be spent in other concerns. Old age 
 and the ineflSciency of years come sooner 
 than they used to do. The squeezing of the 
 orange is done more quickly and more thor- 
 oughly now. 
 
 Nor is this merely a workman's grievance, 
 for everyone affected by the industrial 
 changes which have marked the Liberal* 
 
 *It may be advisable to state specifically that I 
 am frequently to use the word "T.ihftral." a s I do 
 here, not in its political but epochal sense. It indi- 
 cates that period of social evolution when capital, 
 freed from the political and social dominance of 
 Feudalism, developed a political, economic and social 
 policy in accordance with its own nature. The key- 
 note of the epoch is individual liberty of the unreal, 
 atomic kind ; its political characteristic is enfranch - 
 i sement, its eco nomic is competition, and its social 
 IS wealtb. " ■ 
 
•epoch has sufiFered in the same way. The 
 workman suffers from periodic unemploy- 
 ment and from a chronic uncertainty of 
 ieing able to make ends meet. This re-acts 
 upon his personal habits so that he follows- 
 the allurements of intemperance, or seeks 
 {)leasure in the risks of gambling, loses his 
 sense of craftsmanship and his unwillingness 
 to work dishonestly, is driven into the loaf- 
 ing habit through frequent unemployment, 
 and finally becomes a machine which turns 
 out a minimum amount of work at a maxi- 
 mum price. We may regret this as much as 
 we like, and blame the workman as much as 
 we care, but this is the natural consequence 
 <of a state of society in which private inter- 
 ests control industrial capital, in which the 
 land and the instruments of production be- 
 long to a class different from that which 
 uses them, in which the predominant rela- 
 tionship between the employer and the work- 
 man is that of a contract to do work at a 
 price, and in which there is no respo ns*^ g^H 
 no ap peal to moral and-^intiial mnl^ives . 
 Tilt! l!y,ll)i[illi!lll klH6 supers from insecurity, 
 caused, not always by mistakes or 
 faults of his own, but by the com- ] 
 petitive moves of his rivals. He is 
 part of a machine which grinds him 
 just as remorselessly as it grinds the wage- 
 earner . In France,* twenty per cent, of 
 • Leroy Beaulieu, RifartUion des Richesies, chap. 
 
the businesses started disappear at once: 
 in America, t ninety per cent, of business 
 men fail either absolutely or relatively; and 
 though Marshall contends! that business 
 risks are decreasing in this country, the 
 probable truth is that they are only chang- 
 ing their character, as financial cases in the 
 Law Courts appear to show. Moreover, 
 the improvements in methods of production, 
 the concentration of capital, the development 
 of means of communication, the opening up 
 of the world's markets, and the increasing 
 number of nations taking part in interna- 
 tional competition, put an ever tightening 
 pressure upon the capitalist, and demand that 
 more and more of his life's energies shall be 
 spent in business. Although the statute 
 book teaches him business morality and pro- 
 tects him against certain forms of unprin- 
 cipled and anti-social competition (like 
 adulterated goods and long hours), he is 
 compelled to drive the sharpest bargains, to 
 adopt methods of business which he could 
 not employ honourably in.personal relations, 
 and to cross far too frequently the line of 
 dishonesty. He can indulge in few senti- 
 ments; he cannot enjoy very much of the 
 luxury of morality. Business is a_war_iii, 
 
 t Wells, Recent Economic Changes, London, 1891, 
 
 P- 351- 
 
 + Marshall, Principles of Economies, London, 1898, 
 i., p. 703. 
 
which he whose nerves are not always welt 
 strung, whose eye is not always fixed upon 
 the vigilant enemy, and whose heart is not 
 always prepared to drive home every advan- 
 tage, is likely to be overborne. The purpose 
 which must dnminatf <-t,o »,^^;,iffy ^.n^^^j^r' 
 thou ght of the business man is a favourahlg 
 b alance she et, and only in so far as an eypc- 
 
 ei se ot the faner s entimpnts does not 
 
 a dversely influencethat summary of tr ading 
 operations, can he give way to them. 
 
 The result is inevitable. The arts languish. 
 t he vulgar empire ot plutocracy extends its , 
 gild ed boraers. luxurious ind nlCFnrp tvlrfffr 
 t hg-place ot comfort, selfish pursuits that of^ 
 p ublic spirit, philanthropic effort that of just 
 dealing. 
 
 We are accustorned-fee-f^ard the present 
 as a state ofcj nSividualij ip/but no delusion 
 could be more grotesque. NQilii»g4s rarer 
 in Society to-day than -individuality. It . 
 is doubtful if ever there was less individuality 
 amongst us than there is at the present 
 moment. One has only to look on whilst the 
 sons of the nouveaux riches spend their 
 money, or whilst the crowds which our in- 
 dustrial quarters have disgorged enjoy them- 
 selves, to appreciate the meaningless mono- 
 tony of our pleasure. From our furniture, 
 made by the thousand pieces by machines, to- 
 our religion, stereot3rped in set formulae and 
 
f)ursued by clock-work methods, individual- 
 ity is an exceptional characteristic. In the 
 production of wealth, owing to the dififer- 
 •entiation of processes, there is less and less 
 play for individuality, and as this more ex- 
 clusively occupies the time and thought of 
 ■both employers and employed, uniformity 
 spreads its deadening hand over Society, 
 ihe sense of proper discrimination is lost, 
 and at the same time imitation becomes 
 •a social factor of increasing power, 
 respectability becomes more securely en- 
 throned as the mentor of conduct, and a 
 •drab level of fairly comfortable mediocrity 
 is the standard to which we conform. Noth- 
 ing is, indeed, more absurd than an argu- 
 ment in support of the present state of 
 Society, based on the assumption that as we 
 move away from it in the direction of Social- 
 ism we are leaving individuality and indi- 
 vidual liberty behind. 
 
 Liberty and regular employment — the fit- 
 ting of men to the work which they can do 
 ■best — can be secured only when the various, 
 ■functions of the social organism — the capital- 
 istic and labouring, the consuming and pro- 
 <iucing — are all co-ordinated. At preseiit 
 each function is self-centred. It is as though 
 the appetite, the head or the muscles of the 
 Ihuman body worked each for itself — as in- 
 •deed sometimes happens in the case of 
 gluttons, hair splitters, or slaves. But then 
 
we know the consequences. There is an 
 interruption in the general health and 
 growth. There is a dwarfing of some parts 
 and an abnormal development of others. 
 The body rebels periodically, and teaches the 
 functions that only when they take their 
 proper places in the whole, and act obedi- 
 ently, not to their own appetites, but to the 
 needs of the complete organism, do they en- 
 joy an unbroken and a full satisfaction. 
 
 iWe can best express this failure of present- 
 day Society to enrich all its classes nof 
 merely with worldly possessions but with 
 character and capacity to employ leisure 
 time, by describing modern conditions as 
 being poverty-stricken. For to judge the 
 prevalence of poverty merely by returns of 
 income or deposits in savings banks, is like 
 judging a piece of architecture by the size 
 of the stones used in the building. 
 
 We have a vast accumulation of actual 
 physical want. Mr. Booth says that about 
 30 per cent, of the London population must 
 "be classified amongst that accumulation; 
 and if it is not relatively growing, it is not 
 actually decreasing. ,We se em to have 
 reach ed the maximum ofTIn^rovement whic h 
 fhe existing social organisation can yi eld. 
 F-m-lher «iiui!lioijTfve ettorts ot a purely re- 
 forming character can produce little fruit. 
 Our social machinery apparently cannot em- 
 ploy more than 97! per cent, of the willing 
 
workers at best, and it cannot raise more 
 than from 70 to 80 per cent, of our people 
 above the " poverty line." In addition to 
 that, our Society bears a still greater accu- 
 mulation of mental and moral poverty, and 
 apparently this is increasing rather than de- 
 creasing. 
 
 Such are the conditions which challenge 
 the social reformer. They cannot be the 
 final state of social evolution. There must 
 be another state ahead of us less marked 
 by failure, less chaotic, better organised, 
 and the question is, how are we to move 
 into it ? It appears to be the special task 
 of the twentieth century to discover a means 
 of co-ordinating the various social functions 
 so that the whole community may enjoy 
 robust health, and its various organs share 
 adequately in that health. But this is 
 nothing else than the aim of Socialism. 
 
Chapter II. 
 
 SOCIETY ANP THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance, at the v^ry 
 outset, to understand with definite clearness' 
 to what type of unity societies and communi- 
 ties of men belong, because otherwise we 
 cannot judge what the relations between the 
 individual and Society, between conduct and 
 law, ought to be ; how the various activities 
 within Society — e.g., trade and commerce, 
 education, &c., should be regarded ; whether 
 professions should bring profits to individu- 
 als, or be functions contributing life to the 
 whole ; what the State is, and what its sphere 
 ought to be; what the nature of individual 
 liberty is. 
 
 If men live together, forming tribes, 
 nations, communities, societies, like stones 
 accumulated in heaps. Society is only a col- 
 lection of separate men, laws are only rules 
 preventing their hard corners from knocking 
 against the sides of their neighbours, the 
 State exists only to maintain the heap (and 
 not that necessarily). In such a unity the 
 individual man alone counts. Individualism 
 must be the predominating idea. Liberty 
 is the freedom of action of the individual, 
 
and is a thing of quantity, every limit im- 
 posed on its extent — as for instance the legal 
 command, "Thou shalt not kill" — being a 
 curtailment of it. 
 
 If, however, Society is a unitv of the 
 organic kind, totally different conclusions 
 followT The individuals composing it are 
 still separate and conscious, but they depend 
 very largely upon the Society in which they 
 live for their thoughts, their tastes, their 
 liberties, their opportunities of action, their 
 character — in brief, for everything summed 
 up in the word civilisation. It is in Society , 
 an d not in the individual, that the ^ ^'■mrmlq- 
 tio n of the race experience is found. Liberty 
 i s a matter of quality and not of quantity , 
 and curta ilment of its limits does not neces- 
 sal'ily lessen its amplitud e. The community 
 enters at every point into the life of the in- 
 dividual, and the State function is not merely 
 to secure life, but to promote good life. 
 Individual development is conditioned by 
 State organisation and efficiency. 
 
 How far do these theoretical distinctions 
 agree with the actual facts? How far, to 
 begin with, is the life of the individual organ- 
 ically connected with that of his Society? 
 
 Put an individual from a well developed 
 Society into the midst of a different civilisa- 
 
'3 
 
 tion, or place him in wild nature, and he is^ 
 helpless in proportion as the Society to which 
 he belongs is advanced.* Paralyse in a well 
 developed Society all the life which it has 
 inherited from the past— its economic 
 machinery, its legal processes, its institu- 
 tions of every kind — and the individual is left 
 more helpless than the primitive savage' 
 catching fish with his shell hooks. The 
 present is rooted in the past; the future can 
 be dragged away from neither. 
 
 An individualist psychology exaggerates, 
 the free play of the human will and denies 
 the organic type of Society mainly on the- 
 ground that each individual in Society has an 
 independent will and consciousness of his 
 own. In the organism, consciousness is con- 
 centrated in a small part of the whole — the 
 brain or nervous system; in Society con- 
 sciousness is diffused throughout, and no 
 specialised function of feeling can be created. 
 This, Spencer calls a Cardinal difference. 
 But upon examination the difference 
 appears to be not nearly so great as it seems 
 at first. t 
 
 * The reason why the sailor is a " handy man " is 
 that a ship's crew is a type of a primitive form of 
 Society. 
 
 t It is not within the scope of this political study 
 to discuss this point fully, but I cannot help thinking 
 that at this point Spencer sacrificed his philosophy- 
 
The cells that are ultimately di£Eerentiated 
 to become the nerve systems of organisms 
 are the ordinary cells which go to make up 
 •organic tissue, and they differ from muscular 
 cells no more than a doctor physiologically 
 differs from an agricultural labourer. 
 
 Moreover, the work of organic nerve sys- 
 tems is paralleled in Society by political func- 
 tions as the Socialist conceives them. The 
 function of the nervous system is to co- 
 ordinate the body to which it belongs, and 
 - enable it to respond to impressions and ex- 
 periences received at every point. It can 
 also originate movement itself. Evidently 
 the individualist cannot admit any such 
 differentiated organ in Society. But the 
 Socialist, on the other hand, sees its neces- 
 sity. Some organ must pnahip n thrr nrgnm 
 a nd the mass of Society to comm nmVat ff im - 
 pressions and experiences to a receivin g 
 centre, must carry from that centre im - 
 pilspg Icaritng tn artinn^ rpimt nriginntf r>n 
 its own initi ative organic movements calcu - 
 late d to brmg some benp fi t "r pl pasu'-'? t" 
 t he org anism,,. This is the Socialist view 
 ol the political organ on its legislative and 
 administrative sides. It gathers up ex- 
 perience, carries it to a centre which decides 
 
 to bis individualism, and Huxley's lamentable 
 surrender in the Romanes Lecture of bis previous 
 position was owing to his failure to estimate accur- 
 ately how small this difference is. 
 
»5 
 
 corresponding movements, and then carries 
 back to the parts affected the impulse of 
 action. 
 
 Upon this point the psychological sociol- 
 ogists do not face facts. "Within aggrega- 
 ''tions of men, mental activities are con- 
 "tinually asserting themselves, and working 
 "themselves out in conformity to psycho- 
 "logical law. In this process the human 
 ^'mind, aware of itself, deliberately forms 
 "and carries out policies for the organisa- 
 ■"tion and perfection of social life, in order 
 "that the great end of Society, the perfec- 
 "tion of the individual personality, may be 
 "completely attained."* The distinction 
 here set up between thought and nature by 
 the expression "in conformity to psycho- 
 "'logical law," in spite of the writer's protests 
 to the contrary, leaves the problem at its 
 most interesting point. What is the rela- 
 tion between psychological and biological 
 law as factors in human evolution ? What 
 is the scope of biological law ? Did the 
 psychological process of evolution appear 
 only, with man? Undoubtedly the mind of 
 man moulds society, but only just as the 
 mind of the animal assists its biological 
 evolution. The difference is of degree, not 
 of kind. So that, if we begin to assume the 
 
 * Giddings, The Elements of Sociology, London, 
 1897, p. 150. 
 
i6 
 
 airs of the psychological sociologist, we 
 must regard the evolution of the whole 
 universe as psychological, and when we refer 
 to biology we include psychology in our 
 idea all the time. The truth is that man's- 
 power to influence the social organisation in 
 which he is placed is limited to the biolo- 
 gical method of influencing and changing- 
 functions. The simple fact that the chang- 
 ing impact is a human will, does not make- 
 the change or its method psychological. 
 
 The view taken of Society by the individu- 
 alist psychologist is that which the cell in 
 the organic body might be expected to take- 
 of its own liberty and importance. We now 
 know that the cell has an individuality of 
 its own, and we can imagine the strenuous 
 efforts made by cell philosophers to prove 
 that the body existed for them, and that the- 
 modifying and moving force in the organism 
 was the individual cell.* 
 
 We over-rate our individual importance in 
 these matters. When we build our houses, 
 
 * There is less of the purely fanciful in these 
 considerations than we may be inclined to think at 
 first. Recent investigations into the nature of cells^ 
 and recent speculations, based upon scientifically 
 observed facts as to the meaning of cell activity — 
 as, for instance, Binet's Psychic Life of Micro-Organ- 
 isms — point to a fulness of cell life which fore- 
 shadows many of the characteristics of the higheir 
 animals — such as memory, will, fear, &c. 
 
'7 
 
 use the facilities of modern town life, be- 
 come enraptured with our religious conso- 
 lations, contemplate the productions of our 
 art, or plunge into the speculations of our 
 divine philosophies, we seldom think that 
 all these precious possessions anH fyprrisps 
 belon g to Society and n ot to the individua l, , 
 and that when the mdividual employs them 
 he is in reality putting to use possessions 
 which he cannot keep for himself, which he 
 did almost nothing to acquire, which he 
 can do little more than protect from rusting 
 and corrupting, and which he simply has the 
 privilege of borrowing for usury. Through- 
 out our lives we are but as men feasting at 
 the common table of a bountiful lord, and 
 when we bear in the dishes of the feast or 
 gather up the crumbs which have fallen 
 from the boards, we pride ourselves on our 
 wealth and the magnificent reward which our 
 labour has brought to us. When, in 
 time, we die, however, our vacant place is 
 of little consequence. Everything we have 
 done, everything we were, becomes social 
 property, and our life is of value mainly in 
 so far as it has contributed to the fulness of 
 social life and the development of social 
 organisation and efficiency. This is borne in 
 upon us with irresistible force when we think 
 of the few individuals whose memories are 
 rescued from the grave. Our Dictionary 
 of National Biography makes a grand dis- 
 
i8 
 
 play on our library shelves, but when we 
 think of its great array of volumes whilst 
 we are in the midst of the crowded market- 
 place or in the streaming thoroughfares 
 where humanity flows like a tide, what a 
 puny collection it seems! What vast echo- 
 , less generations does it suggest ! What 
 millions of nameless ghosts gather round 
 its few pages of imperishable names ! 
 
 The "bemg" that lives, that persists, that 
 develbps, is Society; the hfe upon which the 
 individual draws that he himself may have 
 life, liberty and happiness is the social life. 
 The likeness between Society and an organ- 
 ism like the human body is complete in so 
 far as Society is the total life from which 
 the separate cells draw their individual life. 
 Man is man only in Society. 
 
 There appears to be a cell consciousness 
 different from the consciousness of the 
 organised body with its specialised brain and 
 nervous system : there is a social conscious- 
 ness with its seiibOiy ana tno* '^v •^y^fm 
 superimposed on the i ndividual consciousr 
 n^ssl Doth togetner make up the real in- 
 dividual consciousness. 
 
 11. 
 
 This dependence of the individual upon the 
 form and nature of the social organisation 
 
'9 
 
 also determines the individual's function. As 
 the organisation of Society changes, men's 
 functions in it change also. The great 
 division al epochs of sociology ^primaeval 
 and eaPiy society, the meaiseval age and 
 modern times — were distinguish ed by cer- 
 tain general characterigtics ot tribal and 
 nati onal life expressing itself in different- 
 
 lO rmS ot social n^g-Qnicgfi'nn y^^hirh rlator- 
 
 mined the modes of thought, the economic 
 pursuits, and the relative values of social 
 functions, classes and men, and which 
 settled whether men and classes were 
 regarded from the point of view of status 
 and subordination, or of equality and 
 liberty. Man, himself, has been the same 
 thing, has been built upon practically the 
 same principles of physiology and psycho- 
 logy as he now is, right through human c 
 history. But it would have been as absurd 
 to claim equality tor him in the teuaar ag -e 
 a s it would be to claim a free and absolutely 
 separ ate individuality for the cells in h is 
 own body. His status was determined by 
 the social organisation of his time. When 
 his tribe became a part of a nation, his poli- 
 tical function was changed; when his nation 
 moved from its military to its commercial 
 stage, he had to be the weaver and the 
 iron-worker instead of the man-at-arms, and 
 his status was changed accordingly. As a 
 workman in the commercial epoch, he finds 
 
his function in society altered with every 
 machine that is invented. The boot and 
 shoe operative of to-day is almost as differ- 
 ent from the boot and shoe operative of 
 fifty years ago as the stomach of the bell 
 animalcule is from that of man. Every 
 improvement in locomotion, everything 
 which breaks down international barriers 
 and opens up the world, every extension of 
 markets, every attempt to reorganise in- 
 dustry by the more effective use of capital, 
 every vital impulse given to the country to 
 empty itself into the town, changes men's 
 functions, alters their relations to each other 
 and to Society, implants new habits, new 
 virtues and new vices in them, gives them 
 new ideals to guide conduct, modifies their 
 body, and impresses itself generally upon 
 the race. 
 
 III. 
 
 All this change has come not because any 
 individual or combination of individuals has 
 sought it, but because someone, impelled by 
 the possibilities which the social organism 
 offered for a modification of its functions, 
 and by the creative opportunities which cir- 
 cumstances gave to thought and will, 
 altered the organisation of Society — for 
 instance, by labour saving machinery — at 
 this point or that, with the result that' the 
 whole organism had to re-adjust itself to 
 the change. 
 
When Stephenson made his steam engine 
 "he had no thought of the social results of 
 his action, except in its immediate conse- 
 ■quences as an improvement in haulingv 
 machinery, and yet how fundamentally has 
 ^Stephenson's engine changed men. A study 
 of history shows, no t the free play of the 
 in dividual will m determining' thfe dharactSF 
 and direction of human activities, but TRe . 
 .almost absolute control of the social organ- 
 I sm. The Great Man has undoubteaiy modi- 
 fied that organism now and again — the 
 soldier, the preacher, the thinker, the in- 
 ventor, the organiser of industry, — but the 
 results of these men's work have not been 
 gained as a direct influence on their fellows, 
 but through a modification of the structure 
 of society, and by the consequent change of 
 the functions which individuals are called 
 upon to perform. To the sum total of these 
 modifications many small changes have con- 
 tributed much more than a few great altera- 
 tions. 
 
 War, the most revolutionary force of all, 
 has had to lower its flags to the persistent 
 doggedness of Society (if the expression 
 may be used) in going its own way. The 
 inroads of Rome upon the rest of Europe 
 left less permanent results than was at one 
 time supposed. The incursion of the barbaric 
 armies from the North upon Italy had no 
 greater effect than a violent storm has upon 
 
a vigorous sapling; little that was perman- 
 ent followed the. partition treaties and edicts- 
 which marked the triumph and sealed the 
 downfall of Napoleon; few real organic 
 changes were effected by the destructive 
 hurricanes of the French Revolution. After 
 the war which was to do so much to revolu- 
 tionise the social and political life of South 
 Africa, the country began to develop from 
 the point it had reached before the war 
 broke out, and upon lines but little differ- 
 ent from those laid down before war wa& 
 thought about, and the recent Transvaal elec- 
 tion (1907) created a position practically 
 similar to that which was evolving months^ 
 before war was declared. Violence in deal- 
 ing with things rooted in history, or organ- 
 ically related to Society, is a waste of time. 
 Effect, of course, all these revolutions had, 
 but how little compared with the furies that 
 accompanied them and the tremendous, 
 efforts which were consumed by them. And 
 as the pre-revolution and post-revolution 
 times are minutely examined, although 
 change may have been rapid (as indeed 
 change from one variety of a species tO' 
 another, as in flower culture for instance, 
 often is), the continuity between the old and 
 the new is well marked.* 
 
 * This opinion, so contrary to the views of the 
 Radical writers of the last two or three generations, 
 is becoming a commonplace in sober history — the 
 
"3 
 
 Or, to approach my argument from 
 the point of view of another class of 
 considerations, we may consider how 
 very little difference there is between 
 the Republican United States and the- 
 Monarchical Great Britain, and that what 
 difference exists is owing not to Dec- 
 larations of Independence, but to the 
 differences in social organisation, which are 
 caused by the fact that one is a new country 
 and the other an old one, and that one had 
 a prairie up to yesterday, and the other has 
 had none for many a generation. 
 
 Just in proportion as an organism has 
 
 history where colour and movement are subordinated 
 to the actual facts. These revolutionary epochs, these 
 ditches supposed to be dug across history, do not 
 bear examination. Even what we Westerns have- 
 been taught to regard as the greatest of all these 
 ditches, that dividing Paganism from Christianity,, 
 hardly exists. In the chapter. Some thoughts on the 
 Transition from Paganism to Christianity, in Pro- 
 fessor Bernard Bosanquet's The Civilization of 
 Christendom, the subject is dealt with in accordance 
 both with what I have written above and also of the: 
 views I express later on regarding the growth of 
 political parties. Mr. Bryce in his Holy Roman 
 Errtfire (chap, iii.) summarises the effect of the bar- 
 baric invasion in these words : "It is hardly too 
 " much to say that the thought of antagonism to the 
 " Empire and the wish to extinguish it never crossed 
 " the minds of the barbarians." Surely no one who 
 knows European history will dispute the view that 
 the partition of Europe by the representatives of the 
 
 D 
 
24 
 
 grown slowly and developed through many 
 generations does it offer resistance to 
 change and are revolutions within it in- 
 effective. It is stable : forced growths are 
 unstable. Every gardener knows that. The 
 Revolutionary elements in Europe have not 
 been suppressed merely by the perfection of 
 the scientific precision of armaments — cer- 
 tainly an important factor — but by the re- 
 establishment of nationalities and systems 
 of government on the same footing as they 
 existed, or were beginning to exist, before 
 Europe was upset by the impact of the 
 French Revolution and the wars which fol- 
 
 Powers at Vienna resulted in the wars which Ger- 
 many, Italy, Austria and France have undergone to 
 break down the artificial arrangements of Metternicb 
 and his masters. Radical writers have altogether 
 exaggerated the real influence of the French Revolu- 
 tion. Its efiect upon law was supposed to be one of 
 its most blessed contributions to European history, 
 but according to Professor Villet, corroborated 
 by Professor Maitland (Cambridge Modern 
 History, vol. viii., p. 753), " the Revolution- 
 " ary Epoch manifests a truth, which no historian of 
 " whatsoever school ever expressed more felicitously 
 "and clearly than Fortalis in the preliminary dii- 
 " course of the Civil Code : ' The Codes of nations 
 " 'are the work of time ; properly speaking, they are 
 "'not made.' . . . French legislation in the 
 " century just passed ... is the result of historic 
 "cal forces, and no mere invention or artificial 
 "creation." Exactly the same is true of social and 
 political France. In our own history, the Norman 
 
"5 
 
 lowed it. European Governments have 
 beco me m difetj table iliaii ilKiy we r « becaiiii e' 
 tlie)/ liav e ceasea to De tne artinciai creations 
 of co nquests and have become the product s 
 o f historical evoluti on. ' 
 
 The cause of progress is, that the indi- 
 vidual, endowed with possibilities of action 
 by his ancestors, is launched into Society — 
 the race — to receive from it the impress and 
 the impact of its inherited qualities, and 
 thus by the play and interplay of the indi- 
 vidual and social inheritance, of the indi- 
 vidual and social dynamic, change in a 
 systematic sequence of stages is carried on, 
 the biological law of natural selection being 
 modified by the conflicting requirements of 
 human reason. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The influence of the individual upon 
 Society is of two kinds. There are in the 
 first place, the rearrangements in social 
 Conquest is generally supposed to have made " all 
 things new," but the study of historical details lobs 
 it of much of its dramatic effect. For instance, it 
 used to be credited with the simplification of our 
 English Grammar, but as Mr. Badley, writing in the 
 Cambridge History oj English Literature, shows, 
 this view " is now abandoned by all scholars. ... 
 In the main . . . [this grammatical change] is to 
 be ascribed to internal agencies." 
 
h 
 
 7b 
 
 functions which result from a reorganisation 
 of industrial structure consequent upon in- 
 vention, — e.g. the application of steam 
 power to processes of production and ex- 
 change. Then there is the bombardment 
 of social structure carried on by the dis- 
 quietude and discontent of individuals who 
 demand from Society better moral results 
 than Society in its existing constitution 
 can give. The work of the Utopians belongs 
 to this second class of effort. 
 
 This second moulding force is to be much 
 stronger in the future than it has been in 
 the past, because it cannot come into full 
 play until political democracy is established.* 
 The people must gain possession of the 
 State before the moral shortcomings in Hat 
 working of Society become dissociated from 
 other questions, and present clear political 
 and social issues. The first comprehensive 
 problem which faces an industrial and en- 
 franchised democracy is how to make 
 Society conform in its functioning to the 
 moral standards of the individual. The 
 moral sense of the individual, consequently; 
 is constantly attacking a morally inefficient 
 state of Society, and acts as a modifying 
 
 * After political democracy has been established in 
 a few countries, others more backward politically 
 may, however, carry on their socio-moral agitatioAJ 
 at the same time as they carry on their political ones: 
 Russia is a case in point. 
 
»7 
 
 force upon it, hastening and guiding its 
 development. 
 
 Political programmes to-day are bein ef 
 mou lded by the demand, emanating from the 
 indivi dual conscience, that Society should do 
 justi ce, that merit should be rewardedT lhat 
 th e~rigEteous should not need to be^ fo r 
 bread. If tbpjjghtpnns rannnt finH a tnarlfpf^ 
 
 either for their labour or the fruits of their 
 labour, the defenders of the present chaos 
 say that the righteous must starve. But this 
 answer satisfies nobody. The questio 
 continues to be asked why the right 
 eous cannot find a market ? and the question 
 is repeated whether the righteous are fools 
 or imbeciles, or honest but baffled and 
 unfortunate men. Men will not be satisfied 
 with a non-moral answer to a moral ques- 
 tion. Descriptive economics will not 
 sooth the enquiring moral intelligence. The 
 dissatisfied moral nature will simply turn to 
 Society and demand it to set its house in 
 order so that the righteous may have a 
 market and be saved from begging for 
 their bread. 
 
 It must be remembered in estimating the 
 power of this modifying influence that it 
 does not depend for practical success upon 
 the numbers of its conscious advocates, but 
 upon the clearness of its thought and the 
 justness of its presentation. The people are 
 moved by the vision. Even hum-drum 
 
politics, barren and dusty because of self- 
 interest, show that. Majorities are deter- 
 mined by hopes and fears far more than by 
 gratitude for things done. In a sense 
 Jerichos are not taken by assault ; their 
 walls fall down at the blast of trumpets; 
 Moral truth comes like the dawn, not like 
 an army of conquest. It cannot be ener- 
 getically opposed after it has been discov- 
 ered. "Thrice is he armed who hath his 
 quarrel just" — if the fact that justice is on 
 his side be recognised by his opponent. 
 
 So, when the time comes for a further 
 effort on the part of Society to protect itself, 
 the step to be taken' must be one which not 
 only unifies the organism more completely, 
 and which makes its organs work more in 
 co-operation and less in competition with 
 each other, but also one which promises to 
 satisfy more fully the demand that social 
 action and individual actiott should approxi- 
 mate to the same standards of morality. 
 The satisfying of the moral sense of the 
 individual and the economising of effort 
 in Society must proceed hand in hand in 
 progressive social evolution. 
 
 "13»e, development tof social structure more 
 accurately embodies and satisfies the moral 
 detnands of the individual as we approach 
 the time when Society is prepared to be 
 modified in accordance with the dreams of 
 
29 
 
 the Utopians. Education liberates the 
 individual will and intelligence so that they 
 are increasingly effective in producing the 
 machinery necessary for economy of social 
 effort; this reacts upon individual morality, 
 and makes it more exacting in its demands 
 upon Society, because the individual himself 
 is then surrounded by social circumstances 
 which press closer and closer upon him the 
 necessity of undergoing the discipline of 
 will and intelligence which makes character 
 — the necessity which justifies the thousand 
 and one movements aimed at improving 
 human qualities. This play and interplay 
 of social organisation and individual will 
 and character, seem to me to indicate to us 
 the accurate view of the scope and method 
 of individual action in Society. 
 
 But the great r eservoir of inheritance is 
 the race an a no t Ihtt luUividual. Wh ui ui re 
 considers m detail how much the social ego 
 controls individual action, the moulding 
 power of the race seems to be limitless. 
 The gen eration into which a man happens 
 ID liavH been Lor ti, fB<» sgnni ^■'-'-'■'° '" 
 which ne moves, the characte r of the vital 
 mouldin g forces wmch play upon him in 
 a rrnrdance as he lives in a suh nrh nr jn th^ 
 centre of a city, the etiquette (settled genera- 
 
30 
 
 ti ons before and now largely irrational') 
 'ot the professioii to which he belongs, 
 ihe tenure Of an oflictf f ouiid which iradttfo ns 
 jiare^gro wn up, tiie very language' he use s, 
 a re influences which haunt him as persist - 
 ently as his shadow, and do more than any- 
 thing else to deter mine the tenor of his life 
 and thought. iSut tHey are all drawn, not 
 from the reservoir of individual, but of 
 social, inheritance. 
 
 ■ ^Thisy error of under-estimating the in- 
 Tluence of social inheritance upon individual 
 life has led to the very grave practical mis- 
 f lakes of political and moral individualism. 
 It has been characteristic of the Liberal 
 ■epoch to regard the individual as a separate, 
 self-contained, creative being, bedecked in 
 the regal garments of possessions and 
 rights. This individualism has received the 
 homage of a century whose interests, pur- 
 suits and problems prevented it from see- 
 ing individuality in all its relations. No age 
 has been less fitted than the nineteenth 
 century to value the common life, to find 
 contentment in working in singleness of 
 heart for the good of the whole, to be at 
 peace in a prosperous organism. But at 
 l ast the falseness of this individualisti c^ 
 ■emphasis is being r ecogmseS^ On its moral 
 side it is not bringingT?eace 7lris"not advanc- 
 ing the trpntiers of the kingdomi 
 
eousness. On its politica l side, whence it 
 iias yielded the greatest amount of gain, it 
 auw stands baffled by the problems ot State 
 atttfaori ty. Oil its industrial side it ha^" 
 divorced economics trom lite and has taileS T 
 absolutely to solve tne problem of distribu- 
 ti&n. The code of laws imposing with ever- 
 increasing stringency upon traders and 
 manufacturers the elementary principles of 
 honesty and fair dealing, grows steadily, 
 and every addition is a fresh impeachment 
 of self-regarding individualism as the basis 
 of conduct. The gulf between rich and 
 poor, the periodical breakdown of the 
 modern industrial machine causing wide- 
 spread destitution, the sinister economic 
 mechanism by which the owners of mono- 
 pohes — especially of land — can claim an 
 extra toll every time that communal wis- 
 dom and conscience adopt some scheme to 
 alleviate the lot of the most hardly pressed 
 classes, conclusively show that Society does 
 not yet meet the requirements of human 
 standards of use and value. 
 
 On the other hand every attempt to 
 correct the shortcomings of what has been 
 the dominant type of individualism — except 
 the attempts of charity either organised or 
 " disorganised — tends to supplant the type. 
 The individual in search of liberty finds that 
 the ideas and the claims contained in the 
 modern expression "individualism" only 
 
mislead him. The individualism of the 
 Factory Laws, of the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Children Acts, of Weights and Measures 
 and Adulteration Statutes, is an individual- 
 ism taught to find outlets for its energy in 
 social directions, an individualism disciplin- 
 ^ ed by and co-ordinated with the require- 
 ments of man's social nature. In such 
 administrative rules, as those of public 
 authorities to provide in contracts that fair 
 wages must be paid for work done, we 
 observe the same movement in operation, 
 laying down conditions under which the 
 individual must be, not a wild buccaneer, 
 but a humble co-operator in society, seeking 
 peace in service and wealth in sharing. The 
 acquiring self-regarding / is an altogether 
 imperfect realisation of the human ego. 
 
 In fact, disguise it from ourselves as we 
 may, in our so-called "practical" moments, 
 every conception of what morality is — except 
 neurotic and erotic whims like those of 
 Nietzsche or antiquated pre-scientific notions 
 like those of the Charity Organisation 
 Society — assumes that the individual is em- 
 bedded organically in his social medium, 
 and that, therefore, the individual end can 
 be gained only by promoting the social 
 end; tha t the individual is primarily _ a-cell 
 in t1ip_nrganism nf his ^nripty;* that he iS 
 
 * I am not discussing here what the scope of indi- 
 vidualism is. The individual is by no means " a 
 
33 
 
 not an absolute b ein gs hut one who develops 
 best in relation to other beings and who dis- 
 covers the true meaning of his ego only 
 when he has discovered the organic oneness 
 of Society. " Man rises from the life of his 
 " petty self to That ot his family, his tftbS, 
 "and ms race, mankind, finding bis greater 
 "sell each time m these" t 
 
 VI. 
 
 Two difficulties still remain, having a 
 bearing on the purpose of this study. The 
 form of an organism is the result of its 
 past racial experience in the struggle for 
 life, and has been moulded by the same 
 forces which have determined the functions 
 to be performed by its organs. 
 
 Has Society a form? Unless it has, it is 
 
 quiescent cell." He has a law of his own being, an 
 evolution of his own, and an individual as well as a 
 social end. A fear lest 1 am denying all this can arise 
 only from an imperfect view of what the life of a 
 cell in an organism is. All I am insisting upon here 
 is, that in any adequate system of individualism, the 
 fact that liberty and freedom of action (involving 
 right to possess and so on) must be conditioned by 
 social considerations in the interests of the individual 
 himself, has to be recognised, and the system con- 
 structed accordingly. 
 
 t Carpenter- The Art of Creation, London, 1904, 
 p. 192. 
 
impossible to conceive of organic functions 
 being performed by the individual and 
 groups of individuals. 
 
 Society has no bodily form like a plant, or 
 an elephant, or man himself. But here again 
 it is more the appearance than the reality 
 that is wanting. For, after all, organic 
 form is only useful for holding together 
 the relationship of organs. The human 
 body, for instance, is not essentially a form 
 composed of head, trunk, and legs : it is 
 essentially a relationship of various organs 
 which, in co-operation, compose a living 
 unity of the human type. If we piece to- 
 gether two legs, two arms, a head, and a 
 trunk, with their organs, we have a bodily 
 form, but no organic unity. But if these 
 organs are joined in that relationship which 
 we call living, it would not matter whether 
 they were in actual contact or not — whether 
 they had form or not. If the character- 
 istic vital relationship were still possible, 
 they, in that relationship, would be an 
 organism. A vital relationship betw een 
 org ans, not £~bodily form contain in g fhpsp 
 o rgans, c onstitH tes an org anism . 
 
 Societv~ls of su ch a type. Its organs 
 are connected by a livin g tiggnp of law nf 
 habi t and custom, of economic inter-HeppTid- 
 e ^e, of public o pinion, of pnlitinl unity 
 and these living connections maintain the 
 stability of relationship between organs 
 
35 
 
 precisely as bodily form does. In that 
 tissue the individual and the class are not 
 embedded as stones in lime, but live as cells 
 or organs in a body. That living tissue on 
 the other hand, is modified in biological 
 fashion by external and internal impulses, 
 heeds and influences, arising from the 
 experience of the whole organism. It lives 
 when the individuals die and preserves its 
 vitality, identity and authority, after the 
 component cells and organs of any given 
 moment have all disappeared and given place 
 to others. Law survives generation after gen- 
 er§tioiL_(just as the human body, with its 
 three score and ten years of life, may be said, 
 from the cell point of view, to survive 
 generations of cells), obtaining from 
 peop le, unborn when the Statutes were 
 pSssed, a s much reverence an d obedience 
 aS~irom those who helped to pass them, bo 
 w ith cusluiu, pu buc o pmion, habits, mental 
 at tributes, institutions. I he maiviouai is 
 part of them. They are the life into whicF 
 hTis born; their pul se regulates the beating ^ 
 bt his; their qualities determine his ow n. 
 
 The_se cond difficulty is. that Societv is 
 not_seif:£Qnscious. As a matter of fact, 
 Societv is keenly self-conscio us. For, what 
 are laW and custom but evidence of the 
 self-consciousness of Society? And, as 
 Society approaches a greater definiteness in 
 
3b 
 
 organic relationships, its self-consciousness 
 will become more accurate and pass more 
 under its control. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Hence it is that the J[aws_gQXfioiing-the 
 
 i existence_and growth of human Society 
 
 c ould ~llOtbe iin dprstnn H until hifi1ntrif:n1 
 
 scien ce was sufficiently far advanrpH tr> fy- 
 
 plai n with tolerable fulness of detail, th e 
 lawsw hich regulate life and its -eimlution. 
 For Society belongs to the biological type 
 of existence because it is no mere collection 
 of separate individuals, like a heap of sand, 
 but a unified and organised system of relat- 
 ionships in which certain people and classes 
 perform certain functions and others per- 
 form other functions, and in which individ- 
 uals find an existence appropriate to their 
 being by becoming parts of the functioning 
 . organs, and by adopting a mode of life and 
 |ieeking conditions of liberty, not as separ- 
 ate and independent individuals, but as 
 members of their communities. 
 
 The chief problems of social life relate to 
 the "o rganisation ann fievplnpmpnr of nHps" 
 o f law, institutions, economic relationships, 
 social ethics, public opinion ; t hey include the 
 growth and decay of functions, the develop- 
 ment and deterioration of organs and their 
 relationship to the total life of the organ- 
 
37 
 
 ism, the gradation from one stage of organ- 
 isation to another by internal modifications 
 — e.g., from primitive to mediaeval and on 
 to modern Society, and the persistence of 
 a social individuality after the composing 
 personal units have passed out of existence. 
 
 The chief difference between the social 
 organism and the animal organism is, that 
 whilst the latter, in the main, is subject to 
 the slowly acting forces expressed in the 
 laws of natural evolution, the former is 
 much more largely — though not nearly so 
 largely as some people imagine, and in a 
 less and less degree as it becomes matured 
 (another organic characteristic) — under the 
 sway of the comparatively rapidly moving 
 and acting human will. This gives the 
 former an elasticity for change which the 
 other does not possess. But the type of its 
 organisation, the relations between its 
 various organs and the mode of their func- 
 tioning — and it is with these alone that I 
 have to deal in this book — are biological. C? 
 
Chapter III. 
 
 THE ECONOMIC PERIOD. 
 
 If we are to consider, with any profit, what 
 are the imperfections of existing Society 
 and what is the law of its further evolution, 
 we must begin by reminding ourselves that 
 there i s a law of mutual aid in life as well as 
 one of a struggle for existence, and that the 
 former is predomi nant in human S ociety. 
 
 The struggle tor lite, fought on the mdi- 
 vidualistic plane at first, is ultimately trans- 
 ferred to the social. One of the very 
 first results of the individual struggle with 
 nature and with other individuals, is to 
 create groups of individuals for mutual pro- 
 tection. This is a law of life from the cell 
 to the mammal. Mutual aid thus becomes 
 as important a factor in evolution as the 
 struggle for life. The law of group existence 
 and development blends with that of mdi- 
 vidual existence and development to weave 
 the pattern of progress. 
 
 The study of mutual aid therefore leads us 
 to examine group organisation with a view 
 to ascertaining what is the position of the 
 38 
 
39 
 
 individual within the group, how its organ- 
 isation affects his liberty, and how far everjr 
 member within it contributes to its efficiency. 
 Socialism in one of its aspects, is a criticism 
 of Society from the point of vie wof mutuaf 
 aid, and the formation of a policy in accord- 
 --ance with the laws of mutual aid. 
 
 I. 
 
 One of the chief characteristics of existiner 
 Societ y is the incoherenc Hof its functions . 
 ITTs a machine which is always getting out 
 of gear, as is shown by alternating periods 
 of overwork and unemployment, excessive- 
 riches and despairing poverty, enormous- 
 gross income and appalling records of des- 
 titution and pauperism. Its productive and* 
 distributive functions are not organised so 
 as to serve the common wellbeing, but are 
 working for their own special interests.* 
 They are, therefore, competitive. It is as. 
 though a stomach performed its functions, 
 
 * It is interesting to note, as an addendum to the 
 discussion on how the individual is organically con- 
 nected with his society, that in fulfilling the parti- 
 cular end which contemporary society is striving tO' 
 attain (in the present day,, the production of wealth), 
 the individual is valued just as he succeeds in making; 
 that end his own (in the present day, amassing^ 
 wealth), and he manages to 'square his conscience to 
 any immoral acts which muy promote his success 
 in this direction. 
 
 E 
 
tiot as part of a body, but as an organ con- 
 scious only of its separate existence, and 
 thinking primarily of that existence. 
 
 At present eac h separate organ preys upon 
 all the others . True, it must to some extent, 
 and in some indirect way, serve the commun- 
 ity, for preying must not be too rapacious 
 or the organ preyed upon will die. The 
 landlord cannot exact too much rent, or 
 industry will move elsewhere : the employer 
 cannot cut wages too low or he will be un- 
 able to command skill and physique. The 
 workman cannot demand too high wages or 
 he will give an incentive to capital to break 
 lip labour combinations, introduce machinery 
 and otherwise rearrange industrial processes. 
 But in all this there is no working of a 
 social organism balancing services and dis- 
 tributing awards. There is an exercise of 
 judgment in determining how far one organ 
 can safely go in preying upon another; 
 there is a call for diplomatic skill. But that 
 is all. The laws which govern this relation- 
 ship are of the same kind as those whioh 
 govern the relationship between the shearer 
 and the sheep. 
 
 To. establish an organic relationship, — a 
 relationship by which each, contributing co- 
 operatively to the life of the whole, may 
 share in that life, — has now become the task 
 of Society. This task, become the subject 
 
of a political propaganda and the guide of 
 social change, is , known as Socialism. 
 Socialism is therefore not an abstract idea, 
 nor a scheme of logical perfection, nor an 
 acutely designed new social mechanism, nor 
 a tour de force of the creative intelligence. 
 It is the next stage in social growth. It is a 
 proposal for the settlement of the problems 
 which the present stage has raised in con- 
 sequence of its success in settling those 
 which met it at its beginning. The vital forces 
 to which the present stage has given birth, 
 but which it cannot nourish, must neverthe- 
 less realise themselves, and will create 
 social conditions to enable them to do so. 
 
 n 
 
 History is a progression of social stages 
 which have preceded and succeeded each 
 other like the unfolding of life from the 
 amoeba to the mammal, or from ♦he bud to 
 the fruit. To-day we are in the economic 
 stage. Yesterday, we were in the political 
 stage. To-morrow, we shall be in the moral* 
 stage. To-day individual property and 
 economic interest are the predominating 
 influences upon society; yesterday, the pre- 
 dominating influence was national organ- 
 isation — the necessity of national solidarity; 
 
 * I use the words to characterise man's responsibil- 
 ity to both his intelligence and bis conscience. 
 
♦2 
 
 to-morrow it will be justice, tempered by the 
 virtues of sympathy. In other words, the 
 course of evolution has been, the making of 
 communities, the exploitation of nature, the 
 cultivation of men.* At no time, however, 
 are these epochs divided from each other 
 by hard and fast lines. At any moment 
 a war may throw a nation back upon the first 
 epoch when national self defence would 
 subordinate every other consideration, whilst 
 we have frequent reminders that economic 
 success cannot be pursued absolutely with- 
 out regard to moral considerations. 
 
 The political e poch is marked by the sub- 
 ordination of the individual and his right to 
 
 • There are two remarkable inconsistencies between 
 the general sociological position taken up by Marx 
 and Engels, and their persistent assertion of the econ- 
 omic basis of history, which should be pointed out 
 here. In the first place they agreed that Hegel's 
 greatest claim to fame was his demonstration that 
 " the whole world," as Engels expresses it in Social- 
 ism : Utopian and Scientific (p. 36), " natural, his- 
 "torical, intellectual, is represented as a process, i.e., 
 "as in constant motioii, change, transformation, de- 
 " Telopment." If that be true, is it conceivable that 
 every department of life — " natural, historical, in- 
 tellectual," (by-the-by a very slipshod division)^is 
 chained to economics and cannot attain an indepen- 
 dent development and existence of its own? In the 
 second place Marx's insistence that each epoch has 
 its own characteristic law of development is inconsist- 
 ent with the assertion that economic considerations 
 are the prime movers in historic evolution. 
 
liberty and property, to the national or tribal 
 need for a head — a central nerve nucleus^- 
 qonnected with the mass of the people by 
 certain differentiated baron classes— nerve 
 fibres and ganglia. The moral epoch will 
 be marked by the complete emancipation nf 
 man so that he becomes master of himself — 
 that self including the necessities of life, 
 labour, and everything it requires for its 
 existence and expression. 
 
 Whatever may have been the particular 
 c ircumstances under which the various com- 
 munities have been formed, thev havp all 
 grown owin g to the necessity of self-defence.. 
 A~_str ong central organisation was imper- 
 ative, ^ nd this organisation had to be linked 
 up to the masses around, by some aristo- 
 cratic and military class of leaders subord- 
 inate to the head.* 
 
 In this process of unification we have the 
 family joining with others to form, or itself 
 growing into, the clan or tribe, and the clan 
 or tribe, partly by internal energy — i.e., 
 voluntary impulse — partly by external 
 compulsion — i.e., conquest — ^joining others 
 to form a nation. For a time, the integrat- 
 ing forces are resented and opposed by the 
 disintegrating sentiment and tradition of the 
 clan. History is then a record of conflic t 
 
 * It is a well-established fact that uncivilised tribes 
 which aie governed on a monarchic plan are most 
 successful in war, and consequently survive best. 
 
44 
 
 betw een central and local s vt^^rWps, he:-. 
 twi ffl the integrating and disintpgrating 
 Tor ces — the King and the B ar ons, the nation 
 andthe shire or~inunicipalIty, ,£arl iamen t 
 afid^ tEe^ guild — during which the law 
 oTlntegration asserts itself because the 
 communities which embody it survive. This 
 is the first chapter. 
 
 The next chapter is marked by the organ- 
 isation of the masses into a political unity, 
 and their initiation into the rights of 
 citizenship. The opportunity for progres s 
 through this second stage comes first of aU 
 from the needs of th e central authority, * — 
 tlie sovereign — to thamtam its positio n 
 itgamst the local and clan disintegrating 
 forces, or against rival _s5 Yereigns. This 
 leSds to the establishmeriroTsome measure 
 of political and economic freedom for the 
 plebeians — in other words, a nerve connec- 
 tion between the central nucleus and the sur- 
 rounding mass. 
 
 * This connection between social need and political 
 power is biought into great prominence by the study 
 of ancient and mediaeval democracies, especially of 
 the city republics. In Carthage, democracy increased 
 its powers with Hannibal's military exploits ; in 
 Rome, the power of the commons increased as the 
 armies of the commons became necessary to rival 
 rulers. The struggle between Emperor and Pope 
 started the Italian cities upon their careers as inde- 
 pendent republics. The political movement in Russia 
 since the war with Japan is an interesting illustra- 
 tion of the same principle. 
 
45 
 
 Meanwhile, thejnass_itsfilf__ceases__tD_be_ 
 amorphous and Secom es differentiate d into 
 ftfiictions, i.e., trades and classes. The 
 economic stage is beginning; the political 
 one is fading away into the accomplished^ 
 past. But the process of political integration 
 continues. 
 
 The municipium, at first merely the wa t' 
 ti ed place of refuge for the people scattere d 
 on the soil, becomes a market, a centre o f 
 industry ^T~ depot. a chartered cn mmnnifY, a, ^ 
 society, ^njoyjn g widening- power s nf sp.lf- 
 government. The individuals composing it 
 a.te divided^nto this trade or that. Some 
 men, and finally a class of men, acquire con- 
 trol of the means of production — the tools 
 and economic opportunities necessary to an 
 industrial community; they get credit or 
 acquire capital; and from the time that the 
 producer has to depend upon a distant 
 market either for his raw material or for the 
 sale of his produce, a separate class becomes 
 the owners of those industrial necessities, 
 the organisers of trade and the employers 
 of labour. Opposition is at first shown 
 between the old aristocracy of title and land, 
 and the new plutocracy of wealth and manu- 
 factures, but again, the laws of integration, 
 of conservation and imitation, come into- 
 operation. Assimilation and co-ordination 
 take place. Production has become the 
 grand social function, and those organising 
 
46 
 
 it are in a position to demand citizen rights. 
 The owners of capital and property are first 
 of all received into the fold of the sovereign 
 lawmaking authority.* When society has 
 <leveloped so far, it still contains a vast 
 amorphous mass of proletariat unconnected 
 '' with its controlling central authority, al- 
 though of importance as food providers; 
 and they are, when roused, the invincible 
 majority. 
 
 Meanwhile, State activity touches more 
 
 and more intimately the every-day life of the 
 
 people, and it becomes more and more 
 
 essential that the people themselves should 
 
 be able to say what they think about the 
 
 laws. The imperfect way in which any 
 
 single individual, family or class can repres- 
 
 - ent the national unity or express the 
 
 " national will, necessitates the creation of an 
 
 y organ in which all interests and classes are 
 
 '^ represented, and Representative Democracy 
 
 ■ * In their efforts to gain an entrance into this fold 
 they have to make it easier for the lower classes to 
 £ain an entrance also, because when the middle class 
 agitate for the franchise they have to base their 
 claims partly on human right, in which the wage 
 earners share, and they have also to enliven the inter- 
 est of the people as was done before 1832 in order 
 that the aristocracy may be compelled to grant a 
 limited franchise. This is the explanation of the ad- 
 vocacy of a democratic franchise by middle-class 
 Liberals. 
 
47 
 
 is established. The stage of political con- 
 struction then ends. 
 
 III. 
 
 The economic period, at the end of which 
 we stand and from the maturity of which , 
 Socialism springs into life, is marked by the 
 organisation of production and exchange 
 of wealth. Production and e xchange a re 
 best begun m a So ciety of the individual- 
 tstic type. I'he scramble of competitors and 
 the struggle for prizes, promote the exploita- 
 tion of nature and create, to begin with, the 
 best machinery for production and the best 
 facilities for marketing. 
 
 We therefore find that the first ch apters 
 in the economic epoch deal with the organ- 
 iSation oF'tnarkets, the separation uf ' the 
 hading from the producing classes, the 
 differentiation of capital from labour, and 
 the setting of the producing functions 
 over all other functions — in a word, they 
 deal with the establishment of the bour- 
 geoisie, the middle class, the plutocracy. As 
 the epoch develops, frequent dislocations of 
 industry take place, political and industrial 
 agitations of a democratic and Socialist 
 character disturb society, as the life of the 
 coming epoch germinates in the bosom of 
 the order which is maturing, and glimpses 
 
48 
 
 of a better organisation are caught through 
 the suffering of the victims. Utopias are 
 dreamt of. But Society goes on evolving 
 in. its cumbrous way. Organic things are 
 not created or re-created in a day. The 
 various phases in industrial evolution, the 
 horrors of child labour as well as the bene- 
 ficent effect of a world commerce, are as 
 much a "necessity" in the nature of things* 
 as the process of organic evolution revealed 
 in the ponderous books of stone from the 
 Cambrian schists to the river gravels. To 
 indulge in dreamy imaginings upon how 
 much more blessed we should have been had 
 not this movement or that been crushed out 
 by force or starved out by ignorance, is one 
 of the vainest and least profitable of all 
 
 *I am aware of the objections that have been made 
 to the use of these words. But they still express 
 better than any others the belief that every living 
 thing develops in accordance with the law of its own 
 being within the community of which it is a part, 
 and that every function of society is ultimately 
 limited in its operations by the whole social life. The 
 living conscious individual partly obeys that law in 
 accordance with the views of Determinists, but he is 
 also partly obedient to his conceptions of that law 
 operating in a higher stage of perfection, and in a 
 changed relationship. " Man partly is, and wholly 
 hopes to be." He can therefore move from the fixed 
 present, and secure some of the better possibilities of 
 the future. We might say that the warp and the 
 woof of life are given to us, but that we can modify 
 the pattern that is to be woven. 
 
49 
 
 serious recreations. The past was 
 "necessary"; the future is ours to make or 
 to mar. Until the individualistic andv 
 competitive phase of our economic evolu-^' 
 tion had worked itself out, after building 
 up an efJicient mechanism of production 
 and exchange, we were not ready to deal 
 with the problem of distribution, or with 
 that of use and consumption. 
 
 But the necessity of dealing with the 
 problem of consumption — which is really 
 the problem of endowing the individual with 
 economic freedom, because freedom to con- 
 sume is the last and most comprehensive 
 of all economic freedoms — slowly emerges 
 from the conditions established under the 
 phase of productive effort. It is not only 
 that the sense of justice is violated with in- 
 creasing harshness as the contrast between 
 the poverty-stricken and the luxurious 
 classes becomes more marked in a nation 
 whose aggregate income mounts up by leaps 
 and bounds, but the very machinery of 
 production tends to be transformed in such 
 a way as to compel the public to guard 
 their interests by gaining control of this 
 machinery. Competition tends to pass 
 away and monopoly takes its place? The 
 common needs, sacrificed by private interest 
 in profit-making, assert themselves more 
 and more through Factory Laws, experi- 
 
JO 
 
 ments in municipalisation, Sanitary Laws and 
 so on. In other words, the various functions 
 in Society, acting originally independently 
 of each other, tend to become grouped and 
 to be subject to a will and an interest 
 common to the whole group ; and in time th e 
 gr oups themselves tend to become com- 
 pletely merged in the whole organism a nd 
 to act m accordance w it h its will and 
 ifilerest. ~ 
 -— ""^ IV. 
 
 At what point of this evolution are we 
 now? How far has the efficient organisa- 
 tion of labour gone? How far has the 
 machinery of production been transformed? 
 
 In attempting to answer those questions, 
 we must remember that one of the chief tests 
 of efficient organisation in industry is sub- 
 division, accompanied by co-ordination, of 
 labour.* In this respect we have attained 
 a perfection which must be approaching its 
 limits. Even in our domestic arrangements 
 — generally the last to respond to change in 
 social organisation — this sub-division and co- 
 ordination have gone far. It is a long time 
 
 * Adam Smith's expression " the sub-division of 
 laboui " is inadequate as a description of what 
 happens under the Factory System, because the co- 
 ordination of the work of those employed in the sub- 
 divided processes is as necessary a characteristic of 
 the system as the sub-division itself. 
 
5> 
 
 since our wives and daughters spun at our 
 own firesides wool from the backs of sheep 
 grazing on our own meadows. These opera- ^ 
 tions suppHed too wide a market to remain ' 
 domestic. But functions which were purely 
 family and domestic, the materials for which 
 were growing in our gardens, the imple- 
 ments for which were nothing more than a 
 fireplace and a pot, and the performance of 
 which was much more personal than even 
 spinning (personal and wifely as that at one 
 time was), have been organised apart from 
 the duties of the housewife, until to-day our 
 cooking is done to a large extent in baker- 
 ies, jam factories, canning and tinning estab- 
 lishments, and the very care of children is 
 becoming more and more a matter in which 
 Society is taking an interest. 
 
 But it is in the staple industries — those 
 which supply a great mai-ket with a uniform 
 article — that the process of differentiation 
 and co-ordination has gone furthest. The 
 cloth-worker used to alternate weaving and 
 spinning with agriculture. But the resistless 
 law of differentiation forced him to leave his 
 fields and give himself up wholly to his 
 machine and his frame, which had become 
 one of many in a factory. In the factories 
 themselves differentiation made itself felt. 
 Separate departments were formed and the 
 division of processes became so great that 
 different establishments confining themselves 
 
S2 
 
 to different oper?itions, like spinning and 
 weaving in the cotton trade, were created. 
 The chief sociological effect of mechanical 
 invention has been to aid this process of 
 sub-division and co-ordination of function. 
 Adam Smith's reference at the opening of 
 the Wealth of Nations, to the sub-division of 
 labour in pin-making owing to the employ- 
 ment of machinery has become classical. 
 But since Adam Smith's day, sub-division 
 has gone both far and fast. I may illustrate 
 this from the boot and shoe and tailoring 
 trades. 
 
 In 1859* men's ordinary cheap boots were 
 made by 83 different operations done by 
 two men; in 1895 they were made by 122 
 different operations performed by 113 work- 
 ers, some of whom were women. In 1863, 
 me n's medium grade calf shoes, finished in 
 style, wer e made by 73 operations done by 
 one man ; m I 895, by 173 oper ations per-^ 
 formed by 371 workpeople. Equally strik- 
 ing is the change in the names by which the 
 workpeople describe themselves. In 1863, 
 tf/it he men were shoemakers : in i8q.s, the worH 
 has becom e iittle better than an abstraction, 
 and"no smgle workman is indicated by it. In- 
 stead uf sliueiuakers we have vamp cutters , 
 
 * Refort of the Commissioner of Labour on Hani 
 and Machine Labour, Washington, 1898. The unit of 
 pioduction for the figures quoted is 100 pairs of 
 shoes and 100 vicuna coats. 
 
53 
 
 tip markers, second row stitchers, eyeletters, 
 feather edgers, insole sorters, counter 
 buffers, pullers-over, welt strippers ^ outsole 
 layers, heel nailers, stitch dividers, bottom 
 stainers, shank burnishers, treers, edge 
 polishers and such like. 
 
 The effect of mechanical appliances upon 
 the clothing industry is equally marked. 
 When men's ordinary vicuna coats were 
 made by hand, 22 operations had to be per- 
 formed and four men were employed upon 
 them; in 189.^ these coats were made up by , 
 28 o perations upon which 2;4 workers werg 
 employed. The hand workers were known : 
 aSTailors, trimmers and cutters ; the designa- 
 tion tailor has not survived I'he use of 
 machinery, the trimmer barely survives, 
 whilst the titles of fitters, basters, sewing 
 machine operatives, button hole cutters, 
 finishers, pressers and button sewers attest 
 to the minute sub-division of the trade. 
 
 Every industry shows the same process. 
 Every minute operation in the manufacture 
 of any article becomes separated, a staff is 
 employed to perform it alone, and the aggre- 
 gate number of hands required to produce 
 any one complete article is on the increase. 
 The individual workman is no longer the 
 producing unit. He does not make a 
 thing but only part of a thing. A body 
 of from 100 to 400 persons as in shoemak- 
 ing and tailoring, is now the producing unit. 
 
54 
 
 The same process has also affected the 
 relation between trades. One trade dovetails 
 into another, either because one supplies raw 
 material for the other or in some other way 
 is a complement to it. For instance, a muni- 
 cipality doing its own street sweeping finds 
 it to be advantageous to make and mend its 
 brooms; if it employs horses it finds that 
 doing its own saddlery is economical; if its 
 stable is large, it may employ its own veter- 
 inary surgeon and start its own forge with 
 profit. The necessity to destroy its dust and 
 refuse may compel it to generate its own 
 electricity, - and for like reasons it may be 
 driven into brickmaking, the supplying of 
 electric lighting apparatus, printing, and so 
 on. 
 
 I have been told that a certain well-known 
 slaughter and packing house found its bye- 
 products so embarrassing to dispose of that it 
 had to start the manufacture of sausages, 
 bristles, glue, felt, candles, soap, table con- 
 diments, manure; it owns the rolling stock 
 which it uses ; in order to protect itself from 
 competition, it has acquired railroads and has 
 organised transport in several cities; it has 
 opened retail shops; it insures itself, and, 
 through a bank of its own, conducts its 
 financial business. 
 
 The activities of the American Steel Trust 
 afford another example of this co-ordina- 
 tion of industry. As a manufacturing con- 
 
55 
 
 ce rn it includes op eratinns Hkf thf makinEr 
 o ftin-plates, tubes, bridges, wire and nails ^ 
 wETch used to be separate businesses ! But 
 if nas carried organisation and co-ordination, 
 much further than that. It has acquire d' 
 5; ^ooo acrfes of the best cokinp^ r.nal lands 
 in tne Connelsville region, and has built over 
 18,000 coke ovens. It holds 106 iron ore 
 m ines in the Lake Supenor region, and large- 
 limestone properties in Pennsylv ania. It / 
 possesses 132 wells of natural gas, which' 
 yield on the aggregate 11,000,000,000 cubic 
 feet per annum. It ow nj 1,200 miles of rai l- 
 way, and h as a controljing interest in fav e- 
 other Imes. It has a fleet of 112 ore-carrv - 
 in g steamers , toge ther with docks a nd land- 
 ing stages and the machinery necessary for 
 handling the iron ore.* 
 
 With this sub-division and co-ordination of 
 labour and industry, has proceeded an enor- 
 mous improvement in the means of com- 
 munication. Fifty years ago if one sent a 
 message from London to Edinburgh, it took 
 about a week to receive an answer, whilst: 
 from London to New York it took a month. 
 The stage coach going at from seven to ten 
 miles an hour, was the substitute for the ex- 
 press train going seven or eight times as 
 fast, and the fare per passenger was not less 
 
 * British Iron Trade Association : Re fort on Ameri- 
 can Industrial Conditions, London, 1902, pp. aa, etc. 
 
 F 
 
56 
 
 than £io for a journey which can now be 
 <lone for thirty shillings. The ship depend- 
 ing upon the fitful winds was all that could 
 he used instead of the ocean steamers which 
 now run so . punctually that one can catch a 
 ■certain train by them at the end of a long 
 voyage. There was no regular cable service 
 between the Old and the New World until 
 1866, and rates which are now a shilling a 
 word were then £1. Telegrams were little 
 tised until between 1840 and 1850, and then a 
 good machine could only send 2,000 words 
 per hour,* whilst now twelve times as many 
 ■can be sent, and devices are employed for 
 duplicating and for working several clerks 
 upon the same message. And now the tele- 
 phone is superseding both telegraph and ex- 
 press train, t There is only the space of a 
 few minutes separating the Old from the 
 New World. The Napoleonic capitalist sits 
 in his office and conducts his trade in every 
 country and every clime as though his 
 markets were but at the end of his street. 
 
 C ^ J -f y With these magical facilities under his 
 -'^^^^^^ontrol, the capitalist is no longer a private 
 
 ~^-<^ 
 
 ^ person operating in a little corner of his 
 
 jikt.'lhn. * McCuUoch's Dictionary of Commerce, London, 
 
 1882, Art. written 1869. 
 
 t I have heard that owing to the adoption of the 
 telephone, one of the express trains running between 
 New York and Chicago has been taken o£E. 
 
57 
 
 parish, whose success or failure only ripples 
 the calm surface of the life of his village. 
 He deals with Society; the fate of peoples 
 flepends upon him; he rules empires; legis- 
 latures which monarchs cannot control are 
 his puppets. Nominally, his property and 
 his business are his own, but the conse- 
 quences attending the way he controls them 
 are spread over Society. The crash of a 
 single financial house in Wall Street can pre- 
 cipitate an industrial crisis in Europe; a 
 handful of men controlling the policy of a 
 newspaper can spread panic, can . depress 
 stocks and cause national distress. 
 
 This elaborate organisation of industry 
 and concentration of industrial power be-^ 
 comes a matter of serious and direct import- 
 ance to the wage-earner when labour-saving 
 machinery is largely used. A machine which 
 lightens labour can very easily be turned 
 into one which takes the place of labour, and 
 whether that happens or not depends upon 
 whether the machine is held by a class which 
 employs labour for a profit, or whether it is 
 used by labour for its own benefit. So long 
 as there are expanding m arkets at home an3 
 aFr oad, machinery creates a demand for 
 w ork, partly b ecause the machinery itse lf 
 must be made, and partly because it cheap - 
 ens producti on and therefore increases con - 
 sumption. ~~ ~ 
 
S8 
 
 But its employment enormously increases 
 the power of the capitalist over the wage- 
 earner. After a point, i t increases t he 
 proportion of u nskilled labour in Ihe 
 community,* a nd, enables the capitalist 
 to call iii to Eis aid the weak and 
 
 the casual workers, generally children 
 a nd wofnen^ to take the plac es ot men 
 and reduce their wages. f JNo sentiment, no 
 tradition, no tjociai- interest can resist the 
 imperative demand in the present economic 
 state that the most convenient kind of laboui 
 — convenient to the capitalist — shall find its 
 way to the factory gates. Whilst our oppon- 
 ents prate, for instance, about the sacredness 
 of the family life, they allow the convenience 
 of the machine to undermine the economic 
 props of the family group. A pillar of Sab- 
 batarianism can prove satisfactorily to him- 
 
 *Cf. American Industrial Conditions, supra, p. 317, 
 "The tendency in the American steel industry is 
 to reduce by every possible means the number of 
 highly skilled men employed, and more and more to 
 establish the general wage on the basis of common 
 unskilled labour. . . . The American Steel manu- 
 facturer has succeeded in late years in largely reduc- 
 ing the relative numbers of his skilled and highly 
 paid hands." 
 
 fA workman in an industrial town in the Midlands 
 remarked to me the other day : "I have eleven 
 children, but thank God, most of them are girls. They 
 can easily get work, but the boys are difficult to 
 place." 
 
59 
 
 self that his works must — the economic, not 
 the moral must — go seven days in the week; 
 a man full of phrases glorifying humanity 
 employs married women or girls to cut 
 down the wages of men when he needs cheap 
 labour, and turns men away from his factory 
 gates. " Business principles " — the " busi- 
 ness principles " of self-regarding individu- 
 als, not of Society — are made the excuse for 
 human waste and unrighteousness, and we 
 are willing to accept as a last word in social 
 ethics an appeal that the rights — or the 
 fancied rights — of property must be respect- 
 ed even should the heavens fall, and that the 
 rights and duties of wage earners should be 
 subordinated to the needs of the machinery 
 which employs them. 
 
 Thus we see how machinery, which might 
 lighTen labour, supplants it when used in the 
 interest of a capitalist class, or increases the 
 demand for cheap and unorganised labour 
 without providing facilities- for a cultured 
 leisure. Thus we see how tools, a dead 
 factor, rule men, the living factor m produc- 
 tion, and now a class engagmg m pi udutliuii 
 for profits controls the class which takes part 
 in production in order to maintain life. 
 T hings dominate men, with results spelt ou t 
 m m oral, social and physical deterioration. 
 The workman has to accommodate himself 
 to his employer's ledger. The owner of the 
 land and the means of production^ is the 
 
6o 
 
 owner of the lives of the people. He holds 
 Society in the hollow of his hand. 
 
 This is no indictment of the individual 
 capitalist, who is often trying his best to 
 listen to ethical imperatives in his business. 
 It is an indictment of a system of dis- 
 organised functions which cannot yield moral 
 results. These things are done not because 
 employers are more hypocritical or un- 
 just than their workpeople. The employer 
 has to perform his part in the machine. He 
 cannot help himself. Like his men, he is a 
 victim of the system. The Socialist com- 
 plaint is not against the man, it is against 
 the organisation which assigns to men their 
 functions and role in the industrial life of 
 the community. 
 
 Nor can any combination of labour in the 
 form of Trade Unionism or Co-operation 
 break down this form of economic slavery. 
 These combinations, particularly when sup- 
 ported by individual character, protect the 
 wage earners up to a point, but capital and 
 i ts interests can be concentrated much mor^ 
 tfior oughly than labour and its interests, 
 and~ultimately the cohtestnde pends upon the 
 physical fact that the battalions of labour are 
 numerous and have a limited reserve of 
 supplies or none at all; and this unwieldi- 
 ness of numbers and early fight with starva- 
 
6i 
 
 tion must always be an enormous disadvan- 
 tage to the wage earners. 
 
 Hence we have reached a stage when th e 
 interest of the community in the use of some 
 fS rms of property is much greater than the^ 
 inter est of the legal owners of that property , 
 arid when, in consequence, we must seriously 
 question the advisability of allowing this 
 property to be controlled by private persons 
 for private ends. 
 
 Even if it were physically possible for a 
 person to own t he light and air_ Qf heaven, 
 so imperatively necessary is it for human 
 beings to use them that the right of private 
 property in them is unthinkable. BuLJlie^ 
 di fference between light and air on the one 
 hand, and land and industrial capital on the 
 other, is only one ot degree, and n ot one 6 1 
 kiMT*^ As population multiplies, as it is 
 deprived of free access to raw materials, as 
 it becomes more dependent for life upon em- 
 ployment for wages, Society becomes in- 
 creasingly interested in the uses to which 
 land and industrial capital are put. Its right 
 to insist upon the social use of property 
 grows, until at last the expediency of allow- 
 ing private ownership in these necessary con- 
 
 * This is seen when, as a matter of fact, private 
 ownership of land in towns, by causing overcrowding 
 and slum conditions, really involves a private owner- 
 ship of air and light. '~~ ~~~~ — -- 
 
6a 
 
 ■ditions of life is destroyed. The reasons 
 which make the private ownership of light 
 and air unthinkable tend to make the private 
 ownership of land and industrial capital also 
 unthinkable. 
 
 This inevitable growth of the necessity 
 for Society to insist upon the proper use of 
 land and capital is hastened in its final stages 
 by the ceasing of competition within large 
 
 • ■economic and geographical areas, and the 
 ruinous intensification of competition be- 
 tween those areas. The competitive stage is 
 always one of unstable equilibrium. The 
 
 '^successful competitor always tends to 
 swallow up his rivals, and then proceeds to 
 
 ^ fight a cannibal battle-royal with those who, 
 like himself, have done some swallowing, 
 and have grown massive in consequence,, 
 .and who have in due course to be faced by 
 him. Or, he may come to a truce with them 
 in a Kartel or Trust. The law of competi- 
 tion is that the operations of the individual 
 capitalist become wider as capital becomes 
 ■concentrated, and that at last a monopolistic 
 peace is declared. Competition is not a fina l 
 condition; it is a stage ihTRe~evolution of 
 co-operafioiT ~ 
 
 - — Thns7 in this country there is little com- 
 petition in railway rates; for years there has 
 been little competition in the supply of 
 paraffin oil; in the iron, milling, shipoingv 
 
63 
 
 tobacco, thread and other industries we have 
 had jn recent years combinations, c reated 
 eitheF atter or without a competitive war, 
 that have been more or less effective in re- 
 ducing competition to a minimum. The wall- 
 p aper trust controls q8 per cent, oftne trade. 
 t he Bradford Dyers, t he T extile Machiner y 
 Company , the London Coal Co mbination , 
 and sevTral others, claim about Qo per cent. 
 of the turnover in their respective industries, 
 and the list could be extended to some 
 length.* Even when the combinations fail, 
 the causes, however difficult they may be to 
 overcome, are all seen to be vanquishable. 
 The apparent failures are but the backwash 
 of the encroaching tide. 
 
 The fact is that the state o f individualist 
 competition, the state of serving the coni- 
 munity by making personal profits, is noth- 
 ing except the chaotic interregnum between 
 two states of social organisation — between 
 Feudalism, when Society was organised to 
 maintain national life, and Socialism, when 
 Society will be organised to maintain the in- 
 dustrial and moral efficiency of the commun 
 ity. It is inconceivable that the unregulated 
 clash of individual interests and the hap- 
 hazard expenditure of individual effort, which 
 competition means, with all their accompany- 
 
 * For most recent information on English combina- 
 tions see Macrosty's Trust Movement in English In- 
 dustry. 
 
64 
 
 ing waste of economic power and of human 
 energy, should stand for ever as the final 
 word which rational beings have to say upon 
 their industrial organisation. 
 
 But whilst within certain areas the bounds 
 of industrial peace are being widened, the 
 growth of a ggressive politic al nationalism 
 . has transfo r med an economic rivalry between 
 tradin g firms into national s truggles. No 
 movement in recent years is fiTDre menacing 
 in its probable results and more absurd in its 
 methods than this. If it is encouraged, it 
 will postpone for generations the success of 
 the tendency towards international peace, 
 and will divert and arrest the growth of that 
 humanitarian sentiment which blots out from 
 our minds — if not from our maps — national 
 boundaries. Already, under the mistaken 
 belief that trade follows the Rag, we have 
 p ut an enormous strain upon our imperial 
 r esources and national we alth. Commerce, 
 which according to the Radical manufactur- 
 ers, was to be the handmaiden of peace, has 
 been enlisted upon the side of war. But no 
 State can allow its international relations 
 to be decided by its merchants. The inter- 
 ests, or supposed interests, of individual mer- 
 chants must give way to the interests of the 
 community. 
 
 The fiscal agitation has, moreo ver, 
 drjiwn our attention to the depredations of 
 
parasitic interests and the waste of disorgan - 
 ised industrial ettorts. The jeremiads which 
 Have had to be uttered in order to give some 
 appearance of evidence in support of Tariff 
 changes, have made us conscious of the 
 weight of the unnecessary burdens which our 
 industry has to bear, and industrial economy 
 has been advocated, by the Socialist and ' 
 Labour organisations at any rate, as the 
 alternative to political protection. It has 
 been shown that our railways are sacrificing 
 national interests for private profits, that our 
 iron and coal industry is weighted with min- 
 ing rents and royalties, that our whole 
 social organisation is maintained for private 
 and class gains. Every crack and subsidence 
 v/hich has been proved to exist in our 
 natio nal commerce has been shown to be 
 mendable, not by tariffs, but by the better 
 organisation of mdustry. ' 
 
 There is also another circumstance which 
 we must take into account in cbnsidering 
 how far the present organisation of Society 
 is capable of improvement. At the present 
 moment we are in the midst of a strong ten- 
 dency in legislation to establish what is^ 
 called a national minimum of social condi-; 
 tions — e.g., wages, sanitation, leisure, etc. 
 Now, as a matter of fact, competitive in- 
 dustry will not bear all this, if the minimum 
 is to be worth striving for, and a point must 
 
66 
 
 soon be reachea Arhen the far-seeing Socialist 
 will cease to press for these superficial pallia- 
 tives, and exert increased pressure for public 
 ownership. When the legislative palliative 
 'is inc onsistenF with the system upon which 
 it is to De impo sed, the awakening moral 
 conijoiousness winc h prompts the demari3 
 must see that it really condemns the exist- 
 ing state fundamen tally, and not merely in 
 some of Its superficial and alterable 
 features.* 
 
 V. 
 
 Labour and industry have been sub-divided 
 and co-ordinated only in so far as has been 
 necessary for efficient production. The sub- 
 division and co-ordination have not been 
 for the purpose of increasing the health of 
 the whole social organism. Land, capital 
 
 * I hold this point to be of the greatest importance 
 for the future success of Socialism. State interference 
 under commercialism is strictly confined within 
 limits. If we go beyond these, our experiments will 
 be failures, and like the Paris workshops of 1848 will 
 become bulwarks behind which reactionaries will 
 shelter themselves. Public ownership, which after all 
 is Socialism, as distinguished from State interference 
 which is only the path to Socialism, — and not always 
 that — must not be allowed to be pushed into the back- 
 ■ ground of Socialist effort. In the interest of the 
 larger movement, mere palliatives, like Wages' 
 Boards and a legal minimum wage, must be rejected 
 sometimes. 
 
67 
 
 and labour; the producer and consumer; the 
 worker and the instruments of work — are all 
 opposing functions in Society. Henc e the 
 wealth created by this system of opposition 
 i s madequately distributed , and the civilisa- 
 tion which it permits is a mixture of barbar- 
 ism and Byzantinism, of philanthropy and 
 injustice. The private ownership of land, 
 expressing itself through monopoly values, 
 mining rents and royalties, wayleaves, 
 rights of enclosure and powers to withhold 
 from use, limits enterprise and is a heavy 
 burden upon industry. The motive of 
 capital to look after its own interests 
 first, subjects trade to serious periodical 
 crises, prevents any effective attempt 
 being made to regulate supply and 
 demand, makes a national organisation 
 of industry impossible and an anarchy of 
 superfluous wealth and bankruptcy, ovenime 
 and unemployment, permanent, and it doom* 
 the dependent wage earners to lives devoi3 
 6i that securitv and comfort which are essen- 
 tial to the liber ty and moral advance of man. 
 The separateness of labour from, and iis' 
 subordination to, capital breed the anti-social 
 spirit: the conditions under which it has to 
 do its work undermine honesty and crafts- 
 manship; the reward it receives gives it no 
 encouragement to attain to artistic or scien 
 tific skill and barely yields to it an oppor- 
 tunity to exercise the virtues of temperance 
 and forethought. 
 
68 
 
 The organs of a healthy body politic are 
 now in existence. In their variety and co- 
 ordination they mark an advance upon the 
 condition of Society a century ago. They 
 indicate a substantial improvement in the 
 economy of effort and precision in gaining 
 results. But each organ is serving an inter- 
 est of its own. When it is serving the whole, 
 it is in order that it may serve itself first. 
 The next stage in our social evolution must 
 be marked, not by the development of more 
 special functions, but by the co-ordination 
 of the functions which are already in exist- 
 ence. The welfare of the community must, 
 in economic, political and moral effort, take 
 the place that the interest of the classes now 
 occupies. Empedocles taught that at the 
 chaotic beginnings of life the various parts 
 of the body — the eye, the head, the hand — 
 arose and wandered separately through the 
 world. But as time went on, a wandering 
 eye met a wandering head, a wandering hand 
 met a wandering arm, and at length the 
 wonderful mechanism of the organic body 
 was brought into being. Fanciful as this 
 may be as a biological explanation, it is 
 literally true as regards the organisation of 
 the industrial world. Disconnected parts of 
 an economic system have arisen from chaos, 
 and only as they unite together will the 
 economic life of Society become full. 
 
69 
 VI. 
 
 This is the biological view of the evolution 
 of Society towards Socialism. The evolution 
 is accompanied by an opposition of different 
 interests proceeding pari passu with a more 
 complete organisation. But the predomin - 
 ant or vital fact is not that contlict, but rather" 
 tBe steady subordination of all functional 
 and sectional mte i esls to llie livill^j needs o f 
 the whole community, and the certain pre- 
 Hommance ot those functions which are 
 carrying on what at any given time is the 
 chief concern of Society. Each epoch 
 has its own appropriate "historical basis" 
 and motive, explained not by the assumption 
 that the stages of social evolution are the 
 creations of the desire of individuals to live 
 or to possess, but by the evolution of the 
 functions of Society, studied as though it 
 were an organic process. 
 
 One conclusion from this view must be 
 specially noticed. As each stage of enfran- 
 chisement approaches, we find that, by the 
 influence on the individual mind of the pre- 
 paredness of Society for change, by the 
 suggestions which the signs and tendencies 
 of the time make to critical and observing 
 minds, intellectual and moral movements 
 arise in harmony with the impending change, 
 Jind weaken the resistance of the doomed 
 
7<J 
 
 interests. A movement towards more e£Eect - 
 ive or ganisation is, of necessity, preceded b y 
 TnoFe comprehensive views of social utility, 
 and~of moral right and wro ng. Smce, under 
 democracy, the torm of social organisation is 
 directly dependent upon the community's 
 need, expressed steadily as it grows and not 
 dammed up till its resistance cannot longer 
 be withstood, we have an increasing secur- 
 ity against cataclysmic change, and a great- 
 er guarantee against revolution. Change 
 becomes organic in its method. Contest s 
 be tween the organism and the function, — 
 b etween Society and a class, — between the 
 c ommunity and vested interests, — becom e 
 gradual s urrenders of the parts to the whol e, 
 to which day and date can hardly be assign- 
 ed, because in the course of the change 
 there has been no dramatic crisis. 
 
 VII. 
 
 In this growth of organisation, Society 
 presents a special feature owing to the con- 
 stant attempts made by individuals to secure 
 for themselves certain advantages, economic 
 and social, which can only belong to a few 
 and which are enjoyed as a rule at the 
 expense of Society as a whole, or of subord- 
 inate classes in Society. The opportunity 
 which a small class has to put itself in the 
 position of a parasite is very great owing 
 
7' 
 
 to the fact that in social evolution certain 
 functions become from time to time pre- 
 dominant. The organ — class or group of 
 persons — which fulfils these functions, and 
 the individual cells — persons — composing 
 these organs, are held consequently in dis- 
 tinction and acquire interests which, when 
 a further social change has ripened, are 
 found to be opposed to that change. 
 Meantime, they have gathered round 
 themselves a group of organic relation- 
 ships which become but obstructive growths- 
 in the social organism, however useful they 
 may at one time have been.* That is- 
 what we mean by "vested interests." Paras- 
 itism breeds parasitism. The predominant 
 function, with its accessories, in every stage 
 of social growth attempts to retard social 
 evolution beyond the conditions which give 
 it predominance. It seeks to establish it- 
 self as a vital part of Society which, if in- 
 jured, will mean death to the whole; it 
 
 * This can be illustrated in othei ways than by 
 a study of parasitism. For instance, geologists have- 
 long been discussing why the gigantic creatures 
 which lived during Diluvial times became extinct. 
 The theory has now been propounded regarding the 
 sabre-toothed tigers that lived in South America 
 that they evolved in relation to the huge Glyptodonts 
 of the Pampas, which were protected by massive plate 
 armour except at the neck. The peculiar dentition 
 of these tigers was an advantage only so long as- 
 the country swarmed with Glyptodonts, but so sood 
 
 a 
 
7« 
 
 creates a practice of morality which serves 
 as a foundation for it; it constructs an econ- 
 omic system which suits its needs; it estab- 
 lishes by its Acts of Parliament a legal 
 system to preserve its own lordly place; 
 it inculcates a habit of mind in the other 
 social functions which makes them unwilling 
 to consider any other system of social 
 relationship than the existing one. 
 
 The place of monarchy in the political 
 evolution of the community may be cited in 
 proof of this. When the time came for tribes 
 to amalgamate into nations it was necessary 
 to devise some means by which national 
 unity could express itself, and this could 
 be done only by selecting a national head. 
 Except for such a head, nations subject to 
 the storm and stress of invasion and internal 
 disruptive forces, could not have survived. 
 But just in proportion to the stress of the 
 national need for a king, the king was able 
 to set aside every tradition and custom whicK 
 limited his tenure of office. He was able to 
 
 as the increased killing eflaciency of the tigers with 
 the sabre teeth reduced the number of the Glyptodonts, 
 the ■ dentition which formerly was advantageous in 
 the struggle for existence became a handicap, because 
 it was not fitted for general carnivorous work, and 
 tiger and victim became extinct together. So, the 
 classes which put property to anti-social uses are 
 doomed to suffer in the long run with the Society 
 upon which they prey through land monopoly, slums, 
 unbridled competition, &c. 
 
73 
 
 raise himself into a class of which he was 
 the only member, to establish that class 
 upon a basis of divine right, to surround it 
 with bulwarks of dependant classes, to make 
 its continued existence appear to be essential 
 to the existence of the nation. To-day, long 
 after the nations have organised themselves 
 into unities which find expression more 
 effectively through representative assemblies 
 and by temporary heads, monarchy survives 
 deprived of its legal authority but supported 
 by the parasitism of thought and interest 
 which it has inherited from the time when 
 it performed a necessary function in Society. 
 In the economic development of Society, 
 the same law holds good. The territorial 
 baron holding land in trust for the com- 
 munity and fulfilling that trust by maintain- 
 ing on that land a body of yeomen whose 
 arms were at the disposal of the community 
 in case of need, expressed in the most 
 effective way possible the necessity for the 
 community being properly defended. The 
 circumstance that this allowed private wars 
 on the part of the barons, and personal 
 expeditions on the part of the king, was only 
 incidental to the state of national organis- 
 ation at the time. When, in due course, the 
 industrial development of the country 
 necessitated a more perfect national organ- 
 isation than feudalism, the new functions of 
 capital and commercialism found the old 
 
74 
 
 ones of the land — feudalism — the vital 
 centres of laws and privileges which had to 
 be abolished altogether > or shared with the 
 new plutocracy. Although feud alism is n o 
 longe r of any consequence to national lif e, 
 the na bit ot mind which it engendered and 
 tire social distmctions which it necessitated, 
 stili i nfluence us, ana we tolerate the exist=~ 
 erice ot a nouse ot Lords and make barons 
 ana oaronet s ot those who do party services T 
 a nd" imagine we are thus maintaining the 
 existence ot the British "aristocracy. 
 
 Hence we sefe tlul Lliuugh the diseased 
 functions atrophy, they, retain a sort of 
 parasitic life and maintain a ceremonial and 
 social existence owing to the incapacity of 
 the social organism to throw them off 
 completely. Intellectual and social parasit- 
 ism is one of the most formidable barriers 
 to progress. 
 
 vni. 
 
 The economic pe r iod has its characteristic 
 e thical and political aspects . Whilst it was 
 unfoldinfr^ the id ea of individual liberty was 
 b ecoming cle arer and was pulling at the 
 "pillars of feudal society with alarming 
 violence, ^averv was being abolished, 
 evangelicisni was crowning the meanest 
 being with ^vine responsibility, and the 
 " rights of m an^' were being proclaimed from 
 tlie street corners by agitators, and taugh? 
 
75 
 
 in studies by philosophers. The feeling 
 of subordination inseparable from the organ- 
 isation of feudal times was wearing off, and 
 the separate individuaL_c rowned with his 
 priceless rights as a human being, was mov- 
 ing with an aggressive stride on to the 
 stage to play his part. 
 
 On its moral side the epoch is best dis- 
 tinguished by the evangeli cal movement 
 which swept aside all bar r iers b etween man 
 and his cre ator, all intermediaries, all mter- 
 cessors of^flesh, and established, once and 
 for all it is to be hoped, individual respons- 
 ibility fnr Yn1v"<'f""y *='" It made man regard 
 iKimself as an independent unit in the eyes 
 of God, directly responsible to God for 
 thoughts, words and deeds. In reality, 
 perhaps it only raised anew the problem of 
 Free Will and failed to answer it, but to that 
 answer it made an important preliminary 
 contribution by placing the burde n of moral 
 respo nsibility on the shou lders of I, not o n 
 
 t hose Ot Ze^g. individualis t "inratc nan ^n hP 
 
 established before social morals could be 
 understood, 
 - ^^re^hortcomi ng of evangelicism as a 
 
 cniirr^ qf mnral gniHanrp w as twofold. First 
 
 of all, whilst attempting to place the seat of 
 moral authority :n tn e conscience, it, iii, 
 reality, plac ed it m tradition and dogma 
 which depended upon " the will to believe " 
 
almost exclusively, and it h ardly touc hed 
 conduct — exce pt se lf-regarding conduct — 
 at "alt: I'ts^iTconsequence of this, evang- 
 
 ^elicism was compelled to dwell with pract- 
 ical exclusiveness upon the aspect of 
 morality — so often merely formal — ^which 
 deals with the relations between man and 
 God ,-r- other-worldline ss — and neglects that 
 which IS concerned with the relations 
 between man and man. It has failed to 
 insist upon the application of those parts of 
 the Gospel which impose secular duties upon 
 the Christian, or has treated them as being 
 metaphorical and poetic. It has therefore 
 done little directly to create the moral 
 demand for a change in the social organism. 
 T he method and need of personal regeng r- 
 ation have bounded the vision of evangg l- 
 icisiru 
 
 Its second shortcoming was its individual- 
 ist standpoint and philosophy — necessarily 
 
 '- so, one has to admit. Not onlv wer e 
 individualism and evangelicism contempor- 
 a ry in history b ut they were akin to_ eac& 
 ( ^er in principleT~so much akin, in~ fact, 
 tFat just as evangelicism failed to conceive 
 of an organic church, so did it fail to con- 
 ceive of an organic state. Evangelicism 
 viewed the whole problem of State interfer- 
 
 ^ ence mainly from the point of view of ardent 
 religionists opposed to a State Church and 
 Arminianism, and misled, in consequence. 
 
77 
 
 into the generalisation that the Establish- 
 ment was a good example of all State insti- 
 tutions. It thus started from a false con- 
 ception of the relationship between the State 
 and the individual. It assumed that any in- 
 crease of State activity was detrimental to 
 individual character, and it was therefore 
 incapable of directing the large volume of 
 moral effort which Evangelicism itself had 
 undoubtedly created especially amongst 
 those in the humbler walks of life, into a 
 pressure directed by Society to readjust 
 social relationships so that social results 
 might satisfy more and more the require- 
 ments of the moral individual. On the whole, 
 Evangelicism therefore contented itself by 
 encouraging the moral individual whom it 
 created, to regard the State as something 
 exterior to his moral life — as something of 
 little or no assistance in the moral evolution 
 of mankind. 
 
 In these later days distinctions cannot be 
 drawn quite so clearly as I have done in the 
 above sentences, for we are passing away 
 from that generation. The Free Churches 
 are beginning to deal with the social 
 pioblem which is facing them. ^Moralit y 
 is separating itself from dogmas aSS. 
 is endeavouring to ifltBfpfet Hiiil BAplaiu 
 itselt through life and lite oniyr The 
 existence of a communal moral per- 
 sonality, a communal moral will, a com- 
 
7» 
 
 murial moral conscience, is being made the 
 reason for legislation. The moral movement 
 which characterised evangelicism is floating 
 into the mid stream of progress to play its 
 part as an agency in the epoch of social 
 construction through social action upon 
 which we are entering. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The direct contribution made to political 
 progress during this period has been the 
 democratic reforms of Liberalism. _ Liber - 
 alism is not ne cessarily democratic; it is 
 ''really tne political creed of th6 rtCWly en- 
 franchised middle class, but under our poli- 
 tical conditions it could hardly help becoming 
 more than that. In this country if it has 
 not succeeded in establishing a pure 
 democracy, it had gone far in that direction 
 before paralysis overtook it. Tt JiaH answered 
 i n practice, by passing a series of acts 
 ending with Household Masculine Suffrage . 
 tVip philnsnph'V r'""W<'"^ ' Whpra — de««- 
 s overeignty r est ? 
 
 ' After the struggle for political liberty has 
 ended or has spent itself, political interest 
 tends to become concentrated on questions 
 regarding the function of the State; and, 
 parties begin to range themselves, on the 
 one hand, round the atomic individualists 
 guided by some idea of individual right and 
 
7$ 
 
 regarding the area of State activity as 
 territory stolen from individual liberty*, 
 and on the other, round the organic individ- 
 ualists who approach political and social 
 problems from the point of view of service 
 and duty, and who regard the State as an 
 active co-operator in developing and secur- 
 ing individual liberty. The work of Liberal- 
 ism has made the position of the, 
 atomic individualists quite untenable. For • 
 the State, after a democratic suffrage 
 has been established, is no longer an, 
 authority external to the individual; a 
 law is no longer a decree imposed 
 upon the people by an arbitrary will 
 bending the common will according to its' 
 desires. The democratic State is an organ- 
 isation of the people, democratic govern- 
 ment is self-government, democratic law is 
 an expression of the will of the people who 
 have to obey the law — not perhaps the will 
 
 * I desire to emphasise that individualism and 
 S ociali^ido not express two opposing tendencie s.'' 
 What IS generally called individualisrii is only tnai 
 kind of individualism which regards the State as 
 though it were iuechanically built up of atoms called 
 persons — atomic individualism. Socialism is a theory 
 of individualism in which the individual is regarded 
 »s being in organic relationsh ip with his fellows in 
 T116 fc6ittftlVinity, ana in wni cn, consequently, the State, 
 the c<imnlun ity and th e individual are seen to be pur- 
 suing the same ends, and are co-operating factors 
 in the pUrsUlt Of those ends. 
 
8o 
 
 of every individual, but the communal will, 
 voicing the need of all classes in their 
 relation to the community, and may fitly be 
 regarded, in spite of the opposition of a 
 minority, aS being " for the good of all 
 concerned." 
 
 Consequently to speak or think, after the 
 Liberal epoch, of State action being "grand- 
 motherly," a limitation upon liberty, a doing 
 for the individual something which he should 
 do for himself, is as meaningless as to credit 
 Liberalism with Hanoverian principles and 
 Toryism with Jacobite sympathies. 
 
 Whilst the antagonism of interests, classes 
 and functions still exists, or its memory still 
 lingers, and whilst such class legislation as is 
 passed to-day perverts the popular mind and 
 colours its vision, some bitter experiences of 
 democratically decreed legislation may have 
 to be borne. An interest finding itself tem- 
 porarily in a position which enables it to 
 dictate its own terms may pass laws bene- 
 ficial to itself and oppressive to the rest of 
 the community, but just as competition in 
 industry ever tends to exhaust itself and give 
 way to co-operation, so, by a similar law, 
 de mocracy tends to legislate for the whole 
 social organism and not merely for one of 
 its sections. Democratic law tends to b e- 
 come national^ l aw, because democracy in 
 working tends to harmonise and co-ordinate 
 
8i 
 
 <;]iP! snoial ftinrtinncj A democratic govern- 
 ment expresses the will of the social organ- 
 ism, and when it directs the actions of the 
 people it speaks to them in their own voice. 
 
 This has been the chief contribution of 
 Liberalism to the evolution of social func- 
 tions and their organisation. 
 
 The economic period is therefore closing. 
 Politically, morally, economically, its fruit 
 has ripened and is being gathered. It 
 has handed down to us three great problems 
 which have arisen owing to its success in 
 having solved its own. What is the sphere^j 
 of the State ? What is the relation between . 
 individual and social morality? How can( 
 national productive resources and accumu- 
 lated wealth be used so that they may con- 
 tribute most to the welfare of the whole 
 community? Up to this point progress has 
 brought us. Upon the portals of Socialism 
 these three problems are written. ' 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 UTOPIAN AND SEMI-SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM. 
 
 Before the idea of biological evolution 
 regulated the thought and methods of social 
 reformers, proposals for social reconstruc- 
 tion took the form of creations of a new 
 earth and new men, made by the fiat of 
 someone whose authority was equal to the 
 task. The man who judged social results 
 by his ideas of right and wrong was driven 
 to plant his ideal community, wherein dwelt 
 righteousness, on some undiscovered island 
 in some unknown sea; and when, in times 
 nearer to our own, the reformer did not 
 merely write of Utopias, but tried to make 
 them, he bought land in the hopes of found- 
 ing a society modelled on a plan devised 
 from his own intelligence. 
 
 The fundamental mistake of the Utopia 
 builders w as that they did not undprstanH 
 that Society develops in accordance vritlq 
 
 , — ■ Si ^ 
 
83 
 jaws nf snrial liff, anH that if rnuU nnf ho 
 
 rebuilt right away like a house, on plans 
 " gesigned by the moral consciousness an d 
 t he imagination of individuals . They did 
 no? see that tEe retormiiig effective- 
 ness of the individual will is hmited by the 
 fact that Society progresses by the readjust- 
 ment of its existing organisation. They did 
 not appreciate that man's habits, modes of 
 action and motives are acquired from the 
 historical period in which he lives, that they' 
 can be modified only by general social modi- 
 fications and that they cannot suddenly be 
 changed to conform to a new moral order 
 created upon a social oasis of a thousand 
 acres. They assumed that the social rela- 
 tions were casual, and that the group life 
 offered the very slightest resistance to 
 readjustment. They had not grasped the 
 idea that Society at any given time has been 
 moulded and fixed by the experiences of the 
 social group up to that time, — that it has 
 inherited its form from the past, and that 
 therefore it cannot hp maHp tVic plaything- 
 of men's i magination . Society can no more 
 retu nTto primitive bliss than man can return 
 fo the a rboreal habits of his ancestors ./ I'hev' 
 hoped to build anew, when all they could do 
 was to aid in modifying structures and in 
 changing relationships. They approached 
 their task as though they were men consider- 
 ing whether a house is' adapted to their 
 
needs, whilst, by the nature of the problem, 
 they should have approached it as men who 
 desire to restore to health their ailing 
 bodies. They regarded Society as though it 
 were an architectural construction of fixed 
 parts, not as an organism maturing by the 
 laws of variation and growth. 
 
 Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Robert 
 Owen's experiments, each in their own way, 
 illustrate this error. 
 
 More was an apostle of the liberal thought 
 of his time, such as it was. Guided by the 
 humanism of the New Learning, he cast his 
 eyes over the state of England when the 
 evolution of national industry was destroy- 
 ing the peasantry. The English manor sys- 
 tem was being transformed into private 
 ownership of land inspired by commercial 
 considerations. The stream from the 
 country to the towns had started. The land- 
 lords, responding to the alluring temptations 
 of commerce, were beginning to regard 
 their lands not as the instrument of territor- 
 ial power and responsibility, but as a source 
 of income, and the demand for wool made 
 them turn their tilled acres to grazing, and 
 put sheep on the fields instead of men. 
 Society was moving from the territorial and 
 agricultural stage to that of world markets 
 and commerce. Capital was concentrating 
 
8s 
 
 and slowly organising itself into a function 
 separate and apart from labdur, and the 
 guild ordinances which protected the older 
 methods of trade were passing into impot- 
 ence. The unemployed were everywhere; 
 social conflict was everywhere. Everywhere 
 the rich seemed to be in conspiracy against 
 the poor. In More's own words: "The 
 " rich are ever striving to pare away some- 
 " thing further from the daily wages of the 
 " poor by private fraud and even by public 
 " law, so that the wrong already existing 
 " (for it is a wrong that those from whom 
 " the State derives most benefit should re- 
 " ceive the least reward) is made much 
 " greater by means of the law of the State." 
 The poor, in consequence, were leading " a 
 " life so wretched that even a beast's life 
 " seemed enviable." Everything, even 
 Christendom itself, was powerless to avert 
 all this wrong-doing, he moaned. 
 
 This indictment is wonderfully modern, 
 wonderfully like the last Socialist speech one 
 has heard, wonderfully like the present day 
 expression of reformers who try to view 
 honestly the facts of life.* And yet More, 
 
 *Cf. for instance this sentence of John Stuart 
 Mill : — " If, therefore, the choice were to be made 
 between Communism with all its chances, and the 
 present state of society with all its sufferings and in- 
 justices; if the institution of private property neces- 
 
86 
 
 the New Learning, Christendom, did little 
 and could do little to avert or shorten the 
 calamities. The iron law of social evolution: 
 grinds out its results with magnificent cal- 
 lousness. 
 
 Why ? Why did More write as a modern ? 
 Why did his criticisms fall like seed by the 
 wayside? The position of Robert Owen 
 may as well be examined before an answer 
 is attempted. 
 
 Owen's Utopias were products of the In- 
 dustrial Revolution. He lived in a system 
 designed exclusively for the production of 
 wealth, devouring both the physique and 
 the character of children, men and women. 
 Human beings were the raw material upon 
 which the growing industry of his time fed. 
 Revolting from the spectacle, Owen began 
 to condemn it on account of its moral defi- 
 
 sarily carried with it as a consequence that the 
 pioduce of labour should be apportioned as we now 
 see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour — ^the 
 largest portions to those who have never worked at 
 all, the next largest to those whose work is almost 
 nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remunera- 
 tion dwindling as the work grows harder and more 
 disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting 
 bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being 
 able to earn even the necessaries of life — if this or 
 Communism were the alternative, all the difficulties 
 great or small of Communism would be but as dust in 
 the balance." — Political Economy, Book II., chap. i. 
 
87 
 
 ciencies, began to address protesting appeal* 
 to the public intelligence and the public con- 
 science. At first his schemes were aimed at 
 modifying the structure of the social organ- 
 ism. He proposed to limit by law the labour 
 of children, to provide them with a suitable- 
 education, to humanise the environment of 
 the people and, by alluring them to walk in 
 more pleasant ways, to draw them away from, 
 the paths of destruction they were treading. 
 His work of that time afterwards earned for 
 him the title of "the father of factory legis- 
 lation " and " the founder of infant 
 schools." There was, then, little Utopianism 
 about his proposals. They were the con- 
 structive schemes of a man of penetrating 
 thought and ripe experience who attempted 
 to modify social environment without creat- 
 ing an ideal Society from the material of his 
 own intelligence; and they remain his chief 
 contribution to the social changes of last 
 century. 
 
 But as time went on, Owen felt more and 
 more the discouragement of the idealist who- 
 lives some generations before Society is in a 
 position to listen whole-heartedly to him. 
 Cobbett was unknown in 1800 when Owen 
 took over New Lanark; and Cobbett had to 
 re-inaugurate the Radical demands for poli- 
 tical enfranchisement, and be successful 
 before Owen's social ideas could be 
 
pushed to the forefront of public in- 
 terests. When Owen started his first com- 
 munity (1823), capitalism was but beginning 
 its triumphs. The State had only just given 
 up its attempts to fix wages, having been 
 baffled in its benevolent intentions by the 
 vigorous and extensive changes in industrial 
 •conditions which the new economic order 
 was bringing about. Even in industries like 
 the woollen, which had been controlled by 
 ■capitalists for over two centuries, the em- 
 ployers were but moderately rich. The same 
 was true of cotton.* The Peels were separa- 
 ted by but one generation from their yeo- 
 man origin. In Scotland, the first cotton 
 mill had been erected only twenty-two years 
 i)efore Owen acquired New Lanark. f A 
 subscription list opened in Liverpool in 1798 
 in aid of the funds required to carry on the 
 war with France, contained only two 
 amounts of £500 and one of £400, and these 
 were the largest sums subscribed.! As late 
 
 * The cotton industry had not in the ' fifties ' 
 sufficiently developed for the notions current to-day 
 to emerge." — Chapman, Lancashire Cotton Industry, 
 p. 250. 
 
 ■f Industries of Glasgow and the West of Scotland, 
 British Association Handbook, Glasgow, 1901, p. 141. 
 
 % Baines' History of Liverfoot, pp. 503-4. In 
 1801, ;^8o,ooo was subscribed in three hours for build- 
 ing an Exchange with a Square in front {jihid. 506-7). 
 iEven that would not have been considered a special 
 ieat a generation afterwards, and the great fuss made 
 about it is significant. 
 
89 
 
 as 1841, according to the report of the 
 Assistant Commissioner for Scotland, pre- 
 sented to the Committee appointed to en=^ 
 ■quire into the condition of the unemployed 
 Handloom Weavers, out of 51,000 weavers 
 south of the Firth of Clyde, not more than 
 3,500 were employed in factories,! whilst it 
 was quite common until the middle of the 
 nineteenth century for agriculture and weav- 
 ing to be carried on by the same person. § 
 As late as 1834, it was stated before the 
 ■C ommittee on Handloom Weavers that " if 
 "a. man could purchase a winding machine 
 "ami a w arpmg mill and get credit for a 
 "gkep Ol yarn he can get into motion as a 
 "master. "II rowerlooms had not seriously 
 menaced h'andlooms, and were so imperfect 
 that their use was not clearly economical. 
 Spinning machinery was equally imperfect. 
 Great as had been the strides of mvention, 
 and though the " Industrial Revolution " 
 had been well begun, the industrial organ- 
 isation of the country was still but rudiment- 
 ary. The factory svstem. charartprispd h v 
 s pecialisation and siih-Hivisinn nf l^hmir 
 t ogether Wltn cent ral^fiPfj tnwn industry^ was 
 tut De ginning: the means of transport and 
 locomotion were nothing better than the new 
 
 J Quoted by Chapman in Lancashire Cotton In- 
 dustry, 1903, p. 24. 
 § Ibid, pp. 10, II, etc. 
 11 Ibid, p. 25. 
 
90 
 
 canal system which had been the subject of 
 such feverish speculation in 1792, and the 
 stage coach; international trade was insig- 
 nificant. Bitt the characteristics of the in- 
 dustrial epoch were apparent. The econ- 
 omic and political conditions of feudalism 
 were passing away. The national existence 
 of the country had been finally secured, and 
 its industrial epoch decisively begun. In the 
 first stage of that development had to be 
 solved the problems of how to produce 
 wealth and create markets and marketing 
 facilities. Therefore, the form of the social 
 organism had to respond to those needs of 
 the social life, and all the organs and cells in 
 Society had to be subordinated to the organ- 
 isation best fitted for satisfying those social 
 ends. 
 
 This subordination entailed suffering and 
 misery. The towns became pestilential. 
 children were done to death in the mills^ 
 pauperism mcreased, the peo ple sent up to , 
 •hea ven angry protests, Utopias were built 
 from the mental stutt of the iust and th e 
 erous, Owen agitated. But protest as 
 
 the organs and the cells might. Society con - 
 tiflhed to organise itself so that it could pro - 
 duce wealth abundantly; and all the fine 
 
 ideas that were scattered abroad made no 
 difference except in so far as they could 
 modify the social structure within the limits 
 of the economic function imposed upon it 
 
9' 
 
 by the character of the social need which 
 had in due course arisen as an expression of 
 the maturing social life. 
 
 Processes of readjustment and experiments 
 in amelioration were begun early. It was 
 found by experience, for instance, that, in 
 spite of the opposition of the capitalists, who 
 were chiefly fulfilling the social functions of 
 the epoch (labour, however necessary, being 
 functionally subordinate), certain limita- 
 tions imposed by factory legislation did not 
 retard the development of the Factory Sys- 
 tem as the most efficient method of wealth 
 production, but in reality aided it. We must 
 not therefore commit the error of assuming 
 that factory legislation is in principle 
 opposed to the spirit embodied in the Fac- 
 tory System. Factory legislation, so long 
 as its effect is tes ted by its compatibility with 
 t ne emciency of private capitalism to produce" , 
 wealth and exploit labour, is an essenti al ^ 
 part oflhe capitalist system. It is an essen- 
 tial influence upon the social organism at a 
 time when the form of the organism is de- , 
 termined solely by its efficiency in producing ' 
 wealth. Hence it was that Owen'..; nronosal 
 for the State regulation of factories were 
 effective and fructified in Society, whilst his 
 Utopian ex periments were valuable mainly 
 as warnings to future reformers . This was 
 not because the legislative proposals were 
 moral or right in the abstract, but because 
 
 
93 
 
 Society was ripe for them; they were 
 "natural" in the sense that they were pro- 
 duced by the circumstances of the time, and 
 advantageous to the vital purpose of the 
 generation. And, above all, they were 
 modifications of the social structure. 
 
 This contention is strongly reinforced 
 if we consider what at first seems to mili- 
 tate against it, thejj evelopment of Co-o pera- 
 tio n from Owen's Utopi an schemes! Cd- 
 operation in Owen's mmd was" as much a 
 tour de force as his New Harmony. It was 
 a new organisation of Society bringing the 
 workers into a new relation with each other 
 and altering fundamentally the conditions 
 under which production and exchange were 
 being carried on. L ogically it was an ex cel- 
 l ent idea . If it were possible for the indi - 
 vidual — the cell — to create at anv time :^ new 
 s ocial n rp-anisntinn O wen's Scheme of 
 in tegral co-operation might have worked . 
 B ut the individual lives in an nrg-^ni''"^-!- 
 S ociety, — his will expresses itself in accord- 
 ance with the life of the organism, his moral- 
 ity is able to act effectively only in so far 
 as it can modify the social organism and is 
 guided by the vital activity of the organism, 
 and his confidence is given only to systems 
 similar to, or but an easy stage removed 
 from, the organisation of which he is a part. 
 Therefore, when Owen's idea of co-opera- 
 
93 
 
 tion was adopted, its Utopian characteristics, 
 were gradually dropped, and, as its success 
 became possible, the features it held in com- 
 mon with existing Society became more 
 marked. 
 
 When the Rochdale pioneers began their 
 experiment in 1844, the Utopian features of 
 Owenite Co-operation were becoming sub-' 
 ordinate to practical and immediate results. 
 True, the Pioneers threw out foreshadow- 
 ings of a new earth. The unemployed were 
 to be absorbed, and an identity of interest 
 between producer and consumer was to be 
 established — in the long run. But the organ- 
 isation of the movement was modelled on 
 the organisation of existing Society. The 
 rest was ornament, and that ornament has 
 had but the slightest influence in the devel- 
 opment of the experiment. 
 
 There was an opposition in Society 
 between the functions of production and ex- 
 change, between the wage-earner and the 
 person who sold him his food and clothing; 
 and the latter was drifting more and more 
 completely under the control of the capitalist 
 employers. The question was: Could that 
 tendency be stopped without hindering the 
 efficiency of the social organism to produce 
 wealth, without having to create an organ- 
 isation different in form and idea to Society 
 as it existed, and without imposing upon 
 men a standard of conduct materially higher 
 
94 
 
 than or different from that to which 
 they were used? Obviously, dear and 
 adulterated food, the credit system, an alli- 
 ance between shopkeepers and employers 
 were not only not essential, but might be 
 harmful, to the efficient production of 
 wealth, and the idea of the workmen being 
 their own shopkeepers militated against no 
 principle upon which production depended, 
 and called for the exercise of no virtue not 
 «ssential to the ordinary operations of capit- 
 alist business. So these things were alter- 
 able. But the private ownership of capital, 
 capitalist control of the workshop and com- 
 petition in production, together with the ex- 
 istence of the unemployed, were essential 
 to the epoch of capitalist production, and 
 these could not be altered. 
 
 The question upon which the success of 
 the Rochdale experiment depended was : 
 Was there a sufficiently strong sense of 
 solidarity amongst the workers to secure for 
 the stores such a determined patronage as 
 to protect them against outside competition ? 
 As it turned out, there was. The Co-opera- 
 tive Store was patronised, not because it was 
 i;nore efiScient or cheaper than the shop of 
 the private trader, but because it was the 
 Co-operative Store. The movement, in the 
 main, did nothing to alter the organisation 
 
95 
 
 of Society.* Some of the leaders of the 
 movement, inspired by an antiquated co^(;^ e p - 
 ti on - ot what they call " self-help/' and 
 masses of its ordinarY members whose 
 , visions are narrowed by dividends and who 
 regard Lo-operation as being merely a ven- 
 ture in profitable shopkeepirig . have actually 
 turned the mnvempnt intr. a Hpfpnpo nf tl^f 
 present industrial system, on the ground that 
 if distribution to-aay is taulty, the reason lies 
 in the defects of human character and not 
 in social organisation. 
 
 One ought not to blame the Co-operative 
 movement for " falling away from the 
 faith: " one ought not to call its shortcom- 
 ings failings. The line of development 
 which the movement took only illustrates in 
 a very conclusive way how the chief function 
 which an epoch is called upon to perform, 
 postpones the successful application of moral 
 notions of social relationships, ■ until the cir- 
 cumstances arise for such a change as will 
 allow them to be grafted upon the social 
 stem. That the Co-operative Congress 
 should be the last- resting place of the inade- 
 
 * Society is now, however, becoming fitted for an 
 application of principles which underlie the Co- 
 operative movement, and so Co-operation, so far as it 
 is intelligently aware of its own interests, is begin- 
 ning to move in the direction of constructive State 
 action, and Society is responding to the co-opera- 
 tive impulse. 
 
96 
 
 quate theories of the economic period is 
 exactly what one would expect. The law of 
 parasitism described elsewhere* provides 
 that in movements like Co-operation, the 
 theories and assumptions held by the genera- 
 tion which made it a success should become 
 embodied in the tissue of the movement, and 
 resist change long after less well organised 
 movements have responded to new ideas. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now we can see why Utopias of all ages 
 are so similar in spirit and seem to repro- 
 duce practically the same human demands. 
 T hey all assert the right of man to life a nd to 
 human consideration against the operations 
 of social evolution which every now and 
 again, owing to functional changes, sacri- 
 fice the personal interests of sections and of 
 individuals. Thev all demand moral result s 
 from Society. Men, thinking and writing 
 at thos6 times of rapid change, make claims 
 and utter criticisms from an ideally moral 
 point of view. Hence, at everv tin3 a.,Qf 
 social change and of activitv in snrial speru - 
 tattBn, men dead for centuries are describe d 
 as Demg "modern men." Thev have searche d 
 f or and thought they have found the state 
 wherein man was free and had justice done 
 
 ^p. 70-74. 
 
97 
 
 to him, and that has been the quest of man 
 smce morahty has been. ' 
 
 Itie moral standards of the builders of 
 Utopias are the result of the experience of 
 well co-ordinated organisms, such as man is. 
 But the organisation of Society has been 
 loose and partial, its will has been weak, its 
 functioning imperfect, its morality, there- 
 fore, rudimentary. The individual is there- ' 
 fore in moral possibilities far in advance of ~ 
 Society . But Society, slowly and by organic 
 adaptation, has become more and more 
 capable of expressing the moral con- 
 sciousness of man, under conditions of 
 greater freedom. So before the Co- 
 operative movement could fulfil the com- 
 plete intentions of Owen, industrial society 
 had to pass into a further stage of 
 organisation. Labour was not sufficiently 
 sub-divided to create the conditions of, and 
 necessity for, Co-operation within wide areas 
 of production. Co-operation comes after sub- 
 division, and in Owen's day sub-division and 
 individualism, not Co-operation and Social- 
 ism, were the lines upon which industry had 
 still to be carried on. But he saw both how 
 Society was to develop and why it had so to 
 develop. 
 
 Before this advance in social organisation 
 could be reached, however, sociology had to 
 pass from architectural or mechanical con- 
 ceptions of social organisation to organic 
 
98 
 
 ones, and so men have left behind 
 them the standpoint from which it appeared 
 to be possible to build a New Jerusalem by 
 Utopian methods. Reforming effort is seen 
 to be impotent unless it effects variations in 
 the s ocial structure, because it is discovered 
 / that tne detect giving rise to all the Tpisprips 
 wnicn s et Utopists dreaming, is. that every 
 f unction m aocietv has not been completely 
 organised so thst each rn -nppratpo ^'"tti onr4i 
 a nd all with the whole . The preparation for 
 Social Co-operation on a large scale 
 is therefore marked by a change in the 
 methods of the social reformer. He begins 
 to see that his ideal city must grow out of 
 Society and not be planted in its midst. He 
 dreams no more ot New Harmonies, but of 
 a Golden Age. 
 
 Moral criticisms on social organisation 
 are useful only in so far as the critics bear 
 in mind that the organisation hitherto has 
 been necessarily unable to respond to them, 
 and that the chief concern of moralists 
 should be to improve the organisation of 
 Society so as to make every function con- 
 tribute to and share in the benefits of the 
 whole organic life. This is the aim of 
 Socialism. 
 
 III. 
 
 An accurate view of the meaning and the 
 method of social progress could not precede 
 
99 
 
 the success of biology in explaining the 
 meaning and method of organic evolution. 
 But biological science is not much more 
 than a century old, and for fully half its life- 
 time it has had to grope its way through 
 tangled masses of ignorance and prejudice. 
 Being the study of change in the organs and 
 forms of Hfe, biology had to remain 
 dwarfed, whilst the miraculous views of crea- 
 tion, in accordance with which the world 
 was supposed to be but in its youth, man 
 almost as old as it, species the work of the 
 hand of God, prevailed. 
 
 The first movement towards the final suc- 
 cess of bold enquiry and speculation came 
 from the geologists towards the end of the 
 eighteenth century, and within fifty years this 
 new science had thrown into the dusty lum- 
 ber room of ancient beliefs the literal inter- 
 pretation of the Biblical narrative of creation 
 and everything it implies. The geological 
 attack proceeded shoulder to shoulder with 
 speculations regarding the origin of the 
 species, and these cut even more deeply at 
 the roots of cosmological views. Erasmus 
 Darwin in 1794, and Lamarck in 1801, 
 challenged the assumption that species were 
 fixed, argued that differences of function 
 altered organisms, and regarded these alter- 
 ations as the cause of organic variation. 
 From 1806, researches in embryology 
 discovered the remarkable fact that in his 
 
embryonic history man goes through stages 
 of life which are a summary of his species 
 evolution from the protoplasmic cell to the 
 human being. Science was occupying every 
 position, and when in 1858 Darwin's Origin 
 of Species appeared, the revolution was com- 
 plete. There were istill gaps in the evidence, 
 there was still a possibility of alternative 
 explanations, but evolution, the dynamic of 
 life, was carried in triumph into the company 
 ■of accepted beliefs. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The philosophers, however, since philos- 
 ophy was, had been exploring this same 
 problem of evolutionary processes in its 
 world significance. In the seventeenth 
 century, that part of those processes which 
 is concerned with man living in communities, 
 Taegan to receive special attention. In the 
 eighteenth century, national circumstances 
 gave these speculations a political character. 
 A contest was raging throughout Europe 
 between the people and their rulers. The 
 people were asserting their rights to political 
 freedom, and such an agitation necessarily 
 lirought into prominence the separate indiv- 
 idual endowed with natural rights. The 
 -view of Society which gave most sympathetic 
 countenance to these demands was that of 
 a collection of individuals bound together 
 T)y some mythical social contract. Only 
 
■from some such assumption could the 
 advocates of political natural rights find a 
 ^Historical foundation for their agitation. The 
 ■questions which were studied in an evolution- 
 ary frame of mind were, by political neces- 
 sity, not the forms of social organisation 
 itself, but the changes which had taken place 
 in the political relationships between the 
 parties to the contract, as, for instance, the 
 growth of the kingly power, the deterior- 
 ation of the status of the people in the 
 government, the constitution of represent- 
 ative assemblies, the character of par- 
 liaments. Thus, social science and philosophy 
 were, for the time being, pushed aside to 
 await the closing of this individualistic 
 ■chapter in politics, and the liberating effect 
 of science upon thought in general. 
 
 In Germany, however, the political pro- 
 blems which influenced intellectual specula- 
 tion upon the nature of the social unity were 
 -different from those of France and England. 
 In the German's heart the idea of a national 
 unity lay, and directed his thoughts to the 
 life of communities as well as to the liberty 
 of individuals. Thus, Herder stated (1767) 
 that "There is the same law of change in all 
 ' ' mankind and in every individual nation and 
 " tribe," and later on (1784-1791) he devel- 
 'Oped the idea that each nationality "lived 
 " out its own spirit." Kant followed and 
 amplified the same idea, and Fichte, smarting 
 
as a nationalist under the heel of Napoleon^ 
 and employing his intellect to awaken Ger- 
 many to a sense of national pride, pro- 
 claimed that the perfect individual life could 
 only be found immersed in the common life. 
 Hegel developed the idea. To him all things 
 and all processes were but the manifestation 
 of Spirit or Idea, which evolved itself by a 
 peculiar method. The acorn becomes the 
 oak through self-destruction: the animal 
 continues to live only so long as the tissues 
 which compose it continue to be destroyed : 
 death is life: Hfe is death. Hence, the 
 universe exists by a constant change in its 
 elements. But what is the nature of this 
 change? Not, says Hegel, a change of 
 growth in the things themselves, not a 
 natural succession of one condition from 
 another as youth insensibly matures to man- 
 hood. The change is really in the Idea, of 
 which the changing phenomena are the man- 
 ifestations.* This, which has been called 
 one of Hegel's "most unfortunate blunders,"' 
 is the error of the metaphysician, of the 
 logician, untrained in the methods of science. 
 It is naturally followed by a pronouncement 
 that the issue of the more highly developed 
 organisms from the lower is " a nebulous 
 idea which thinking men of speculation 
 must renounce." Hegel's philosophical 
 conception of evolution included a defence 
 * Encyclofadie, %. 249. 
 
I03 
 
 of fixed species, and was being shattered 
 by science at the time it was absorbing the 
 attention of metaphysicians. 
 
 Its interest to us is that, modified and 
 applied to history, it was made the basis of 
 the first grand attempt to give scientific pre- 
 cision to the Socialist idea by Karl Marx. 
 
 Marx was born in 1818, and attended the 
 Universities of Bonn and Berlin at a time 
 when the chairs of philosophy were held by 
 Hegelians, and when Hegelianism was un- 
 challenged in its sway over German thought. 
 He responded to the Liberal spirit of hope 
 which the accession of Frederick William 
 ly. to the Prussian throne in 1840 quickened 
 in Prussia, and threw himself into politics- 
 and journalism. These pursuits required 
 some knowledge of economics; and a 
 study of the French economists, and of 
 Proudhon in particular, inclined him to- 
 wards Socialism. In 1844, he met Engels 
 in Paris, and from that time onwards he was 
 engaged in completing the fabric of his 
 Socialist theories and in creating the organ- 
 isations which were to give them practical 
 eflFect. 
 
 When Marx became a Socialist, he entered 
 a movement distracted by many leaders each 
 
104 
 
 ■with different views, and ineffective by 
 reason of loose organisation and indefinite- 
 Tiess of purpose. No strong penetrating 
 mind had welded the dreamers into a united 
 and aggressive organisation or blended their 
 •dreams into a comprehensive social faith. 
 
 In France, where Marx then was, several 
 schools of Socialist thought and propaganda 
 flourished, each bearing the name of one or 
 other of the distinguished Frenchmen who 
 paved the way for the modern movement. 
 
 First among these was Saint Sim nn, whn se 
 views, indic ated in his last work Nouveau 
 Christiamsme, sought the establishment o ^ 
 a moral order ot international peace and co,- 
 o perative industry , and gave rise to a move-~ 
 ment which hoped to bring about the reign 
 «f fraternity by destroying all the privileges 
 of birth, of which inheritance of property 
 was considered to be the chief — " t he effect 
 of which is to leave to chance the apportion- 
 ment of social advantages and cf tiH^mn the 
 largest class in number to vice, ignorance 
 and poverty "^ ^hd by bringing intn " one. 
 social fund " «ill the instruments of produc- 
 tion and regulating their use by a hierarchy 
 who should apportion work acc ording to a 
 man's capa city and ass ign weal th to him 
 according tohisjvoji.*" 
 
 * Letter addressed by the Saint Simonians to the 
 President of the Cbambei of Deputies, quoted in 
 Talgrave's Dictionary ef Political Economy, London, 
 1904, iii., p. 346. 
 
105 
 
 Then came Fourier, the fantastical specula- 
 tor upon the wonderful cycles of our earth's 
 evolution and the architect of the Phalans- 
 tery where men, working in groups accord- 
 ing as desire prompted them and sharing 
 by certain rules in the wealth produced, 
 would be led by their circumstances to live 
 harmonious lives. 
 
 Louis Blanc was the first of those pre- 
 scTentihc Socialists to hold that if the basis of 
 Socialism was moral, its method^ neyert he- 
 less, should be politica l. J-^'e gave up the 
 editorsmp oT a newspaper because his 
 proprietors objected to his opinions in favour 
 of railway nationalisation. But he had not 
 discovered that an idea which is not support- 
 ed by an organisation of electors is politic- 
 ally impotent; and his belief that a member 
 of a ministry could, all by himself, effect 
 radical social change by persuasion or per- 
 meation, tended to misdirect the energies of 
 his followers, and instead of building up an 
 independent organisation they contented 
 themselves by taking part as an un- 
 organised party in current political conflicts. 
 R ound him centred the demand for natinnal 
 yyork shops by which alone the characteristi c 
 ten et of his creed, the right to work, could 
 be mai ntained and the absorption o f thp 
 means ot production by the community be 
 
ict6 
 
 cffci-t£fj_Qnfiunll3r nnti with rrr^^\"^y * Louis 
 BlancTostgrip. He could not master the 
 strong choppy currents of French politics 
 of his times. He ceased to count. 
 
 But it was -Eraudlm n who was in the 
 ascendant when Marx sought refuge and 
 opportunity for study in Paris; and his 
 mutualism_rest ed on the border l ine betwee n 
 Socialis m and Anarchism. 
 
 Finally, in intimate touch with the Social- 
 ist movement proper were groups of rev- 
 olutionary and reformist parties aiming at 
 social reconstruction — from Blanquists to 
 Comtists. 
 
 * Perhaps no social experiment has been more mis- 
 understood and misrepresented than the Paris 
 National Workshops of 1848. Louis Blanc, who is 
 supposed to be their originator, wrote of them : — '^As 
 the kind of la bour in these workshops was utterly 
 unproductive and ab surd, besides beinff such a s thw 
 greater part ot tnem' were unaccu stomed to, the action, 
 
 e f the State was simply squandering the puhlin 
 
 funds ; its m oney, a premium upon idl eness ; its 
 wages, alms in disguise ." After describing the sort 
 of workshops he wanted to establish, he proceeded : 
 " The National Works? ofis as manae;ed bv M. M arie 
 wgre 'iTothi ng more than a rabble of paupe ''"," Tht" 
 he gMS on to s how " that these worksh^yf wsrs nr - 
 eanised in hostility to me, as the oflSci at rBpj-i«iBn>a. 
 tive 01 s ocialism." Louis Blanc, 1848 Historical 
 Itl'ielaiions^ London, 1848, chap. ix. 
 
107 
 
 Here then was a floating mass of human- 
 itarian feeling, of Utopian dreaming, of 
 fanciful speculation and of sound economic 
 criticism having in common a condemnation 
 of the existing industrial system on the 
 ground that it failed to feed, clothe and pro- 
 tect the producer oF wealth, and also a belief 
 that only by the organised people controlling 
 the instruments of production could labour 
 secure its due reward and the workman be 
 able to command the comforts which he had 
 earned. 
 
 But this mass of dreaming and discontent 
 could have no great social value until it was 
 pruned of the offshoots which were dissipat- 
 ing its vitality, until it was taught its own 
 real meaning, until a definite statement of 
 what was floating vaguely in its mind had 
 been made, until its feelings were translatea 
 into a dogma, until its genesis was discov- 
 ered. To do this was Marx's task. His 
 Hegelian outlook presented to him a clear- 
 cut view of the process of progress and 
 showed him the historical place of the 
 whole movement; and he chose words to 
 express its meaning desig'ned to draw to- 
 gether the floating elements of the Socialism 
 of his time by giving simple and clear 
 definitions of the Socialist purpose, and by 
 sifting out from the movement every vestige 
 of vagueness and Utopianism and every 
 ^ace of bourgeois Socialism which would 
 
io8 
 
 not assimilate with the economic basis of 
 history, surplus value and a class struggle. 
 His success was by no means immediate, 
 the French workmen in particular holding 
 out for "mutualism," and carrying the first 
 International Workingmen's Congress which 
 met in Geneva in 1866. After that, however, 
 Marxism dominated the working clasi 
 movements of the continent. 
 
 ^ The Communist Manifesto was the first 
 result ol Marx's activity. Issued when 
 France was on the point of bursting out into 
 revolution in 1848, the proletarian defeat in 
 "the first great battle between Proletarian 
 and Bourgeoisie,"* stifled for a time the 
 movement of which the manifesto was the 
 mouthpiece, but it was called upon sixteen 
 years later to perform almost the same ser- 
 vice as Marx originally designed for it, when 
 the proletarian movement, divided into "the 
 English Trades' Unions, the followers of 
 Proudhon in France, Belgium, Italy and 
 Spain, and the Lasalleans in Germany, "f 
 had to be brought together and when the 
 aspirations common to these sections had 
 to be expressed in a set of phrases. 
 
 Marx rejected the Utopian architectural 
 proposals of his time, and fixed his attention 
 
 * Engel's introduction to Communist Manifesto, 
 London, 1888, p. 3. 
 t Hid, p. 4. 
 
109 
 
 OH the evolution of Society. He turned 
 away from the creation of Phalansteries, 
 and sought to organise the State for indus- 
 trial purposes. He also brushed aside, as 
 being of secondary importance in social 
 change, in his day at any rate, moral notions 
 of right and wrong. The broad outlines of 
 th e Socialist state were laid down bv him, 
 the passing character of existing social rnn- 
 ditions were emphasised by him, the demo- 
 cratic control of capital by political methndy 
 and not by mutualist co-operation was estab- 
 lished for ever by him as the distinguishing 
 mark ot Socialist opinion. But his concep-l 
 tion of the method of social change misled 
 him as to how the Socialist forces were to 
 act. Darwin had to contribute the work of 
 his life to human knowledge before Social- 
 ism could be placed on a definitely scientific 
 foundation.* 
 
 The influence of Darwinism upon 
 Socialism does not depend upon wnetner 
 Darwin s special theories ot evolution cio'o r 
 do not lead to Socialism . Virchow has said 
 Lhvy llu; Haeckel has said they do not; and 
 the controversy will not be settled until the 
 actual evolution of the state and Society de- 
 prives it of reality. Socialism as a conception 
 
 * This subject is discussed in the first Tolume of 
 this Library, Socialism and Positive Science, hj 
 Enrico Ferri, London, 1905. 
 
of a desirable organisation of Society is an 
 idea which scientific investigations have illum- 
 inated and aided, but not created. The plan 
 upon which the reconstruction was to be 
 made, the justification offered for it, the way 
 to attain to it, have depended very largely 
 upon the state of scientific knowledge, and 
 particularly upon the nature of the science 
 which happened to be predominant — e.g., 
 mathematical, chemical, biological, or 
 psychological. What Darwin, then, did, 
 was not to lay down biological laws which, 
 to use Virchow's expression, "lead directly 
 to Socialism," but to present a view of 
 hiological evolution which fundamentally 
 •affected our view of social evolution, and 
 which, in consequence, indicated to us a 
 more commanding standpoint from which to 
 judge our Socialist proposals, a more accur- 
 ate way for carrying them into effect, and a 
 more scientific phraseology in which to 
 •express them. Darwinism applied to sociol- 
 ogy is as far in advance of Hegelianism as 
 Hegelianism was in advance of Kantian 
 individualism. Marxianism, however, is a 
 product of German thought during the 
 second and third decades of the nineteenth 
 century. It reflects the method of that 
 thought: it reveals the imperfections of that 
 thought.* "Scientific socialism, once for 
 
 * C.f. Engels. "Readers will be surprised to 
 stumble on the cosmogony of Kant and Laplace, on 
 
all," wrote Engels, "is an essentially 
 German product." 
 
 Marx rejected Hegel's Idealism, but he 
 retained the Hegelian notion of how the 
 Idea evolved itself. Hegel's great contrib- 
 ution to thought was that he once more. 
 Drought us back to consider all being as in 
 reality a becoming. The metaphysician is 
 ever prone to lose himself in a maze of 
 formal but unreal oppositions and contra- 
 dictions. He thus creates an unreal world 
 of problems, absolutely insoluble because 
 they are not part of the world of experience 
 at all. But so soon as we regard phenomena 
 in their movements, in their evolution, in 
 their potentialities, we are dealing with 
 realities and not with abstractions. Hegel 
 brought us back to those realities. 
 
 Hegel's idea of growth, however, was 
 mistaken. It is contained in the oft-used 
 expression "the negation of negation." A 
 process starts by a certain condition — e.g., 
 the individualised production of primitive 
 times; it then develops an opposite condition 
 —e.g., the communal production of lo-day, 
 organised, however, for private profit; it 
 
 Darwin and modeTn physics, on Hegel and Classical 
 German philosophy in a sketch of the growth of 
 Socialism." Introduction to Socialism: Utofian and 
 Scientific, dated 1882. One is surprised to find 
 Darwin, but not the others. 
 
finally reaches equilibrium, and spends itself 
 in a third condition which harmonises in it- 
 self the two opposites of the previous 
 conditions — e.g., the coming Socialist State, 
 and individual advantage through collect- 
 ivist organisation. 
 
 Marx and Engels seized up" " tTip rf^jntnon 
 raflical view ot the eighteenth century — the 
 ^iew which lay at the root of Saint Simonian~ 
 politics — the class struggle, tructitie^ it by 
 bringing it in c ontact with the Hegelian 
 dialfetfit and by substituting economic class" 
 moiivea fbr idealism as tne moving- pnwpr, 
 ana constructed, by a remarkable effort, 
 botK-g -philOiJophy ot history and a political" 
 method. C hange presented itself to Marx 
 not as a process of functional adaptation, but 
 as a result of conflicting economic interests 
 seeking equilibrium. Hence, to this day, 
 the metaphysical and logical faults of the 
 Hegelian dialectic are traceable in the 
 phrasing of the theories and dogmas, and 
 also in the expectations of the loyal Marx- 
 ian School. 
 
 The Hegelian dialectic is unfitted to des- 
 cribe biological and social evolution. It des- 
 cribes superficial appearances rather than 
 explains deep seated causes.* It would, for 
 instance, explain what goes on in the hedge- 
 rows in Spring as an opposition between 
 
 * This is particularly true when it is used apart 
 from Idealism, as Marx and Kngels used it. 
 
"3 
 
 the bud and the enveloping sheaths ; it would ^ 
 leave out of account the great stirring up of 
 life from deepest root to highest branch tip, 
 of which the opposition between bud and 
 sheath is but a small — if dramatic and easily- 
 seen — 'incident. For this reason, it cannot 
 be dissociated from the idea of catas- 
 trophe and revolution, of accumulated 
 energy bursting through opposition, of a 
 simplicity of opposing forces which is never 
 found in the actual world. 
 
 Marx himself, in his preface to the second 
 edition of Capital, ■f illustrates this in the 
 words he has chosen to express his indebted- 
 ness to Hegel., The rational Hegelian dialec- 
 tic he says, "is a scandal and an abomination 
 "to bourgeoisism and its doctrinaire profes- 
 "sors, because it includes in its comprehen- 
 "sion an affirmative recognition of the exist- 
 "ing state of things, at the same time also 
 "the recognition of the negation of that 
 "state, of its inevitable breaking up; because 
 "it regards every historically developed 
 "social form as in fluid movement, and 
 "therefore takes into account its transient 
 "nature not less than its momentary exist- 
 "ence; because it lets nothing impose upon 
 "it and is in its essence critical and revolu- 
 "tionary." 
 
 One holding modern biological views 
 would have expressed himself differently. 
 
 t Dated " London, January 24, 1873." 
 
114 
 
 Biologically, "the negation of the existing 
 state of things," its "inevitable breaking 
 up," "its momentary existence," is impos- 
 sible. Here we find, as we find eveiTwhe re 
 j p the Marxian methnH . a lar k of a real ^ 
 guarantee (altho^ gi} fliprf nrr mnny vfrbil 
 gtiarantees) that chanp^e. is progr ess. The 
 bi ological view emphasises the possibilities 
 o f existing society as the mother of future 
 so cieties, and regards idea and circumstan ce 
 as the pair from which th e new societies are 
 t o spring. It gives not only an explanation 
 of the existing state of things, but of its 
 giving birth to a future state of things. It 
 also views every form of existence in its 
 actual process of movement and therefore 
 on its perishing — ^very different from "per- 
 ishable" side. It lays the very slightest 
 emphasis on its "critical and revolutionary" 
 side, because it is mainly constructive, and 
 the idea of "clearing before building" is 
 alien to its nature. Street improvements are 
 not biological processes. 
 
 There is a very great di£Eerence between 
 the constructive dynamic, perfec tin g or- 
 ganisation, the more conere nt co-operation 
 o t tne organs of society, wmch ■" thf ^'"- 
 logical met hod, and the logical movements^ 
 t he supernciai oppositions, the cp ^-'irlyfT"'''^ 
 c hanges which social progress appears to be 
 when seen through the spectacles of th e 
 hegelian dialectic] The phenomena which 
 
"5 
 
 need studying in a biological frame of mind, 
 are the growing strength of the life-currents 
 in Society, their deflections owing to their 
 strength, and the modifications in functions 
 and organisms which are necessitated in con- 
 sequence. In short, the biologist as social 
 reformer deals with social Hfe as a whole, 
 studies its evolutions as a whole, and in terms 
 of the underlying whole regards the surface 
 things which his eyes see and his ears hear — 
 the oppositions of classes, the brooding revo- 
 lutions, the perishing social tissues, the "ne- 
 gations" of what exists. 
 
 In one as pect the only fault one 
 has to nnd with Marxian formulae is biit 
 verbal^ But words suggest ideas, and though 
 the Marxian phrases based upon revolution- 
 ary conceptions are being more and more 
 used with a modified meaning, their use does 
 not lead to clear thinking. A hiatus is 
 being established between the classical 
 phrases and the modern methods of Social- 
 ism, and this is tending to confuse the Social- 
 ist propaganda and make abortive the prac- 
 tical steps taken by political parties to bring 
 Socialism about. Owing to this, we have 
 to submit our Parliamentary work to the 
 criticisms of a section of the Socialist move- 
 ment, which, whilst nominally offering 
 support to Parliamentary methods, is in 
 spirit anti-Parliamentary and revolutionary — 
 whilst using at one minute the phrases of 
 
ii6 
 
 ■evolution, turns the next for draughts of 
 intoxicating strength to formulae borrowed 
 from Hegel through Marx. This confusion 
 between thought and action, between words 
 and deeds — this pouring of old wine into 
 new bottles — is the gravest danger which at 
 the present moment threatens from inside 
 the steady advance of Socialism in this 
 country.* 
 
 Biology alone was competent to give the 
 clue to the proper understanding of the pro- 
 cess of evolution, because it was the science 
 -which dealt with the modes of change follow- 
 ed by organisms, and biology when Hetrel 
 lived was but stuttering its wonderful tale. 
 Biology alone deals with the processes ot 
 vital change, the growth of the unlike from 
 the like, the appearance of new qualities and 
 •characteristics, the gradual absorption and 
 modification of parts, the development 
 
 * The existence of this confusion is also partly 
 •owing to the fact that the propaganda of Socialism 
 a;i conducted by some sections tends to become too 
 closely associated with the spirit of bravado ex- 
 pressed in wild but meaningless wordiness. Describ- 
 ing the Socialist Presidential Convention held in 
 Chicago in igo8, one of the official organs of the 
 American movement, the New York Socialist (May 
 i6, icjoS), says — and by doing so puts its finger upon 
 a. general characteristic of the propaganda of the 
 section to which it refers — : "There is a tendency for 
 -some delegates .... to favour whatever sounds 
 snost revolutionary, even if it is not exactly clear." 
 
117 
 
 of new organs to fulfil new functions 
 and respond to new circumstances. Tak- 
 ing on the one hand, the well-marked 
 forms of old species, biology had to 
 study the growth of the first from 
 the second, and from the very nature 
 of its subject matter it had to reject 
 explanations which assumed revolutionary 
 changes or special creative fiats*; and it held 
 it to be axiomatic that whatever change it 
 was studying issued from the total life of the 
 organism and expressed the needs of that 
 total life. If, for instance, it is a stomach 
 that is being modified, the modification is 
 owing to a change of food which nature has 
 imposed upon the organism, or to some 
 other readjustment of the organs and func- 
 tions of the organism. But Hegel was no 
 
 * Dr. Bas tian, Professor Hu^o De Vries, Mr. Bate - 
 son, an d otliers have pointed to certain fact s and 
 experiments whic h appear to show that o rganic 
 trans tormation takes place rapidly or by leaps. 
 Recently, this view has been brought before us with 
 particular force in De Vries's book on "Sfecies and 
 Varieties: Their Origin and Mutation." li this 
 view should succeed in receiving the support of 
 investigators it can still only partly explain the origin 
 and variation of species and is very far from afford- 
 ing a biological analogy to the revolutionary concep- 
 tions of strict Marxianism. It would go no further 
 than emphasise the method of progress by the forn^ft - 
 tion ot independent political parti es which I discuss 
 in Chapter ^1. '■■ - ■ ■^ ■•»» ^y ^ 
 
ii8 
 
 biologist, and Hegel, not Darwin, was in- 
 tellectual father to Marx. 
 
 Therefore, t he exprep giyns " rf^mlntinn " 
 an H "rpvn.tntinnary." which are SO frequent- 
 ly met with in the writings and speeches of 
 Marxians to-day, and upon which they insist 
 as a mark distinguishing them from mere 
 reformers, do not only indicate, as is some- 
 times supposed, and as Social Democrats 
 when hard pushed try to make us believe, 
 that emphasis must be placed upon funda- 
 mental change so as to make.it clear that 
 Socialism is not merely a proposal for en- 
 grafting upon existing Society reformist 
 shoots.* The words rhean more than that. 
 T hey indicate what Marx borrowed from 
 Hegel, from his master in philosophy he 
 acquired the habit of regarding social pro- 
 gress as moving from one epochal character- 
 istic to its opposite over an intervening short 
 revolutionary period. His mind dwelt on a 
 "periodic cycle through which modern in- 
 "dustry runs, and whose crowning point is 
 
 * Cf. Ferri's definition of revolution : — " The 
 critical and decisive moment, more or less prolonged, 
 of an evolution which has reached its climax." What 
 this means exactly is not very clear, and the biological 
 examples which might be produced to throw light 
 upon it cannot be used as sociological analogies. 
 The critical stages through which a butterfly evolves, 
 for instance, are the reminiscences of a racial past 
 summarised in each individual; but there is no 
 analogy for that in Society. 
 
119 
 
 *'the universal crisis."* He never fully 
 recognised the character of those intervening; 
 stages. To the biologist the old disappears 
 by renewing itself, and whilst the transform- 
 ation is taking place there is perhaps a rest, 
 an apparent reaction, a sudden leap forward,, 
 but no revolutionary chaos — nothing "short 
 and sharp." But to Marx all that was 
 meaningless. It was a view which was re- 
 actionary. Revolution was to him a real 
 social fact, when the old idea, crumbling by 
 reason or its age, was being swept away by 
 its own antithesis. Our own epoch of 
 production, amongst others, was to pass 
 when§ "the integument [of capitalism] is 
 "burst asunder. The knell of capitalist priv- 
 "ate property sounds. The expropriators 
 "are expropriated." And again, "Commun- 
 "ists disdain to conceal their vows and their 
 "purposes. They openly declare that their 
 "ends can only be attained by the forcible 
 "destruction of all existing social order, "f 
 These sentences are typical of the defici- 
 ency of a sense of continuity! which one dis- 
 covers in Marxian methods. 
 
 The condition of England when Marx 
 knew it (1840-1870) supported him in his 
 
 *Cafital i., xxxi. London, 1896. 
 %Cafital X., 789. 
 
 t Communist Manifesto, p. 31. - 
 + Unless perhaps one bases his philosophy on 
 Idealism, and Marx would not listen to such a thing. 
 
error. Economic considerations as the 
 spring of conduct were preached from 
 the most respectable housetops, and the 
 state of society, absorbed as it wa;s 
 in production and hopelessly confused 
 when higher and more permanent ends 
 were thrust upon it. gave ample justification 
 for the most materialistic conception of th e 
 eco nomic basis of histo ry, clas s war ana 
 revolutionary meth ods, me country seem- 
 ed to DC Hushed with incipient revolution. 
 The "antithetical" stage of production was 
 at its height. The truth of the Hegelian 
 "movement" of three stages appeared to be 
 about to show itself amidst the glow of 
 flames and clouds of dust. Engels 
 wrote his Working Classes in England in 
 1844 as a last chapter in the history of the 
 (pre-Socialist state. "The England of 1840- 
 "1870 has therefore become to the Social 
 "Democrats what the land of Canaan was to 
 "the ■Covenanters — the land from which all 
 "illustrations are drawn, on which all theor- 
 "ies of what is and what ought to be are 
 based."* 
 
 But the England of 1844 did not break out 
 into revolt; Chartism did not develop into 
 Socialism. The logical conclusion was not 
 the line of advance. The class war created 
 trade unionism; the working classes became 
 ■ J' 
 
 * Beitrand Russell; German Social Dtmocracf, 
 London, i8g6, p. 9. 
 
citizens; law, morality, the force of combin- 
 ation, lifted to some extent the pall of dark- 
 ness which hung over the land. The Marxian 
 to-day still wonders why England fell from 
 grace. England did not fall from grace. 
 Neither Marx nor Engels saw deep enough 
 to discover the possibilities of peaceful 
 advance which lay hidden beneath the sur- 
 face. Their analogies misled them. Their 
 German historical evolution and predomin- 
 ant school of philosophy, misled them. 
 The continent — particularly Germany — un- 
 settled by war and by unnatural partitions, 
 was revolutionary; England, growing slowly 
 and naturally bound into a social unity and 
 
 well organised as a community in spite of 
 the fearful social disintegration caused by 
 the earlier stages of capitalist production 
 under factory conditions, was evolutionary. 
 
 1844 was the darkest hour before the dawn, 
 not the shadow of the black cloud of the 
 thunderstorm. 
 
 Only when we understand the mind and 
 the historical circumstances of Marx can we 
 anderstand the phrases and key words that 
 pass as current coin amongst Marxians al! 
 the world over. His philosophy belonged to 
 an old generation; his logical view of the 
 state was unreal; the words which he used, 
 together with the conceptions which they 
 expressed so accurately, are inadequate in 
 
1 elation to modern thought, and misleading 
 for practical conduct; in short, whilst fully 
 accepting the collectivist and Socialist con- 
 clusions of Marx, we must explain and 
 defend them with a dififerent conception of 
 Society in our minds, different formulae on 
 cur lips, and different guiding ideas for our 
 activities. 
 
 The place which Marx occupies is on the 
 threshold of scientific sociology, but not 
 altogether over it. 
 
Chapter V. 
 
 TOWARDS SOCIALISM. 
 
 iWhat then are the forces in present-day 
 Society which Sociahsts should regard as 
 making for Socialism? 
 
 I. 
 
 The Marxian answer is that a war of 
 classes is going on which one's eyes can see 
 and one's ears hear. On the one hand is 
 the exploiter, the person who accumulates 
 surplus value; on the other, the exploited, 
 the person who sells his labour power for a 
 price which tends to sink to a bare subsist- 
 ence level.* The opposition between these 
 two classes grows in intensity. It will con- 
 
 * " The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised him- 
 self to membership in the commune, just as the petty 
 bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, 
 managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern 
 labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the 
 progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below 
 the conditions of existence of his own class." — 
 Communist Manifesto, pp. 15-16. 
 123 
 
124 
 
 tinue to grow until the workers become 
 class conscious, seize political power, and 
 establish the Socialist state. In the words of 
 the Communist Manifesto : "The proletariat 
 "will use its political supremacy to wrest by 
 "degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, 
 "to centralise all instruments of production 
 "in the hands of the state, i.e, of the pro- 
 "letariat organised as the ruling class."* 
 
 Such a vi ew i s both inaccurate as to the 
 facts it assumes and misleading as a -guid e 
 for action. 
 
 In the hrst place, it is not true that there 
 are only two great economic classes in the 
 community — the assumption which is con- 
 stantly made by those who hold to the class 
 war explanation of progress. f Marx was so 
 anxious to separate himself from "bour- 
 geoisie" economists that he would on no 
 account recognise the conflicting in ter- 
 e sts of the receivers of rent and of profits . t 
 ^ Some of his followers without altowing 
 for the admission in their systems, concede 
 the antagonism, as for instance, where Mr. 
 Hyndman describes the trinity of labourers, 
 farmers, and landlords as being "as compact 
 
 * Ibid, p. 21. 
 
 t The Communist Manifesto, even in its day, 
 admitted as much, but made no place for the fact ill 
 its theories. 
 
 X Rodbertus made the same mistake. 
 
I2S 
 
 "a little set of antagonisms as any in our 
 "society,"* and later on when he states that 
 "the only results of the confiscation of com- 
 "petitive rents or royalties by the State 
 
 " would ... be the strengthen- 
 
 "ing of the hands of the capitalist class. "f 
 This is true only on condition that there is an 
 economic antagonism between landlords 
 and capitalists as well as between capitalists 
 and workmen, and that the "class war" is 
 car ried on not between two, but at least 
 three a rmies, between any two of which 
 T: here may be treaties of peace and offe n- 
 sive alliances. t ~ j 
 But further, any idea which assumes that 
 the interests of the proletariat are so simply 
 opposed to those of the bourgeoisie as to 
 make the proletariat feel an economic one- 
 ness is purely formal and artificial. || It is a 
 
 * Economics of Socialism, London, 1S96, p. 194. 
 
 t p. 209. 
 
 X E.g., when the landed interests joined with 
 labour to secure factory laws, or when the capitalist 
 ..nterests join with labour to agitate for land 
 nationalisation or for the nationalisation of mining 
 rents, etc. Another antagonism of sub-divisions , o£ 
 economic sections is now > bein g revealed in ,tb& j:ji,s3 
 ot certain producing and trading interes ts combining 
 against the interests 5t railw ay snarenolders aiid 
 demanding railway nationalisation.. . ■ .^ -.• ,, 
 
 " U 'I'he Class struggle is sometimes clothed.., 4n 
 biological garments and regarded as an embodiment 
 of the law -of the. struggle, for life (c.t. ,i"eriL : 
 Socialism and Positive Science, vol. I., Socialis 
 
126 
 
 «nification arrived at only by overlooking 
 many differences and oppositions, which have 
 ■been growing for some time rather than 
 •diminishing. The eco ""Tn'<: gtmrtn^^^f 
 S ociety is simpITfied out of all rerng-niti nn 
 wHen iris described as a rnntp s^ Hptwopn 
 t wo economic classes, and the political pro-, 
 blems of democracy are still more distorted 
 under the guise of simplification when they 
 are stated as being nothing more than an 
 effort to give political form to this economic 
 antagonism. T he boureeoisie is not 
 u nited eit her for economic or political pur- 
 poses, tfte p roletariat is in the same positi on. 
 Por, just as in the earlier years of "the 
 Factory System, the line between workman 
 and employer was not clearly drawn, 
 and men could reasonably hope that, 
 by saving and by procuring credit, they 
 
 Library, pp. 75, 145). The struggle for life, how- 
 ever, is also carried on by mutual co-operation anc 
 •by the organisation of the group, and as this higher 
 form of the struggle is far better expressed by the 
 view that what is called the class struggle is in 
 reality the pressure within Society to reach a 
 more economic form of organisation so as to afford 
 protection for the individual with a less expenditure 
 ■of energy than at present, the biological analogy 
 which Professor Ferri makes, rather militates against 
 the scientific accuracy of the class war view, because 
 that analogy relates to the struggle as carried on 
 in a low grade of life or regarding animals untaught 
 :by the co-operative spirit of social groups. 
 
"7 
 
 could become masters, tn-day there is still 
 a goodly number of workmen who cropsy .^he 
 nne ana become employers or employinR ; 
 "managers: whilst the great thrift mnvemen ts i 
 t he Xnendly Societies, the Building- Soc ie- . 
 ties , the Co-operative Societies, connect i 
 w orkmg class interests to the existing state 
 ot things. I n addition, there are consider- 
 able classes of workers in the community, 
 whose immediate interests are bound up 
 %ith the present distribution of wealth, anc *!. 
 wji o. obedie jit jio class interests, would range/'^ 
 themselves oiTttie side ot the status quo. 
 
 Of course it may be said that all these 
 ■sections, in refusing to help on the change 
 towards Socialism, are making a mistake 
 from the point of view of their own inter- 
 ests, and that if they were properly en- 
 lightened they would see that they belong to 
 an exploited class, one and indivisible. That 
 may be true, but a mode of action which i s 
 ineffecti ve until men are "fully enlightened" 
 isl t chimera. M oreover, it is equally true 
 that it the capitalist 'were fully enlightened, 
 he too would embrace Socialism on account 
 of the great blessings which it would bring 
 to him. Thus all that the class war means, 
 when used to indicate the opposing armies 
 whose combat is used to usher in the reign 
 of Socialism, is that an enlightened prole- 
 tariat, not blinded by its immediate interests 
 
128 
 
 but guided by its permanent ones, will be 
 Socialist. But so also will a similarly en- 
 lightened bourgeoisie. Hence the value of 
 the class war as an uncompromising state- 
 rrent of hard economic fact becomes a mere 
 semblance. , It is nothing but a grandilo- 
 quent and aggressive figure of speech. 
 
 It is an indisputable fact that the wage 
 earner and the wage payer have interests 
 which are antagonistic, and in the nature of 
 things cannot be reconciled. The suppo.se d 
 / i dentity of interest between capital a nd 
 Ta bour, which is assumed to be proved by 
 ttie discovery that unless capital pays high 
 w ag^s-JTwill not be able td"commarid efficrent 
 lab our, is no identity of interest at all.~The 
 e fficient labour which high wages produce is 
 s till bought and sold by capital, is still enT: 
 ployed or rejected asTt suits the convenience 
 o f capital, is still underpaid to enable capital 
 to accumulate high dividends, is still trpatprl 
 n ot as something possessing- rip-hts nf i ti 
 own, but as something which minister.s to 
 t hg-hrtETests of ^ thers. This opposition may 
 he expressed asTclass war. But it is only 
 one of the many oppositions tending to 
 modify social organisation, and it is by no 
 means the most active or most certain in im- 
 proving that organisation. 
 
 There is, for instance, the opposition be- 
 tween consumer and producer. This opposi- 
 
129 
 
 tion is peculiarly complex, because a man 
 is a producer one hour and a consumer the 
 next.* The most valid objection that can be 
 taken to Trade Unionism (if it can be sub- 
 stantiated) is that it sacrifices the interests 
 of the consumer to those of t^ie producer. 
 This has been illustrated in agreements be- 
 tween capitalists themselves and also 
 between capital and labour. Combinations of 
 capital to raise prices or to monopolise the 
 market, and agreements with workpeople 
 to share in the profits of artificially high 
 prices on condition that they support the 
 pool by refusing to work for any firm out- 
 side it, are examples of this rivalry between 
 the consumer and the producer. Sometimes 
 the rivalry takes the form of a war between' 
 capitalists, as when the German producers of 
 pig iron damage the interests of the German 
 steel manufacturers by dumping the rawer 
 material in England. In other wo rds, trade 
 rival ry is as real as. and more forceful as an, 
 impulse ot the day than, class rivalr y. Some- 
 tiffles capital an d labour m combmationTighF 
 ag'dinst a class consummg certain commodi- 
 
 *Tari£f as it afiects the wage earning class is the 
 best illustration of this conflict of function in the 
 ■same person, and the tug-of-war between the Protec- 
 tionist and the Free Trader largely consists in the 
 efforts of the one to induce the electors to think in the 
 frame of mind of producers, and of the other to 
 induce them to think as consumers. 
 
I30 
 
 ies, as in the late bedstead combination... 
 sometimes laDour alone fights against the 
 consumer, as in the building trades where 
 the increased price of labour has influenced 
 costs of building, and consequently dimin- 
 ished housing accomodation.* The latest 
 illustration of the economic opposition be- 
 tween consumer and producer belonging to 
 the same class has been the agitation 
 caused in industrial districts against the 
 Miners' Eight Hours' Bill. Here, exploited 
 engineers, carpenters, labourers and wage 
 earners of all kinds have risen to oppose a 
 measure which they believe will increase the 
 cost of coal. Thevjhave fnr y^t tf" ^-V-" "In^l 
 war and have "plu nged with zest into an in- 
 terests' war. "^ " 
 
 The conflict of economic interest between 
 the consumer demanding cheapness and 
 the producer desiring to sell the use of 
 his labour or the use of his capital at the 
 highest rates, is an economic conflict which 
 must not be overlooked or smoothed away 
 in a formal generalisation. And it must be 
 emphasised that the opposition is not one 
 
 * 1 desire to guard myself against misrepresenta- 
 tion here. Whilst I believe that the above statement 
 is true, I im(>ute no blame to the building trades' 
 unions. If we have in the community a class so poor 
 that they cannot afford to dwell in a house made 
 under proper conditions of labour, that proves the 
 existence of social evils which are not cured but in- 
 tensified by keeping wages at a low level. 
 
■3> 
 
 whit more unreal because the same man may 
 belong at the same time to both the oppos- 
 ing classes. 
 
 Certain modern developments are tending 
 to break up into well defined economic 
 sections this "uniform" proletariat class. Of 
 these the Co-operative and Building Socie- 
 ties are the most iniportant. In the first ojf 
 those movements, the wage earner becomes 
 an employer— or, as it presents itself more 
 familiarly to him, he is a receiver of divi- 
 dends which, in part, are profits from other 
 people's labour. All day, at his work in the 
 factory or mine, he thinks of himself as the 
 victim of the exploiter, as the loyal trade 
 unionist, as the wage earner. But he comes 
 home in the evening, washes himself, puts 
 a better coat on his back, goes to his Co- 
 opei-ative Committee and immediately under- 
 goes a fundamental change. Psychologic- 
 ally, he is a different man. He is no longer 
 a wage earner and a trade unionist, but a 
 capitalist employer who has been known to 
 join in an anathema against labour combina- 
 tions. 
 
 This does not mean that wealth is being 
 better distributed, but rather that the psycho- 
 logical basis of class is being undermined. 
 The boast of having control of "millions of 
 money " which is made at every Co-opera- 
 tive Congress, the threat that capital and 
 
132 
 
 trade will leave the Stores if this or that de- 
 parture in policy is decided upon, inculcate 
 ' the capitalist frame of mind in the worker, 
 and though his sovereigns may be few, it is 
 not the actual possession of riches which 
 determines with what class a man associates 
 himself. Imitation, as well as identity of 
 economic in terest, determines for practi cal 
 pofpQses the c lass to which a man belongs . 
 When a rnmrose League dame shakes 
 hands with an elector on polling day, she 
 May or may not leave behind the shake a 
 £5 note. But she certainly removes for the 
 time being the psychological props upon 
 which class feeling has been resting. Down 
 it tumbles, and the elector goes and votes 
 for his " class enemy." Patronage and 
 charity have the same effect. 
 
 B ut the point is best illustrated by certain 
 recent developments ot co-partnership , 
 ^ liich as an industrial theory is admirabk, 
 b ut as a sociological influence may be most 
 reprehensible. . Th e iSouth Metropolitan Cias 
 Company a few years ago determined to put 
 an end to the organisation of its men, and 
 considered expedients for doing so. It dec- 
 ided to try co-partnership and it succeeded. 
 It bound its men to itself in precisely the 
 same way as the proverbial man bound his 
 donkey to his will by hanging a carrot in 
 front of the animal's nose. Hoping ever to 
 
•33 
 
 reach the carrot, the donkey romped home, 
 and the driver's end was cheaply accom- 
 plished. 
 
 It is interesting to work out how mtich 
 financial strain the class solidarity of the 
 proletariat will bear, and this gas company's 
 experiment throws some light on the ques- 
 tion. After the co-partnership scheme had 
 been in operation for fourteen years, 4000 
 men were affected, and their total holdings 
 were £170,000.* Hence, in fourteen year s 
 under the scheme a man had saved a little 
 oV er £40, or about jd.-^ per annum; and as 
 his active working life does not averag e 
 thirty years, this scheme allows the average 
 m an to save altogether tjuiiielliiiig unde r 
 £•100. i'or thi s the men have given up tlie ir 
 ri ght to compme and their freedom of actio n, 
 a nd have consen ted to place themselves absol- 
 utely at the disposal 01 the employing Com- 
 pany. Their appreciation ot their tiade illLer- 
 ests has been intensified, whilst that of their 
 class interests has been almost obliterated, 
 and however objectionable from a civic point 
 of view a class bias may be, a trade bias is 
 much worse. Nor, indeed, has this sacrifice 
 even had the merit of being the price of a 
 better distribution of the wealth created by 
 this company for, whilst nominally the men 
 
 * Paper by Sir George Livesey on the scheme, in 
 Methods of Social Advance. Edited by C. S. Loch. 
 London, 1904 
 
•34 
 
 are receiving specially good treatment, in 
 reality specially good profits are being made 
 out of them.f 
 
 By the second of these organisations — 
 Btiilding Societies — the interests of the 
 working classes become identified with those 
 of the landowning classes, and are opposed 
 to every attempt of the community to enter 
 into possession of the unearned incre- 
 ,ments on land. 
 
 There is also another aspect to this. The 
 interests injured by our present social otate 
 are not merely those of the wage earners. 
 Considerable classes of people depend on the 
 wage-earners and of these t he small shop - 
 keeper i s a type. jj^L. nmbitiwnn m^ 
 sympa thy, however, unite him with the pet ite 
 b ourgeoisie and divorce him from his econ- 
 omic supporters — the working classes — and^ 
 t Tius rebuke the theorists who see in social . 
 motive little more than economic motived 
 Then, there are those whose comfort and 
 success under existing conditions are but 
 precarious, the bankrupts, the struggling 
 
 t This is admitted by the manager, who, in the 
 paper referred to above, stated that the bonus given 
 to the men is first of all earned by them. " This," 
 he says, " is proved by a comparison vfith the wagea 
 accounts of companies where the system is not in 
 force, the rate of wages being the same, but the 
 cost per ton of coal handled is considerably less." 
 
I3S 
 
 business people, those engaged in industries 
 which are passing under the control of 
 trusts. All those are in economic positions 
 which expose them to the allurement of the 
 Socialist ideal. But they are possessed by 
 a pathetic desire to attach themselves to the 
 classes which rest in economic calm and bask 
 in a blaze of social sunshine above the tem- 
 pests and the shadows in which the lower 
 beings live. From the depths to which theyl 
 are driven they cast an adoring eye upon 
 those "above" them, and from the midst of' 
 their ruin they bow the knee to whatever 
 bears the stamp of respectability. 
 
 Cla ss, in the sense in which the Marxians 
 u se It, is an economic abstraction, an. 
 academi c generalisation . 
 
 Having discovered what are the fact,?, we 
 can now turn to consider what is the idea 
 which is in reality expressed by those who' 
 use the word class in this connection, and 
 what is its value as a motive force making for 
 social change. When we appeal to class 
 interests what do we do in reality ? A man's 
 class interests cannot appear to him to be ' 
 anything else than his personal interests — '' 
 not his interests as a member of the wage' 
 earning class, not his interests as a citizen, 
 not his interests as a member of the commun- 
 ity, but his ind ividual interests from day to 
 dayr ■ ThereTs'no principle of social re-con- 
 
136 
 
 stru ction in this ffpTing There is the motive 
 of a scramble, or of class defence and pre- 
 servation, the motive to secure big wages, 
 short hours and favourable conditions of 
 ""work. But that is all. The tug of the class 
 war is across not upwards. There is no con- 
 structi ve value in a class waE 
 ' i'he best expression of a class war is 
 Trade Unionism. It is created on the assump- 
 tion and experience that capital will do its 
 utmost to exploit labour, and that labour 
 ought to do its best to prevent capital from 
 succeeding. The position is a simple and 
 frank recognition of existing industrial fact. 
 It concerns itself with no opposition except 
 that between capital and labour, no union of 
 interests except the interests of wage earn- 
 ing, no field of activity wider than the fact- 
 ory. It leads n n^hyff tipr n n'if' '*• ^? i " -^ 
 i deal goal : its onlv result can be the bondag e 
 ot one side or the gthcr Here is the pure 
 example of the class war. Nay, more, it is 
 the class war. 
 
 The Trade Unionism, moreover, which is 
 the purest expression of this simple antagon- 
 ism between capital and labour, is what is 
 known in this country as the Old Unionism, 
 the Unionism which was opposed to labour 
 politics, to Socialism, to everything except 
 conferences with employers and strikes as 
 a last resort. It was sceptical of any recon- 
 struction, arid decided that if such recon- 
 
137 
 
 struction were to be tried, Trade Unionism, 
 in its opinion, was far too wise to have any- 
 thing to do with it. This state of mind was 
 also characterised by a narrow conception of 
 trade interest as opposed to general 
 interest. It is only the emptiest flat- 
 tery to tell the old Trade Union move- 
 ment that its various sections ever have, or 
 ever could have, considered anything but 
 their own immediate interests when settling 
 their policy from time to time. Each of the 
 wings of an army for carrying on the class 
 war is bound in the nature of things to fight 
 its battles mainly for its own hand. Trade 
 solidarity rather than proletarian solidarity 
 is the real outcome of a class war in practice, 
 and trade interest is ultimately individual 
 interest. After a time — in 1899 to be precise — 
 Trade Unionism saw that this policy could 
 lead to nothing permanent; it widened its 
 outlook; it rose above its old ruts; i t be- 
 came co mmunity conscious as well as clas s 
 c onscious. "I'he l^abour Party was formed,^ 
 because Trade Unionism had experienced 
 that a class war led nowhere. 
 
 Co nvey it in what spirit we mav. an appeal 
 to class mterest is an appeal to pers onal 
 mterest. Socl djiSt propaganda earned on as 
 a class war suggests n one of those ideals of 
 moral citizen ship with which Socialist literal 
 t ure ab oundgrzL^ ' each tor all, and all for 
 ■"each," "service to the community is the sole 
 
"righi of property," and so on. It is an 
 appeal to individualism, and results in 
 getting men to accept Socialist formulae 
 without becoming Socialists. It springs from 
 a time in the evolution of the Labour move- 
 ment when the narrow creed of the old 
 Trade Unionism was the widest revelation 
 that nature had yet made to men striving to 
 protect themselves against the encroachment 
 of capitalist power. In other words, the 
 " class war " idea belongs to the pre-Social- 
 i&t and pre scientific phase of the Labom 
 Movement. 
 I am aware that the Marxian argues that 
 
 [ this class struggle is the last in history, and 
 that when the proletariat have been eman- 
 cipated, the epochs of struggle end. The 
 
 I argument is but a vain assumption. The 
 emancipation of the proletariat will of itself 
 be the signal for new struggles of 
 economic sections with appaiently opposing 
 interests, and so long as these oppositions 
 are made the main reason for social change, 
 each triumph can only lead to other battles, 
 again and again renewed. It is not the 
 emancipation of the numerical majority, or of 
 a class so big as to be "no class but the 
 " nation," which matters. What matters is 
 the character of the motive power which 
 effected the emancipation. If that power is 
 the conflict of interests, it will reappear in the 
 new regime, and if it finds no complete class 
 
»39 
 
 4o infuriate, it will enter class sub-sections, 
 which will then be prepared to fly at each 
 others' throats. Th e assumption tha t hv ^ . 
 cl ass triumph Society is to emerge from th e 
 epoc h ot class conflict and sail gaily awa y 
 Qpon the calm waters of fraternity, <;an he. 
 held only by those who have not ceased t o 
 believe in the magical and the irrational. j 
 
 n. 
 
 The antagonisms in Society which result 
 in organic change of a progressive nature 
 are not merely ecoilomic. They are also 
 intellectual and moral. Man is moved bv his 
 h ead as well as by his pockej: . bv the growth \ 
 ot social mstinct as well as by cupidity. The 
 richest possession of any man is an appro v- i 
 m^ LUliscience.' People who themselves / 
 liave no quarrel with existing economic 
 airangements, must measure the achieve- 
 ments of existing Society by standards of 
 right and wrong, must enter its dark corners 
 and sojourn amongst its waste places, its 
 wrecks and its ruins, and they will turn in 
 liorror and weariness from the spectacle and 
 begin preparing for a new order of things. 
 Everybody does not pile up riches on his 
 inner lights so as to smother them. Even if 
 we regard economics as the mainspring by 
 which history moves, that does not prevent 
 -us from recognising that only by a combina- 
 
MO. 
 
 tion of intellectual guidance and economic, 
 needs does historical change become one 
 and the same thing with progress. 
 
 The scheme upon which humanity evolves^ 
 to higher and more humane stages of exist- 
 ence is either rational or it is not. If it is 
 not, all organised attempts to hasten reform 
 and make it effective — Socialism included— j 
 are waste effort. If it is rational.^ hen pro- 
 gres s becomes a_ in attpr o f intolloctual co n- 
 Vi ctTon, and man, seeking intellectual peac e 
 as well as economic security, will have to 
 choose which he is to pursu e! Even suppos- 
 mg ne is a wage earner and his pursuit of 
 the means of life brings him into conflict 
 with the existing state of Society, his success 
 will not depend upon the richness of his ex- 
 perience of poverty, but upon the meaning he 
 places upon his experience and the methods 
 he adopts to place himself in different 
 conditions. Economic needs may give 
 volume and weight to the demand for 
 change, but reason and intelligence, the 
 maturing of the social mind, ideals of social 
 justice grasped so firmly that they have 
 become real existences for those who hold 
 them, give that demand a shape, a policy, 
 a direction. Socialism must, therefore, re- 
 cognise the intellectual as well as the econ- 
 omic movement. And if it over-emphasises 
 either side, let it be the former. For the 
 pressure of economic need may exert itself 
 
141 
 
 in several conceivable directions, not every 
 one of which opens the gateway to progres- 
 sive advance. A consciousness of class 
 disabilities may be either a motive for react- 
 ionary sycophancy, or for revolutionary 
 indignation. A man's poverty may make him 
 a Socialist. But it is as likely tn indnrp tiim t^ 
 sell his birthright for a mess of p ntt^g-p JTli^ 
 sl um life may blossom into revolution, but 
 it is as likely to deteriorate into imperialism. 
 Ihe rich are led away from the light by their 
 great possessions, but the pressure of pov- 
 erty also induces the poor to be content with 
 the immediate satisfaction of appetite, and 
 incapacitates them from patient and stren- 
 uous striving. 
 
 Not only, therefore, is it incumbent upon 
 Socialism to rec ognise the existence of an" 
 imi ellectual motive, it must place that motive 
 a bove~the economic, because without it the 
 econ omic struggle would be devoid of an y- 
 constr uctive value; it would he a. mere tiig - 
 nf-wa r; it would never bring us to Socia l- 
 i sm, ine e conomic motive ihiist be led by 
 tfte light of reason or morality — as, indeed, 
 it has always been when it is a factor in 
 progress. 
 
 This line of thought appears to overlook 
 the article in the Marxian creed that Social- 
 ism is inevitable. But the industrial and 
 economic inevitability of Socialism is a mere 
 
143 
 
 fancy. It is inevitable only if intellig^en ce 
 makes it so . It is inevitable only if we are 
 to develop on rational lines ; it is inevitable , 
 n ot because men are exploited or because 
 the f abric of capitalism must collapse undg r^ 
 its owiTweight, but because men are rationale 
 J t is the action o f reason alone which makes 
 ^ our evils a sure ^ause of progress and nol 
 
 the possible beginning of final deteri oration- 
 Intelligence and morality indicate the goal oy 
 which the struggle to escape the existing pur- 
 gatory is guided. Human evolution is a 
 stretching out, not a being pushed forward. 
 Acorns produce oaks, grubs grow into 
 beetles, tadpoles into frogs, but slums, in- 
 d ustrial crises, poverty, trusts, do not in the 
 same way grow into Socialism . In the 
 (Struggle lor iiie which has taken place in the 
 
 orld of nature since life began, many 
 species have been exterminated, many evolu- 
 tions have never been completed. Arrested 
 development is as conspicuous in nature as 
 finished processes. 
 
 The workmen who vote Liberal an d 
 U nionist to-day are perfectly conscious of 
 the drawbacks of a life of wage-earning; 
 they are also quite conscious that they 
 belong to a separate economic and social 
 class — and a great many of them would like 
 to belong to another. In short, in any 
 natural meaning of the words, the y are class 
 conscious. But they are not Socialists, be- 
 
J43 
 
 cause they are not convinced that the intel- 
 lectual proposals of Socialism should receive 
 their support. 
 
 In order, therefore, that the social organ- 
 ism may perfect itself , there must be the wil l! 
 for perfection and the definite idea as to i 
 what changes are require d. The life of the' 
 organism Is contmued through change, and 
 the organism itself is ever in a state of 
 reorganisation. Nation after nation has risen 
 and fallen, others have risen and attained 
 to a certain civilization and there have stuck. 
 But stagnation is impossible for our own 
 iWestern peoples. They may fall; political 
 combinations may crush them; the canker 
 of poverty may make them degenerate. But 
 if they are to continue to grow and to 
 adapt themselves to new circumstances, if 
 they are to continue to improve, it must be 
 by the organisation of opinion and the oper- 
 ations of a constructive genius which sees 
 a stage ahead and leads the people so that 
 they attain to it. T he Socialist appeal, there- 
 fore, is to all who believe m social evoiu- 
 ticij . Who agrfee that the problem whic h 
 Society has n ow to solve is that of the dis - 
 t ribution oi wealth, who trust in democracy , 
 who re gard the State not as antagonistic to , 
 but as an aspect of, individuality, and who 
 are gtopmg onwards with the co-operative 
 faith guiding them. That appeal may find 
 some people in poverty, and they may follow 
 
144 
 
 beca use it offers them economic s yqFJtyr 
 • faCit it will tind others in wealth, and they 
 will follow because it brings order where 
 tfaefe lsliow chaos , organisation where there 
 IS now confusion, law where there is now 
 anarchy, justice where there is now injustice^ 
 
 Socialism marks the growth of Society, 
 not the uprising of a class. The conscious- 
 ness which it seeks to quicken is not one of 
 economic class solidarity, but one of social 
 unity and growth towards organic whole- 
 ness. The watchword of Socialism, there- 
 fore, is not class consciousness but commun- 
 ity consciousness. 
 
 We can now see to what combination of 
 interests and convictions we must appeal, 
 and how we must direct that appeal, so a& 
 to create the order of the Socialist State out 
 of the chaos of the present day. 
 
 I reject what seems to me to W thp un- 
 satisfactory expression of a class war, be - 
 . c ause class consciousness leads nowhere, an d 
 a' class struggle may or may not be intellig- 
 ent. A " class war " describes only a pa rt 
 of the condition which bociety presents to 
 our eyes to-day. But still, we turn our hopea 
 first of all to the wage earners. They are 
 the most certainly doomed victims of the 
 present chaos; they suffer most from the 
 
MS. 
 
 inability of the present system to provide em- 
 ployment, wages, life; they, are least buoyed, 
 up by elusive hopes that a lucky turn of the 
 wheel of fortune may pitch them up on the 
 backs of others; they are the helpless spills 
 tossing on the troubled waters of present day 
 strife; their attempts to share in the benefits 
 of an efficient method of production result in 
 little but turmoil, hunger and poverty; and 
 above all, their needs have now become the i 
 chi ef concern ot Society, because in fulnesW 
 'oi time social organisation is being tested by] 
 its human result s, and because the economic 
 enfranchisement of the people naturally 
 treads upon the heels of their political eman- 
 cipation. 
 
 And it is o"f special note for the moment 
 that they have been subject recently to re- 
 buffs and attacks in the Press, the Courts of 
 Law and Parliament, and thus have been 
 taught the necessity of political unity and 
 independent organisation. Thpy havp p^iven 
 us the^abour_P arty in consequence . The 
 politics of an enlightened democracy is of nec- 
 essity social, and is aimed at ending experi- 
 ences of unemployment, old age pauperism, 
 and so on. Hence, as one of the laws jj f 
 evolutio n is, that need creates organs , re- 
 dis!hbutes an(I organises functions and 
 changes biological types, working class 
 policy must be directed towards the organisa- 
 tion and the development of the organs and 
 
146 
 
 "functions of mutual aid in Society. The 
 political policy of the Labour Party might 
 well be described as an attempt to give mutuai 
 a.i a.jstiape and term m our national me. So 
 soon as a serious attempt has been made to 
 frame a policy directed to such ends, it will 
 "be found tnat monopoly in land and the use of 
 industrial capital for individual profit are the 
 sources of the experiences which Society now 
 seeks to shun, and they must consequently* 
 be supplanted by public ownership and pro- 
 eduction for use, before labour can enter into 
 «njoyment of the blessings which an efficient 
 method of wealth production would make 
 possible. Labour has but one intelligent 
 road of advance — ^that of economic and in- 
 <lustrial reconstruction — that of Socialism. 
 
 Among the wage earners, therefore, we 
 must expect to find in fullest development, 
 and in forms most political and effective for 
 organic change, those vital and vitalising 
 •disturbances which indicate active life push- 
 ing out to higher forms of organisation. But 
 those disturbances, as has been shown, are 
 not purely economic, and are not therefore 
 confined to wage earners, and consequently 
 in order to gather together the forces mak- 
 ing for Socialism, the basis of the movement 
 must be such that everyone sharing in the 
 ■disturbed promptings must be included. 
 
 All barrier phrases and sectional dogmas 
 tutist be removed from Socialism. The ex- 
 
'47 
 
 periments in factory legislation, in public 
 B ealth reg ul ations, in education /in mnniVT- 
 p alisation, are pointing out to men of a ll 
 classes tne des irability at' gdmg yet turttier 
 al ong the road wflicti leads to iSocialism. a nd 
 are forming in the minds of men of all classes 
 a conception of Society, of the community 
 and the individual, formed on Socialist prin- 
 ciples. When we think systematically of the 
 scattered fragments of reform promised by 
 the political parties, we see that they are but 
 the foreshadowing of Socialism; when the 
 tendencies begun by scores of experiments- 
 — factory laws, public health law^s, municipal- . 
 isation — are followed out, joined together,, 
 systematised. Socialism is the result. This ' 
 completeness of organisation, this idea of 
 national and communal growth, this state of 
 business eflSciency, nothing short of it and 
 nothing which is sectional in it, should be 
 laid down as the basis of SociaHsm. And the 
 political movement which is to express, and 
 ul timately satisfy, this need for the organic- 
 unity of Societv. must be a movement of the, 
 whole of Society and not of one of its sec- 
 tions — the working classes. As the brain 
 moves obedient to the grossest as well as 
 the purest prompting of the needs of the 
 living thing, so must the political organ in 
 Society be subject to the purest prompting^ 
 of moral intelligence as well as the grosser 
 prompting of economic need ; but both must 
 
148 
 
 be united if a more perfect form of Society 
 is to be created. 
 
 Economic hardships are the flints on the 
 road, but these flints may develop on us the 
 hoofs of the beast, or may compel us to use 
 our intelligence to find smoother paths. 
 Socialism is the latter alternative. 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 POLITICAL PARTIES AND SOCIALIST THOUGHT. 
 
 Socialism has sometimes been defined in 
 isuch broad terms as to include philanthropic 
 ■endeavour and moral effort which rests upon 
 individual will. Such a definition is inaccu- 
 rate. The community, acting through law, 
 ^nd organised into definite forms determin- 
 ing the lines of individual action, is an essen- 
 tial part of the Socialist idea. The Socialist 
 considers that the State is as essential to 
 individual life as is the atmosphere, and he 
 regards the evolution of political democracy 
 as having been necessary in order to create 
 a State which could respond to the common 
 will. The modern State in > most civilised 
 •countries is democratic, and, in spite of the 
 remaining anomalies and imperfections, if 
 the masses of the ordinary people are agreed 
 upon any policy, neither rich electors, privi- 
 leged peers, nor reigning houses could stand 
 in their way. That being the case, the 
 Socialist sees that so soon as the problem: 
 In whom does the sovereignty rest ? — the 
 149 
 
"SO 
 
 problem underlying political democracy- 
 has been solved, progress presents to the 
 community, as a sequel, the further conund- 
 rum: What is the sphere of the State? — ^the 
 problem underlying industrial democracy — 
 the problem which creates the SociaUst con- 
 ception of Society. 
 
 I. 
 
 This involves a positive view of the State.* 
 The Socialist refuses to regard the State as a 
 mere atomic collection of individuals, the 
 majority of whom coerce the minority. He 
 regards it as the means of expressing a will 
 which belongs to the minority as well as to 
 the majority, because the minority is organ- 
 ically connected with the community for 
 which the State is acting ; he^j herefore. d oes 
 not consi der legislative and administ rative 
 wnrk- to hp a rnprrive liTnii-afjrm nfinHivid iiaL 
 liberty, because he cannot tHmk of a com- 
 munity as only a crowd of individuals, each 
 self-centred, each" pursuing his own ends, 
 
 * It is true that a positive view of the State has 
 been taken in much of our recent legislation, as, for 
 instance, in Factory Acts, and in everything known 
 as socialistic legislation, but it has been haphazard 
 and unsystematic, and has been applied without 
 understanding. State interference has often been 
 resorted to as a quack remedy. Socialism comes with 
 a clear and scientific idea of the aim and method 
 of State activity, and can, therefore, discriminate 
 between mistaken and proper methods of State action. 
 
each endowed; with natural and inviolable 
 rights. The communal life is as real to him 
 as the life of an organism built up of many 
 living cells. When, therefore, he is told t hat 
 self-he lp and btate activity are opposed to 
 each~~ot her, that individual liberty and a 
 tnic k statute book are inconsistent. thatTh ej! 
 a ction of the electors through parliament o r 
 municipalities is different in kind to the 
 action the y take through Trade Unic 
 Co-operative bocieties, Limited Liabil ity 
 Com panies, or that communal property is 
 l imitation of private property, the bociali s^ 
 c onfesses he does not follow the argumen t. 
 There is no opposition between these things. 
 Not only do they exist, in fact, side by side — 
 they are naturally co-existent and interdep- 
 endent. They indicate that the law of individ- 
 ual well-being is a law of social personality, 
 and that mutual aid as well as individual 
 struggle is an element in the process of pro- 
 gress. The State is, therefore, essential to 
 Socalism and we must consider Socialism as 
 an influence in politics, and in relation to 
 political parties. 
 
 11. 
 
 The history of State activity and political 
 parties has been different in this country 
 from what it has been on the continent. lii 
 modern times we have not had to fight wars 
 of self-defence like Germany or France; we 
 
»S2 
 
 have not had revolutions and revolutionary 
 changes uprooting the present from the past ; 
 . Napoleon did not walk over us ; we have not 
 had, like France, political minorities, whose 
 avowed object has been to overturn the es- 
 tablished political order; militarism has not 
 exercised its fatal influence by separating 
 the State from the people; since the days of 
 George IV. our Parliament has been free to 
 legislate as it has wished. We have, there- 
 fore, had few crises. Progress has been 
 steady, if slow; the dams obstructing its 
 course have given way to slight pressure, 
 and no floods of pent-up evil have had to 
 break down barriers and rush furiously down 
 courses where they might otherwise have 
 meandered peacefully. On the continent it 
 has been different. There, the modern 
 period was ushered in by Revolution. Wars 
 followed, natural boundaries were des- 
 troyed and a new crop of kings reared. 
 When peace came, Europe did not begin 
 where she had left off before the French 
 Revolution exploded in her midst. She was 
 partitioned to suit Austria and Metternich; 
 volcanic forces were implanted in Italy, 
 Norway, Germany, Prussia, Belgium, Hol- 
 land, and they began their protesting 
 thunderings almost at once. Europe for 
 well nigh a century was ruled by politicaj 
 Utopists, by gentlemen of individualist be- 
 liefs, who thought that the individual will 
 
was invincible, and that States and peoples 
 were but blocks of wood to be cut into what- 
 ever forms the fancy and pride of a few 
 rulers decided. The result was revolution, 
 sudden change, catastrophic politics. 
 
 This difference in political history between 
 ourselves and our neighbours has had a de- 
 termining influence upon the work and 
 nature of political parties here and in 
 Europe. The difference is temporary, but it 
 is important. Continental conditions have 
 encouraged theories and dogmas regarding 
 the course of progress, and have created 
 parties to embody these theories and 
 dogmas. Thus, we have rigidity in party 
 relationship, and a lingering survival of 
 the revolutionary method. 
 
 Here, our revolutionary period ended with 
 1832, and before that its revolutionary char- 
 acteristics were very mild. As on the Con- 
 tinent, that period of our politics was char- 
 acterised by political dogmas and systems of 
 progress built up upon assumptions of class 
 wars, economic motives, and other simple 
 explanations of complicated problems.* But, 
 since 1832, parties have been in touch with 
 life and national need, and, in a biological 
 
 * For instance, philosophic Radicalism sprang from 
 our revolutionary period, and hardly survived the 
 generation which followed 1832. 
 
>S4 
 
 frame of mind, have been busying them- 
 selves with results, rather than in a logical 
 frame of mind declining to budge one degree 
 from some imagined meridian of sound poli- 
 tical theory. Speculative politics have been 
 proceeding pari passu with experimental 
 politics. 
 
 Parties do not therefore in this country 
 survive after their theories have become use- 
 less for practical purposes. The weird mum- 
 mies of a byegone generation, which forrii 
 the Liberal parties in most ContinentaT 
 countries, are unknown here except as indi~ 
 •yiduals campmg outside the bounds of the 
 reguiar par ties. An influential minority can 
 for a time thwart the will of the majority, 
 but when the supreme test comes, a party 
 finds its strength to lie not in its rich minori- 
 ties, nor in its select supporters whose inter- 
 ests do not coincide with those of its rank 
 and file, but with the rank and file itself, and 
 it is the experience of the rank and file which 
 ultimately directs party politics. 
 
 Our political method no doubt cripples 
 intellectual movements in politics, but it lays 
 inassive foundations, by patient experiment. 
 It finds its chief motive for action not in the 
 flaws of a system which one can detect by 
 logical processes, but in evils actually experi- 
 enced. It compels the assimilation of all 
 useless political organs, and does not allow 
 
»5S 
 
 the atrophied remnants of old parties to en- 
 cumber the State by retaining a separate 
 existence. It makes it impossible for parties 
 to flourish on words, and forces them to 
 apply themselves to satisfy the needs 
 experienced by the communities where 
 they rule. But as the experimental method 
 ever requires the guidance of theory, all 
 scientific progress being a combination of in- 
 duction and deduction, the British political 
 method demands for its success a clear com- 
 prehension of the social and individual ends 
 which it from time to time embodies in its 
 work, so that it is by no means a " living i 
 fiom hand to mouth." The British method " 
 
 is n ot oppo rtunism, h"t thP «.Yp<^rJmpntaJ ' 
 filHEod in the full scientific^ mpaninp- nt tho a 
 
 term. 
 
 This may be illustrated in two ways. 
 When, as the result of the Labour and 
 Socialist political victories in 1906 and 1907, 
 he Unionists started a campaign against 
 socialism, and the Liberals proceeded to 
 draw lines of distinction between themselves 
 and the Socialists, both these parties agreed 
 that the difference was to be found i n the 
 f a c t that their prbgfdmhlfeS deal t only wiLl ra _ 
 Sodal R ^fdrtn which lelaiued individual iiir ' 
 itiative and enterprise as the basis of sociaL 
 clgaiiibaliun." The Sbcialist speedil y pointed 
 
 * The most definite attempt to draw this line was 
 made by Mr. Balfour in Birmingham (14 Nov., 1907), 
 
•S6 
 
 rmt^Tiat all attem pts to draw this distinction 
 Tailed and were bound to fail, beca use, when 
 one tries to ba se social f ef Ortil on individual "_ 
 regponsibih ly iL is at once apparent that.' 
 it cannot be done. The very fact that 
 S ocial Refunti is to be imposed on the 
 individual by the power of the State des- 
 troys such a basis. When the "^tgfp rnmppk 
 piiv ate property to bear the burden of unem- _ 
 — t)lovnient and old age pensions, it de facto 
 claim s a right' tO dispose ot possessions 
 winch upon the anti-socialist hvoothesis be- 
 long to another. Moreover, as there will 
 6j private property under Socialism, the dis- 
 tinction that Social Reform is " based on 
 private property" is a false one. The real 
 distinction is contained in one's conception 
 as to what private property should include . 
 It included " niggers " a generation or so 
 ago^ Is not Its scope to be further citcuih- 
 scribed as time goes on and the orsranisa- 
 tion of the State becomes more definitely 
 directed towards procuring and defending 
 individual wellbeing ? The very programme 
 of Social Reform created to be a bulwark 
 against Socialism, itself limits that scope; 
 and that this is so is understood at once 
 when he said : " Social reform is when the State, 
 based upon private property, recognising that the 
 best productive result can only be obtained by respect- 
 ing private property and encouraging private enter- 
 prise, asks them to contribute towards great national, 
 social and public objects. That is social reform." 
 
157 
 
 when one knows that it is in the main taken 
 from what the Socialists for the last tv/enty 
 years or more have been asking for as first 
 steps tov/ards Socialism. 
 
 The same idea can be illustrated from 
 another point of view, — that of Socialist 
 method. One can conceive of a Social Re- 
 form which would break down existing So- 
 ciety, bring a crisis and stop the existing 
 mechanism. This is what some critics of 
 Socialism imagine that Socialists are going 
 to do, and they are enabled to harbour such 
 a belief by storing their minds with detached 
 statements loosely made by a few Socialists. 
 Moreover, Marxism gives some countenance 
 to this notion. Catastrophic Socialism, how- 
 ever, belongs as much to the days that are 
 past as does Utopian Socialism. In so far, 
 for instance, as some people advocate a leg al 
 mirimum wage because they know that 
 Society as at present constituted cannot pay 
 such a tnmg — nof because there is not 
 enough wealth, for the re is, out because ouF 
 mechanism ot distribution will not allow the 
 tiling to be done — and they hope that in this 
 way a breakaown will be reached and that 
 after the breakdown will come Socialism, 
 they are following unscientific and profitless 
 paths. The only safe prophecy to make re- 
 garding such circumstances is, that after the 
 breakdown will come reaction. The Social 
 Eeform that is to bring us to Socialism is 
 
>58 
 
 that which takes the opportunities of the pre- 
 sent and with them embarks upon coUectiv- 
 ist experiments and makes beginnings in 
 ■coUectivist organisation. Capitalism is to 
 grow into Socialism by having its advant- 
 ages — i.e., sub-division of labour, co-ordina- 
 tion of capital, &c. — retained for CoUectivist 
 purposes and organised by a CoUectivist 
 State. Socialist Social Reform is therefore 
 directed not to destruction but to fulfilment. 
 It aids Capitalism to grow into Collectivism; 
 it does not knock Capitalism on the head. 
 All that this means is, that the Socialist is 
 an evolutionist and is beginning to under- 
 stand the political methods which that im- 
 poses upon him. 
 
 Thus, when the opponents of Socialism 
 invite the country to adopt Old Age 
 P ensions, Unemployed Acts, Municipal 
 Housing Schemes, and similar program mer 
 o t Social Re form in order to stem the 
 Socialist tide, surely the Socialist can look 
 on with much complacency and behold the 
 fulfilment of his purposes as the result of 
 his opponents' efforts. 
 
 III. 
 
 Theimmediate origin of the present 
 So cialist movement was the Trtdtisfr iaT^Rp- 
 Toluti on. It was the vague dreams of a 
 Socialist order which men lingered ovm* 
 
•59, 
 
 when they beheld the young dragged to the 
 factories before their tiny legs could well 
 carry them there, adults exploited of life and 
 possession by the unchecked greed of capital, 
 the ugly town raised up haunted by vice and 
 inhabited by disease, poverty become 
 chronic, " economic law " proclaiming the 
 end of human sentiment in business opera- 
 tions, men beaten and bruised and torn under 
 the harrow of commercialism and left with- 
 cut consolation and without hope. 
 
 The first germinating growths of the prac- 
 tical Socialist spirit were to be found ia 
 projects for land nationalisation promulgated 
 by men like Thomas Spence and Professor 
 Ogilvie. The Spencean Philanthropists, who 
 were a thorn in the side of the purely poli- 
 tical Radicals, " openly meddled with sundry 
 '■ grave questions besides that of a commun- 
 " ity in land, and amongst other notable pro- 
 ' ' jects petitioned Parliament to do away 
 " with machinery."* Dr. Ogilvie was an 
 Aberdeen Professor, who turned his atten^ 
 tion to the depopulation of the country, and 
 wrote An Essay on the Right of Property in 
 Land, in which he advocated the taxation of 
 land values and the establishment of a Land 
 Court. 
 
 In the direct line of succession to these 
 two came Robert Owen, who widened the 
 
 * Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace. Bohn's 
 Edition, i., p. 8i. 
 
i6o 
 
 outlook and the interests of social reformers 
 by laying down theories of the relation 
 between education, character and environ- 
 ment. With him, English experime ntal 
 Socialism may be said to begin. He started 
 t he epoch of social legislation w ^r^^ ^^^g 
 g iven us our Factory I rwr, ""'^ ltIuVTi^ 
 mainly through those laws, has made us, 
 familiar with the idea that it is the business 
 of the State to protect the weak and create 
 conditions favourable to the full develop- 
 ment of men and women. As a result 
 of Owen's work, the tendency towards 
 Socialism in this country made itself mani- 
 fest in certain directions, but particularly in 
 politics through the growth of State activi- 
 ties and the political organisation of the 
 working classes; in ethics through the 
 assumption, which ever since has had such 
 definite practical effect, that man and his cir- 
 cumstances cannot be separated in any pro- 
 gramme of reform; in business, through the 
 growth of the Co-operative movement, first 
 in distribution and latterly in production. 
 
 The beginnings of a political labour move- 
 ment, for which Owen was responsible, soon 
 gr ew into C hartism under the nurturing care 
 of evil social conditions and a lack of~s ocial 
 s ympathy in both political partie s. It is 
 marvellous that this movem ent di d"so~ little. 
 either by contributing ideas to succeeding 
 generations or by direct influence upon legis- 
 
i6i 
 
 lation. Two explanations can be offered for 
 this. In the first place the country was not 
 quite ready even for political Chartism, and 
 was far from ready for the social implica- 
 tions of Chartism. In the second place, 
 although the people were prepared to be led, 
 Chartism produced no ge nuine leaders, 
 under the political circumstances of the'titfie, 
 the voice of the masses of the people could 
 penetrate Parliament only through secondary 
 channels, and the most permanent effect of 
 Chartism was to give an impetus to the in- 
 dividualist and voluntary movements of Co- 
 operation and Trade Unionism. 
 
 Labour then ceased t o organise itself. 
 toF political pur poses. i'he demand for 
 labour which followed the inauguration of 
 free trade, the development of railways and 
 rapid transport, and the consequent opening 
 up of the world's markets, allayed social 
 agitation and gave the Radical wing of the 
 Liberal Party an opportunity of inspiring 
 the imagination of the working classes with 
 visions of the blessings which would follow 
 upon political reform and the curtailment of 
 aristocratic privileges. Thus, the social 
 problem as a direct political issue receded for 
 the time. Enthusiasm for political democracy 
 grew more ardent. A self-confident, im- 
 patient, spirited mass gathered to storm the 
 last citadels of the politically privileged 
 classes. Labour sentiment had been diverted 
 
l63 
 
 into purely political channels. Al l parties 
 accepted the situation: the peopIe"were to 
 fOler It might be the people drunk or the 
 people sober, the people rational, or the 
 ^people cajoled. But still it was to be the 
 people. 
 
 This condition reinforced the national 
 characteristic of trusting to experience ^athe^ 
 than to theory. A sudden outburst of demo- 
 cratic ideas, owing mainly to Continental 
 influence, appeared iii the fourth decade ot 
 last century, and have been dying gradually 
 away ever since, because life is more or less 
 tolerable under a monarchy, a House of 
 Lords, and an Established Church. The 
 attacking army has become dispirited, or 
 content with things as they are. " The 
 " enemy " is not so bad after all. The spirit 
 of the Labour Radicalism of the seventies has 
 gone out of us. 
 
 But in the meantime legislation has be- 
 come more and more intimately connected 
 with life, administration with public needs, 
 and the State with the individual. In this 
 process, parties have changed and have 
 accepted the inevitable.* Nothing is more 
 
 * After the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, 
 Peel said during the debate on the Address that he 
 would accept the Reform Act as " finally and i le- 
 vocably settling the question of reform." His 
 speech was tantamount to a declaration that the 
 party which he led would change its spirit, and 
 accommodate itself to the new conditions. The his- 
 
i63 
 
 difficult for the foreigner investigating our 
 political conditions than to master this most 
 elementary characteristic of British politics. 
 He thinks of party as the embodiment of a 
 political dogma, and finds ours to be the 
 temporary exponent of a method. He looks 
 for something fixed and rigid, and finds 
 something constantly in a state of flux and 
 flow. He expects to find something founded 
 on the rock of .first principles, and discovei's 
 a barbae floating upon currents and moving 
 with the stream. 
 
 IV. 
 
 T his characteristic of British political Hfe. 
 is of the great est importance to the Social- 
 ist movement, it necessitates a special 
 phraseology and a special political method. 
 It means that in this country Socialism can^ 
 not create for itself a political party fnnnrlpfl 
 o n its d ogmas — that Socialism should see 
 th at its aim is "to become the spirit of. 
 a party which may not pr ofess the Socialist 
 creed as church lolk protess that of Athan- 
 asius, Put winch will take t he Socialist ouF 
 l ooITand use Socialist constructive ideas a s" 
 guides in practical legislation. This explains 
 why bocialisffl is traceable in every kind of 
 progressive activity, and why it is slowly and 
 
 tory of the Tory party since that time shows how 
 well Peel understood the life of British political 
 parties. 
 
164 
 
 organically changing the structure of society, 
 just as new modes of thought change the 
 whole of a man's outlook on life, or as a 
 
 , change in diet modifies the digestive organs 
 and the bodily structure. 
 
 In spite of this, and in a way because of it, 
 the life of a party is finite. A party applies 
 certain general principles in certain directions 
 and to certain conditions, and then it is 
 gradually faced by conditions very dis- 
 
 ) similar to those which originated it, and 
 which gave rise to its working principles. 
 Then, whilst it struggles valiantly to adapt 
 itself to the new conditions, it decays 
 through a period which is a transition or 
 reactionary period, just as the sabre-tooth- 
 ed tigers of South America died out when the 
 race of Armadilloes approached extinction. 
 There is some reason for regarding the 
 present time as one of these periods. Capit- 
 alism has worked itself out; atomic individ- 
 ualism has become barren; our conceptions 
 of property are being revised; all the old 
 axioms regarding the State and the individ- 
 ual are being swept away into reliquary 
 •chambers; the centre of gravity in social 
 economics is shifting from problems and 
 methods of production, to problems and 
 methods of distribution. In the political 
 arena the old champions of political freedom, 
 having fought their fight with their own 
 appropriate weapons, have now nothing to 
 
I6S 
 
 face like what they were accustomed to fight, 
 and are riding off the hsts, whilst their places 
 are being taken by a new generation, armed 
 differently and animated by new crusading 
 ideals. 
 
 Finally, a very definite and pressing need 
 has arisen for the development of moral and 
 social wealth, which can bring no dividends 
 to capital, and therefore is neglected by cap- . 
 italism. The character and quality of citizen - [ 
 ship can be n urtured and encouraged by a \ 
 policy ol legislation and administration, bu t 
 there is no private profit in i t. The clearan ce 
 ot s lum property, the maintenance of park s, 
 the es tablishment of havens nf rest for th e. 
 aged, tHe gen eral improvement of th e 
 texture ot human material by education, are 
 c ommunal questions . The deterioration of 
 the physique oi our people is of but remote 
 interest to the factory owner or the house 
 agent, and by them can be neglected, on the 
 ground that it will not materially affect 
 profits and rents — this generation at any 
 rate. Indeed, profits and rents can really 
 be made out of the very conditions which 
 hasten this deterioration. But, from the 
 standpoint of the community, every depop- 
 ulated parish, every overcrowded area, every 
 class of under-fed children, is dead loss. 
 
 To meet those problems does not always 
 i?ecessitate a new departure in policy. It very 
 
i66 
 
 often means no more than that services, 
 only part of which can pay dividends, and 
 which are divided into paying and non- 
 paying businesses, should be co-ordinated. 
 At present, the paying parts are nursed, 
 and the non-paying neglected. But from the 
 point of view of the community, both should 
 be developed. Thus, experience teaches that 
 the full social need can never be supplied by 
 self-interested capitalism. T here are certain 
 pub lic needs which, thm if yii dittprent afiH 
 separable in the eyes of private enterprise . 
 g TS~mseparaDle from the point of view ot 
 p ublic policy. Private pntprpricp fr»f in- 
 s tance, separates a housing^ from a transport 
 policy. Une interest builds houses, another— 
 constru cts trams, and the activit i*"? "f bf>tli 
 a re limited by rents and ta Wing-g But, from 
 .',, t he pomt of view of the community^ hniise s 
 and tr ams, overcrowding and tr ansport, are 
 inseparable, and a policy regarding them is 
 neither justified nor condemned by financial 
 gain or loss. It would " pay " a community 
 to run " free " trams as it now provides 
 " free " roads. Further, in considering its 
 policy of building up its structure, of gaining 
 for itself healthy life in order to supply 
 vigour to all its parts, of increasing its effi- 
 ciency as the condition of individual 
 efficiency, a community has always to con- 
 sider whether certain public needs — e.g., 
 locomotion — have become so " primary " 
 
167 
 
 as to be part of a common charge^-^.^,, 
 schools or roads — and, therefore, to be paid 
 for from rates on the principle that the 
 common needs of a community should be 
 borne by the property of the community or 
 by those who are deriving most benefit from 
 the community; or whether they are still, 
 in the main, personal luxuries and advant- 
 ages, and, therefore, to be paid for out of 
 the pockets of the user at certain rates per 
 unit of use. The history of civic progress! 
 is the h istory of how the personal become s ] 
 fKe comm on; of how, tor example, the 
 luxury ol a Path be comes the common neces- 
 sity Of a bath. Individual use becomes 
 social uSe" "1 will accept nothing which 
 " all cannot have their counterpart of on the 
 " same terms," wrote Whitman. That is not 
 the words of the visionary poet, it is the 
 message of history. 
 
 This new conception of sodal structure 
 and public policy could not be adapted to 
 the political organisations which came into 
 being to carry on the work of last century. 
 Change in Society is continuous, but new 
 generations, organically connected with the 
 old but not the old themselves, are required 
 to carry on the change. If a generation 
 spanned the space of a century and not 
 of only a third of a century, change 
 would be slower, because new organisations 
 
i68 
 
 and new conceptions of epochal change 
 would be more difficult to create, as Society 
 would not keep so young as it does. Con- 
 sequently, when in politics a new outlook 
 and objective are presented with compara- 
 tive suddenness, a new political organisation 
 is required. 
 
 Ever since 1868, when the workmen in the 
 boroughs were enfranchised, the growth of 
 a new political organ has been apparent. This 
 Reform Bill led at once to a conflict between 
 organised labour and both political parties. 
 After its lapse into a purely political grove, 
 the labour movement again developed upon 
 its own special lines. Trade Unionism 
 demanded certain alterations in the law of 
 ^feonspiracy, of master and servant, ol combi- 
 nation ; the conditions of factory labour were 
 such that no satisfactory improvement could 
 Jje made save by further Acts of Parliament ; 
 .a mass of questions in social economics 
 grouped round the ownership of land, wages, 
 unemployment, hours of labour, were 
 occupying the attention of the working 
 classes, and the politicians were not pre- 
 pared to face them. Moreover, in industri al 
 warfare e mployers ^or^ot political diflPe r- 
 e nces and joined in opposing labour 's 
 demands . Thus the necessity for a new 
 political departure was made clear 
 
 Nor were the new foi-ces being gathered 
 
169 
 
 merely to the tune of the political incompe- 
 tence of the old. Moral and intellectual ' 
 tendencies and ideas that had been moving 
 in Society for a generation and more, ' 
 mingled with the revolt which was creating 1 
 the new movement. Carlyle and Ruskin had 
 t roubled conscience and'mtellect ; the <^hrrs- 
 tian Soci alists had struggled with the prac-_ / 
 tical problem s of association and organis- 
 ation: t ne craftsmen of later Hmes, lik e 
 Morris, lai d down the only conditions under 
 which honest work could be done, and whilst 
 thunaenng against the snoamness of the 
 present system, infused a warm idealism into 
 the new movement by writing and speaking 
 of it in its artistic and craftsman aspects. 
 Even Spencer's opposition, being based uoon 
 such a palpab le failure to apply his philos- 
 ophical system to Society, ripened into 
 Socialis t truit, and Mill^s later confession"? 
 con tributed to the same jen^ Here, if any- 
 where, were the germs of a new political 
 birth, too distinct and too powerful to be 
 merely a fresh stimulus to an old and jaded 
 political organisation. 
 
 To begin with, they were perhaps but 
 vague gropings rather than clearly defined 
 visions, and their first result was a 
 flood of estimable but uncontrolled effort 
 and desire such as that which Marx 
 found in Paris in 1847. From this flood 
 arose the definite, at first tiny, but swift and 
 
170 
 
 straight running current of Socialism which 
 organised itself in 1884 through the Social 
 I Democratic Federation, and in 1893, to very 
 much better purpose, through the Independ- 
 ent Labour Party. In 1900, the Socialist 
 and Labour movements combined, and the 
 Labour Representation Committee, now the 
 Labour Party, was the result. Thus by the 
 biological process of a union between 
 ( thought and experience, the study and the 
 7' bench, the movement for a complete recon- 
 struction and the demand for an immediate 
 readjustment, a real political organism has 
 been brought into life which is capable of 
 embodying all the tendencies, gropings, ex- 
 periencesj thoughts, idealisms, which to 
 gether are urging society forward to greater 
 perfection. 
 
 If we review our present political position 
 from the standpoint of this chapter, we dis- 
 cover in it a new meaning. For twenty years, 
 before the election of 1906, when Liberali'^m 
 swept the country. Liberal politicians had 
 Been telling us that we were in the trough of 
 reaction. In one sense that was true, but the 
 idea of reaction did not include all that had 
 been happening. 
 
 The enfranchised people have disappointed 
 their backers. Interests that were supposed 
 to be doomed thirty years ago not only con- 
 
171 
 
 \inue to exist, but have gathered strength. 
 The King, the House of Lords, the military 
 caste, have not only survived democracy, 
 but have found in its weakness a new source 
 of power, and in its interests a new bulwark 
 of defence. 
 
 This is not surprising. Metamorphosis 
 exhausts the organism. The caterpillar, at 
 the end of its caterpillar days, retires, and in 
 a comatose and helpless condition passes 
 through its transition stage. Every critical 
 change in an organism is attended by a sus- 
 pension of vital energy and a seeming ebb 
 of hfe. 
 
 Such is th e condition of o ur snripty fjt tVi^ - 
 
 present time. The Liberal stage is past : the, 
 sjage of Socialism has not vet fully cnmp^ / 
 Liberalis m stood, in the political sphere, 
 ror enfranchisement, for freedom, for demo - 
 cracy. Its battles have not been won fully, 
 ITi e register ot electors is still limited ; the dcr 
 mocrac y are not enfranchised ; riot a singlp 
 woman can say dir ectly what the law should 
 01' HllUUld'hot be. And, towering above tiie 
 whule deinocralic Tabric which has been 
 erected since 1832, the. House of Lords stijl 
 raises its privileged head, the negation of 
 •pop ular sovereignty, the custodian o f narrow 
 <^ms s interests, the safeguard of everv thing 
 anti-s ocial and parasitical. 
 "But the Hame of poJitfcal democracy has 
 
172 
 
 died away. The demand for political power, 
 except perhaps in the special case of women, 
 will, for its own sake, stir up to no more 
 crusades. The finishing touches will not be 
 put upon political democracy until the exist- 
 ing constitution is proved to be a barrier to 
 social legislation. So much for the political 
 side of Liberalism. 
 
 On its religious side. Liberalism stood for 
 the liberation of spiritual organisations from 
 the binding patronage of the State and for 
 equality of all sects in the eyes of the law. 
 The latter for most practical purposes has 
 been secured, and the attempt to go back 
 upon it made by certain provisions of the 
 Education Act of 1902, blew the dying flame 
 of religious Liberalism into a blaze which 
 materially contributed to the change in 
 Liberal prospects which made itself evident 
 
 in 1906. But in th '"" flpparfinpnt nf T JhprnT 
 
 activity. SOthint^ rpmaina tn hp dnnr ntrrpt 
 to dises tablish the chur ch. In this, however, 
 ttiere is no great mterest. The Liberationist 
 argument has to be re-stated because the 
 negative conception of the state upon which 
 it once rested is no longer held. But in the re- 
 statement of the argument, t he Nonconform - 
 ist must b e willing tq _cammit himsftlf— t^ 
 ■t fet^l-iilies oi freedom of thnng^h t w^ir^ '"- 
 volve whath r frrnTi°i?MBly '•'>^^o "f\]f- "^crr^'^- - 
 isation ot tne State," and that he will not 
 
»73 
 
 do. He was tested during the debates on 
 the Education Bill of 1906 and he failed. He 
 was asked to apply his Liberationist prin- 
 ciples to the school, but he shrank from the 
 ordeal. Although he has declared against 
 the endowment by the State of the Bible in 
 the Church, he clings to the State endow- 
 ment of the Bible in the primary schools. So, 
 except under special conditions such as those 
 created by the Education Bill of 1902, the 
 religio-political principles of Liberalism have 
 ceased to inspire enthusiasm and to provide 
 a battle cry. 
 
 In the matter of national finance, the retro- 
 grade proposals of the Tariff Reform League 
 and the stupid extravagance and maladmin- 
 istration of the Tory Government between 
 1895 and 1906, raised into a temporarily 
 renewed value the classical economic doc- 
 trines of Liberalism. But these doctrines, 
 whilst making excellent fortified camps for 
 defensive purposes, are of no use to an army 
 on the march. Free Trade solves no social ' 
 pr oblems. It may make poverty less oppress-*" 
 fve, unemployment less severe, cost of living' 
 cheaper, labour combination easier, mon- 
 opolist combination more difficult, and so on. 
 But none of these advantages amounts to 
 the solution of problems. Economy is good. 
 but not so good as profitable expe n diture. ; 
 wastelniist b e stopped, but withj t he desire 
 
'74 
 
 to Stop it. mu st ""t gn an idpa that all .Stal;e 
 
 ■'e5rpenditure_is_ssfastefuL A campaign to 
 
 encourage suspicion against national expend- 
 iture is a necessary and a good thing as a 
 corrective to maladministration in our spend- 
 ing departments, but as a positive policy it 
 is futile. This has been shown already in the 
 history of Liberal finance since 1906. In spite 
 of Liberal principles of economy, expenditure 
 lias not been curtailed, the impetus towards 
 militarism could not be stopped ; the demand 
 for further expenditure such as Old Age 
 Pensions could not be denied. 
 
 From the point of view of social organise 
 tion, the function of Liberalism has been 
 mainly negative. Liberalism has cleared the 
 ground of ancient, tottering forms of prop- 
 erty. It broke the feudal relationships which 
 during the nation-making and political 
 epoch, knit the various classes in an organic 
 whole, and in its attempts to solve the pro- 
 blem of wealth production it glorified the 
 rights of the separate individual and sub- 
 divided the functions of labour down to the 
 finest possible difference; but it made little 
 attempt to co-ordinate these individual 
 rights and sub-divided functions, except in 
 so far as it was necessary for them to co- 
 operate for the production of wealth. At 
 certain points like education, factory con- 
 ditions, public health, the pressure demand- 
 
•75 
 
 "ng public interference was so great that 
 Liberalism had to find a place within itself 
 for constructive ideas, which, when matured 
 into full luxuriance in the next epoch, were 
 to mark off that epoch in opposition to that 
 of Liberalism, jut the distinctive mark o f 
 ihe Libe ral epoch was the disruption o f/ 
 KOdul organic relationships, and the emphas- - 
 isiiiy u f ULumiu iudividuaHSffl as th e con-*^ 
 iroiimg power m mdustry. re li^inn^nri pnii- 
 
 idividt 
 
 ticsriHaw, since atomic individualism, in 
 Tace of the problems which this century 
 is called upon to solve and of the know- 
 ledge which it has inherited, is seen to be 
 false and of no practical value. Liberalism is 
 compelled to apply the authority of the 
 State for constructive purposes in a haphaz- 
 ard way, and in relation to separate griev- 
 ances as they come up. The attempt is 
 doomed. It only unites in opposition all the 
 ihreatened interests, because the Liberal 
 attack seems to be specially against them, 
 and not to be the manifestation of deep 
 national impulses of growth. Here again we 
 see evidence of the close of an epoch. 
 
 Finally, as regards a generous belief in tne 
 principle of nationality — to which the history 
 of Liberalism owes some of its most inspir- 
 ing pages — where is that belief now cherish- 
 ed ? When our South African policy reached 
 the fateful point when we had to choose the 
 
176 
 
 way of peace or that of war, Liberalism was 
 split in twain, and the party which a few 
 years before boasted of its nationalist 
 sympathies has to bear a heavy share of 
 responsibility for the discreditable transac- 
 tion which removed the names of two 
 Republics — one, the best governed in the 
 world — from our maps. If this criticism 
 must be slightly modified by the splendid 
 courage shown by the Liberal Government 
 in establishing self-government in those 
 conquered colonies at the very earliest poss- 
 ible time, it nevertheless must remain as a 
 paragraph in the history of Liberalism. 
 
 In both vegetable and animal kingdoms, 
 when youth is past, the hard structures of 
 the body are hardened and thickened, the 
 saps of life flow more and more slowly and 
 suffer greater and greater impediments, 
 until at length motion ceases altogether, 
 the sap rises no more in the Spring, the 
 blood pulses no more through the veins. 
 The weakening life of the Liberal epoch 
 has been the most marked feature of politics 
 during the past quarter of a century. 
 
 Before the final silence comes and 
 shadowy memory sits where life was, the 
 forces of destruction, the armies of para- 
 sites, are already busy upon the decaying 
 organism, preying upon its strength and 
 living upon its substance. Even in human 
 
»77 
 
 affairs do we not often see this humiliating 
 spectacle of harpies pouncing upon the 
 treasures which the enfeebled being can no 
 longer defend? Do we not detect this 
 activity of the harpies of decay in our poli- 
 tical life to-day? For what else are those 
 organisations of one idea which induce 
 electors to barter their votes and turn par- 
 ties into separate fragments, which hang 
 together only so long as each has a nostrum 
 which has not hitherto been recognised by 
 Act of Parliament, and which make alliances 
 with other factions nursing other nos- 
 tiuras? So long as a party is in vigorous 
 health it keeps these sectional interests in 
 their places, and prevents the dominance of 
 faction and the menace of particularism; 
 but when it becomes feeble, these maggots 
 luxuriate and fatten, and national interests 
 pass under the custodianship of groups 
 which have bargained with each other for 
 a majority, and which live on the decaying 
 life of what was once a healthy party. 
 
 But again, as in biology, dissolution hap- 
 pens only after germination, and organisms 
 die only after they have given life to other 
 organisms, so, in Society, one epoch dies 
 after it has nurtured the epoch which is to 
 succeed it in the process of evolution. The 
 nurturing period is generally one of uncer- 
 tainty of aim. Progress then raises many 
 fears. Its goal is unfamiliar to men, and is 
 
,78 
 
 the subject of prejudice. Every vested in- 
 terest tries to combine to keep back the 
 change which it dreads. How far do the 
 characteristics of the present alleged reaction 
 correspond to what we should expect to find 
 in the condition intervening between the 
 vital activity of an epoch that has "lived it; 
 " life," and that of another which is as yet 
 an infant in the womb of Time ? 
 
 Do present political conditions fulfil such 
 an expectation? Is the reaction through 
 which we have jjone and which culminated 
 in the South African War, its mismanage- 
 ment, its waste, and its hysterics, a definite 
 back-sliding ? Or, is it the lethargy, the stup- 
 or and the unsettlement of a people passing 
 through a crisis in its development? Has 
 it been accompanied by changes in vital 
 organisation which are as yet rudimentary, 
 but promising? 
 
 VI. 
 
 In a'Ttjook recently published, written foi 
 the purpose of discussing this alleged re- 
 action,* complaint is made that the biologi- 
 cal theory of the struggle for life, misinter 
 preted and misunderstood, has afforded a 
 ne^y defence for aristocracy and for govern- 
 ment by classes, and has weakened the cori- 
 
 * Democracy and Reaction, by L. T. Hobhouse, 
 London, 1905. 
 
179 
 
 ception of democratic equality as a guide in 
 politics, economics and ethics. This, how- 
 ever, is true only to a small extent, and is 
 much less true in this country (where the 
 reaction has been more marked than any- 
 where else) than in France or Germany. 
 Discussions on the application of Darwin- 
 ism to politics have hardly rippled the sur- 
 face of politics here. Mr. Spencer's anti- 
 Socialism was never more than a wail 
 against new times and new men. His poli- 
 tical arguments have not had the least 
 weight on oui public policy. They have 
 never won the ear of a statesman as the 
 Wealth of Nations won Pitt's ear, and the 
 only attempt to make them the basis of a 
 propagandist society was initiated by a few 
 obscurantist peers and private persons. f 
 
 t Recently in connection with the anti-socialist cam- 
 paign, organisations have been started which might 
 have been expected to " go back to Spencer " for their 
 principles. But they are mere political societies with- 
 out any clear or intelligent idea either of what tliey 
 want or what they are attacking. In this CLfj^LtiuuP 
 a manifesto and appeal issued by Lord Balfour of 
 Burleigh, on behalf of one of these societies is im- 
 portant to the political student for its amazing con- 
 fusion of thought. His Lo rdship innocently appe aled 
 for a state of society m which eve ry man would own 
 wSat he would produce, an d asked people to believe 
 that this economic doctrine was contrary to Socialism.. 
 whereas it nas been t ne basis of the economic system . 
 most closely i dentilied with the SocialLst mo vftment.^ 
 cTf;^ Menger'3 Right to the Whole Produce of 
 
i8o 
 
 Spencer's general philosophy, in the hands 
 of intelligent students, has, however, con- 
 tributed to the stability of Socialist thought,, 
 mainly by his clear exposition of the facts of 
 social evolution. The Socialist literature 
 of twenty years ago abounds in Spencerian 
 arguments directed against Spencerian indi- 
 vidualism. 
 
 During the reaction, little was said about 
 science. It was, indeed, not a change in 
 public opinion so much as a manifestation of 
 the private interests which have acquired the 
 leading newspapers circulating amongst the 
 people, and obtained control of electoral 
 machinery and a legislative majority. Pri- 
 vate interests were enabled to do this owing 
 to the temporary failure of political prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The individualism of the Rights of Man, 
 as understood in the Eighteenth century — of 
 the "all men are born free and equal" type 
 — which was the foundation of Liberal poli- 
 tics, and which gave to the Liberal epoch 
 such magnificent power for destroying the 
 crumbling organisations- of feudalism and for 
 layiijg the foundations of democratic gov- 
 Tjtfni^r anH more particularly Professor Foxwell's 
 mt^Wuction to the English translation. More 
 curiously still. Mr. Balf ';'nri " ^""^ w»o^c -.ffor f^r 
 
 lowed Lord Balfour in j ^ pprnpr^atin j tTin < .r ,.in , i . iii i r 
 
 f oundation o'f early English Socialism as the aim -O f. 
 aiodern loryism." 
 
ernment, had to be supplanted by a doctrine 
 of rights more accurate as to the facts of 
 social life, before we could enter upon a 
 constructive epoch. HegeHanism in the . 
 hands of the German bureaucrats and Brit- 
 ish Imperialists, is no doubt subversive to 
 the most elementary condition of demo- 
 cracy; biological theories of evolution, in 
 the hands of the threatened aristocratic and 
 monopohst interests, are no doubt used to 
 defend inequality, class government and the 
 subjection of the many by the few. But the 
 ultimate value of ideas cannot be estimated 
 by the temporary abuse of those ideas, by 
 their partial application, by the use made of 
 them by interested classes in their own fav- 
 our. The German bureaucrat and the 
 British Imperialist are not to have the last 
 word on the application of HegeHanism and 
 Darwinism to politics, nor are the Conserv a- 
 tive3ristorrrir3r nlways to be in the ascend- 
 ant as they were during the last twenty years 
 of the nineteenth century, and when they 
 had, in consequence, an o ppor tunity of _con- 
 cealing by scien lifa£ jargSri about the sur- 
 Yival_gf_t he fittest, or philosophical jargo n 
 about the governin g classes, th e . simple 
 fact that they are looking after the mselves, 
 a nd are preying upon tJie community: ^ 
 
 Both HegeHanism and Darwinism, in some 
 of- their aspects, came into conflict with the 
 political philosophy of the Liberal epoch-; 
 
i8i 
 
 both denied the principles of atomic individ- 
 ualism ; both challenged the intellectual basis 
 of Radical Democracy. Progressive politics 
 had to be re-systematised. The old crutches 
 were broken; the old Hghts blown out_;The 
 State has become a real thing and an essentiaT 
 condition of individual liberty : the social' 
 organism had become a real existence sub- 
 ject to laws of growth modified from those 
 of natural selection by the fact that selec- 
 tive reason had become a factor in further 
 change. And that had closed a chapter. 
 
 But when this happens, reaction always 
 appears to follow. So soon as any prop is 
 shattered or any old faith supplanted, a pro- 
 cess of dissolution sets in. It is really not the 
 old organisations which carry on the new 
 life. This, for instance, happened at the 
 Reformation, when Luther had to confess: 
 'No sooner did our Gospel arise and get a 
 "hearing than there followed a frightful con- 
 " fusion. . . Every man at his free pleasure 
 "would be and do what he liked in the way 
 "of pleasure and license, so that all law, 
 "rule and order were overthrown." This 
 has happened every time that liberalising in- 
 fluences have softened the hard dogmas of 
 faith, every time that the ethical imperative 
 has been modified, that greater leisure, 
 greater knowledge and greater comfort 
 have freed men from the control of the 
 dead hand, emancipated them from custom 
 
and opened out wider and unfamiliar fields 
 for them to explore and exploit. 
 
 But further, does not a careful examina- 
 tion of the period of reaction discover 
 germinal growths which make us doubt the 
 fftallty of reaction .'' " " 
 
 ' ine political history of the past twenty 
 years has not been a record of the defeat of 
 the Liberal party and the rout of progress- 
 ive opinion. It is mainly a record of the 
 split-up of Liberalism and the disintegration 
 of the progressive movement, broken by the 
 extraordinary phenomenon of the elecUiauif 
 10 06 which was in reality a striking dem - 
 cffTst ration in favour of the status quo and an/ 
 empnatic vote of censure upon the Govern-( 
 ment. The bye-elections which followed 
 showed that the country was returning to the 
 hesitating mind of transition periods. It is of 
 the greatest importance to remember this 
 fact, if we are to arrive at an accurate concep- 
 tion of what is really going on. Like the cell 
 which is about to divide and create a new 
 organism, the Liberal party now contains 
 more than one nucleus. At the same time a 
 new manifestation of vital activity has ap- 
 peared. Socialism has at length rea ched_a 
 stag e wRen it is more thaq a riiffiisgd in- 
 fltlence, and becomes part of a definite 
 organ functioning - in pfrliti'"? Whilst for 
 the moment the reactionary elements in 
 
iS4 
 
 Society were luxuriating almost unchal- 
 lenged in the midst of "a frightful 
 "confusion," Socialism was becoming a 
 definite factor in administration and 
 legislation. Reaction in national aflfairs 
 was proceeding whilst constructive policies 
 in local government — Municipal Socialis m — 
 were becoming a menace to monopolists an d 
 i ndividualists of all kind s; imperialist will- 
 o'-the-wisps were enticing the people into 
 muddy morasses, whilst sound policies of 
 social reconstruction were lighting warning 
 beacons to blaze for a century; whilst aristo- 
 cratic notions were supplying wizard music 
 to the ears of the crowds, the people were 
 beginning to hum snatches of their own 
 tunes ; whilst the nation was applauding the 
 grandiloquent sentiments of its privileged 
 classes, it was beginning to formulate a few 
 demands of its own, to ask itself how it liked 
 the exercise, and to gather round it own ad- 
 vocates and applaud them with growing 
 emphasis and ardour. Whilst the political 
 parties of the reaction were congratulating 
 themselves that they were secure from attack, 
 the Labour Party was marshalling its forces 
 and finding recruits from every political 
 quarter. 
 
 The period of reaction has not been one of 
 simple relapse: lii local government, the 
 period has been the most fruitful of any we 
 have ever experienced. Even in legislation 
 
i8s 
 
 and in national affairs, in spite of certain out- 
 standing events, it has been far from purely 
 retrogressive, whilst, in the country, har- 
 vests of political opinion have ripened which 
 a few years ago appeared to be still rank and 
 green. The period of so-called reaction has 
 ' been, in realitv. a period of reconstruction 
 ^d reorganisati onT 
 
 At tne beginning of 1906, the tide turned. 
 A Liberal Government was placed in office 
 and behind it there sat a majority greater 
 than had ever previously supported a min- 
 istry. A Labour Party also found a corner 
 of its own in the House of Commons. The 
 private interests which had manned the 
 reaction became alarmed an d a furiou s 
 attack upon the Socialist movement wa s 
 delivered. The Government dissc^iat^rl itcplf 
 from the defenders, and in some places its 
 o rganisation joined heartily in the attack . 
 Its official spe akers lai d down their principles 
 l est there shouia be any mistake about the m. 
 Tliese principles were: "Individual prop - 
 "erty, individual enterpris e, individual initiat- 
 " "ive" — w ords apparently precise in signitic- 
 ance, but absolutely meaningless when 
 applied to the social conditions requiring 
 remedy. Even when the avowed Opposition 
 laid down the economic giouuJs Up Uil Wlifeh 
 It wa s to oppose tlie new movglUtiUX. ' ft 
 piea ged itself to establish a state und er 
 which a man would own what he earnefj * 
 •Mr. uailour at Wirmmglnam^°i4lET^oveml)'er, igty, 
 
i86 
 
 When the Government drafted its legisla- 
 tion, and when the opposition criticised it, 
 no one thought of "individual property, indi- 
 "vidual enterprise, and individual initiative," 
 but of collective property, collective enter- 
 prise and collective initiative. So imperative 
 in practice had the new organisation become, 
 that the phrases of reaction were used mere- 
 ly for platform purposes when the fears of 
 the people had to be appeased, but the id«as 
 of the new progressivism guided all legisla- 
 tion aimed at the solution of the pressing 
 questions of the day. 
 
 We have witnessed during the last quarter' 
 of the nineteenth century the transition from 
 democracy clamouring for political recogni- 
 tion to democracy experimenting how best 
 it can use its political power. Questions of 
 political sovereignty have receded into 
 history with those of kingly divine rights. 
 From the parish to the nation, democratic 
 forms have been conceded, and from the 
 parish to the nation, democracy is now 
 -busy assuming authority, discussing what is 
 its legitimate sphere of action, moving 
 tentatively out in this and that direction, 
 making incursions upon fields hitherto held 
 to be sacred to individual enterprise, under- 
 taking responsibilities which, it has hitherto 
 been assumed generally, the public in their 
 corporate and political capacity could not 
 and ought not to assume. 
 
We are still living too near to this change 
 to see how thorough it is; the change itself 
 is too little understood, its features are yet 
 too much the haphazard concerns which 
 meet us with the dawn and pass from our 
 thoughts with the night, its inward meaning 
 is too imperfectly seen, it is too split up into 
 apparently disconnected fragments, for us 
 to grasp the tremendous significance of the 
 transition which is going on to-day from de- 
 mocracy in form to democracy in reality. 
 The Franchise Acts of 1868 and 1884 closed, 
 not merely a chapter, but an epoch in politi- 
 cal evolution. 
 
 One special reason why we cannot see the 
 magnitude of this change is that parties 
 maintain their old names and appeal to their 
 traditions. But that both Conservative and 
 Liberal parties have been revolutionised in 
 twenty-five years must be apparent to every- 
 one who has withdrawn himself from the 
 stream of political event and mapped its 
 course through a generation. Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer's polemical statement of the change 
 in his The Man versus the Slate may be un- 
 founded in its conclusions and mistaken in 
 its inferences, but it is true in its facts. 
 "Most of those who now pass as Liberals 
 "are Tories of a new type";* "it seems need- 
 "ful to remind everybody what Liberalism 
 "was in the past, that they may perceive its 
 * op. cil. p. I. 
 
i88 
 
 "unlikeness to the so-called Liberalism of the 
 "present ^ . . How are we to explain this 
 "spreading confusion of thought which has- 
 "led it [Liberalism], in pursuit of what 
 "appears to be public good, to invert the 
 "method by which in earlier days it achieved 
 "public good?"* An d Mr. Spenc er sees an 
 inversion of method not only in the Liberal 
 party. "If the present drift of things con- 
 "tinues, it may by-and-bye really happen, that 
 "the Tories will be defenders of liberties 
 "which the Liberals, in pursuit of what they 
 "think popular welfare, trample under 
 "foot."t The facts which have induced Mr.. 
 Spencer to come to these conclusions are in- 
 disputable. He interprets them in the spirit 
 of the controversialist. He throws upon them 
 the misleading light of that rich fund of illus- 
 tration which is his peculiar method. He 
 perhaps fails to notice adequately that the 
 change of the Tory party is quite as signi- 
 ficant as that of the Liberal party, and_lie 
 certain ly falls into the profound error of 
 assummg tnat any one principle of .social 
 policy will remain for ever the g^lif^f "f pro- 
 gressive change. But the fact remains that. 
 Whether to its praise or blame, the progress- 
 ive idea of the century has in these latter 
 years borne fruit in ideals and purposes 
 which seem to be in antagonism to their 
 parentage. 
 
 * P- 4-S- t p. 17. 
 
It is, therefore, no surface change which 
 has taken place if present tendencies are to 
 continue, and give birth to a new epoch oif 
 legislation. Our complete conception qt 
 democracy, its form, its functions, the nature 
 of its government, its method of expressing 
 itself, the interpretation which it is to put 
 upon the old watchwords of liberty and pro- 
 gress, its relation to its pioneering heralds, 
 is being revolutionised by the very short 
 practical experience which we have had of 
 its aspirations now that it has been estab- 
 lished as sovereign power. The irresistible 
 movement of events has transported us 
 from thoughts of democratic form to 
 thoughts of democratic function. 
 
 VII. 
 
 These conclusions have an important bear- 
 ing upon the relation between the old part- 
 ies and the new. One sometimes hears of 
 "the profound gulf" fixed between Liberal- 
 ism and Socialism, and of the Liberal party 
 being crushed out. That is the thought of 
 the logician who sees things in the abstract, 
 and not of the biologist who is accustomed 
 to deal with life. The fact is, there are no 
 gulfs in the course of organic evolution, and 
 nothing in the main path of that evolution 
 has been crushed out. Lower forms merge 
 into higher forms, one species into another. 
 
the vegetable into the animal kingdom; in 
 human history, one epoch slides into another. 
 Each new stage in evolution retains all that 
 was vital in the old and sheds all that was 
 dead. Even when we see revolution and 
 sudden change in thought or habits of 
 peoples and individuals, we only behold the 
 result of many hidden influences become 
 visible! Socialism, the stage which follows 
 Liberalism, retains everything that was of 
 permanent value in Liberalism, by virtue of 
 its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism.* 
 ■Thus we have seen in recent times that when 
 two vital principles of Liberalism were 
 assailed — the existence of nationalities and 
 the policy of free exchange between nations 
 — Socialism rallied to their defence even 
 when enfeebled Liberalism could not 
 always command enough vital force to do 
 so itself. The democratic work of Liberal- 
 ism is the basis of the Socialist State; the 
 ^ individualist morality of Evangelicism is th e 
 basis of the social moralitv of Socialism ; 
 the organisation of production of Capitalism 
 is the basis of Socialist economics and 
 organisation of distribution. 
 
 Hence it is that the politicians' attempt to 
 preach Social Reform as an alternative to 
 
 • It is worth while noting that this is also true of 
 modem Toryism. The Toryism of the end of the 
 X.iberal epoch is a new creation owing to the achieve- 
 ' ment of that epoch. C.f . p. 140 f.n. 
 
igi 
 
 Socialism is false. Social Reform is the 
 change which takes place in social relatiop- 
 •ships, economic and industrial, as they adjust 
 themselves in the new social organisation. 
 Socialism comes by a growth upwards not by 
 a sinking backward. Social Reform is the 
 path to Socialism ; the process of cha;ige 
 through which the ugly caterpillar becomes 
 the magnificent butterfly. 
 
 Hence also, the creation of a political 
 party that is not Socialist but only Socialistic 
 — like our Labour Party — is not a thing for 
 which Socialists need apologise to them- 
 selves, or regard as an unhappy expedient 
 imposed upon them by force of circum- 
 stances. If Socialism is to come by a series 
 of Social Reforms, as pounds accumulate by 
 the collection of pence, each one contribut- 
 ing to the evolution of Society as a whole, 
 it is as essential that Socialism should dev- 
 ise a means of expressing itself politically as 
 that it should carry on the propaganda of 
 its economic and industrial ideas. The differ- 
 ence between industrial and political Social- 
 ism is that, whilst the former on the whole 
 is a creed, the latter is on the whole a 
 method and is in a constant state of expan- 
 sion and progress. Those Sociahsts who weep 
 because the Labour Party is not Socialist, 
 or who regard it as an ugly duckling forced 
 upon them, have not yet applied their minds 
 to the hard problem of political method — to 
 
192 
 
 the hard problem of how Socialism is to 
 be brought about. They have fallen into 
 the same error as those politicians who' 
 think that Social Reform is an alternative 
 to Socialism. The work of the Labour Party 
 is to bring Socialism — if Socialists are right; 
 it is to make Socialism impossible — if they are 
 wiong. I for one am willing to test my faith 
 by the acids of experience . 
 
 G/adual transition with periods of rapid 
 change, is peculiarly the characteristic of 
 British conditions, where parties do not hold 
 to principles as dogmas, but are prepared 
 (within Hmits of course) to be guided by 
 experience. Hence it is that during its 
 growth a new political organisation in 
 this country appeals not to one but to 
 both the preceding political parties for 
 recruits, and embodies principles from 
 both, which it unifies by reason of its 
 more commanding and comprehensive 
 point of view. It is very nearly true that 
 new wine can be poured into old bottles. 
 The new biological offspring has much in 
 common with its decaying parents — even 
 when it is starting upon a totally new line 
 of development. 
 
 The characteristics of the apparent re- 
 action ot our time are as follows : 
 
 T he decline of vigour in theold progress- 
 ive partv and the activitv within it ot narrow- 
 visioned and one idea groups: 
 
193 
 
 The formation outside it of a nucleus of a 
 new political party, building itself upon fun- 
 damental political theories which are the 
 result of the pressure and character of 
 current problems, and which differ from the 
 fundamental principles of the old parties; 
 and, consequently, the beginning of a series 
 of experiments upon new lines : 
 
 TViP plmr.Qt iin<'ongqr.^|c chaUgC in t^ 
 
 prm ciples which underlie administrati on and 
 le j^islation , m the direction of the principles 
 Upon which the new party rests,* which 
 cannot be altogether obscured by the reac- 
 tionary doing of a Conservative party in 
 power during the transition : 
 
 The steady ffrowth of what may be called 
 an unassimilated mass of political support. 
 tne result of social instinct rather than of 
 individual reason, and also the result of a 
 law of intellectual gravitation by which a 
 small body made weighty because it knows 
 its own mind, draws mass to it: 
 
 If in the meantime the reaction has been 
 extreme — as has happened in our own time 
 — the more healthy sections of the old party 
 co-operate with the new party, and so by a 
 process which is not altogether assimilation, 
 
 * The explanation of this i s, that fruitfu l political 
 ideas cannot precede very long in time vital social 
 movements ; that tnese movements begin to transform 
 societ y even when it is busy compatting and rejecting 
 their theoretical and absolute expression. 
 
194 
 
 but very much like one of sexual reproduc- 
 tion, the new political organism which is to 
 carry on the life of the epoch is at last 
 formed. 
 
 This party flourishes until in due time its 
 vitalising idea is enfeebled by success, and 
 it becomes pregnant with a new political life 
 to which it gives birth and then passes away. 
 
 This is the normal process. Repression, 
 force, revolution, catastrophe modify it, but 
 this is the order of birth, virility and decay 
 which has hitherto been the life story of all 
 political parties. 
 
 The Socialist party ^vill be no exception to 
 the rule. Away beyoiid into the eternal 
 future we cannot go. The only thing we are 
 certain about is that Socia'jsm itself will 
 create problems hardly dreamt of as yet, and 
 that in its bosom will generate a new social 
 life which can be brought to birth only 
 through the gateway of death and dissolu- 
 tion. But sufficient for the day is the good 
 thereof. 
 
 \ To solve the problem of poverty by co- 
 
 lordinating the various functions of society; 
 
 rto quicken the social instinct by making the 
 
 :ommunity play a greater part in individual 
 
 ife; to discover to men, wearied after a 
 
 ruitless search for liberty, that the paradise 
 
 ■ hey sought is to be found in faithful service 
 
195 
 
 to their group and ultimately to humanity; 
 to bring law and ethics into vital relationship 
 with life; to create from the anarchy and 
 injustice of the present day, order and fair- 
 ness; to make the State a hive of busy 
 workers enjoying their rights only by virtue 
 of their services; and to use as the power 
 of action from which these changes are to 
 come the conception that the State is the 
 complement of the individual and legislation 
 a form of individual will — that is to be the 
 task and the method of the Socialist Epoch. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 Our experience has shown that the owner- 
 ship and use of monopolies essential to the 
 production of wealth, like land, and of the 
 capital required under the factory and asso- 
 ciated labour system, determine the method 
 of distribution, and the extent to which the 
 individual members of a community share in 
 its wealth and prosperity. 
 
 So long as land is privately owned it can 
 exact unjust tolls from public and private 
 enterprise, and its owner can dip his hands 
 into stores of wealth created, commonly in 
 spite of his opposition, and nearly always 
 without his help. 
 
 This is no place to discuss in detail thv. 
 merits of the rival schools of Land National- 
 isation and the Single Tax in any of its 
 forms. Suffice it to say that not only is the 
 Single Tax wrong in its economic theory, 
 and inaccurate in its description of itself, 
 but it would fail to solve the problem of the 
 private ownership of land. The Socialist 
 must support the nationalisation of the lan cT 
 ithielt and not merely the nationalisation of 
 aportion ot renE 
 — 196 
 
197 
 
 But ^when the land has been natio nalised, 
 t he private ownership of industriaTcapital 
 • ^Will still present the problems which arise 
 ■ whtn t ue supply of public needs is left to 
 the ca"re of private intere sts. The nationalisa- 
 tion ot the land will 'not solve industrial 
 problems. Unemployment alternating with 
 overtime, riches with poverty, the trading 
 in luxuries and the pandering to vices and 
 •weaknesses which private interest encourages 
 without a thought of the wider consequences, 
 because it is concerned only with the more 
 immediate making of profit upon any trans- 
 action, all point to the same conclusion — 
 the control and co-ordination of industrial 
 capital by the community. 
 
 If one could rely upon moral checks on 
 individual conduct, or if it were sufficient to 
 set bounds to anti-social action by legislative 
 •enactment, a mingling of public law and 
 private character might be a sufficient safe- 
 guard for the public, and thus the problem 
 of the use of industrial capital might be 
 solved on lines individualistic in the main. 
 No doubt, this solution would preserve to 
 us some of the advantages of the individual- 
 ist regime which, were it possible, we might 
 well take pains to preserve. But when we 
 survey the tendency of the times, the rise of 
 the financier in succession to the legitimate 
 Ijusiness man, the soulless character of most 
 of our industrial organisations, the strangi- 
 
igS 
 
 ing pressure which trading interests place 
 upon moral impulse, we must give up in 
 despair any hope that in this way can the 
 problem be solved. Public ownership must 
 be resorted to. Industry must be organised 
 like a fleet or an education system. 
 
 No doubt within the limits of the existing 
 social organisation, much could be done to 
 aid a more equitable and economic distribu- 
 tion of wealth. The incidence of taxation 
 could be readjusted so that incomes which 
 represent services rendered might be 
 relieved, whilst those representing rents and 
 monopoly profits might be more heavily 
 burdened. Following the idea that what 
 appears to be over-production is in reality 
 under-consUmption,* caused by a method of 
 distribution which necessitates a wasteful and 
 harmful accumulation of wealth at one end 
 and so acts as a bar to the steady and un- 
 interrupted flow of wealth through Society, 
 we may go some length yet under our present 
 system in the direction of increasing the con- 
 suming efficiency of the public and thus 
 maintaining a steady demand for labour. But 
 * Writing of this, one must acknowledge the splen- 
 did services which Mr. J. A. Hobson has done, both 
 to the science of economics and the art of government, 
 in' working out and applying his theory of under- 
 consumption, which was the basis of the Physiology 
 of Industry, written by him and Mr. Mummery in 
 1889, and amplified by him in subsequent books. 
 
igg 
 
 the key to the position is production, and so 
 l ong as production is in the hands of com - 
 peting private individuals, demand and 
 supply can never be kept in touch jyith each 
 o ther except by periodic industrial crises" 
 when some ot the accumulation is scattered. 
 For the iacts are these. Lvery producer 
 to-day acts as though he meant to capture 
 the whole market for himself, and so long as 
 there is an effective demand to satisfy, he 
 produces to the utmost capacity of his pro- 
 ducing machinery. In times of confidence 
 he is ever confident. He does not think of 
 the many streams of produce flowing in to 
 take the place of the materials drawn off by 
 the consumer — in fact under the present 
 system of competitive industry, he would be 
 foolish if he did think of them; he only 
 thinks of how the stream issuing from his 
 own works may be as great in volume as 
 possible. He very properly makes hay while 
 the sun shines. Then, his people are work- 
 ing overtime; they are making unusually 
 high wages, and as they are living in a rush 
 and are over-exhausted, they spend a high 
 percentage of th^ir income uneconomically. 
 The inevitable glut takes place. In two 
 years t he unregulated powers of production 
 CSfi pro duce enough to satisfy at least three^ 
 years o t consumption. 
 — Hence it is evident that however desirable 
 it may be to increase the powers of consump- 
 
tion enjoyed by the wage-earning classes, 
 that of itself will not obviate industrial 
 crises, because it will only be a further in- 
 centive to the individual producer to produce 
 a greater proportion of the markets' de- 
 mands. A rising demand is a sour uoo n 
 supply. It is also obvious that abstention. 
 thri ft and temperance on tlje p prt nf fhp 
 wage earners will not avoid unemployment 
 periods (alt hough such conduct might rob 
 fhem ot some of their worst experiences), 
 b ecause these periods are not caused by the 
 faults ot consumM:sI They are one of the 
 products of our machinery of production. 
 There can be no steadiness of industry so 
 long as there is anarchy in production. The 
 flow of production must be regulated at its 
 source. The instruments of production must 
 be socialised before unemployment is ob- 
 viated and the problem of distribution 
 solved. 
 
 This is supposed to be tantamount to say- 
 ing that there must be no further improve- 
 ments in machinery, no further advances 
 in industrial organisation, no more saving 
 of effort. But that is a mistake. Under 
 Socialism, a portion of the national produc -^ 
 tton will be earmarKed tor exneriments. and 
 there will be more room for, and encourage- 
 " ment given to inventive initiative and experi*- 
 miaating with new processes than under the^ 
 
present system which, by entrusting produc- 
 er! to competing individuals, by encourag - 
 i ng the growth of monopolies, and by 
 st unting human capacity, is, in spite of its 
 boasts to the cont rary, pre-emin ently un- 
 fit ted to develop to tne utmost either the 
 human or the mechanical elements in pro- 
 duiiliUll. 'Ihe Kconomic epoch cannot com- 
 plete Itself. ~ 
 
 So far from being a static state. Socialism, 
 by raising each worker into the position of 
 co-partnership with all other workers, and 
 by proportioning reward to approved 
 honest effort, will call for such an applica- 
 tion of science to industry as the world has 
 not yet seen. It will provide a constant in- 
 centive to improve the means of production 
 because such improvement will not be a 
 menace to labour, but a direct and certain 
 cause of more leisure and comfort to it. 
 Under Socialism, one may rest assured, 
 national production will not only be charged 
 with the expenses of the political state, but 
 with tte wear and tear of the industrial state 
 — i.e., old-age pensions, improvements in 
 machinery, scientific experiments. 
 
 I have been aware whilst writing of the 
 problem ,of distribution, that our economists 
 endeavour to deny altogether its existence 
 in the character in which I have been con- 
 sidering it. Professor Marshall tells us that 
 
"capital in general and labour in general" 
 are rewarded "in the measure of their re- 
 "spective (marginal) efficiencies,"* a some- 
 what vague statement which leaves the 
 reader to answer for himself the question 
 which immediately occurs: "Efficiencies in 
 "what?" But the most detailed examination 
 of the subject that has been made by an 
 orthodox economist in recent years is that 
 by Prnj^^ggn^- c^-^* -j- His couclusiou is 
 that there is enough "rough justice" in the 
 present system to enable him to call " it 
 "Distribution according to service." The. 
 
 'public J^ according to him, by making^ 
 demands and by patronising or neglecting* 
 to patronise, rewards with wealth or doom's" 
 with failure. This, however, is not the case. 
 The machinery of production, of financing, 
 
 ^of buying and selling is not run by the 
 public, but by interested parties. The public 
 have not placed South African mine 
 magnates in Park Lane, and English work- 
 men in two or three-roomed houses in du ll- 
 sunless streets . The public did not cause - 
 th e American financial panic, the bitter triiits 
 of which have not been fully plucked as v^U t 
 The conditions under which property is hdd, 
 and under which the function of production 
 is carried on, the relation between the 
 
 * Principles of Economics, London, 1898, p. 617. 
 + The Distribution of Income, London, 1899. 
 % Summer of 1908. "■ 
 
303 
 
 ■^?Sket and the factory on the one hand and 
 th€'home and the factory on the other— in 
 short the whole productive mechanism — 
 determine the proportion of national income 
 assigned to each of the classes in the com- 
 rtiunity.* 
 
 The conclusion to which we are driven is 
 that those economists in whose hands econo- 
 mics is simply a descriptive and not a 
 critical science, are compelled to accept the 
 present state of distribution as something 
 which has to be defended with a mild amount 
 ■of enthusiasm. The Socialist who regards 
 €ponomics as a branch of Sociological 
 science and who illuminates it by discrimina- 
 ting appreciation or depreciation of the 
 social conditions which exist at present, is 
 not content with those descriptive exercises 
 and those ingenious apologies for what is. 
 The scfience of economics and the art of 
 government should go hand in hand. In that 
 respect the Socialist goes back to Adam 
 Smith. He is not content with Professor 
 Marshall's " efficiencies," which, if the word 
 means anything at all, only begs the question 
 in dispute, or with Professor Smart's mis- 
 leading "given private property." He does 
 
 * It is true that Professor Smart lays down as a 
 
 condition to his conclusion stated above, " given 
 
 private property." But it is not "p rivate" property 
 
 Tnjliich is the important thing at all, but the present 
 
 . 4irgauisation, scope and useol private property. 
 
.204 
 
 not think that existing distribution is just, 
 he regards the c haracter of the productive 
 mec ha nism as the determinant of how dts- 
 tributio n is to be made: and from 
 fliatstandpoint he sees the inadequacy of all 
 personal and individualist theories account- 
 ing for mal-distribution, such as drunken- 
 ness and improvidence, and he labours, in 
 consequence, for a readjustment of the parts- 
 of the mechanism. 
 
 At the same time he takes no mechanical 
 view of the problem. He knows that an 
 absolutely accurate distribution according to 
 merit is quite impossible. The problem is 
 biological, and is therefore incapable of 
 a nice mathematical solution down to moral 
 decimal points. Nor indeed is this necessary. 
 We do not object to the present system 
 becaus e it fails to discriminate betwee n 
 dese rts measured by £ioo and those 
 measured by £ioo and sixpence. W e obje ct 
 to ^it because it dooms whole ctasses to in- 
 adequa te tood, inad equate mental equip- 
 ment , inadequate oppoftunities to becotne" 
 hu man~Beings ; and all that Socialism and a 
 Socfalist system of distribution car Hgim f-o~ 
 do IS to destroy social parasites, and secure- 
 ^tfaar eve ryone that gives service to Sncipfy" 
 ' "receive from Society an ample measure 
 opportunities to live and enjoy living. 
 
 ire "been made trorii time to- 
 
205 
 
 time to lay down limits to the socialising 
 process, and settle by a priori logical 
 methods that certain trades are in their 
 nature individualistic, and, therefore, incap- 
 able of being included within the scope of 
 Socialist reconstruction. 
 
 That may or may not be so. We are not 
 in a position at the present time to hold any 
 very definite opinion on the subject. The 
 character of these trades — i.e., the artistic 
 group — will not remain as it is at present, 
 after Society has taken upon itself a different 
 organic form. It may be that their necessi- 
 ties will be the soil from which is to spring 
 the new growth of social idea which will 
 characterise the epoch after Socialism. But, 
 whether the one or the other happens, 
 matters little to us at present. 
 
 The function of the Socialist theory is to 
 guide. The seaman, in his voyages across 
 the seas, steers by certain marks, and at 
 certain points alters his course and follows 
 new marks wben the old can lead him no 
 further. S o with Socialism . Its method i s 
 tiot the architectural and dogmatic one gf 
 building straight away from bottom to top, 
 but the organic and experimental one o i 
 relieving iimmediate and pre R-iinc diffir")^'"' 
 on a certain plan, an d in accordance with a 
 ce rtain s cheme of o rganisat ion. ■ 
 
 We have, therefore, begun with municipal 
 
206 
 
 administration, and have proceeded from 
 tvater to trams and from light to milk, the 
 necessity for the latter developments being 
 suggested partly by the principle which un- 
 derlay the first experiments, and partly be- 
 cause as a matter of experience certain 
 definite grievances met us as we went on. 
 
 From administration to legislation is a 
 natural and necessary step. As pressing 
 matters like housing and trams were ready 
 for treatment, and as practical plans had 
 already been prepared for their settlement, 
 they were first of all dealt with. As in Muni- 
 cipal Socialism, so in National Socialism, the 
 harvest which is ripe and most easily reaped 
 will be gathered first, and the experience 
 gained in reaping it will be used when later 
 harvests have to be brought in. Thus, we 
 shall be^in the process of natmnalisintr 
 cap ital by takingjjver services like the ra il- 
 ways, or Dy securing for the whole com- 
 m unity such values as mining roya lties; 
 of we shall begin the process of in- 
 dustrial reconstruction by agrarian policies 
 which will bring the towns into con- 
 tart with the country, re-populate deserted 
 villages, and re-till the wasted fields. 
 As the problem of the unemployable and the 
 unemployed is most pressing, and as it is the 
 direct result of some of the most glaring 
 follies and imperfections of our present 
 system, it will afford the first opportunities 
 
307 
 
 of establishing Socialism on a large scale. 
 This will open out the way for us, and 
 further steps will come naturally. Solvitur. 
 ambulando, not sic volo — laboratory experi- 
 ment, not revolution — is the method of 
 Socialism emerged from its Utopian and 
 pseudo-scientific stages. 
 
 It has been said that this method will post- 
 pone the Socialist millennium till doomsday. 
 But the reply is obvious. Social resistance 
 to change is much more quicklv and surelv 
 overcome by these methods of organic modi- 
 lication than by atiy Utopian f evolutionary 
 atlt iiiipis. = "" 
 
 Another point of some importance in 
 Socialist controversy must be dealt with. 
 Torrents of printed matter have been 
 issued from the press, discussing how 
 property is to be held under Socialism 
 — and all to no purpose, j'he Socialist creed 
 is that property can be legitimately held only 
 as the reward of services, it condemns the 
 ^viotinpr statp nf things, becaus e those whjp 
 do no service own most property.* Social- 
 ■ » Cf. " How small a part of all the labour per- 
 foimed in England, from the lowest paid to the 
 highest, is done by persons working for their own 
 "benefit. Under the pressnt system of industry this 
 incitement [property in labour's produce] does not 
 exist in the great majority of cases." Mill, Political 
 Economy, bk. 11., chap. i. Compare this with Mr, 
 
2Q8 
 
 3. defence of propert y 
 "against the existing orde r. Ss, however, it 
 ' regards the hving tactor in production — man 
 — as being of more consequence than the 
 dead factors — land and capital, — it seeks to 
 set limits upon the employment of property 
 for the purpose of keeping men in economic 
 subjection, and it proposes to organise 
 Society in such a way aS to render it neces- 
 sary that the services upon which property 
 is held are continuous, and not as to-day,, 
 stored up, so that a Marlb nfnii|yh^ whrt- 
 fought a few battl es and had a w|fe whp 
 •<!6u ld manage her sovereign two centuries 
 a go, could tound a tamily and P"*^ it in a~ 
 positio n to consume other people's wealth 
 f or ever and pvpr" To secure this aim. 
 Socialism need not refuse to recognise the 
 right of inheritance. Its business is not to 
 prevent accumulation, or prohibit its trans- 
 ference, but to provide that such accumu- 
 lation is not made at the public expense, and 
 is not employed to keep the public in subjec- 
 tion for all generations. 
 
 But* on the other hand, the Socialist con- 
 tends that the community, as well as the in- 
 dividual, creates value which it should hold 
 as property and devote to common interests. 
 
 ^alfour's imaginative economics propounded at 
 Birmingham (15th November, . 1907) *' Individual 
 energy can only be called forth by a system ba^eff 
 upon the fact that what a man earns he owns." 
 
<t 
 
 209 
 
 Every valid argument which establishes the 
 right ot individuals to own and use property^" 
 is jequally applicable to a defence o^ the i 
 •community's ri^ht to own and use property . ) 
 Social income, in the shape ojf taxes and' 
 rates, is not private income appropriated. 
 It is public wealth devoted to public uses. 
 If our taxation were imposed so that values 
 created by the public were placed in 
 the public exchequers, the effect would be 
 to deprive parasitic classes of their nour- 
 ishment, ease industrious classes of their 
 burdens, and provide nourishment for the 
 useful organs of the community. Here there 
 opens out another broad avenue leading to 
 the Socialist state. 
 
 I do not know if it is really necessary to 
 consider the objection taken by some poli- 
 ticians to Socialism on the ground that when 
 the means of production are socialised there 
 can be no private property, so manifestly 
 absurd is the contention. The social owner- 
 shi p of industrial capital is essential tp the 
 ^joyment of private property, in thp fruTts 
 ot one's labour . Collective and privatel 
 property are not mutually destructive but^ 
 mutually helpful. If the argument were : 
 advanced with any serious force, one might 
 drive the reply further, and say tha t if collecr 
 tive property is so fatal to enterprise and 
 in dusitrv. it has precisely the same economic 
 and industrial features as Joint Stock and 
 
Limited T.iahility prop erty. The holders of 
 slock in a tram company are little more 
 directly concerned in its success, and miuch 
 ■/less able to influence its working, than are 
 the ratepayer owners of a municipal service. 
 
 Similarly, we have had acute discussion 
 which has been worse than useless, upon 
 labour notes, coins, and other forms of 
 Socialist currency and standards of value. 
 At the present moment all that the Socialist 
 need do is to lay down ana defend as a 
 general, principle that reward for work 
 should be certain and sufficient, and that full 
 opportunity should be given to each adult 
 to work at some remunerative employment. 
 Whether our successors are to calculate in 
 labour notes or in pounds sterling, and 
 whether they are to establish an equality of 
 reward for all services (a thing not at all 
 essential to Socialism, though not at all un- 
 desirable from some points of view), our 
 successors will have to decide when the 
 application of Socialist principles has gone 
 so far as to make the matter a practical one. 
 Some things will have happened in the in- 
 terval, we may depend upon it, which will 
 have a very important bearing on the ques- 
 tion. Again, not Sic volo, but Solvitur 
 ambulando ! 
 
 A misunderstanding regarding the Social- 
 
211 
 
 ist attitude to labour-saving machinery is 
 equally widespread. At present, as I have 
 explained, such machinery is used by a clas^^ 
 in the interests of that class primarily. The 
 convenience of the machine is the first con- 
 sideration in the industrial organ isation. If it 
 does skilled work the skilleg~w6rknian is/ 
 di splaced, it it does heavy work the strong \ 
 workman is displaced, it it splits up compli- 1 
 cated work into simple a nd automatic pro-/ 
 " cesses women and children take the places n | 
 men<__Without any attempt being made tc 
 protect human interests, to conserve social 
 experience, to guard spiritual growths like 
 the family, we permit Society to be moulded 
 by the operations of machinery. To-day we 
 have in many towns — of which those en- 
 gaged in the boot and shoe and hosiery 
 trades may be taken as examples — a move- 
 ment going on which will end in the trans- 
 formation of women and girls into the bread- 
 winners of the family, and of men and boys 
 into casual labourers or habitual loafers. 
 When this tendency is pointed out to well- 
 meaning people they admit its potency, but 
 shrug their shoulders in helpless despair. 
 What can be done ? The men must go. The 
 machine, like the young cuckoo, must 
 wriggle the other fledglings out of the nest 
 to make room for itself. It is sad but in- 
 evitable ! 
 The Socialist objects to this. He is deter- 
 
mined to make the machine a social instru- 
 nrient, to make it serve society and not 
 control Society. He is therefore not against 
 miechanical invention. He is no Luddite. 
 His idea is that such aids to labou r <;|]nnM 
 ge controlled in the common interest. 
 Moral considerations should in the main 
 determine the form of social organisation, 
 and the non-social use of economic forces 
 should be put an end to before they destroy 
 the moral growths which Society at present 
 possesses. The Socialist welcomes every new 
 ma chine, but demands that it be used as part 
 ot a moral organisation, and not put into 
 operation under the control of sectional 
 economic mterests. Mar.h inpry must gmplifjT 
 
 l ite, not profits : * itmust therefore be subject 
 to social control, and not class control. 
 
 Within the scope of this communal organ- 
 isation of industrv there wi U ^p nfpi^ fnr 
 sftialler groups, such as trade unions . 
 c HurcHes, familie s" Indeed, the larger 
 organisation will greatly depend upon the 
 smaller groups for its vitality. As the com- 
 munal organisation becomes more efficient, 
 
 * The argument that the community benefits by the 
 cheap products of machineiy is good up to a point. 
 The cheapness of sweating, the cheapness which 
 \ destroys craftsmanship, the cheapness which means 
 Vunemployment, is the cheapness of deterioration. 
 bocialism also m^ans cheapness, but cheapness co n- 
 listent with social wellbeing. 
 
213 
 
 the individual will respond with more intel- 
 ligence and more character, and as the in- 
 dividual thus responds, these smaller groups 
 will become more important. Trade union- 
 ism keeping the communal industrial 
 organisation in the closest touch with the 
 needs of the workers; a church attending 
 with enthusiastic care to the life, and not 
 merely to the dogma, of Christianity; a 
 family organisation built upon a sound econ- 
 omic basis and serving, in as pure a form 
 as humanity will allow, the spiritual needs 
 of men and safeguarding at the same time 
 the rights of the community, would be 
 precious organs in the body communal. 
 
 One of the assumptions which bear up the 
 fabric of Socialist thought and expectation 
 is, that as Society approaches in its organisa- 
 tion to the Socialist condition, the individual 
 will respond to the moral responsibilities 
 which that condition will lay upon him. The 
 individual is in tune with his Society, and for 
 that reason Socialism can purify the gross, 
 blundering, vulgar thing to-day called indi- 
 vidualism into an impulse which will seek to 
 express itself and find its liberty in social con- 1 
 duct through service to the community. ( 
 
 Hence it is that the key idea to the under- 
 standing of Socialism is not a wiping out but 
 a transformation, not a re-creation but a ful- 
 filment. The impulses and appetites of the 
 
814 
 
 old are to be carried on into the new, but they 
 are to run in different channels and demand 
 different nourishment. 
 
 At the threshold of Socialist speculation 
 stands as sentinel the Law of Continuity, 
 and as guides the Laws of Variation. 
 
 Printed by Wadsworth S* C»., Rydal Ptess, Keighley 
 
THE 
 
 SOCIALIST LIBRARY. 
 
 PROSPECTUS. 
 
 FOR some time it has been felt that there is 
 a deplorable lack in this country of a Social- 
 ist literature more exhaustive and systematic 
 than pamphlets or newspaper articles. In 
 every other country where the Socialist 
 movement is vigorous, such a literature ex- 
 ists, and owing to it Socialism has taken a 
 firmer hold upon the intellectual classes, and, 
 amongst Socialists themselves, its theories 
 and aims are better understood than they are 
 here. 
 
 Comparing the output of Socialist liter- 
 ature in Germany and France with Great 
 Britain, one must be struck with the ephem- 
 eral nature of the great bulk of the matter 
 which we publish, and the almost complete 
 absence of any attempts to deal exhaustively 
 with Socialism in its many bearings in econ- 
 omics, history, sociology and ethics. This 
 failure is all the more to be regretted, be- 
 cause just as the special development of 
 British industrialism afforded the basis for 
 much of the constructive work of foreign 
 
Socialists half a century ago, so the growth 
 of British democratic institutions and the 
 characteristics of British political methods, 
 have a special and direct bearing upon Social- 
 ist theories and tactics. 
 
 It is also disquieting to think that, on the- 
 one hand, the intellectual life of our country 
 is becoming more and more attached in its. 
 interests and sympathies to reaction, and' 
 that, on the other, so many who lift up their 
 voices against backward tendencies either 
 look behind with regretful regard upon poli- 
 cies which are exhausted and can no longer 
 guide us, or frankly confess that they are- 
 disconsolate without hope. 
 
 To the promoters of this Library, Social- 
 ism appears to be not only the ideal whiclv 
 has to be grasped before the benumbing- 
 pessimism which lies upon the minds of 
 would-be reformers can be removed, but also 
 the one idea which is guiding such progress- 
 ive legislation and administration to-day a& 
 are likely to be of permanent value. But those 
 experimenting with Socialism are only 
 groping; are working with an instrument 
 they do not understand ; are applying an idea, 
 they have not grasped; and it is therefore 
 believed that as a practical contribution to 
 political principles and methods, the Librart 
 may be of some value. 
 
 The Library, however, with more assur- 
 ance of definite success, will aim at providing 
 studies in Socialism, or from Socialistic 
 
tstandpoints, which will be stimulating to the 
 Socialist movement, and which may do some- 
 thing to knit together the different sections 
 of Socialist opinion and activity in this 
 country. It will contain translations of the 
 best works of foreign Socialists, as well as 
 contributions from our own writers. 
 
 It follows that the volumes will not be sel- 
 •ected because they advocate any particular 
 school of Socialist thought, but because they 
 are beheved to be worthy expositions of the 
 school to which they belong. 
 April, 1905. 
 
 LIST OF VOLUMES IN PREPARATION 
 
 Socialism and Religion. Rev. A. L. 
 Lilley. 
 
 Socialism and Democracy. By J. Ramsay 
 MacDonald, M.P. 
 
 •Socialism and Foreign Affairs. By H. N. 
 Brailsford. 
 
 These will be followed fay volumes on : 
 -Socialism and the Rural Population. 
 £'ocialism and the position of women. 
 
 Translations from the Leading Foreign 
 Socialist Writers. 
 
Independent Labour Party^ 
 
 PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT. 
 
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 VOLUME I.— SOCIALISM AND POSITIVE 
 SCIENCE, By Enkico Feeri, Professor of 
 Penal Law in the University of Rome. 
 Translated by Edith C. Harvey. Paper, is. 
 net; Cloth, is. 6d. net. 
 
 Fifth Edition. 
 
 "No more representative type of militant and 
 systematic Socialism could have been chosen. 
 The series which this volume inaugurates prom- 
 ises to be both interesting and instructive, and 
 will doubtless find attentive readers in other 
 than Socialist circles." — Sydney Ball in the 
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 introduction contains an interesting personal 
 pronouncement upon the future of the Labour 
 Party in this country." 
 
VOLUME IV.— WHITE CAPITAL AND COL- 
 OURED LABOUR, bv Sydney Oliviee, 
 K.C.M.G. Paper, is. net; Cloth, is. 6d. net. 
 
 Manchester Guardian. — "An important contribu- 
 tion to the sociology of race relations. Every- 
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 nature of the black. The case is treated with 
 ' conspicuous moderation." 
 
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 Alremarkable and realistic account of the Revolution 
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