UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY BaOK CLASS VOLUME 335 W&STc COMMU^^ISM AND SOCIALISM IN THEIR HISTORY AND THEORY A SKETCH BY THEODORE D. "WOODSEY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1894 Copyright by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 1880. TRO-'^ niRfU-'ORY PRINTING AND BOOM BINDING COMPANY htW YORK .9G PEEFACE. The greater part of the work which is now offered to the public, first appeared a few months since, under the form of weekly articles, in the New York Independent. It is now republished with some ad- ditions, which are chiefly appendixes, giving the views of others on certain special points. The object of the work wiU be suflaciently evident on shght examination. From very early times there has been felt, under several forms of civilization and rehgion, a dissatisfaction with the existing institu- tions of society, which has given birth to the desire of forming communities within the state and pro- tected by it, yet separated from the rest of the peo- ple. Ideals, also, of reformed pohtical societies have been, given to the world, which grew out of tin's same dissatisfaction with the actual order of things. And in the most modem times these Utopias have passed over into plans for a new social system. IV PREFACE. which aims at gaining the control over all civilized states. We have attempted to sketch the leading features of these smaller communities and Utopias, and of modem socialism, founded on equality and political economy, in the hope of showing the simi- larities and differences of the schemes, devised for carrying on the work of society without private property. The class of persons for whom we have written, are those who would relish neither extensive details touching the commimities of the past, which have left no mark on society, nor a long exposition of the economical principles of modem socialism. Should this system gain such favor as seriously to threaten the present order of things, we earnestly hope that other essays, more elaborate and comprehensive than the present one, will be written for its confutation. New Haven, December, 1879. TABLE OF COISTTENTS, CHAPTER I. 1 . II, DEFINITION AND ESSENCE OP COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. PAGE 1-16 16-23 CHAPTER II. SMALLER COMMUNISTIC SOCIETIES WITHIN THE STATE. I. Buddhist Monks — ^Essenes — TherapeutsB, . 24-33 II. The Christian Monastic System, . . , 33-41 III. Anabaptists of Munster, 42-50 IV. The Shakers, 50-60 V. Smaller Communities concluded, ... 60 -72 Appendix I. No 1. Change in the system of the Perfectionists, 73-75 ; No. 2. New matter from Mr. Hinds’ American Communists, ♦ . , 73-84 CHAPTER III. COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. I. Plato — Sir Thomas More — Campanella, . . 85-95 II. Theories, in France, of Mably and Morelly. The same reduced to Practice in Baboeuf’s Conspiracy, . . . . . . . 96-106 VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE III. Theories of Communism — St. Simon and his Followers — Fourier, . 106-115 IV. Certain Religious Socialists — Laroux, Cabet, Louis Blanc, . . . ... . 115-125 CHAPTER IV. THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN’S ASSOCIATION. I. Origin, Organization, Rules, .... 126-136 II. International continued — Number of Mem- bers — Congresses of Geneva, Lausanne, Brussels, Basel, 136-146 III. International concluded — Schism in Switzer- land — Its Members at Paris in 1871 — Mani- festo of the Council at London — Effects of Events at Paris, 146-159 CHAPTER V. SOCIALISM IN GERMANY. I. Leading Features of the Theory of Marx, . 160-171 II. Lassalle and the German Workingmen’s Union, 171-181 III. Socialism in Germany since Lassalle, • . 181-192 Appendix. Mr. Mill’s Chapters on Socialism, . 193-200 CHAPTER VI. SCHAEPPLE’S “quintessence op SOCIALISM.” 1 201-214 II 214-226 CHAPTER VII. RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS, ETC. I. To the State and to Society, .... 227-238 II. To the Individual and to Religion, . . . 238-249 TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii PAGE III. To Religion (continued), to the Family and Marriage, 250-260 IV. Relations to Society concluded, . . . 260-267 Appendix I. Extract from the Einfluss der Herr- schenden Ideen of Eotvos, 267-271 Appendix IL Extract from F. A. Lange’s “ Arbeit- erfrage,” Ed. 3, 271-275 CHAPTER VIII. I. Is the Overthrow of Society in its present Form by Socialism probable ? . . . 276-286 II. Future Prospects of Socialism, .... 287-299 Index, 301—309 i - /■< '1. , COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. CHAPTER I. DEFINITION AND ESSENCE OP COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. L In an essay like this it seems to be necessary to define the terms often used synonymously, which are employed to denote the subject of the essay itself. There are two such terms yrhich are of constant occurrence, communism and socialism^ the first of earlier origin than the other ; besides which two others, of still more modern birth, collectivism and mutualism^ have sprung up in ^France, and are less current, although the former of them is now often employed in books and public discussions. Communism^ in its ordinary signification, is a system or form of common life, in which the right / of private or family property is abolished by law, l,^^^utual consent, or vow. To this community of goods may be added the disappearance of family life, and the substitution for it of a mode of life 1 2 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF in which, whether the family system is retained or not, the family is no longer the norm according to which the subdivisions of the community, if there are any, are regulated. But while the father’s authority in the separate parts of the community is of little or no account, there are rulers of some sort, who must have a considerable degree of power, in order to prevent the system from falling to pieces. A whole state or nation may be conceived of as bemg parcelled out into a number of communi- ties, each of which would have its property and its rights of property over against the rest. Yet all the communities which have appeared in the world have, so far as I know, been established within states which are not themselves commu- nistic in their institutions; so that the smaller bodies are protected by greater bodies which have no especial affinities with them, or may even be regarded by them with dislike. Whether a state broken up into communities could long exist may be doubted. So also the theoretic communities which political dreamers have imagined, are either small and simple, or, if complex, are affili- ated, as monastic commimities also, generally, are, under a law outside of, and above, their own. 2. Socialism was not known as a term synonym mous, or nearly so, with communism until recent times. The first vTiters who can be discovered to have used it were Frenchmen. COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 3 By its derivation it ought to denote the system of those who would socialize states or subdivisions of states, or, in other words, would organize the people of a nation according to their idea of what society ought to be, or, in other words still, would reform society according to a social theory of their own. The theory might or might not cor- respond with the idea or the rule on which a com- munistic society is founded. Socialism is there- fore a broader term than communism. It might embrace systems for a state, and systems for smaller communities which could not be adapted to a state ; it might include community of goods, and other kinds of common participation; or might even discard them, as far as the derivation of the term is concerned. But in matter of fact, having been coined by those who had communis- tic principles, and in an age when it was desirable to avoid the terms communist and communism^ as being somewhat odious, it denotes almost uni- versally a theory or a system into which commu- nity of goods, or better, abolition nearly or quite complete of private property, enters as an essen- tial part ; and again a system which embraces an entire society or state, if not a cluster of contigu- ous states, or even the world. And it is, as thus used, no longer a system, if I may so speak, of disintegration, but one of consolidation, subject- ing all the members of a state, willingly or unwil- lingly, to the control of the state as the head of 4 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF society ; making it in fact the sole proprietor for the most part within the national territory. But although the term thus differs from the term coin- ^munism^ we may be pardoned if, in following other writers’ examples, we use the two as sy- nonymous now and then, since they both cover part of the same ground. 3 and 4. The two other terms need only a word or two for their definition. Collectwisnij which is now used by German as well as by French writers, denotes the condition of a com- munity when its affairs, especially its industry, is managed in the collective way, instead of the method of separate, individual effort. It has, from its derivation, some advantages over the vague word socialism^ which may include many varieties of associated or united life. Mutualism (in French, mutuelisme\ scarcely used beyond its birth-place, is intended to express the social and political condition constructed on a system of mu- tual and reciprocal relations, implying equality as far as it can be carried out. The community of property is thus an inference from what must come to pass if such a conception should be re- alized, rather than involved in the word. It may be worth noticing that the word in itself at its origin had nothing communistic about it ; and that mutuum^ mutuor^ in Latin, connected with muto^ change, exchange, have the sense of a loan^ and to horrow. The Romans, in their laws, social COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 5 life, and politics, were as far from socialism in the modern sense as possible. The natural division of the subject before us is to consider first those smaller communities which were earliest in the order of time, and came into being within and under the state ; — not for the purpose of undermining general society, but to enable a select number of similarly disposed per- sons to lead a life, which they could not easily lead without some separation from their fellow-men. After these may follow those theories for the rectification of existing society, which were never carried out, and "perhaps were never intended to be carried out ; but which expressed their authors’ views in regard to the best constitution of society within the state. These theories, as time ad- vanced, began to be something more than Uto- pias; they became, in France, revolutionary; they were animated by the spirit of equality and fraternity; and in their successive forms they approached nearer to the shape of definite plans and methods, by which the whole of society was not only to be affected, but to be put on an en- tirely new basis. At the same time the condition of the working-class became a subject of promi- nent interest. These French theories, or some of them, had not left the original ideas from which they started, so that they might be put to proof on the small scale in single communities and by way of experiment, as well as on the large 6 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF scale in the state. Such were Fourier’s, Cabet’s^ and Louis Blanc’s systems, although they aimed at the universal control of societies. We shall term these, all of them, communistic systems. But, by the help of the later French communists, a new system, or set of systems, arose, which could not be well applied on the small scale within the state, but aimed at controlling the state itself ; and not the state only, but even a set of contiguous states, if not the world. The leading characteristic of this system is, that it is built chiefly on political economy, as understood by the advocates of the system ; while moral no- tions, such as equality of rights and fraternity, are assumed and involved in the plans for carry- ing it out. The main force of the theory lies in abolishing private property, and giving the con- trol of all industry to the state. It does not re- quire a common life, but carries what had been before contemplated — the doctrine of common property — into all details. As reconstructing society in this way, it is properly called socialism^ whether it appears in the sliape of not entirely breaking with present society, like the half-way scheme of Lassalle, or in getting complete con- trol of society, on the scheme of the ablest of those who would overturn society, like the accom- plished, determined veteran, Karl Marx. This system, in the construction of which Germans have been most active, and which seems likely to COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 7 throw all others into the shade, which threatens to control the working-classes everywhere, and ‘^with fear of change perplexes monarchs,” we shall call socialism^ without absolutely confining ourselves to this terijo^ inasmuch as under it the great commiuM^f^the state — now becomes the only subject of property. It will thus be seen that communism does not really give up the notion of property either within the state, or over against all persons and communities which are outside of its pale : it also expressly admits the rightful exist- ence of private property by receiving from pri- vate individuals, and that, in the way of free gift, what before was their own ; by maintaining suits to defend such property, when once received ; by transactions of bargain and sale with persons beyond their borders, and, in some cases, by re- turning such property to its former owner when he leaves a community. Socialism^ on the other hand, while it may admit the state’s right of property over against another state, does away with all ownership, on the part of members of the state, of things that do not perish in the using, or of their own labor in creating material products. Its first and last policy is to prevent the acquisition or exclusive use of capital, by any person or association imder the control of the state, with the exception, perhaps, of articles of luxury or enjoyment procured by the savings of wages. 8 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF No savings can give rise to what is properly called capital, or means of production in private hands. Communities have been established on various principles. The individuals that compose them enter voluntarily into association with others; and the societies themselves determine, witliin certain limits, which are subject to the control of public law, what their rules and the relations of members shall be. Thus the question of the en- tire surrender of property to the community by the entering member would naturally be a car- dinal one, yet, state law might restrain him from so acting. The various questions relating to mar- riage and celibacy, to the employments of the grown-up members, to the forms of social union, to religious worship, if they have any, to the government of the society and the management of its property, are all laid down by general agree- ment pt first, and may be altered unless the con- stitutions forbid. The reasons for entering such communities are various. Some of them, being strictly religious and confining membership to one or other of the sexes, would be destroyed in their essence, and probably their property be es- cheated, by departing from this idea. Others may be founded on religious grounds or for social rea- sons, may establish or abolish celibacy, and extin- guish or tolerate existing family relations. The control, again, of the officers over the members may be strict or loose. unless they should be judged to contaiii lawful element. Thus Cabet put his own plan the proof in the United States. Fourier’s pha- lansteries might be established as experiments to teach the state what attitude it ought to take in regard to them, and something like them has been attempted outside of France. Ateliers, after the plan of JfTniis Blanc’s organization of labor, were actually tried by one of the French governments. These schemes were intended for the reform of society, and it might be said that a failure in a single case, when society w^as all on the other side, was no real proof that in other circumstances such plans might not be successful. There may also be men who oppose property and communism at once ; who are called commu- nists with no good will of their own. Such was Pierre Joseph Proudhon, whose well-known motto, borrowed from Brissot de Warville, was, La jyro- jprieU dest le an expression of principle, by the way, which Brissot gave up before he was guillotined. Proudhon’s owm opinions are known from passages in his first memoir on property: we give them in English in Mr. Benjamin R. Tucker’s translation, p. 259 : “ I ought not to conceal the fact that property constitution for society and for the state U.C once. It is therefore, when viewed on one side, far more imperious and widesweeping than communism. It is so opposed to the present order of society that it must transform and over- turn, either by the peaceable consent of the mass of men in a state, and by thus getting possession of a state’s principal resources (whiclTH/ entirely incredible), or by revolutionizing society. , On the other hand, having got sucli control, it scarcely has had in view, as yet, so great a change and separa- tion from the society of the present, in some re- spects, as some of the communities, which are pro- tected by states, have introduced on the small scale. Give it the control over capital, and it may leave marriage, in a measure education, and the choice of religion, free to the people which it has re- organized. Such would pure socialism be ; but the theory may be so modified, either to secure an improve- ment on society as it is, or to provide for an easier transition to an unmixed socialism of the future, that it will be important to take into view such departm’es in theory from the strict idea of the system, if any such there be. The later French systems of social change, as COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 11 and communism have been considered always tlie only possible forms of society. This deplorable error has been the life of property. The disad- vantages of communism are so obvious that its critics have never needed to employ much elo- quence to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and repul- sions, the yoke of iron which it fastens on the will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect which it has upon society, and, to sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense and con- demned communism by an irreversible decree.” And in another place he indulges himself in a similar strain (p. 261) : Communism is inequal- ity, but not as property is. Property is the ex- ploitation of the weak by the strong. Commu- nism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised — physical and mental force ; force of events, chance, fortune ; force of accumulated property, etc. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This dam- aging equation is repellant to the conscience, and causes merit to complain ; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they 12 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF prefer to do it out of generosity. They never will endure a comparison. Give them equal op- portunities of labor and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of a common task.” This is enough to show that he is no commu- nist, although he holds a doctrine which commu- nists also hold. What his opinions on other cog- nate topics are, this is not the place to set forth. Another view of communism and socialism in their resemblances and differences, is said in a public journal to have been lately given by a brilliant lecturer, to which we must take excep- tions. He defines the former of the two to be the doing away with inheritance, the family, nation- ality, religion, and property ; socialism to be the doing away with the first four only. This is clear and distinct — as clear as the doing away with the five points of Calvinism to describe Arminian- ism ; but we are compelled to make objections to the justness of the distinction. And first, as for inheritancey why put it at the beginning, when, if there is no property, there is nothing to inherit. As for thefamilyy as yet no social bodies or asso- ciations,, that we know of, which are widespread and ramified, have in modern times dared to at- tack the family. Jager, one of the best writers on socialism, asserts expressly that “ modern so- cialism, through those whom it has called upon as co:\imi;nism and socialism. 13 its representatives, lias never officially expressed itself concerning marriage ; ” altliongli he thinks that its principles tend in the direction of loosen- ing the marriage tie. Isext, as to nathnality^ it would be correct to say that some forms of this doctrine are international, while others are na- tional ; but none expect, nor, so far as we are in- formed, seek to do away with the state. On the contrary, the social state would have all the pow- ers now distributed through society in their high- est potence. So of religion^ that the principal supporters of socialism are atheists or pantheists is undoubted ; and yet the theory has not hitherto absorbed atheism into its organism. So much is true that it discards altogether any public or state religion, and regards religious faith as a matter of private conviction, to be professed by individ- uals ; that in the main it repels Christian believ- ers from its pale by its godless tendencies ; but yet there have not been wanting in this age Chris- tians who have tried to unite it with their holiest convictions. Finally, as to property ^ the doing away of private property is common to both com- munism and socialism, and, in fact, there is no theory of socialism thouglit of at present, ‘ so far as we know, in which questions of property do not occupy the first place and the expropriation ” of the holders of property does not really lie at the foundation of the system or systems. In proof of what we say, we will give here a definition of social- 14 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF ism, translated as literally as perspicuity will per- mit, from a work of a German political econo- mist of no mean reputation: ^‘The politico- economical quintessence of the socialistic pro- gramme,” says he, the proper aim of the inter- national movement, is as follows : the replacement of private capital (that is, of the speculative, pri- vate method of production, which depends only on free competition) by ^ collective capital ’ — that is, by a method of production which, upon the basis of the collective property of the sum of all the members of the society in the means of pro- duction, seeks to carry on a unitary (social, ^ col- lective’) organization of national work.” Here he includes in his first sentence both what is called the socialistic and the international movements, and finds their end in the substitution of collective for private capital, using the collective property of the entire community so as to destroy all con- currence, and to effect a unitary organization of the work and, therefore, of the production of the whole nation. So that, if Schaeffie understands the movements in which Marx and Lassalle have been so prominent, our lecturer, to whom we le- fei-red, misunderstands it. Thus the essence of both socialism and commu- nism lies in the abolition of private property, either entirely or to such an extent that the pri- vate person ceases to have any control over it and the state takes his place. This is especially true COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 15 of everything by which human labor is assisted in production — that is, it is true of all machinery and of the soil. And thus all products are cre- ated under the supervision of the state, and pass over, or a portion of them passes over, to individ- ual workmen, as their wages for their work. We add one remark tending to help the under- standing of the subject at this stage of our prog- ress. Men will not stop in a theory which they hope to reduce to practice without looking for- ward, and, as it were, prophesying wdiat shall be, when so immense a change as the abandonment of private property shall have passed over the world. But many crude ideas must be mingled in the speculations on such a subject. These speculations ought not to be confounded with the vagaries and chimeras of fervent minds. There never has been (we trust there never will be) any system of society answering in its principles and the vastness of its results to the theories and plans of socialism. This very vastness of the plan stimulates the imagination and makes possibilities seem real to dreamers. But all these must not be imputed to the scheme of society, as the sober- est thinkers of the sect conceive of it. We may show necessary results, we may show probable re- sults in opposing, just as others may do in advo- cating such untried measures. But we must not call it socialism when unpractical dreamers pro- pose something in the way of promoting their 1C DEFINITION AND NATURE OF hopes which soberer men of the sect pronounce impossibleo If a hierschenJc reviles the wealthy over his lager, and arouses the passions of the la- borers who spend their money at his counter against the hourgeoisie^ another voice comes from thoughtful socialists, who profess to find the evils of society in the capital accumulated in a few hands, and would therefore make a sweeping rev- olution by abolishing private capital. It is these theorists who are most to be dreaded. II. We have defined communism and socialism to be in their essence the substitution of common,^ or public, or “ collective ” property for private prop- erty ; that the state or the community is made the proprietor of all or of the principal means of pro- duction and of existing products — including, of course, the soil and whatever comes from it — in- stead of the private person or the association of private persons, uniting or separating by free con- sent. The consequences of such a complete over- turn in the relations of individuals to production Ave cannot yet fitly consider. It is more impor- tant at this stage of our inquiries to try to find out whether there are not some subdivisions of com- munism, and thus to put ourselves on our guard against confounding together forms of society which differ in important respects. COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 17 1. But, first of all, the definition given above needs to be defended at one point. Admitting its truth, must we not admit also that partnerships in the freest society are a kind of common life, and do they not presuppose a common property ? The answer is, that some forms of communistic society do resemble some forms of partnerships ; but that there are essential differences between the two. One is, that partnership is a limited form of doing business which a single person, if he had the capital and ability, could do equally well. There is also nothing political about it. It is a creature of the state, and need not inter- fere with any of the state’s powers. But the community, even on a small scale, cannot fail to obstruct the state in its proper office. For in- stance, it may control the family system, one de- partment of private rights for the protection and free exercise of which states may be said to exist. Another difference is, that partnership is purely voluntary, a creature of law, generally temporary and terminable at will, without any intention, for the most part, of continuing its own existence in- definitely, and with no control of the firm over the conduct of the single partners, except so far as is necessary for prosecuting the business. Still more resemblance does a community of slaves or serfs imder a master bear to the com- munities of which we here speak. In the system of serfage the laborers are by law or usage perma- 18 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF iiently connected with the soil. They cannot le- gally remove from it, or marry, or dispose of their crops or productions without the land-owner’s con- , sent. He may even have political rights over them, united with some of the rights he can exer- cise over slaves. The community may be so far isolated that the serf may have no uniting bond to the body politic except through his master. But here the property is all vested in the master, and can for the most part be alienated by him, or may be taken from him for political offences. In the system of slavery the property of the mas- ter includes the slave and his children, as well as the soil ; and the state, while the system lasts, in- terferes only on the ground of humanity. The Spartan commonvrealth had not only a sys- tem of serfage, under which the state was the ulti- mate proprietor ; but a division of land also to the original members of the body politic in equal por- tions, which at first they could not alienate. Be- sides this, the men had common meals as long as each member of a club could contribute his share of the expenses. There was also great looseness in regard to the marriage relation. But the indi- vidual Spartan became free at length to alienate his lands in his lifetime or by will ; so that before the time of Aristotle vast inequalities existed in the estates, and the whole soil came into the hands of a few proprietors. This was in the end any- thing but commimism. COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 19 But, passing on from this point, we come to the more important one of the different forms of communities. Here we notice first those early societies which were at an early period developed out of the family and consisted of blood-relatives. These communities were germs of tribes and ex- pansions of the family. Within them crimes were punished and rights secured in a rude way ; but no right of property as between the members was very definitely settled, wdiile, as far as a simi- lar neigliboring community was concerned, the possessions of the community were defended by force. Land for the purposes of cultivation had no value. Products there were next to none, and still less did division of labor exist. The family was, so to speak, held in solution in the great fam- ily or community. We cannot afford to go fur- ther into the details of these early institutions, which have been investigated by Bachofen, Mc- Lennan, Lubbock, Morgan, Girard-Teulon, and others. Nor can we more than mention the later forms which appear in several parts of the world where the lands within a hundred^ or other small districts, or at least meadow-lands and forests, have been held in common even until modern times ; and where for a long period the plough- lands were exchanged among the inhabitants from year to year. For communities under these forms Sir Henry S. Maine, Laveleye, and others must be consulted. In these, as well as in the communi- 20 DEFINITION AND NATUIiE OF ties first mentioned, the starting-point was the family. In the first form the necessity of self- defence must have been the main cause of the common life in contiguous settlements. In the second, the village communities being a part of a tribe or union, and being now devoted to agri- culture, as well as pasturage, houses and lands ad- joining became personal property ; although there was a time in some races when these were ex- changed from year to year. As soon, then, as houses and lands had a value, private property to a very great extent was recognized all over the world. These early communities teach us little. The second communistic form is that which has arisen within the state^ whenever, for various reasons, small bodies of men make a common stock and live a life severed from the rest of the society. This is not an unfrequent phenomenon in the history of mankind. The most common cause for their existence has been either the ascetic, or in some way the religious principle, whether it appears in the contemplative life of the Buddhist mendicant order, in the institutions of the Es- senes, and among the various kinds of Christian monks; or in a more fanatical form, as among the Anabaptists under John of Leyden ; or in as- sociations of dreamers for establishing societies after a certain idea, like Cabet’s colou}^ in Texas ; or for industrial purposes, like that of Owen, COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. 21 Many of these are full of interest, and would re- ward study. Some few of them may be noticed hereafter. It is to be observed, however, that all of these may form parts of states, just as towns and villages do, except that they are not separate political communities. There never has been a state con- sisting of S2ich communities^ and of such only. The state protects them and their property, and society stands aloof from them, as they stand aloof from Society. It is impossible that in such a position they should not receive ideas from the larger community under whose shadow they live, Hence, all conclusions from their conduct and history are subject to some doubt. We may always ask whether such communities have acted out their genuine nature ; whether the world out* side of their pale has not repressed some evil, has not prevented their principles from running to an extreme, and infused some good into them. Sometimes, also, they have lasted so short a time that no sure judgment can be formed concerning what fruit they would bear if time were given them. A third communistic form would be that of a comnmnistic or socialistic state^ with all power put into the hands of the upturners of existing society to carry out their principles as they wished. But, unfortunately for mankind in the future, there have been no such communities in 22 DEFINITION AND NATURE OF the past. History has no voice to utter concern- ing communistic states. That awful thing, pri- vate property, has lorded it since a little after the era of the cave-dwellers until now. And just in this consists the power and plausibility of social- ism. They can tell the operative that, if only the theory is made practical, his fortune will be made ; or, as Mr. Most, who has been a member of the German Parliament, tells them, a man will need only to work ten years, from his eighteenth to his twenty-eighth year, to be supported by the socialistic state for the rest of his life. Thus we see that another division can be made for practical uses, between communistic forms which hawe heen tested hy experience^ and those that exist as mere theories. These latter are of incomparably vaster importance than all the others that have been thought of since the begin- ning of the creation. They have also this pecu- liarity, that, whilst the old experiments proceeded from some philosophical or religious conviction, which adds dignity and worth to them, the new experiments, which amount to an absolute over- throw of all existing political institutions, are ap- plications chiefly of principles of political econ- omy, which, to say the least, are not so certain of success as to justify a complete revolution. But we are anticipating wliat we might better say by and by. At present we must look at the history and results of the communistic system as COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM. it has shown itself by actual experiment ; then at the theories and plans for a new order of things, which have not been submitted to trial. Much of this matter we may lightly pass over. It will then be necessary to examine far more fully the schemes which are now agitating the world. 24 SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. CHAPTEE IL SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. I. BUDDHIST MONKS — ESSENES— TIIERAPEUT^. We have already remarked that there is an abundance of materials furnished to us by history, for showing the nature and workings of small societies, united in a common life by some one principle or motive. A large number of these societies were formed by persons of the ascetic or contemplative sort, who expected some great good, especially some religious good, from seclu- sion. In the order of time the anchorite or her- mit was earlier than the community of monks. If seclusion fi’orn the corruptions of the world, with opportunity for contemplation and religious exer- cises, could be united to help derived from others of a like spirit — the advantages of solitude, and those of a society separated from the unthinking mass of men, would be equally secured; and a certain description of persons who had a natural turn for solitude, or expected to purify their souls SMALLER COMIVIUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 25 by contemplation, or were soured by disappoint- ments, or disgusted with ordinary life, would here find some solace together. These comrnmiities began extensively in the free union of anchorites, who united by and by, with equal freedom, in associations where rules and promises or vows were found necessary, in order that the common good might be promoted. As it regarded supplies for the bodily wants, either soliciting alms from others or industry within the commimities themselves was the origi- nal means by which these needs were met. The demands made on others might be very small, for the earliest plan was to live within the nar- rowest bounds of human necessities ; and, more- over, an industrious life might seem to be incon- sistent with the great spiritual end which the communities had in view. By and by, in some countries, the life of self-denial and of religious contemplation and prayer, unattainable by the mass of men, would naturally cause these monks to be revered ; permanent funds would be given to them, houses would be provided for their shel- ter, and orders would bring together in different parts, where the same religion was professed, great numbers who were governed by the same rule. It is easy to see that the fundamental rules were pointed out by refiection on human nature and by experience of the evil that is in the world. 2 2G SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. There are two very strong desires in man — that of wealth or the means of self-gratification, and the sexual instinct. Whatever end be proposed in a life remote from the w^orld, whether it be the extinction of desire, or closer communion with God, or escape from the corruption that is in the world through lust, or a longing for seren- ity and peace of soul, or the realization of an idea of virtue which men in society cannot well reach : these two classes of desire are the principal ones to be held in restraint, or, if possible, extinguish- ed ; these are the main tyrants, in a corrupt so- ciety especially, which enslave the soul. Hence the vows or, at least, the rules of chastity and poverty are universal, in all the forms of com- mon life to which we here have reference ; and they were taken even by orders or bodies of priests or priestesses who did not constitute com- munities. The vow of obedience also to a su- perior, elected by the members of the community or in some other way set over them, was generally but not always required. Among these communities a very early order was that of the Buddhist monks, who were at first simply the mendicants whom Gautama gath- ered around him in his solitude. These were at the outset to have nothing but their rags, their begging-bowl, a razor, a needle, and a water- strainer ; but ere long, like the monks in Chris- tian convents, they could as a body possess books, SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 27 lands, and houses, given to them by private muni^ ficence. Houses were almost necessary in the rainy season. The vows they took upon them- selves were poverty and chastity — the latter so strictly guarded that it was held to be unlawful even to touch a woman, however nearly related. Obedience to a superior in the convent or com- munity consisted in conformity rather to the rules of the order than to a superior’s bidding. When the vow or the rules are violated, a mem- ber may be expelled from the body, or may have some penance imposed on him upon his confes- sion of his offence. Mr. Rhys Davids says that ‘^charges may be brought against a monk for breach of the ordinances laid down in the Pitakas [or sacred books], and must be examined by a chapter; but no one can change or add to the existing law or claim obedience from any novice.” The originating motive for Buddhism in the mind of Gautama or Buddha and its success are due especially to the weight with which transmi- gration pressed on the Indian mind. Successive lives depended for their condition on the sins and virtues of a previous life ; but all life was unreal- ity and illusion, the complete escape from which was the highest good. Such escape could be ef- fected only by killing desire, and this extinction of desire could be effected only by meditation and self-denial. The reward was, that there would be no new birth ; that an end could come to the 28 SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. illusive dream of existence. It is strange that anchorites, who only meditated and supplied their most absolutely necessary wants, could spread a religion which embraces more followers than any other. But the explanation, in part, at least, lies first in this doctrine that the new birth might at length come to an end, and that existence in a world full of illusions might give place to nonen- tity; next, in the abolition of caste — in other words, in the breaking away from the fundamen- tal institutions of Brahminism ; then in the mild and benevolent morality of the founders of Bud- dhism. The abolition of caste made it possible, while the reliction was in its infancv in India, to admit all men of all castes into its pale ; and the same liberty, together with other causes given above, made its spread possible through surround- ing nations. This spread was due to the mendi- cant order, which was not a caste or a body of priests, but a simple fraternity. Originally, the mendicant order was all of Buddhism that existed. But wide expansion of such a kind of anchorites was impossible, in a world where industry and marriage are forced on the majority of men by the commands of their nature. The Buddhists had to yield to this. In converting men to their moral maxims and to freedom from caste, they had to allow the existence of a kind of laity, which was not bound by the- rules of the mendi- cants. And what was, perhaps, as important — SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 29 when the religion, being overcome in a great struggle with Brahminism, w^as driven out of India and spread its doctrine in other countries ; the great mass of the converted population, or that which venerated Buddha, received the moral precepts and fell under control of the monks, was left to its superstitions and its old divinities and spirits to a very considerable extent. This could be done, because the gods themselves were sub- ject to the same lav/s of existence with men, and because in Buddhism there was no God in our sense of the word, no providence, no prayer, noth- ing but atheism. The mendicants, we have seen, were at an early date allowed to possess houses, and formed close settlements or social unions. In Thibet, after a long struggle, they formed a hierarchy, with wealthy and populous religious houses, under su- perintendents, like the abbots of Ilomanism, and imder ‘ an infallible head, the Dalai Lama, in whom the spirit of Buddha or the Buddhas be- came incarnate. Supreme temporal power was given to him by the Mogul Emperor Kubilai Khan, in the thirteenth century ; but the destinies of this impostor have varied since they fell under the control of the Chinese Government. Another very different set of communities, small at their acme in number, but remarkable on more than one account, are the Essen es, who appeared in Judea not long before the birth of Christ. CO SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. They are known to ns from the accounts which Philo the Jew, and Josephus have given in their wwks. Of their origin, their opinions, and their relation to Jewish opinion and heathen sects we intend to say next to nothing, except that they show some influences derived from the Persian religion, or Parsism, and that no connection what- ever can be traced between them and our Lord or his apostles. Those who can follow the argu- ments of Dr. Lightfoot in his commentary on the Colossians, will find there the most instructive es- say on this sect which has hitherto been given to the world. The Essenes numbered, according to Philo, about four thousand in all, and preferred to live in villages rather than in cities, on account of the corruption of the latter. They are spoken of by Pliny the Elder, wPo has a very imperfect knowl- edge of them, as dwelling not far from the western shore of the Dead Sea ; but apparently these were scattered and remote from one an- other. All authorities agree that they held to community of goods and of products of the in- dustry of each member of the society; but it w^ould seem that they had no common bond imit- ing the several communities together. A treas- urer is spoken of by Josephus as taking care of the funds in each society, and a common head- man was chosen by the vote of the members of each. Marriage w^as not in use among them, not 8MALLE]a COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 31 tliat they looked on it or on inheritance as institu- tions to be abolished, but because, as Josephus says, they feared the wanton conduct and un- faithfulness of the female sex. Hence, they re- cruited their communities by adopting boys to be trained up under their rules. There was, however, a portion of the Essenes, the same au- thor says, who differed in no respect from the rest, except that they allowed marriage in their communities, for the reason that those who do not marry cut off succession and descent, which constitute the leading features of life.” But they subjected the women who were to be married to a long probation, to see whether they were likely to be fruitful. The distinctive peculiarities of the Essenes, as it respects worship, were very great veneration for the Sabbath, abstinence from sacrifices at the temple, — although they sent offerings thither, — and a certain kind of reverence for the sun, which came near to idolatry. They had prophetic per- sons, and, it is said, magic arts among them. They were constant and particular in their ablu- tions. As a mild sect, more contemplative than fanatical, not taking pains to propagate their doc- trines, but rather living by themselves, and yet kind to strangers, they remind one of the Shaker communities in the United States, who, when most prosperous, have not differed greatly in num- ber from Philo’s estimate of the Essenes. 32 SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. Very similar to the Essenes were the Thera- peutae, whom Philo the Jew, in his brief essay on the contemplative life, speaks of as being scat- tered over all the districts of Egypt. They must have been Jews, who were under the influence of Platonism, and, like Philo himself, to some ex- tent, of Oriental philosophy. He describes a set- tlement on the sea-coast, near Alexandria, as com- posed of men and women who had given up theii property and left their kindred for the purpose ‘‘ of avoiding unprofltable intercourse with’ per^ sons of characters and habits unlike their own.” They live in scattered houses, he says, but near enough to each other for defence against robbers. They spend their time, from the morning prayer at sunrise until the evening prayer at sunset, in meditation and study of ancient books, oracles of prophets, and the like. Their meals are nothing but bread and salt. They hold no slaves, think- ing slavery to be contrary to nature. In each house is a chapel or sanctuary, where they spend the six days in meditation ; but on the Sabbath they meet in an apartment provided wdth a low wall running through its length, in order to keep the females from observation. In their solemn feasts the singing of sacred lijunns seems to have been the principal act of worship. Hymns are struck up by one and another, in the choral parts and refrains of which both sexes join. The un- leavened bread, together with salt and hyssop, is SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 33 brought in on a table representing, it would seem, that table where the shew-bread was placed in the temple, of which they partake. After this a sacred vigil is kept, in memory of the passage through the Red Sea. Hymns follow, in which the men and women form choirs, first apart and then to- gether. This lasts until sunrise, when they stretch forth their hands, pray for prosperity, truth, and sharpness of intellectual vision,” and then part. These Therajpeiitm differ from the Essenes in allowing both sexes to live in the same communi- ties, although without marriage and in a strictly abstemious and ascetic life. Of industry pursued in their settlements Philo says nothing. They were, doubtless, called forth by much the same causes which gave rise to the Essenes. The time of their origin is unknown ; but they must have been such as Philo describes them long before Christ began his ministry. 11 . THE CHRISTIAN MONASTIC SYSTEM. The examples thus far given, of societies con- structed on the communistic plan within the state, show the power of religious opinions and ideas to bring men into societies separate from the masses of men around them, and to do this with no po- litical or pecuniary object in view. Our next 2 * 34 SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. example is still more remarkable. The monastic system of the ancient church, both in the East and in the West, is a most important chapter in ecclesiastical history, on account of its tenacity of life and its vast influence for good as well as for evil, and because it could not have grown up in a pure, enlightened Christian church. As in pa- pacy, so here the seemingly good and inno- cent nature of the system lent strength to false principles, which had no necessary connection with the spirit and principles of the gospel. These false principles took hold of supports which belonged to an age and to its way of thinking, in order to construct institutions which have lasted until this day; and which, although they have reached senile weakness, are still a strong if not a chief power in several decaying churches. A community of goods is an essential feature of all kinds of communism. What shall we say, then, when it is asserted that the community of goods in the early Christian church at Jerusa- lem, just after the death of Christ, is a sufficient reason for the rise of monachism ? We say, first, tliat this community was not a close^ but rather a changing community, consisting of families obedi- ent to no law of union, no vow or other tie save the fellowship of the gospel. Again, it was vol- untary. No one was obliged to sell his goods to feed the poor ; but, although governed by a strong public feeling, was free to follow what was right. SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 35 While it remained [unsold] was it not thine own ; and when it was sold, was it not in thine own power ? ’’ is the question of Peter to Ananias. Again, it was local. There is no evidence that it existed beyond Jerusalem. Among the Hebrew Christians, to whom James wrote, there were great inequalities of property. Paid, writing to Timothy, at Ephesus, uses the words Charge them that are rich among you ; ” and the Gentile Christians were well enough off to send their con- tributions to the poor at Jerusalem. And, finally, it was temporary. When there was no centre and capital any longer ; when, we may add, there was no longer an immediate expectation of an end of the existing order of things in society — it turned into such general charity as is now called forth by Christian love. Nor was a single life thought to be essential to the Christian profes- sion. Paul led such a life ; but claimed the right to have a wife, like Peter and other apostles, if he thought it best. His advice to the Christians at Corinth is against seeking husbands for their daughters ; yet this advice is dictated, in part, at least, by the present distress,” or the state of the times. In other circumstances he urges that woman should marry, and even that young wid- ows should marry again; which, although al- lowed, was not approved even by the heathen Romans. He makes it one of the marks of a de- parture from the faith, that the speakers of lies 3G SMALLER COMMUNITIES MTTIIIN A STATE. should forbid men to marry and command to ab- stain from meats (1 Tim. iv, 2, 3). And, to dwell no longer on this point, the same apostle finds an apt symbol of the union of man and wife in the union of Christ and the church. From one pas- sage only of the New Testament (Matt. xix. 12) can we infer that a pure single life is not only al- lowable, but even praiseworthy, for those who can lead it for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, which we certainly would be far from denying ; and in another (Rev. xiv. 4) there is praise of ab- solute purity, whicli, however, cannot fairly be pressed as teaching the inferiority of a married to a single life. Nor is there anywhere any encour- agement in the Christian Scriptures to vows, and to associations built upon them, within the church. We may add the remark that the formation of close unions, shut out from intercourse with the world, meets with no favor from the spirit and institutions of the New Testament. The believ- ers were expected to assemble together, as breth- ren and members of a common Master. They w’ere on an equality, and there was no esoteric class, no persons or coteries of superior sanctity, who were to do the praying for their fellow-Chris- tians. The thought, that Christians lived and acted like other men in outward things, is well expressed in the epistle to Diognetus, belonging to the second century. The Christians, neither SMALLER COMMUNITIES WITHIN A STATE. 37 in speech nor in place of abode, nor in usages of life, differ from their fellow-men. For nowhere do they dwell in cities of their own, nor make use of dialects peculiar to themselves, nor observe a singular mode of life. They marry, like all men, and bear children ; but they do not expose their infants, ” etc. Christianity, then, was no more the native soil of monachism than the Jewish religion was the proper birthplace of what was ascetic and monas- tic among the Essenes. The true origin was in that tendency of the age towards a solitary and contemplative life, as being the only life suited to the attainment of truth and virtue, wliich began some time before the Christian era, and diffused itself like some epidemic from the East, with the help of some of the Greek philosophical systems. We hav^e shown how the contemplative and asce- tic spirit was spread over Egypt in the small com- munities of the Thera2)eut^eaker by the stronger, may abolish. In 1782, Brissot de Warville invented the phrase, used afterward by Proudhon, Pro- priete dest le vol^ and even justified the temporary unions of the sexes found among races of men nearest to brutes. Twelve years afterward a war against the rich began, and such measures as a maximum of property and the abolition of the right to make a will were agitated. But the right of property prevailed, and grew stronger after each new revolution. In 1796 the conspir- acy of the Equals, or, as it is generally called, of Babceuf, was the final and desperate measure of a portion of those Jacobins who had been stripped by the fall of Robespierre (in 1794) of political power. It was the last hope of the extreme revo- lutionists, for men were getting tired of agita- tions and wanted rest. This conspiracy seems to have been foniented by Jacobins in prison ; and it is said that one of them, who was a believer in Morelly and had his work in his hands, expounded its doctrines to his COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 103 fellow-prisoner, Baboeuf. When they were set at liberty by an amnesty law, there was a successful effort made to bring together the society or sect of the Equals ; but it was found that they wei'e not all of one mind. Baboeuf was for thorough measures — for a community of goods and of labor, an equality of conditions and of comforts. Anto- nelli, who had been a member of the Legislative Assembly, was for laws restricting property by a maximum and for other half measures. He thought that extreme measures would only de- stroy, without rebuilding ; but he finally yielded to the views and plans of his associates. There was a secret committee of the society of the Equals, as well as an open society. The latter excited the suspicion of the Directory, and an order was given to suspend its sessions in the Pantheon (or Church of St. Genevieve). The order was executed by Bonaparte, then general of the army of the interior, who dispersed the mem- bers and put a seal on the doors of the place of meeting. Next the Equals won over a body of the police into their measures; and, when this force was disbanded by the Directory, the Equals established a committee of public safety. The committee was successful in bringing as many as sixty of the ^ party of the mountain into their ranks, and an insurrection was projected. Seven- teen thousand fighting men were calculated upon by the conspirators as at their disposal. But an 104 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. officer of the army whom they had tried to bring into their plots denounced them to the Directory. The leading conspirators were arrested. Baboeuf and Dai the suffered death, and five others were banished. One of the most ferocious of the sect, Sylvain Marechal, a fanatical atheist, who, accord- ing to Taine, erected atheism into a compulsory dogma and a superior duty,” had written a mani- festo for the occasion, in which he says: ‘^We wish real equality or death. The French Ke vo- lution is only the precursor of another, much greater, more solemn, and the final one. Let all the arts perish, if need be, provided real equality remains for us.” He disclaims the maximum^ or agrarian laws, as being the project of some sol- diers without principle, and of bodies of people without reason, and then adds: “We aim at something more sublime and more equitable — the common good, or the community of goods. K'o more individual property in lands. The land belongs to no person. We demand, we seek the common enjoyment of the fruits of the soil. The fruits are for all the world.” Buonarotti, an Italian, wlio belonged to the insurrectional committee above spoken of, pub- lished in 1828, after long years of exile, a project of an economical decree, so called, which reveals the special plans of the Equals for the new organ- ization of France which they had in view. Some of the provisions of this project are that all prop- COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 105 erty of living persons, when they die, is to form a part of the national community of goods, which all the members of society are to manage. The community gives to all that of which they have need ; but, in the transition state, no one can hold any office who is not a member of the com- munity. Every member under si^ty is required to work on the land or in some useful art. The citizens everywhere are divided into classes, cor- responding with the useful arts ; and the work in each district or commune is performed under the supervision of magistrates elected by the workmen in each class or description of industry. These chiefs of divisions of labor store away such fruits of the soil and of the arts as will bear keeping, and distribute wffiat is laid up in the magazines to the people of the place, according to their necessities. All machines are furnished by the general com- munity; transport is under the direction of the magistrates ; taxes are payable in kind ; no money is to be coined ; and whatever money comes to the national community is to be used in foreign trade. The magistrates may transport workmen from one place of work to another, if it is neces- sary, and may impose forced work on the lazy. This project is interesting, because, in its lead- ing features, it anticipates the newest plans of German socialists in a number of important par- ticulars. It did hot aim at instantaneous expro- priation, owing, no doubt, to the certain failure 5 * 106 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. of SO bold an attempt. The attainment of the same end by abolishing inheritance was judged to be less hazardous. The conspiracy of Baboeuf was a great blessing. During the Empire and for a generation after its fall, there was, we believe, no serious attempt to dissolve social order ; but there was under the Bourbons a communistic or semi-communistic literature arising in France which we cannot wholly pass by, for at length it leavens the multi- tude and threatens the foundations of society. III. THEORIES, ETC., OP COMMUNISM— ST. SIMON AND HIS FOLLOWERS— FOURIER. The ways of thinking or schools that arose in France having social questions for their object, in and soon after the first third of the present cen- tury, could* not, in the strict sense, be all termed communistic or socialistic. We are not called, therefore, in the discussion of socialism, to con- sider them particularly ; nor can we go into the history of them and do justice to the prominence which 'some of their authors reached. Nor did they acquire importance, in any great degree, by going beyond the region of theory and imagina- tion into the sober domain of experiment. If in a few cases they did tliis, the result was a failure. COMMUNISTIC theorip:s and utopias. 107 as in the instances where Cabet’s speculations and a modified Fourierism sought a home within the United States. Yet, as they adopted the princi- ples of earlier communistic writers or gave new directions to communistic thinking, they need here a brief exposition. One of the first of these was St. Sirnonism, or the speculations of St. Simon, modified or corrupted afterward by En- fantin and Bazard. The founder of the school was a member of the noble family to which the duke of the same name, author of important me- moirs published in recent times and a courtier under Louis XIY., belonged. The Count de St. Simon served in our Revolutionary War in the French army, while very young, and ended a life of misfortune and poverty in 1825, a month after the publication of his Nouveaiv ChristianismsP In this work he aimed at a new organization of Christianity, which was reduced to fraternity, with very little of its dogma left. All society,” he taught, ‘‘ought to labor for the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poor- est class. Society ought to organize itself in a way best fitted for reaching this great end.” In regard to the rewards of industrial employments, his motto was: “To each one according to his capacity ; to each capacity according to its work ” — ^which is very far from being a communistic principle. The school of St. Simon at the time of the 108 COlVmUNISTIG THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. July Revolution (in 1830), five years after his death, was attacked by misrepresentations which they endeavored to refute in a letter addressed to the President of the Chamber of Deputies. The attacks touched three points: the community of goods, the community of women, and connection with democratic societies. These attacks pro- ceeded from Messrs. Maguin and Dupin, impor- tant members of the Chamber. In ansv/er, they admit that the St. Simonists profess doctrines concerning the future of prop- erty and the future of women which are peculiar to them, and are connected with equally peculiar and entirely new views concerning religion, politi- cal power, and freedom ; in short, concerning all the great enigmas which are at present making a stir over all Europe in a violent and extraordinary way. But these ideas of theirs are far different from those which are imputed to them.” As to community of goods, they declare that to attempt the introduction of this “ would be a greater act of violence, a more outrageous in- justice than the unequal division which originally was brought about by the power of arms and by conquest.” They could not hold to this : for they believe in the natural inequality of men,” and think that such community would violate the first of all moral laws which they are sent to propagate — that in future every one should have his place according to his capacity and be reward- COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 109 ed according to his works.” Yet, in conformity with this law, tliey demand the aholition of all privileges of birth, without exception ; and, hence, the destruction of inheritance, the greatest of all privileges.” As to the position of woman, they say that ^^Christianity drew woman out of slavery; but still condemned her to subjection.” The St. Si- monists are come to announce her final freedom, her complete emancipation ; but without, on that account, destroying the holy law of marriage, which is proclaimed by Christianity. They de- mand, like the Christians, that one man be united to one woman ; but they teach that the woman shall stand on an equality with the husband, and that, according to the grace which God has spe- cially poured on her sex, she be united to him in the triple function of temple, state, and family, so that the social individual, which until now has been the man alone, shall become in future the man and the woman. The charge that they are allied with the exist- ing democratic clubs, they deny, so far as to say that, although they have sympathy with these movements, their own work is of another kind — not destructive nor violent, but reformatory, and constructive of a new society in peaceful and re- ligious ways. Not long after this defensive letter was pre- sented to the Chamber of Deputies, a schism be- 110 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOriAS. gan between the two successors of St. Simon — Bazard and Enfantin. Bazard, who had intro- duced the society of Carbonari into France, was interested in the social problems which St. Simon left almost untouched. They all believed in some kind of equality of men. How can this be united with inequality of property? Is there any absolute right to property ? To this he gave, if not a new answer, at least one more thorough- ly considered than it had been by St. Simon : that acquired property is truly such, but transmitted property rests only on positive law. This would lead to the abolition of inheritance. How, then, should lapsed inheritances be disposed of by the state ? He solved the problem by a system of banks, which formed a sort of magistracy, em- pow^ered to find the persons best qualified to take care, through their lives, of estates thus revert- ing to the public. There would thus be not strictly a community of goods ; but a distribution by the state, according to the capacity of per- sons to manage what was put into their hands. And so, on the death of each tenant, the turn of some other, well fitted for the work, would come. Enfantin, the other leader of the sect, appears to have been a conceited, selfish man ; and it seems probable that he became imbued with some of the views of Fourier relating to the intercourse of the sexes. But, however this may be, the idea COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. Ill of the rehabilitation or reinstatement in its rights of the flesh was unknown to St. Simon or Ba- zard. When Enfantin avowed this as his doc- trine, Bazard left the hall and did not appear there again. He died not long after. Others of the school — Pierre Leroux, for instance — soon fol- lowed ; and, to save it from total destruction, En- fantin removed to a paternal estate in the coun- try. The last blow the school received came from the arrest of Enfantin and three others, one of whom was Michael Chevalier, for a violation of the penal code. They were imprisoned ; and, although the master or father, as they called him, lived many years afterward, he and his work fell into entire oblivion. An important writer on the social movement in France, L. Stein, thus sums up what. St. Simon, as the leader of a new school of thought, accom- plished : He flrst pronounced the separation of the two great classes of industrial society, employ- ers and workmen. He flrst set forth, although obscurely, social reform as the only real problem of state power. He flrst put the question con- cerning inheritance, the question on which the entire future of the social form of Europe in the next two generations will depend. And, Anally, with St. Simon, society, in its elements, its power, and its contradictions, was for the flrst time half understood, half dimly conceived of. He is the boundary stone of the modern time in France.” 112 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. St. Simon seems not to liave deserved the name of a profound thinker ; yet he and his successors drew to them a number of young men who after- ward distinguished themselves in several depart- ments. Buchez, author of ‘‘ The Parliamentary History of the Revolution,” and of a “ Treatise on Politics,” and President of the Constituent Assembly in 1830, was one of them. Pie, with his friend Bolland, left the school when Enfantin began to make his new doctrines known, and lie afterward passed over into a modified Catholi- cism. Michael Chevalier was another. Auguste Comte was a third, who retained some of the thoughts of the school in his philosophy. We have already spoken of Pierre Leroux as joining Hazard in the schism which Enfantin occasioned. Another scholar, less known, Olinde Rodriguez, when he broke loose from Enfantin, was accused by him of heresy, and accused him in turn. I have asserted,” said he, “ that in the family of St. Simon every child must know who his father is.” Enfantin would have it that the woman alone should be called to decide this serious question.” He gave to the world several publications con- cerning the schism. Fourier may come next, on account of his some- what near relations to St. Simonism ; but to the doctrine of the school, rather than to that of the master. He was destined for trade ; but, losing his property early in his life, filled inferior posi- COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 113 tions with little success, and died, at the age of sixty-five, in 1837. He began to write early in the century. His principal works are Theory of the Four Movements” and ‘^Treatise on a Domestic Rural Association.” In another publi- cation he attacked Owen and St. Simon. Fourier, like St. Simon, separated from the communists by not admitting the equality of members of his communities. Talent and capi- tal are to receive their rewards, as well as work. A rule of his gives five-twelfths of the product to work, three-twelfths to talent, and four-twelfths to capital. Work itself is to have a larger dividend according as it is repulsive and difficult. He does not even absolutely cut off inheritance, so that a generation of property-holders might con- tinue in his establishments. Another of his ideas was to strive to make work agreeable. He would make it so by dis- tributing it according to the inclination of the workman, by allowing him to engage in more than one employment, and by stimulating rival- ries between persons employed in different occu- pations. The existing opinion is thoroughly wrong, he thinks, in expecting from men moral self-control. In Fourier’s system every one may give free vent to his sensitive or impassioned na- ture ; and the result is a harmony in which the poorest may have more enjoyment than kings. For instance, a friendly rivalry between the culti- 114 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. vators of a pear-orcliard and an apple-orchard would give spice to their employments. Fourier would gather a large number of per- sons in a vast building, calculated to hold from 1,800 to 2,000 in all. Here should be collected all the means of amusement after work was ended, and all should have liberty to partake of them. The building — called a phalanstery, as the community is called a phalanx — could be con- structed at a cheaper rate than the hovels contain- ing the same number of poor families. This, and the larger amount of work turned off, owing to the pleasure of the occupations, would greatly in- crease enjo}m:ient and would give ample time to amusement. Work would become play while it lasted, and be followed by a new kind of play after the hours of work. The products of the phalanstery and its dividends would show a vast increase of profits over ordinary systems of labor. He professes to think that England could pay off her national debt by henneries and raising of eggs in half a year (Stein, ii., 506). This is the ridiculous side of the system. Of his fantastic natural philosophy we shall say noth- ing. His moral philosophy consisted in holding that pleasure was the chief good ; that natural desires and passions were to be gratified. It was on this basis that he aimed to make work as in- viting as possible. His opinions respecting chas- tity and conjugal fidelity fell below those of the COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 115 degenerate portion of St. Simon’s scholars. I shall not be guilty of an exaggeration if I say that they admitted into his system something very much like polyandry and polygamy. IV. CERTAIN RELIGIOUS SOCIALISTS— CARET— LOUIS BLANC. St. Simonism manifested the feeling that the problem of the regeneration of society could not be solved on merely social grounds, and that a foundation of religion would be demanded by many earnest minds. Lamennais was one of these. What led him onward from his first posi- tion of a Catholic preacher of righteousness, to that of breaking with his church and of becoming a sort of tribune of the people, was the spirit of fraternity and sympathy with the lower class. At length, in 1838, in a book called the “ Livre du Peujple^'* he almost reached community of goods. He there says : “ That which begets dis- sensions, hatred, envy, is the insatiable desire of possessing more and always more, when one pos- sesses for himself alone. Providence curses these solitary possessions. They stimulate covetousness without ceasing, and satisfy it never. There is no enjoyment in goods, unless they are divided.” And again : From the holy maxims of equality, 116 COMMUNISTIC THEOKIES AND UTOPIAS. liberty, and fraternity, immovably established, the organization of society will emanate.” Another form, in which this religion of frater- nity appeared, has been called the theosopliic^ and it showed itself in the minds of religious dreamers, who were half Christians, with a governing spirit of demagogy. The Abbe Constant was one of these. He says that “ God is everything and everything is God, and that a gi’ain of sand is God,” perhaps having no definitely pantheistic meaning in this. He says again : Nothing on the earth belongs to this or that man. All be- longs to God. That is to say, to all.” Here, too, he may have no definite notion of what he is saying ; but when he says, the community will be the perfect society, he means what communists mean. This man is said by Stein to have taught that in a good time coming marriage would cease ; that a man and woman should unite without re- serve, and the birth of a child should constitute the marriage ; and, since God is love, if love did not last in such marriage, it came forthwith to an end. Another such man is one Esquiros, who wrote the “People’s Gospel” and the “People’s Gospel Defended,” in 1840, 1841, and says that “ the community is altogether in the spirit of Christianity, and that the doctrine of Christ is the enemy of most governments, as they are at pres- ent constituted.” We pass from these to another religious writer, COMMUNISTIC THKOBIKS AND UTOPIAS. 117 who oiTginally belonged to the sect of the St. Simonists, but withdrew when Enfantin revealed his licentious doctrines. PieiTe Leroux, one of the most learned men of his time, estimable and pure, after this breach with his friends, gave him- self up to learning and writing. One of the products was a new but murky and fantastic reli- gious philosophy. Another was a social system in which equality was the foundation. He seems to have condemned property ; yet he stopped, like his teacher, St. Simon, short of the strictest systems of communism. Two of his scholars have given a resume of his social principles, from which I will cite a few pas- sages. Each and all have a right to property. Property is the natural right of every one to use a determinate thing in the way which the law points out. Society, the collective centre, is the field and place of labor of each man ; from society each one borrows the science he applies, the instruments he employs, the materials he transforms. It is so- ciety, in fact, which furnishes him with all his means of production. In eveiy fact of produc- tion, the social centre, as a whole, has a concern, under the title of detaining in its possession the instruments of labor and the primary materials, under the title of suggester of thoughts and mo- tives, and under that of dividing up products and means of work. Labor is demanded by 118 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. society from the industrial man, the artist, the scholar.” Society divides up by its administrative power, products and means of labor of all kinds. The formula of rewarding the various labors is to each according to his capacities, to his labor, to his needs. In this scheme everything is communistic ex- cept the plan of rewarding the laborers, which is borrowed from St. Simon. We come next to a more pronounced commu- nist, Etienne Cabet, wdio was by profession an advocate, and in politics was, at the time of the Bourbon restoration, a very decided radical. In 1834, being compromised in a revolt, he went as an exile to England, and there employed his lei- sure in studying social problems. One of the fruits of his leisure was his Yoyage to Icaria,” a Uto- pia after the pattern of Sir Thomas More’s, in three parts. The first part describes and sets forth a nation in the communistic condition ; the second part is designed to show how such a com- munity can proceed from the actual state of a na- tion ; while the third contains a resume of the doctrine or principles of the community. Wish- ing to carry out his ideas, he crossed the Atlan- tic in 1848, and before his death, at St. Louis, in 1856, had planted his colony. The colony and other subsequent offshoots have been, on the whole, unsuccessful, and we must believe that he had no gift to conduct such an enterprise. COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 119 About 1841 Cabet published his communistic creed in Paris, from which we extract a few arti- cles, sometimes abridged, but generally in a close translation of the author’s words : “ I believe that nature has intended the earth to be possessed in community and undivided, like the light, heat, and air ; that she has pointed out division only for production and things indispen- sable for the needs of the individual, and that community is the most natural system. I believe that property is a purely human invention and in- stitution. I Tielieve that the institution can be good and useful only in case the earth were divid- ed among all men, and each one had an equal share, which, according to its nature, should be inalienable. I believe that the acceptance of the right of property among all nations, in connection with its inequality and alienability, is an error, perhaps the most disastrous of all errors.” believe that the evils rising from private property must continue whilst its cause continues, and that, in order to suppress the effect, the right of prop- erty must cease.” In respect to marriage, his faith is that it is the relation of the sexes most in conformity with the dignity of our nature, and the best calculated to secure individual happiness and order in the com- munity ; that what evils attend on it at present will disappear when equality and community pre- vail ; and that all men not only ought to marry. 120 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. but would incline so to do when the community secured to them, in payment for moderate work, the necessary means of subsistence. So also the present affection between parents and children, however strong it might be, would then produce no single one of those evils which it creates in the present system of inequality. Since the national territory belongs, like an un- divided estate, to society, society or its representa- tives ought to take care of it and see to its culti- vation by the citizens, that they should collect the fruits, put in different ateliey^s all that is necessary for food, clothing, and dwellings, and see to the distribution. Such a kind of cultivation of the soil, he believes, would have for its result the suppression of boundaries between the fields of neighbors, the cultivation of waste lands, far bet- ter agriculture and economy, together with a dou- ble, triple, or even tenfold amount of production. In regard to industry in the community, his be- lief is that society ought to divide and direct work, to place and regulate the workshops {ate- liers)^ and to distribute the workmen. Machines in a communistic system can never be enough multiplied, and human intelligence must find the means to limit the office of the workmen to the mere management of them. Every tiling possible must be done to make work as easy and pleasant as possible. All kinds of work must be regarded to be alike honorable. All citizens must be work- COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 121 men ; every one must, as far as possible, clioose the profession most congenial to him ; and all must work an equal number of hours. believe,” he says, in closing this article of his creed respect- ing industry, that such a system of industry will be followed by the avoidance of double employ- ments and losses, by great savings, and, at the least, by a tenfold increase of fabrics.” He adds, in a subsequent article: “I believe that the opinion which rejects communism as a chimera is only a prejudice, and must yield to study and investiga- tion.” And, on the important point how this sys- tem is to be introduced, he declares that it must not come in by force. If a minority, against the will of the great and small proprietors, should seek to abolish the right of property, and to force the present wealthy class to work, this attempt, overthrowing all past usage, all confidence and all existence, would meet with more hindrances than any social or political revolution has ever had to encounter.” The bare resistance presented by sluggishness would be enough to shipwreck the project. Only public opinion, acting through the will of the people, with the consent of all, or at least of the great majority, and through law, can make it an actual institution. And, in case of a popular reform or revolution, a transitional or preparatory political form would be necessary. Only democracy would be adequate to this task of introducing communism through a system by 122 COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. which inequalities would be gradually lessened and equality increased, thus making the road open for full communism. Thus Utopia has come down out of the clouds and planted lier feet on terra firma. Friendly argument, peaceful conference can make all her speculations real in reference to the greatest change in society ever contemplated in the world. We cannot but praise M. Cabet for the kindly and humane spirit of his creed ; but benevolence and the regeneration of men, with no forces save nakedly human ones, are hardly enough. He re- minds us of the French dancing-master who tried to teach wild Indians to dance, while neither party knew the dialect of the other. “ Messieurs Sauvages,” said he, with the politeness of his country, “ will you have the goodness to put your- selves in the first position ? ’’ But we turn to a man of another kind, and the last Frenchman whom we shall include in these brief sketches. Louis Blanc, born in 1813, the youngest among the more important socialists of France, and still living, is distinguished by his historical writings ; and was so prominent in his party at the downfall of Louis Philippe, in 1848, that he was chosen a member of the Pro- visional Government. He was, however, com- promised in the disturbances of May, 1848, and, to avoid prosecution, fied to England, where he re- sided many years. Here he continued and com- COmiUNISTIO THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 123 pleted his great work on the French Revolution, in twelve volumes. He had already written his ^‘History of Ten Years,” and his ‘^Organization of Labor,” which is the expression of his social or communistic principles. His social starting-point is no new one. “ It is not the man who is responsible for his wrong- doings, but society; and, hence, a society on a good basis will make the individual man good.” The evils of slavery flow from inequality, and that from property. Property, then, is the great scourge of society; it is the veritable public crime.” Government should be considered as the supreme regulator of production, and be invested with power enough to accomplish its task. It should raise money, which should be appropri- ated, without payment of interest, for the creation of social workshops {ateliers) in the most important branches of national industry. In these work- shops the operatives should choose their own overseers, and there should be the same wages for all. They should form a solidarity among themselves, and, when united with agricultural labor, would consolidate in one the whole indus- try of the country. The enormous sums neces- sary for this organization of labor could in part be derived from the abolition of collateral inheri- tances. The effect of thus aiding the ateliers would obviously be to render it impossible for private undertakers to compete with the national 124: COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. shops. Thus concurrence would cease, and pri- vate work yield first or last to the public or com- munistic system. In 1818 the system of Louis Blanc was so far put to the test that public ateliers were opened, and in Paris 150,000 workmen were employed in them, at a daily expense of $50,000. National ruin was near if the system should continue. The workmen were also a dangerous element in the population. The emeute of May, and that of June in the same year, 1818, in which many of the workmen in these national ateliers took part, furnished a pretext for putting an end to the ex- periment. Louis Blanc did not seek to interfere with the family. But, while he says that the family is a natural fact, which on any hypothesis cannot be destroyed, he adds that inheritance has a conven- tional character, with which the progress of soci- ety can do away. The family comes from God ; inheritance from men. The family is, like God, holy and immortal ; inheritance is destined to fol- low the same direction which societies may take in their transformation.” When Louis Blanc encounters the objections made to the destruction of the social system, it is by the reply that it would be only a transitory condition, through which the world would pass to something better. He did not say much on com- munity of goods; but his organization of labor COMMUNISTIC THEORIES AND UTOPIAS. 125 took its place. The great importance of what he did, lay not in the novelty of his suggestions; but in his bringing the minds of men to a practi- cal point, where the transformation of society could begin, without any preparatory overturning. He had, perhaps, a greater part in preparing the way for the German socialism than any other single Frenchman. 126 THE INTERNATIONAL CHAPTER lY. THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN’S ASSO- CIATION, I. With the progress of the French Revolution some very important changes made their way among the industrial classes, both in France and in other parts of Europe. In France the peasant- ry, or serfs of the feudal times, became to a large extent proprietors of small farms, and now con- stitute the largest class of independent workmen in the nation. In the towns the industry of the citizens, or bourgeoisie^ as we shall call them, re- ceived a great stimulus from the new freedom ; while the greater use and cost of machinery ren- dered it increasingly difficult for the operative to emerge from his condition into that of an em- ployer or undertaker. Meanwhile, the feeling of equality, stimulated by the Revolution, made the operative feel that he was depressed below his rightful position — a feeling which was rendered the more bitter by his notion of equality, as im- plying equality of condition, and by the harping wokkingmen’s association. 127 of the demagogues on this string. Thus there grew up, almost of necessity, a division in the working-class of the towns between those who formed the standing hourgeoisie and the proleta- riat^ as the agitators delighted to call the stand- ing class of operatives ; meaning, by this Koman term for the lowest class in that republic, those who had only hands to work with and no laid-up capital. This strife appears in the earlier part of the Revolution. The Directory, when Ba- boeuf’s conspiracy broke out, put it down, as an attack on capital, which might destroy both the republic and the property which was necessary for its industrial prosperity. The Directory tri- umphed; but the alienation between labor and capital was not cured and is not in the process of being cured. It is this strife, or feeling that they have separate interests from the hourgeoisie and the capitalists, which now forms the strong point for agitation everywhere, wherever industry is flourishing; which gives a force to communistic , arguments ; which enables popular leaders to con- solidate them into a class ; which in some coun- tries clouds the prospect for the future, affects politics in a way unknown a century ago, and perplexes the most adroit of statesmen. It is worthy of remark how this strife of classes has widened the breach between the classes in the minds of the parties interested, and, to some ex^ tent, in the minds also of thinking persons. 128 THE INTERNATIONAL There are really no such marked lines as the com- munistic writers have drawn between men in modern society. The holder of a few acres of land in his own right, the small shopkeeper, the various artisans on a small scale in towns and vil- lages have some resemblances to the proletariat and some to the lourgeoisie. Any fundamental change in society would bring no more prosperity to them in a material point of view, or help them more to rise in the social scale. These classes, then, have no motive to welcome revolutions. If there was to be a repartition of all property in equal shares, their shares would be little, if at all, increased. And all the while, in all the countries of Europe and America, education, both general and in the arts of industry, is becoming larger and more open ; so that they may expect that their children will have better chances in life than they had when they were young. Now, these classes or departments of human laborers make up the majority of all who work for their living. It is, then, a minority in most countries that com- poses the discontented and embittered mass ; it is, in the main, the operatives whom improved ma- chinery brings together in large establishments, who are able to influence each other to common action, that can be stirred by eloquent socialists. It is these between whom and the capitalists, the employers, the transporters, a running flght sub- sists, with intervals of rest, but with no perma- workingmen’s xVSSOCIATION. 129 nent peace. The fight does no good in the end, for strikes can never establish healthy relations between employer and employed. The methods of getting rid of employers and capitalists only mitigate the evil to a slight extent. The state, as at present constituted, cannot do anything effec- tual to promote peace between the parties, except by such temporary expedients as arbitration ; and so the workingmen take the matter into their own hands and form associations for themselves. These associations and the prominence given to questions of political economy may be said to be the characteristics of the most modern commit- nistic^ or we will say socialistic movements. And another peculiarity of the more modern times is the spread of socialism itself through European countries and even in both Americas. The history of this spread of socialistic opin- ions by association it is not easy to give ; nor would it be edifying, unless we could trace some of the particulars more minutely than it is in our power to do with our materials and within our limits. As it is a characteristic of the age to be international ; as clubs and associations have be- come far more common since the Ecvolutionary period began ; as the operatives who have intelli- gence and education are far more numerous than formerly, and the circulation of knowledge by the system of post-offices is greatly facilitated ; it is not strange that plans and views prevailing in 130 THE INTERNATIONAL one country should travel into another. Nor is it strange that attempts should be made to unite the operatives of all lands in one great associa- tion. In 1848, when Louis Philippe lost his throne, there was apprehension from the communists in Paris ; and one motive to support the new Empire was the need of a strong conservative government for the continuance of social order. The same dread was inspired by the other revolutions which in quick succession followed that in France. The socialists themselves were becoming international. Thus we find Karl Marx fioating as a pronounced socialist in the decade bemnnin^ with 1840 be- tween France and Germany ; banished from France in 1844, and taking refuge in Belgium ; banished from Belgium, and returning to his na- tive land; editing a journal in Cologne in 1848, which was suppressed by the political authorities in 1849 ; thence fieeing to Paris, and ere long to London, where he has ever since resided. The outbreaks of ’48 revealed a danger to existing in- stitutions which in part proceeded from the com- munistic leaven ; and, accordingly, the police of the Continental states increased in its preventive, as well as in its detective vigilance against the secret foes of order. A number of persons im- bued with socialistic principles found England the safest country to live in. Expression of ob- noxious political or social opinions was there com- workingmen’s association. 131 paratively free; there chartism had been sup- pressed and secret clubs had never been the fash- ion; there the reform bill and a change in the corn laws, with other wise legislation having the welfare of all classes in view, quieted • and in a measure united the nation ; so that the old right of free speech could be safely granted to persons, few of whom were natives, since they were too insignificant to be noticed, although holding opin- ions, in the estimation of Englishmen, the most pernicious. Before the formation of the ‘‘International Workingmen’s Association,” at London, in 1864, it had occurred to some persons to found such a union on international principles. As early as 1840 a society existed in London for the benefit of German operatives, called the Arbeiterbild- tmgsverein^ which counted Englishmen, French- men, Swedes, Poles, and Hungarians among its members, and had some connection with work- ingmen’s societies on the Continent. It is said by Jager, in his “ Socialismus,” that a woman of Geneva conceived the idea, in 1849, of uniting all associations of operatives into one great wliole. And a little before this a manifesto “ of the com- munist party,” in which Marx had a leading hand, called on the proletariats of all lands to unite. This manifesto demanded the abolition of private property in the soil ; centralization of credit in a state bank ; union of the means of intercourse in 132 THE INTERNATIONAL the hands of the state ; national workshops ; ferti- lizing and tilling the soil on a common prescribed plan ; and gratuitous instruction. A union of communists was then called to meet at Brussels ; but the February Revolution in 1848 brought on a i-eaction and discouraged further movements. Sev- eral Germans who were active in this project appear again in the International — as Marx, Engels, Lieb- knecht ; the latter of whom spoke of it afterward as designed to have its headquarters at London. There may have been a reason for an associa- tion embracing all Europe, which we have not yet noticed. If the communists could not be organ- ized and ready for action everywhere at once, it would happen that, when the time for the “ eman- cipation of workingmen” should arrive, one na- tion would bear the brunt of the revolt, and the others be ready to afford it assistance. Or, if the existing form of society could be overthrown in one land, in others the government could be fore- vrarned and forearmed. The immediate impulse to the formation of the International was given in 1862, when the Gov- ernment of France sent over to London a num- ber of skilled workmen to gather up what infor- mation they could respecting the progress of the arts from the exposition of that year. And again, in 1863, Odger, a well-known English socialist, ^Girged the holding of a general workingmen’s coiigress, in order to prevent foreign workmen workingmen's association. 133 from coming into a land where wages were high, and causing a decline in them. The French work- men, on their return home, gained the assent of their comrades for the matter, and it was agreed that there should be a meeting at London the next year” (Jager). A meeting took place, accordingly, on the 28th of September, at which tlie veteran conspirator, Mazzini, made an address, although having little in common with the object for which the meet- ing was convened. His goal was a political one. He was for a strong central power, which should begin a movement; while the essence of the In- ternational movement was a federal association, a combination of movements in part already begun, with the social end in view of raising the opera- tives up over against the employers and capital- ists. To them political power was a means ; and to Mazzini, who seems to have had no thought of overthrowing society, it was an end. Marx also made an address and proposed a series of statutes. In his address there was little of agitation, and the plan of the association was not unfolded at large ; but he pointed toward a system in which wages should disappear, and the working-class should hold in their hands the means of produc- tion furnished by nature. These things must be- come the property of the state, which could be effected only when the power of the state passed over into socialistic hands. 134 THE INTERNATIONAL A few words are needed to explain the organi- zation and working power of the International, which is in the main simple and efficient. The general statutes state that the association is founded to serve as a centre of union and of systematical co-operation between the working- men’s societies in various lands, which have the common aim of the protection, advancement, and entire emancipation of the working-class. A general congress assembles yearly, which consists of deputies from the several branches, and deter- mines the time and place of the next congress ; for the assembling of which, after such determi- nation, no special invitation is required. The congress from year to year fixes the seat of the general council and names its members. The council may add new members to its body ; must present a yearly report of its proceedings; and can, in pressing cases, call a new congress before its regular time for sitting. The council consists of workingmen of the countries represented in the associations, and fills the places necessary for carrying on business out of the members of its own body. It serves as the medium of communi- cation between the various national and local groups of the association ; so that the workmen of a land may remain constantly informed of the movements of their class in all other lands ; that an investigation into the social condition of the various lands of Europe may take place at the workingmen’s association. 135 same time and under common guidance; that questions of general interest, started by one society, may be taken up by all others ; and that, should immediate practical steps be necessary — as, for instance, in international disputes — the united associations may take action at the same time and in a uniform way.” Among the rules for the proceedings of the In- ternational, which were enacted at various times from 1866 onward, we mention the following: Every association, section, or group sends one membeif to the congress, whose expenses his con- stituency is expected to defray. Where the num- ber of members exceeds five hundred, for every additional five hundred a new member may be sent. In countries where the law prohibits branch associations of the International, deputies may be admitted to the congresses for the purposes of debate on questions of principle only. A contri- bution of one penny, or ten centimes, is required from all sections and associations connected with the International. The plan, if fully matured, of the associations would be in the ascending order, groups and sections in a city or tovm ; federations or unions in a place or territory where the different sections can unite together ; and the General International Workingmen’s Association crowning all. As this has a general council of fifty members, with London for its seat ; so each federation is expected to have a central com- 136 THE INTERNATIONAL mittee or council, and each section has its own particular statutes. Each federation has power to admit or suspend local sections, and must make report of its doings every three months. The federations are expected to hold congresses stated- ly, and the smaller unions to have their own par- ticular meetings. The next subject which will call for our atten- tion will be the spread of the International ; after which we shall consider its action and his- tory, especially as revealed by its general con- gresses, until 1872, when it fell under the ban of Europe. II. THE INTERNATIONAL CONTINUED. The details in regard to the spread of this workingmen’s association, as it respects the num- ber of its members and its ramifications, would be unprofitable and could not be relied upon with entire confidence. Thus we find that the num- ber of English members was stated by Dupont, the secretary of the general council, to be 25,173 in 1866; and by Applegarth, one of the mem- bers of the same council, to be 95,000 ; while 10,000 is accepted as a more correct estimate by Jager, the historian of socialism. In some coun- tries, again, the restrictions imposed by govern- wokkingmen’s association. isr ments must have prevented many from joining the association. In Germany, where it had any foothold, its progress was impeded until 1869 by the Workingmen’s Union, an earlier society, founded by Lassalle; and the laws prevented branches of foreign associations from existing in Prussia. But in France, until 1871, it was strong and revolutionary. In Switzerland, where it was free to spread, it embraced, one would think, all the operatives. In Belgium also it had an exten- sive membership, while in Holland few cared any- thing about it. In Austria there seem to have been no capable leaders who could unite a party together, and the German Workingmen’s Union had already preoccupied this field. When, in 1869, the Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party was founded, at Eisenach, nearly 100,000 Aus- trian operatives were represented by delegates, of which number 59,000 belonged to Vienna and 25,000 to Bohemia. In Spain it had many ad- herents — according to some, 100,000 ; according to others, 40,000. It crossed over the Atlantic, and established itself by the side of associations already existing in the United States, which had private relations toward capitalists, rather than the revolution of society, in view. In speaking of what the International and its subordinate branches have done to declare and define their objects, we must give our testimony to the ability and the general moderation with 138 THE INTERNATIONAL which the reports submitted to congresses, and other declarations of principles, have been pre- pared. The association contams an amount of talent which no one has a right to despise. Part of this talent, as it seems, pertains to ^^head- worhers^'^ or the “ inielleoixidl proletariat,'^^ At one of the congresses it was made a question whether any but \i2indL-wor7cers ” should be members of the International. The French members, who had had unpleasant experiences with the men of the tongue and pen, opposed their entrance. They urged the danger which there would be in letting advocates and journalists have an influence over the meetings of men of work. But the plan was carried by the English and German mem- bers. The first general congress met at Geneva, Sept. 3d-8th, 1866. It had been voted to hold a con- gress at Brussels, in 1865 ; but hindrances put in the way of the French socialists, and the unwih lingness of the Belgian government to allow a meeting within its borders, caused it to be post- poned until the next year. The congress of the next year, or 1866, sat at Geneva ; but did little that looked toward the goal of the association. They favored counting eight hours’ labor as a day’s work ; they denounced the labor of women in manufactories, ^^as a cause of the degenera- tion and demoralization of the human race;” they rebuked trades’ unions for occupying them- workingmen’s association. 139 selves with immediate contests, instead of acting against the system of capital itself : they favored co-operative labor, but thought that it ought to be generalized and not have a special form given to it ; they proposed a confederation of all the workingmen’s banks, with the view of ultimately uniting them in a central establishment, under the association ; they unanimously condemned permanent or standing armies, and approved of the general armament of the people and their in- struction in the handling of arms.” The next congress met at Lausanne, in Septem- ber, 1867, under the presidency of Eugene Du- pont, secretary of the general council. Seventy- one delegates were present. Among the points here discussed was that contained in the question whether “ the emancipation of the fourth estate (or working-class) might not result in the forma- tion of 2 ^ fifths the situation of which might be more miserable still.” The prevailing opinion was that the actual efforts of the workingmen’s associations, if they preserved their existing form, might have this effect ; but that this danger would disappear in proportion as the develop- ment of modern industry should render produc- tion on a small scale impossible. Modern pro- duction on a great scale fuses together individual efforts and renders co-operative industry a neces- sity for all.” To obviate this danger, the prol- etariat ” must become convinced that social trans- 140 THE INTERNATIONAL formation can operate only by means acting on the whole of society, etc. On the subject of education, embraced in another question for discussion, the congress de- clares “ that it concedes to the stkte no other right than that of taking the place of a father of a family when he is unable to fulfil his duty. At all events, all religious instruction ought to be re- moved from the programme.” In the report on the definition of the part which the state has to act we find the following views expressed : The efforts of nations ought to tend to make the state the holder of the means of transport and of circulation, in order to anni- hilate the powerful monopoly of the great com- panies, which, by submitting the working-class to their arbitrary rules, attack at once both the dig- nity of man and the liberty of the individual.” At the same congress a report was read which is interesting, as showing the state of war be- tween the International and the capitalists. The master basket-makers of London gave notice to their men that they must dissolve their associa- tion within three days and agree to take lower ^ wages, or be locked out of tlie shops. The work- men declined to accept of the terms, and the em- ployers, aware of what their decision would be, had sent for Belgian workmen to take their place. They had arrived, and were kept from all contact from all other workmen, as far as possible. “ But WOiiKIXGMEN’s ASSOCIATIOX. 141 the council-general of the International made out to get within the ^ cordon scmitaire^ and hy a stratagem made themselves known to the Belgian workmen. On the morrow the workmen, having comprehended what was their duty, returned to Belgium, having been indemnified for their lost time by the basket-makers’ society at London.” Another detachment of laborers from the same country was in the same way persuaded to go home. The leaders of the International cared nothing for strikes, in themselves considered ; but re- garded them as desirable means of bringing about the good time when private capital should cease to be. The strikes would unite the opera- tives by close ties, as common sufferers and as hav- ing common enemies. They would turn the eyes of the operatives toward the International, thus increasing its strength and importance. They would make capital more odious and open labor- ers’ eyes to the advantages of universal combina- tion. When the end should be gained and the state should become the only capitalist, strikes would become impossible. The workmen who should strike then might as well hang themselves outright. At the congresses of Brussels and Bale, in 1868 arid 1869, a discussion sprang up on property, which showed some difference of opinion. De Paepe, of Brussels, in a report, had spoken of 142 THE INTERNATIONAL “certain measures of general reform” proposed by divers socialists. These were the transforma- tion of national banks into banks of gratuitous credit ; the making of the soil a part of the col- lective property of society ; the abolition of in- heritance ah intestate outside of certain degrees of relationship ; and the laying of a tax on succes- sion in the direct line. Citizen Tolain, speaking on the subject of making the soil collective prop- erty, admitted that certain kinds of property ought to become collective ; other kinds, by their nature, ought to remain individual. To this De Paepe replied that Tolain wanted canals, roads? mines to become the collective property of society ; but he himself would extend that idea so far as to include all landed property [property in the soil or resting on it]. Coullery, of La Chaux de Ponds, avowed himself a partisan of individual property. The soil, he said, was an instrument of labor. It ought to belong to the laborer by the same title with every other utensil. If you make the soil collective property, why not extend your theory to all instruments of labor? This would be logical, but would be absurd. We refer to this difference of opinion as show- ing that the extreme theorists had not yet got complete ascendency. And yet they alone com- prehended where the theory must carry them. If persons like Coullery had had their way, the whole scheme would have been an abortion. workingmen’s association. 143 The congress of Brussels met in September, 1868, and was largely attended; but its doings show a repetition of the opinions expressed at the previous congresses. On the question of strikes the congress decided that, in the actual struggle between labor and capital, they were legitimate and necessary; and recommended that, in each federation, there should be a council of arbitra- tion, to decide on their seasonableness and justify- ing causes in future. On a question touching machines, among other things the council de- clared that machines, like all other instruments of labor, should belong to the laborers ; but that this end could be reached only by co-operative associations and a system of mutual credit, and that at present there is room for intervening in the introduction of machines into the workshops, so far that they should not be introduced without certain guarantees and compensations to the la- borer. On a question relating to property, the congress decided that the ways of communica- tion and forests ought to be held as common property, and passed the same resolution respect- ing the soil, mines, quarries, coal-pits, and rail- roads. Dupont, general secretary of the International and one of the vice-presidents at this congress, in a speech at the close of the proceedings, said : What we wish to overthrow is, not the tyrant, but tyranny. We want no governments any 144 THE INTERNATIONAL longer, for governments oppress us by taxes ; we want no armies any longer, for armies butcher and murder us ; we want no religion any longer, for religions stifle the understanding.” The congress of Basel met in September, 1869, and numbered eighty members. A committee, appointed to consider the question of property, brought the subject before the congress under two heads. They proposed that it should declare, first, that society has the right of abolishing indi- vidual property in the soil and of causing it to belong to the community ; secondly, that it is necessary that the soil should become collective property. After debate, in which some con- tended that individual property was the source of all social miseries and inequalities, and that, as having its origin in violence and usurpation, it ought to disappear, and give way to landed prop- erty, regulated by communes organized as federa- tions,” only four stood up for individual property. The first proposition was carried by 54 to 4, and the second by 53 to 4. The subject of inheritance, which had not been discussed at any previous congress, was also brought forward at Basel, in a proposition to adopt the following resolution : “Considering that the right of inheritance, which is an element inseparable from individual property, tends to alien- ate property in the soil and social riches, to the benefit of some and to the detriment of the greater number ; that, by woekingmen’s association. 145 consequence, the rig-ht of inheritance is an obstacle, pre- Tenting the soil and social riches from becoming a part of the collective property ; ‘‘ That, on the other hand, the right of inheritance, how- ever restricted in its operation, constitutes a privilege, the greater or less importance of which does not destroy its in- iquity in point of right, and which is a standing menace to social right ; “ That, further, it is an essential element of all kinds of inequality, because it prevents individuals from having the same means of development, both moral and material ; ‘ ‘ Considering, finally, that the congress has pronounced in favor of the collectivity of landed property, and that this declaration would be illogical if it was not corroborated by that which now follows ; “ The congress recognizes the principle that the right of inheritance ought to be completely and radically abolished, and that this abolition is one of the most indispensable con- ditions of the emancipation of labor.” This report did not meet with entire accept- ance. One member proposed transitory meas- ures, to make the passage smoother from the pres- ent state of things. Another, in the name of his section, proposed a limitation in respect of de^ grees of kindred. If reduced to its minimum, he thought that individual inheritance was only an element of progress and morality. He did not believe in its efficacy as a means of social liquidation.” When the vote was taken on this proposition, 32 delegates were in favor of it, 23 against it, while 17 abstained from voting. At the same congress a report was presented 146 THE INTERNATIONAL by the delegates of the section of Brussels, of which, for want of room, we can only cite the closing words : One of two things must be true. Either the socialists who demand the abolition of inheritance confine themselves to this single re- form — and in that case we claim that they none the less retain the distinction of capitalists and laborers, consequently ‘parasitism'^ for the one and pauperism for the others — or they demand besides that the soil become collective property ; that the capitalists’ deductions from the laborers’ wages be done away with; that instruments of labor be put in the hands of the laborers as their possession ; that integral instruction be given to all ; and, in that case, we claim that the abolition of inheritance is, to say the least, useless and superfiuous.” We shall finish what we have to say of the In- ternational in the next article. III. THE INTERNATIONAL CONCLUDED. It was determined at Basel that the next con- gress of the International should be held in Sep- tember, 1870, at Baris. But on the 15th of July of that year war was declared by France against Prussia, and no congress was held, either at Paris or elsewhere, although an effort was made to workingmen’s association. 147 have one convened at Mainz. The next year, in consequence, no doubt, of the bad odor in which the International then was, a congress was not summoned ; but a private conference met at Lon- don, the proceedings of which were of small im- portance. The congress for 1872 was appointed to meet at the Hague, in Holland ; the reason for meeting there being that ‘‘ the existing persecu- tions of the International by the governments both in France and in Germany do not allow the calling of the congress either to Paris or to Mainz.” In the course of this year a new section of the International was formed at Geneva, by a very remarkable man, Michael Bakunin by name, a Russian Nihilist and a fugitive from his country, who was arrested and condemned to death in the Saxon and Austrian courts and then delivered over to Russian authorities. Sent to Siberia, he escaped, and reappeared in Western Europe, where he figures as the most extreme of radicals. In a speech, made at the third session of the Congress of Berne, he declared, that religion was not simply a disorder of the brain ; but was also a passionate and perpetual protestation of the entire nature of man and of the infinite riches of the human heart against the narrowness and the misery of reality. Religion will be almighty as long as unreason and unrighteousness reign on earth. If we give the earth back what belongs 14S THE INTERNATIONAL to her, that is happiness and fraternity religion will have no longer a reason for its existence. Bakunin did not like communism, because it concentrated all the powers of society in and transferred them to the state ; because it neces- sarily leads to the centralization of property in the state, while he desired the abolition of the state altogether.” At the formation above referred to of the Al- liance of the Socialist Democracy, the following programme was adopted by Bakunin and his friends: ‘^The alliance declares itself atheistic. It desires the abolition of worship ; the substitu- tion of science for faith and of human justice for divine justice ; the abolition of marriage, so far as it is a political, religious, judicial, and civil institution.” To this it adds some of the com- monplaces of the social system — as the abolition of inheritance and the conversion of every kind of property into collective property, for the pur- pose of being utilized by rural and indus- trial associations. It recognizes the fact that all existing states and bodies invested with authority must disappear in the universal union of free as- sociations; and declares that the social question cannot find its definitive and real solution except on the basis of the universal and international solidarity of all countries; and, therefore, dis- cards all politics founded on so-called patriotism and on the rivalry of nations.” workingmen's association. 149 This atheistic section — which also seems to have been a secret society — had applied for ad- mission in the preceding April into the ^‘Ro- mand,” or Swiss federation, and was received by a majority of three, 21 voting for and 18 against its admission. Thereupon the non-contents with- drew from the congress, and the schism was last- ing. In the general congress at the Hague the question of declaring the Alliance,” founded by Bakunin, international, was put into the hands of a committee, which proposed the exclusion of the Alliance, and especially that of Bakunin and another member, from the General Association, on the ground of their having formed a secret society. This report was accepted ; but the per- sons concerned declared that they would not obey the vote. At a congress of the Swiss federation, held the same year, at St. Imier, in Bern, it was unanimously resolved by the sections represented to reject the resolutions passed at the Hague. There could be no other course after this than for the general council at London to suspend the sections, and for the next congress to confirm its action. The International, just after the close of its session at the Hague, lost some other members by their voluntary abandonment of a connection with the Association. These were members of the Commune at Paris who carried things to an extreme, belonging to the clique of which Blan- 150 THE INTERNATIONAL qiii was the head, and who were also members of tlie International. One of these had presided at the congress ; several were members of the gen- eral council at London. They complain that the International Association had not done its work ; had not enough stimulated the political activity of the proletariat. It ought to be not a league of co-operative unions, nor a society for support- ing strikes. It should be, rather, the interna- tional vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. In withdrawing from the International, however, they give the assurance that they will not with- draw from action. “We have but one object: the reorganization of the workingmen’s party in the shape best fitted for striking a blow, in France as well as in any other land, and under the ban- ner of social revolution. In France it is abso- lutely necessary to keep the plans of the social- istic revolutionary party strictly separate from those of the International. There the future of the revolution lies in the hands of the proletariat of the towns, which singly and alone has a revo- lutionary spirit. Above all things must every contact with the hourgeoisie be avoided ; at no cost should a compromise be made with parties in that interest.” From these words it is plain that the Interna- tional was now brought into extreme perplexity, into difiiculties which were unavoidable and re- sulted from its very constitution. On the one workingmen’s association. 151 hand, it had a transitional policy, to encourage the union and common feeling of the laboring class by encouraging strikes and trades-unions and every method of joint action, save war. AVar it did not seek, at least as an immediate ob- ject, and the protests were loud against the Tranco-German war, when it was in prospect. On the other hand, it avowedly kept one object in view, the overturning of society in its present shape, and a reconstruction in which all classes but one should disappear. Every man who had property, however invested, within the country, looked forward to the triumph of socialism as the ruin of himself and his family. Every state and all interested in upholding the state or in maintain- ing individual rights, as they are understood in civilized communities, interpreted a socialistic state as an overturn begun by civil war, and sure to involve the destruction of every existing thing except a state and operatives paid by that state. Was it strange, now, that many on both sides honestly believed that the new millennium could not come in without force ; although the Interna- tional held out hopes that suffrage, opposing the interests of capital and a conviction of the un- avoidableness of a change, would make the upper classes, when the time should come, willing to yield without fighting ? This, also, we think, was a necessary result of the agitations attendant on the existence of such 152 THE INTEENATIONAL organizations as the International, that the pas- sions of the ignorant and unreflecting were of necessity excited beyond the limits of reason. Socialism could not live and thrive without agita- tion. To foster and increase the agitation, the line between the operative and the employer must be widened and rendered more precise ; the feeling of wrong must be intensified. The capi- talist must be looked on as a thief. I venture to say that no equal intolerance, between parties in politics or in religion on the large scale, can be shown in any crisis of change or strife. The leaders in the socialistic movement — able men, who ought to have their own tempers at com- mand — show a malignant spirit that a man con- scious of a good cause should be ashamed of. Thus, in the communistic manifest prepared in 1847 by Marx and Engels, two very able men whose equals would take a foremost place in any party, do not scruple to write as follows: ^^For the rest, nothing is more laughable than the highly moral horror of our hoiirgeois at the pre- tendedly official [accounts of] the community of wives among the communists. The communists need not introduce community of wives, for it has almost always existed. Our hourgeois^ not content with having the wives and daughters of i\\Q jgroletojriat at their disposal, find a chief pleas- ure in seducing each other’s wives. Civil mar- riage is in reality the community of wives.” As for WORTONGMEN S ASSOCIATION. 153 these words we only ask, how a man could be be- lieved in any statement afterward, who would send forth stuff into the world. But, to turn to another form of this malignity, we cite a passage from a letter of Dupont, a secretary of the gen- eral council of the International at London, writ- ten a day or two after the disaster at Sedan ; Nothing is changed. The power is still in the hands of the hourgeois. In these circumstances, the role of the workmen — or, rather, their duty — is to let this ‘vermine hourgeoisie^ make peace with the Prussians, for the shame of the act will never be wiped off from them,” etc. The lyouv- geoisie^ who are charmed with their triumph, will not at once perceive the progress of our Associa- tion, and for the day of real war the operatives will be ready.” And, to give one sample more, one Sylvis, then president of the National Labor Union of the United States,” writes from Philadelphia, in May, 1869, as follows : “ Our last war has had for its result to build up the most infamous financial aristocracy in the whole world. This money power pumps the substance of the people. We have declared war against it, and think that we shall gain the victory. We shall first try suffrage ; but, if it fails, we shall have recourse to more efficacious measures. A little blood-letting is sometimes necessary in des- perate cases.” The man perhaps was a very mild person ; but the style of the class required him to 154 THIS INTERNATIONAL say something sanguinary. He died soon after writing the letter. The International suffered to such a degree from its alleged complicity in the horrors of the spring of 1871 that it has not since recovered. The question may be asked, to what degree was it answerable for those crimes ? As far as we can discover, it had little direct blame for them, how- ever much the general council at London might try to whitewash the villanies of the insurgents, and to blacken the deeds of the government’s army : and the members of it at Paris, as far as we can discover, were not among those who ap- proved of the burning of the public buildings in Paris, or of the murder of the hostages, that most fiendish of crimes. The question is not an easy one to resolve, nor have we many materials for a satisfactory solution ; but, as far as we can discover, the case stands thus : 1. The authorities of the International appear to have taken, before the war, no active part in bringing it on. What individuals may have wished or done, they were not responsible for these horrors. At the congress of the Hague the delegates from Spain, Belgium, and the Federa- tion of the Jura proposed to do away with the general council. They asserted that its present power was too great, and that a bureau of statisti- cal correspondence would be enough for the wants of the Association. They added that the gen- workingmen’s association. 155 oral council would never lead men to the barri- cades. They had thus far neither instigated an insurrection nor organized one ; but, on the con- trary, taken hold of things in a repressive way. The majority in the congress replied that the general council did not exist for the purpose of initiating a revolution. They appeared on the scene only to give help, as in the strike of the bronze-workers at Paris, that in Newcastle, etc. If it had not done enough, the cause lay in its limited power ” (from Jager). 2. The Commune of Paris was elected by the revolutionary body in possession of the city, on the 26th of March, 1871, after the preliminary peace of Feb. 26th, made by the legislative body at Versailles with the Prussians. The Commune consisted normally of eighty representatives of the quarters of the arrondissements ” of the city. To this body belonged a large number of socialists, but a minority of the members of the International. These last, however, seem to have been the most moderate, the most able, of the representatives in the Commune. A French authority says that in the brief history of the Commune the members of the International played the most serious and the least violent role. They furnished the Commune with men of ad- ministration and theory — such as Theisz at the posts; Frankel in the department of industry; Yaillant in that of public instruction ; Beslay in 156 THE INTEKNATIONAL tlie Bank; Yesinier in the Officiel [jonrnal of the Commune], who gave for a moment to this un- principled and aimless erneute an appearance of regularity and life : they voted intrepidly against violent measures, against the committee of pub- lic safety. They pursued the object which the socialists had in view throughout. ^We ought not to forget,’ said Frankel, in the session of May 12th, ‘ that the revolution has been made exclu- sively by the working-class. If we do nothing for this class, I see no reason for the existence of the Commune.’ And it was not until this social- ist minority protested, on the 16th of May, against the revolutionary dictatorship of Pyat, Rigault, and their fellows, and declared that it would no longer sit in the Hotel de Yille, that Rigault and Urbain dared, the day after, to propose and have put to vote the law concerning the host- ages.” May I add another important citation from the same source ? There were in the revolt of 1871 three distinct phases : it was called forth and exe- cuted by the republican element (1) with no other programme than maintenance of the republic ; was then made use of and organized by the so- cialistic element (2), which brought to it the con- siderable support of the International ; it then fell rapidly into the hands of revolutionists prop- erly so called (3). This sad evolution brought into pov/er successively the central committee of WORKINGMEN S ASSOCIATION. 157 tlie national guard, the Commune of Paris, and the committee of public safety.” * It must be added, however, that in Paris the International identified itself with the Commune and the revolution against the Assembly at Ver- sailles. One of its best members, Tolain, who, in fact, was one of the founders of the Associa- tion, had been chosen a member of the French Assembly and took his seat. The federation or section to which he belonged passed a vote, after the establishment of the Commune, that he should resign his place in the national legislature and adhere to the Commune, or lose his status in the International, thus making opposition to the actual organization of the French state a condi- tion of membership in that body. 3. After the murder of the hostages, the de- struction of public buildings, and the attempted burning of the city, the general council at Lon- don published a manifesto to all the members of the Association in Europe and the United States.” Their object is to put the best face possible on the transactions during the capture of Paris, and to lay the blame on the soldiers of the gov- ernment and on M. Thiers. ‘‘ In war, they say, fire is an entirely righteous weapon. Buildings occupied by an enemy are bombarded only to set * La Commune, pp. 8, 9. By Bourloton et Robert. Paris, 1872. 158 THE INTERNATIONAL them on fire. The Commune used fire, in the strictest sense of the word, as a means of de- fence.” The putting to death of the hostages was the fault of the government at Versailles, who refused to give up Blanqui in exchange for Arch- bishop Darboy and a large number of clerical and other persons. A strange operation this, to seize upon a large number of innocent men within the towm, peaceable persons who had no connection with the enemy outside, and make them hostages for a single man taken in war. We have no space to dwell on this manifesto further, except to say that by its malignant spirit and useless palliation of crimes on which man- kind look with horror, it made them its own. It hurt the cause for which it was written. Two of the council gave up their places on account of it. It gave ground to the French government for the enactment of a law against all who should be- come members of the International Working- men’s Association, or any other society with simi- lar doctrines, or who should aid and co-operate in spreading its doctrines or letting it have a hall for the purposes of meeting, etc. The effect of the events at Paris was — whether the impression were true or not — to identify the International with bloody insurrections against established order and to keep it under the in- spection of the police in almost every country in Europe. Henceforth it would tend more workingmen’s association. 159 and more to become a secret society, and, there- fore, would have less efficiency, would dwin- dle away, would lose principle, and become des- perate. 160 LEADING FEATURES OF CHAPTEK V. I. LEADING FEATURES OP THE THEORY OP MARX. We have already made the remark that there were two changes in the direction which socialism took after the revolutions in 1848. One of them was, that it became more international, and strove to unite the operatives of Europe in a common movement. The other was, that it made the field of political economy in a greater degree the battle- ground for the new order of things. We do not mean to say that this branch of social philosophy had not been already used as an armory of wea- pons against the existing relations of capital and labor; or that the socialists of all countries had previously been entirely isolated in their action ; but that these changes of direction are more obvious, and played a more important part after the period indicated than before. The Interna- tional movement in its first and most active period, down to 1872, we have already consid- ered, and have seen that Marx, with other Ger- mans, had much to do with it. The same emi- THE THEORY OF MARX. 161 nent socialist gave to the theory and claims of socialism the form which at the present time is most current, especially in Germany. It will be our endeavor to give the leading features of his economic theory, so far as they are necessary for the understanding of the present standpoint of the leading socialists and of their party. In 1859 Marx gave to the world a small work, entitled “For the Criticism of Political Econ- omy;” and in 1867 an enlargement and continua- tion of the same, under the title of Capital : a Critique on Political Economy.” The first vol- ume, which is all that has appeared, and which contains only Book First, ‘‘The Process of the Production of Capital,” appeared first in 1867, and again in 1872, somewhat enlarged, so as to form a volume of 822 pages. The work, written in the dialect of the Hegelian philosophy, with a terminology of its own, is not readily understood, and is more like a production of Thomas Aquinas than like an essay of Cairnes or Eoscher. In the preface to the first edition Marx complains that Lassalle, in his work attacking Schulze-Delitzsch, is guilty of seriously misunderstanding it. I must endeavor, with the help of others, to present the simplest outline that I can of the most fundamen- tal points in Marx’s work, which rest on no newly discovered truths, but on such as Adam Smith and Ricardo long since made familiar to the stu- dents of political economy. 162 LEADING FEATURES OF The principal lever of Marx against the present form of industry, and of the distribution of its results, is the doctrine that value — that is, value in exchange — is created by labor alone. Isow this value, as ascertained by exchanges in the market or measured by some standard, does not actually all go to the laborer, in the shape of wages. Perhaps a certain number of yards of cotton cloth, for instance, when sold, actually pay for the wages of laborers and leave a surplus, which the employer appropriates. Perhaps six hours of labor per diem might enable the laborer to create products enough to support himself and to rear up an average family ; but at present he has to work ten hours for his subsistence. Where do the results of the four additional hours go? To the employer, and the capitalist from whom the employer borrows money ; or to the employer who also is a capitalist and invests his capital in his works, with a view to a future return. The laborer works, and brings new workmen into the world, who in turn do the same. The tendency of wages being toward an amount just sufficient for the maintenance of the labor, there is no hope for the future class of laborers. Nor can compe- tition or concurrence help the matter. A concur- rence of capitalists will tend to reduce wages to the minimum, if other conditions remain as they were before. A concurrence of laborers may raise wages above the living point for a while ; but THE THEORY OE MARX. 1G3 these fall again, through the stimulus which high wages give to the increase of population. A gen- eral fall of profits may lower the price of articles used by laborers i but the effect of this is not to add in the end to the laborer’s share. He can live at less expense, it is true, but he will need and will get lower wages. Thus the system of labor and capital is a system of robbery. The capitalist is an ^^expropriator” who must be “ex- propriated,” as Marx expresses it. A just system can never exist as long as wages are determined by free contract between laborers and employers ; that is, as long as the means of carrying on pro- duction are in private hands. The only cure for the evils of the present industrial system is the destruction of private property — so far, at least, as it is used in production ; and the substitution of the state, or of bodies or districts controlled by the state, for the private owner of the means of production. Instead of a number of classes in society, especially instead of a bourgeoisie and a proletariat^ there must be but one class, which works directly or indirectly for the state, and re- ceives as wages what the state decides to give to tliem. The state, it is taken for granted, will give in return for hours of labor as much as can be afforded, consistently with the interests Of future labor and with the expenses necessary for carrying on the state system itself. Whether wages under this kind of social order will be really 164 LEADING FEATURES OF greater than they are now ; whether the amount of comforts and of enjoytnents will be increased — these questions we may consider hereafter. We now content ourselves with remarking that the laborer has and can have no effective choice in regard to employment, or amount of wages, or place of abode, if the state is to be the great em- ployer and capitalist. His work must be forced work ; and there must be a return to what is, in substance, the same as mediaeval serfdom, when the serf owned no land and worked part of the time to maintain his master and a part of the time to maintain himself. Marx, if we are not in an error, nowhere shows the injustice of private property ; but, rather, as- sumes that it is not an institution of natural law. Nor does he expound the steps by which the ex- propriator is to be expropriated ” — a maxim which would seem to denote restitution of property to its natural owner, and hence, the right of the state to be the supreme owner of ail property. When this is assumed, the only way of getting rid of the evils of the present social plan is a wholesale confiscation of private property, or the abolition of the right of inheritance, which would even- tually bring about the same result ; or confiscation, not taking effect all at once, so as to pauperize the property-holder, but making him some compensa- tion for a term of years. We have not found any declarations of Marx as to the practical way THE THEORY OF MARX. 165 of introducing the socialistic state, which is cer- tainly a matter of very vast importance. But to this we shall recur in the sequel. We had intended to give our readers some idea of the system of Marx and an explanation of his new and most ingeniously contrived technical terms ; but the attempt within our limits would be hopeless, and we should reach nothing really original. We shall confine our remarks to the fundamental principle that whatever is exchanged is work put into products. It is only the quan- tum of socially necessary work,” says he, ‘‘or the work-time socially necessary for the production of a value in use, which determines its amount of value” (^. of its value in exchange). “Wares in which equally great quantities of Avork are con- tained, or which can be produced in the same work-time, have, therefore, the same amount of value. The value of a ware has tlie same propor- tion to the value of another ware, as the time necessary for the production of the one has to the time necessary for the production of the other.” It is, indeed, true that the same amount of labor incorporated in two “ wares ” or articles will give them equal value in exchange, so far as the factor of labor comes into the estimate ; but it is not true that the amount of labor is the only source of value. It is impossible to count hours’ work in different employments as having the same value ; or to put difficult or dangerous work by 1C6 LEADING FEATURES OF the side of easy or safe work, as though they ought to be subjected to the same measure ; or to give equal rewards to intellectual and artistic work and to that performed by the common operative. Then, again, taste displayed in a pro- duction of labor will give it a preference over one where the pattern or mode of execution is clumsy. The same labor may be spent on an ugly calico as on a pretty one ; but in no state of society — not even in a socialistic republic — ^will the ugly one exchange with other commodities on equal terms with the handsome one. In the same way in other cases, supply and demand af- fect all the objects brought into market, on ac- count of their plenty or scarcity, or on account of their different capacity to gratify some desire of man. But it is far more to our purpose to remark that the employer is a vital factor in all work which requires time for its completion, which is conducted on a large scale, which requires many hands and careful supervision, and which needs knowledge of the money market, of the labor market, of public taste and public demand. Nor is the employer necessary in the present relations only of the laborer and the employer ; but, what- ever be the form of society, he or somebody dis- charging his functions wdll be found necessary. Some such man could not be dispensed with in the co-operative industry of workmen. One or THE THEORY OF MARX. 167 more of their number would be required to do those duties which are necessary in order to suc- cessful production. And so, if the state shall ever take the place of all other employers and capitalists, it will not fail to need supervisors and agents without number, in procuring, for instance, raw material, in keeping up instruments of pro- duction, in paying laborers for their hours’ toil, in deciding what will best suit the market, in keep- ing accounts, in providing for sales. The importance of the employer is also shown by the fact, common enough, that many who start a manufacturing business fail, because they have not the ability or judgment or knowledge that is requisite for success. I7o skill or industry of the operatives themselves can render the employer useless, and it is on his ability or want of ability that everything depends. If he is not a capital- ist, he must, also, provide funds by borrowing from some canitalist for the raw material and for the wages, which are paid before the products are finished and ready for sale. He must establish connections with men who can sell the products ; he must be able to judge what products it is most advantageous to manufacture ; he must thus cal- culate well the future probabilities as to quantity and kind of products ; his taste and judgment, to a great extent, makes products salable ; — he must, in short, be a far-seeing man, with a general’s ability to dispose of all the parts of his army, so 168 LEADING FEATURES OF that they shall support one another. He, finally, takes all risks upon himself, while the operatives are generally sure of their w^ages. Now, the question is : Can or should the man on whom so much depends be thrown out of cal- culation and treated as of no account ? Is it not for the interests of all that he should have a con- siderable share — if the year’s work turns out well — in the proceeds of the articles which he, in fact, has greatly contributed to create ? And will not, for the most part, his profits go to the benefit of labor, and by accumulation of profits, cheapen the prices of all commodities, and in the end benefit the entire community, laborers and others ? Tills is but a balance against the risks and losses to which employers and capitalists are subject, and which are disastrous to laborers, although tlie}^ receive their full amount of wages. The measure of remuneration for work is time, according to Marx’s system. The differences of influence upon the amount produced by skilled and unskilled, efficient and inefficient work, by a capacity to meet the ends for which a particular industry is set on foot, and by labor little above brute force, are not estimated. Work is work, and all wdio work an hour are paid alike. The treatment of the superintendent is in conformity with this kind of equalization. If he is fit for the business, his management alone meets the ends of united industry in a special form. But if he THE THEORY OF MARX. 169 is the pivot on which everything turns, he ouglit in justice to be rewarded for the success of the undertaking, unless we lay it down that the end of labor is to support life, and no one has a claim to anything more. To this might be added, that the amount of re- muneration to the capitalist and employer is a small portion of the whole product obtained by the joint agency of capital and labor. Mr. Edward Atkinson, a most competent judge, says that in the first division those who do the actual work of production, either of the raw material or of the finished article, must get ninety-five to ninety- seven parts, and the owner of capital only three to five.” And from these three to five parts taxes and private expenses must be drawn. And Mr. Mill, in the chapter on Socialism, recently published, remarks that the remuneration of capi- tal, as such, in Great Britain, is measured by the interest on the funds, which is about three and one-third per cent. All above this is to be re- ferred to the employer’s wages of superintend- ence, to various risks, and other causes. If there were any other plan which could bring more wages to operatives and more prosperity to all parts of society, let it be by all means tried at once. Suppose that all the profits were paid over to the operatives ; would that mitigate any of the evils of society? By no means. On the con- trary, all capital would be withdrawm from active 8 170 LEADING FEATURES OF use, for no employers would work and undergo risks for nothing. We come, then, to the conclusion that work has no just claim to the entire results of produc- tion. How much of those results shall it appro- priate? Does justice or the good of society de- mand that it shall have an amount which may he equal to the supply of the laborers’ necessities ; or ought it to be more, ought it to be very much more? Prof. Cairnes says that he is ^Hmaware of any rule of justice applicable to the problem of distributing the produce of industry,” and that ‘‘ any attempt to give effect to what are considered the dictates of justice which should involve, as a means toward that end, a disturbance of the fun- damental assumptions on which economic reason- ing is based — especially those of the right of pri- vate property and the freedom of individual in- dustry — would, in [his] opinion, putting^all other than material considerations aside, be inevitably followed by the destruction or indefinite curtail- ment of the fund itself from which the remunera- tion of all classes is derived.” Some of the workingmen in Germany, who have been led to embrace socialistic views, seem to expect that in the new socialistic world of the future all the returns from labor will go to the laborer; for instance, that a year’s production of cotton cloth, consisting of fifty million yards, at ten cents the yard, or §5,000,000, would liave no THE THEORY OF MARX. 171 deductions made from it by the new employer — the state. But this is as far as possible from the truth, unless the state can provide raw material, machinery, and buildings, and do all the work which an employer now does, from some other fund. Nor is this all ; for the state must provide for its own proper expenses as a political body, besides those incurred in its capacity of an em- ployer, out of the avails of the workingman’s industry. It would be possible, indeed, to pay all alike for work-time, to put the employer or supervisor and the most unskilled workmen on the same level, laying out of the account capacity and the importance of operations. Whether in practice this would work well or ill, there can be but one opinion. II. FERDINAND LASSALLE AND THE GERMAN WORKINGMEN’S UNION. Marx and Lassalle were the two leaders in the German socialistic movement ; but the former became a cosmopolite in his principles, while the other was a German to the end of his career. They differed widely in their characteristics. Marx is cold and bitter. He is more of a philos- opher than of an orator ; he lias not figured so much in congresses and public debates as in lay- ing plans. for spreading social doctrines. Lassalle 172 FERDINAND LASSALLE AND THE was an ardent and ambitious, as well as a pleasure- loving man ; was fond of admiration, and knew how to draw to himself the warm sympathies of the people. Marx went as far as the principles and logic of his socialism could carry him. Las- salle went half way in his socialistic efforts ; lay- ing down principles which in the hands of others might overturn society, but aiming in his own efforts at no direct results, and planting the seeds of thought in the future, as if the triumph of his ideas were a great way off. In political economy he was by no means as strong as Marx ; but in historical and juristic science was much his supe- rior. He was, indeed, a man of splendid endow- ments, and only needed self-contrql to make one of the most eminent jurists or scholars of his native land. But he was driven by contrary forces, so that he fell short of what he could have accomplished in any one direction ; and his end disclosed his weakness. A man who is at once a scholar, an orator, and a man of pleasure, cannot do much that will last. Yet his high endow- ments, his almost sovereign position at the head of his party, and his qualities which gave him power over common men, made him the idol of one party among the German socialists, while he was undervalued and disliked by the other. Lassalle was born in Breslau, in 1825, the son of a rich Jewish merchant, who destined him for the same employment ; but, preferring a life of GERMAN workingmen’s UNION. 173 study, he betook himself to the university, where he pursued philosophy and law. At Berlin, where he intended to settle as a private teacher, he awakened the highest admiration of William von Humboldt and Boeckh. Heinrich Heine, whom he saw at Paris, in 1815, introduced him to Varnhagen von Ense, in these terms: “lie is a young man of the most distinguished endow- ments, with the most thorough learning, the most extensive knowledge, the greatest acuteness that have ever come under my notice. To the richest power of expression he unites an energy of will and a skill in action which astonish me.” To this he adds that “ Lassalle is a genuine son of the modern time, which will have nothing to do with self-restraint and discretion.” Lassalle’s life was diverted from its original purpose by an acquaintance, in 1845, with the Countess of Hatzfeld, a Berlin beauty, forty years old, who was then involved in a suit for divorce against her husband. He took her part as her counsel, and spent the best portion of eight years in carrying the case to a successful issue. In 1846 he managed to get possession of a casket containing documents important for his client, and was tried for moral complicity in a theft; but was acquitted, on the ground that the theft was not foreseen by him but originated among the servants of the countess. This suit led to lasting intimacy between the parties. He received — as 174 FERDINAND LxiSSALLE AND THE F. Mehring, in his Social Democracy,” says — a yearly income of five thonsand thalers from the lady. Lassalle entered into liis relations with the countess in real sympathy ; and he said, a little before his death, in a letter to Huber, that his intervention in her affairs was the fact in his life of which he should ever continue to be proud. But they brought him into a circle which his critics call impure misauber and he, there- fore, comes before the world in no fdvorable light. Is there,” asks an eminent German, von Treitschke, abjectness more vulgar than dema- gogy over truffles and champagne ; than the ca- rousing and unchaste life of an adventurer, which was led by this man who played the part of the saviour of the suffering? Even in France good society would, without mercy, have rejected every one who took part in the elegant g}^sy life of the Ilatzfeld circle. Only we Germans, with our in- complete social ethics, are more tolerant.” Until the spring of 1857 Lassalle lived at Diis- seldorf. Here he took part in movements which brought him into connection with Marx, Engels, and other social leaders ; and in the revolutionary year, 1848, was unsuccessfully accused of inciting the people to armed violence. He was, although not convicted, held under arrest, and was subse- quently sentenced, for a very trifling offence, to six months’ imprisonment. In 1857, having now GERMAN WORKINGMEN S UNION. 175 completed tlie law-suit of the Countess of Hatz- feld, he returned in disguise to Berlin, and ere long obtained leave, through Wm. von Humboldt, to remain in that city. In the same year he pub- lished a work, which he had written some time before, entitled The Philosophy of Heraclitus the Obscure, of Ephesus,” of which Ueberweg says that it is the most thorough monograph on the subject, but that the author is at times too much given to Hegelianizing.” In the ensuing years appeared his rhetorical drama, entitled ‘^Francis of Sickingen,” ‘‘The Italian War and the Task of Prussia ” (1859), “ Fichte’s Political Legacy” (1860), with “The Philosophy of Fichte and the Meaning of the Spirit of the German People ” (1862). These last-mentioned works were written to propagate his idea of a centralized Ger- man democracy. In 1861 he published his “ Sys- tem of Acquired Rights,” in two volumes, the object of which was to show that certain rights of vast importance — such as property and inheri- tance — are really historical, and not jural; that is, that they arose in circumstances which justified their recognition, but that certain other circum- stances might require their abolition. The sec- ond volume is occupied with the question of in- heritance. This is a very learned attack on the present constitution of society, and an argument to prove that a social state may have a right to exist. In this work he already caught up the 176 FERDINAND LASSALLE AND THE doctrine of Marx, first announced in his Critique of Political Economy ” (1859), that the value of work acquired in production must wholly belong to the workman. A little after the publication of this work Las- salle delivered a lecture, which was published under the title of “ The Workingmen’s Pro- gramme,” on the special connection of the pres- ent period of history with the idea of the labor- ing class. The object of this was to show the rise and growth of the classes that lay outside of feudalism, from the feudal times until the pres- ent. The political condition and importance in society of these classes has been growing until now. First the hourgeosie and the men of capi- tal emerged from the insignificance they had in the feudal ages. Then the laboring class, res- cued from serfdom, began to claim power and the reform of social evils. We are at this point of a progress which must of necessity go onward by revolution or reform. In May, 1863, Lassalle founded the German it Workingmen’s Union,” which was somewhat more than a year older than the International. Its object confined it to the States of the German Confederation, and it arose out of the conviction that only by general, equal, and direct suffrage a satisfactory representation of the social interests of the German operative class can be brought about,” etc. Lassalle was to preside over this Union for GERMAN workingmen’s UNION. 177 five years with almost autocratic power — sub- ject, indeed, to a committee or council, but to one scattered over Germany, which could seldom be brought together. This post he filled with an energy and a consumption of vital force that few, if any, agitators have equalled. His writings from this period until his death were devoted to social questions. His speeches and addresses were nu- merous. The working class heard him gladly. He effected a separation between the socialists of his party and those persons who looked for relief to the plans suggested by the Progressive Party, as it was called ; or, in other words, he detached the workingmen from the iourgeosie^ or third estate. But his success was by no means as great as he hoped for. The vital power of the move- ment was concentrated in the head, and could not be sufficiently diffused through the members. The International continually asked, in its num- berless meetings, local and general : What shall we do ? ’’ They had definite aims ; but Lassalle’s organization did little more than convoke men to listen to a powerful and eloquent chief. His po- sition, again, which confined the Union to Ger- many, making it simply national, was a false one. As another remarks, socialism, as such, is univer- sal ; and, if it is the true remedy for social evils, it ought to be proclaimed everywhere. The Union, again, by means of personal rivalries, was brought into a false relation toward the Interna- 178 FERDINAND LASSALLE AND THE tional. They could not unite and they could not both thrive in Germany. Finally, when univer- sal suffrage was introduced into the North Ger- man Confederation, in 1867, the main object for which the Union was founded was accomplished ; for its objects, or the objects of the party repre- sented by it, could be either attained in the Reichs- tag, through its representatives there, or some- thing, beyond that which was contemplated in the existing organization, must be sought for. It is not strange, then, that the small fruits of his agitation were extremely disheartening to Lassalle. His discouragement appears strikingly in an extract from a letter written in the last year of his life : “New supplies of money I cannot get ; and just as little can I let the Union go to the ground as long as hope beckons to me in the political heaven. ... I am deadly weary ; and, strong as my constitution is, it trembles to the very marrow. My excitement is so great that I can no longer sleep by night I roll about until five o’clock, and arise with headache, ut- terly exhausted. I am overworked, overstrained, over- wearied to a fearful degree. The mad effort to complete the ‘ Bastiat- Schulze ’ [one of his latest works against Mr. Schulze von Delitzsch, leader of the Progressive Party], be- sides everything else, in three months, the deep and painful discovery of my delusion, the gnawing internal vexation with which the indifference and apathy of the working class, taken as a whole, fills me, are together too much even for me.” In tlie summer of 1861 lie attended tlie festi- val of the foundation of the Union, which was GERMAN workingmen’s UNION. 179 celebrated in Rhenish Prussia. Here he was re- ceived by the workingmen with tiimultnous ap- plause. Next he visited several watering-places of Germany and Switzerland. His death was due to his unregulated mind, which gave itself lip to pride and passion. He had become enam- ored of a young lady in Munich, who rejected his addresses, preferring another man. Lassalle chal- lenged his rival, and was shot dead by him, Au- gust 31, 1864. No one can scruple to call Lassalle a socialist in the sense of that word which implies a denial of the right of private individual property and a desire to make the working class the only order in the state. But he did not express his views very clearly, and had no plans of immediate change in the institutions of society. His policy was to agitate ; to set the minds of the laboring class at work in preparation for a mild and peace- ful overturning in the future. One of his plans, which is not absolutely socialistic, was the found- ing of productive associations, which differed from Louis Blanc’s workshops mainly in this, — that they were not got up by the state, but by unions of operatives, on the credit of the state. There was also an insurance union embraced in the pro- ject, for the purpose of making up local losses of the associations by the help of profits elsewhere made. The managers of the several productive associations in every place were to pay weekly 180 FERDINAND LASSALLE AND THE wages to the laborers, and would be united to- gether in one vast union. That this plan was practicable and could be extremely lucrative could be denied,” he says, ‘^only by the igno- rance to which it is unknown that both in Eng- land and in France numerous workingmen’s as- sociations subsist, which depend entirely on the efforts of the isolated laborers who belong to them, and yet have reached a high degree of pros- perity.” Vfe believe that this device is altogether discarded by the most advanced socialists. Lassalle made more of the ^^iron law” of wages in his agitations than of any other single doctrine of political economy. He explains it thus : The iron economical law, which in existing relations, under the control of supply and demand for work, determines the wages of work, is this : that the average wages always continue reduced to the means of living which are required in a nation, according to the usages there prevailing, for per- petuating existence and propagating children.” There is nothing to complain of in this statement of the law, except first that wages are generally above the sum necessary for supporting and sup- plying labor — that is, are above the minimum ; and that more has been paid on the average is shown by strikes and savings-banks, by the great contri- butions to trades-unions, and the vast sums spent for useless or hurtful drinks. But, again, is he not in a great error when he imputes this iron GERMAN workingmen’s UNION. 181 law ” to the relations in society as it now exists, to supply and demand, and free contract between laborer and employer ? Must it not be called a law of nature, inevitably growing out of tlie in- citements to the increase of population in the working class ? Kicardo’s doctrine of wages was founded on the law of population, as interpreted by Maltlius. As far as we can see, it might just as much affect a society where the government was the sole employer and capitalist, as it affects a society where free contract and wages paid by the employer are in vogue. A high remuneration paid by the state to all its laborers — that is, to the whole population of the social state — would en- courage population just as high wages do now. And there is this advantage on the side of present usage, that now the laborer feels some responsi- bility for rearing a family ; but then he would lean wholly on the state. This could be prevent- ed only by the despotical act, on the state’s part, of making marriage a crime, if contracted with- out the state’s license, or by preventing it in some other way. III. SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. After Lassalle’s death the election of persons of much less importance to the office of presi- dent of the Workingmen’s Union, and the in- 182 SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. trigues of the Countess of Hatzfeld, by which tlie members of the Union were divided into two factions, retarded its progress ; but the choice of Alexander Schweitzer, in 1867, brought back a hope of prosperity. He was from Franlrfort, had studied law, and was editor of the Social Democrat^ the organ of the Union. Mehring, in his German Social Democracy,” calls him a voluptuary, full of esjorit^ who was too prudent and of too strong a character to waste himself wholly in sensual pleasure.” He had, during his five years of official connection with the Union, enemies within and without its pale. The friends of the International in Germany felt that their time was come to unite all the socialists of that race under one banner. They professed to sus- pect him of being in secret understanding with tjie government of Prussia; and his political views, favoring the centralization which was ef- fected in 1867, were diametrically opposite to tliose of German Internationalists, such as Lieb- knecht and Bebel. This faction first managed to alter the constitution of the Union, so as to alyrid'je the power of its president ; but when Schweitzer persuaded the members to put things in their old place again, and effected a junction with the Hatzfeld faction, a new organization, outside of the Union and antagonistic to it, was felt to be necessary. At a general assembly Lieb- knecht declared that Schweitzer must be got rid SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. 183 of, as one who was seeking, in the interests of the Prussian government, to prevent united action among the workingmen. In a congress sum- moned by the International party, and to which the members of the Union were invited, after violent disputes, the Social Democratic Work- ingmen’s Party ” was founded by Liebknecht and his friends, in August, 1869. In the other organi- zation Schweitzer held his own for several years. One of his plans was to build up a general sys- tem of trades-unions, and thus to encourage strikes. These differed from Lassalle’s produc- tive associations in this, that they could act un- der the existing conditions of industry. Strikes were not promoted as directly favoring socialistic changes, which they could not effect ; but as cal- culated to awaken the class feeling of operatives, and as helping to do away with some of the exist- ing grievances. But strikes met wdth encourage- ment also from tlie Party of Progress, which had no social leanings and considered private capital necessary, yet on humane principles strove to meliorate the condition of the working class. In 1871 Schweitzer failed of being re-elected to the office of president of the Union, and was succeeded b}^ a man named Ilasenclever. Its prosperity after this depended much on its jour- nal, the new Social Democrat. The programme of the Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party, constituted at Eisenach, in 184 SOCIALISM IN GER]\IANY SINCE LASSALLE. 1869, seems to have been shreivdly intended to be so indefinite, and to have snch a squint toward the two opposing parties, that it could succeed in detaching numbers of adherents of Lassalle from their old faith without their being aware that tliey were deserting their colors. Some of the principles, which every member of this party binds himself to accept, are “equal riglits and equal duties of all, and the doing away of all class supremacy ; ” the getting rid of the present method of production (by means of wages), and the securing, by means of associated work, to each laborer of the full returns of his labor. On the ground that the social question cannot be separated from the political, they aim at its solu- tion in the democratic state, where alone it is pos- sible. “ In view of the fact that the freedom of work is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, which embraces all lands where modern society exists, the Social Democratic Working- men’s Party considers itself, so far as the laws of the [North German] Union allow, to be a branch of the International Workingmen’s Association, to the plans and efforts of which it gives its adhe- sion.” The immediate demands to be put forw^ard in the “ agitation ” carried on by the party are such as these: (1.) The universal, equal, direct, and secret right to election of all men twenty years old into the parliament, the diets of the single SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. 185 states, the provincial and communal assemblies, as well as into all other representative bodies. To the representatives thus elected sufficient pay is to be allowed. (2.) Introduction of direct legisla- tion by the people — that is, the right of proposing laws and of rejecting laws passed by legislatures. (3.) Abolition of all privileges, of rank, birth, and confession. (4.) The institution of a militia, in- stead of the standing army. (5.) Separation of the church from the state, and of the school from the church. (6.) Obligatory instruction in com- mon schools, and gratuitous instruction in all pub- lic institutions for polite education. (7.) Inde- pendence of courts, introduction of juries, of courts composed of experts, of public and oral judicial proceedings, and of gratuitous adminis- tration of justice. (8.) Abolition of all laws re- lating to the press, to unions, and coalitions ; the definition of a normal day’s work ; limitation of the amount of work done by women ; and pro- hibition of the work of children. (9.) Aboli- tion of all indirect taxes, and introduction of a single direct, progressive income tax and inheri- tance tax. (10.) Help from the state to associa- tions (of laborers), and the state’s credit for free productive associations under democratic guaran- tees. This last demand was, without doubt, inserted to please the followers of Lassalle, and could not have been acceptable to the Internationalists of 186 SOCIALISM IN GEKMANY SINCE LASSALLE. the party. Many of the others are reasonable and just. That under No. 9 throws the burden of taxation on the rich, and could be used for the pur- pose of taxing inheritances to such a degree that they would fall to the state. The International was approved of to suit the views of the majority in the party ; but it was not altogether safe to de- clare the new association a branch of it, and hence the qualifying clause, as far as the laws of the Union allow.” An unqualified connection might become dangerous. The social nucleus of the whole programme lies in the declaration that the party strives to abolish the present method of pro- duction, and to secure to the vrorkmen the full returns or yield of their labor. If this means, as it seems to mean, that the entire gross product ought to go to the laborer, it would be as absurd and impossible when the government should be- come the sole capitalist as it would be now. They can hardly intend to say that industry ought to be co-operative, and to keep the entire returns of labor as its reward, tlie laborers thus taking the place of the capitalist. In the Reichstag, or Parliament of the North German Confederation, and, after 1871, in that of United Germany, the two socialistic parties w^ere represented by a few of their leading mem- bers. By having common enemies to contend with, they were led to overlook their less impor- tant differences and to live in peace. The govern- SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. 187 ment of Prussia, also, by its persecution, first of members of the Workingmen’s Union and then of the Workingmen’s Party, brought them nearer to one another. Their differences, after the pas- sage of the Eisenach programme, were more owing to differences of organization than to dif- ferences of opinion. At length a plan of union was agreed upon by the principal men of the two associations, and accepted at Gotha, in May, 1875, by the representatives there present. These repre- sented 15,000 paying members of the Lassalleans, or Workingmen’s Union, and 9,000 of the others ; which shows that the former, after all their dis- asters, following the death of Lassalle, were still the more numerous organization in Germany. The acceptance of the Gotha programme virtual- ly extinguished the older party. Lassalle was de- feated, and the principles of the International were now to be predominant in Germany, not- withstanding its decline in the rest of Europe after the events of 1871 in Paris. The programme of Gotha differs from that of Eisenach not by introducing any new principle, but by being somewhat more positive and ex- plicit. It begins with declaring that ^^worlc is the source of all wealth and all culture ; and that, as work which is generally useful is only possible by means of society, the entire product of work belongs to society, that is, to all its members, — « with an obligation to work common to all accord- 188 SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. ing to equal right, — to every one according to his reasonable wants.” “ In the society of the present the instruments of work are a monopoly of the class of capitalists. The dependence of the working class, which is due to this, is the cause of misery and servitude in all its forms.” ‘^The liberation of work requires that the means of production be converted into the com- mon property of society, and that there be an associational regulation of the sum total of work, with application of its results to the general use and a just distribution of its returns.” ‘‘ The liberation of work must be effected by the working class, which, over against all other classes, are only a reactionary mass.” “ Proceeding from these principles, the Social- istic Workingmen’s Party of Germany, by all legal means, strives for the free state and the socialistic society ; for the breaking in pieces of the iron law of wages, hy doing away with the system of working for wages; by putting an end to making gain out of others ; by the removal of all social and political inequality.” ‘^The Socialistic Workingmen’s Party of Ger- many, although directly acting within national limits, is aware of the international character of the workingmen’s movement, and is resolved to fulfil all the duties thus laid on workingmen, in order to make the brotherhood of all men a reality.” SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. 189 Then it is added, for the purpose of pleasing Lassalle’s followers, that, ‘4n order to pave the way to a solution of the social question,” the party demands the setting up of socialistic pro- ductive associations, to be assisted by the states and under the democratic control of the working people.” These associations are to be called into life for [manufacturing] industry and for agricul- ture to such an extent that out of them the social- istic organization of the sum total of work may arise. The programme then sets foi-th certain points as foundations of the state, and makes certain demands for reform within the existing order of the state, which are not materially different from those of the Eisenach programme. The first paragraph of the declaration made at Gotha is open to more than one objection. Meh- ring, in his Deutsche Socialdemocratie,” criti- cises the expression, to every one according to his reasonable wants.” What does this vague phrase mean, and who is to be judge in the case ? So of righteous division of the proceeds of labor he says that this is what every society wdiicli has life in it regards as its duty. He adds that ^^an authentic interpretation of the canon of the party was represented as to be expected,” which, how- ever, until now (1877) has not seen the light. “ After a careful study of their literature, one can only say that the leaders of the movement have 190 SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. decidedly different views respecting the meaning and comprehensiveness of the party programme.” The very beginning of the programme seems to be altogether illogical and inconsequent. Work is the source of all riches and culture. Work, having a general value, is only possible in and through society. Therefore, the sum total of work belongs to society — that is, to all its mem- bers.” Such are the fundamental propositions. But is it not possible to conceive of an individual ill a society making something that everybodj^ else will be glad to have — a chair, for instance — v/ithout its belonging to society ? If so, does not the proposition beg the question that there is no such thing as private property ? Even before the meeting at Gotha, where these articles were accepted, the socialistic movement began to make steady progress. At least, the increase of votes given to the candidates of this party for seats in the Reichstag can be interpreted on no other supposition. In the first Reichstag after the formation of the German Empire there were but two socialist members. In the second (1874) there were nine, for whom 339,738 votes were cast. Yon Treitschke estimates that the whole strength of the party or factions, counting men, and youths too young to vote, may have then been about a million. The vote of 1877, when a new parliament ivas chosen, amounted, according to Mr. Bancroft Davis (in his correspon- SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. 191 dence with the Department of State) to from six to eight hundred thousand. Decent evidences of political fanaticism, leading to the greatest crimes, may retard this progress for a time ; but it does not yet seem to have reached the highest flood tide. It is, however, quite probable that many vote for representatives of socialism who know little about its principles, either out of hatred to Prussia or for some other extraneous cause. The party at present has no concentrated strength ; but consists chiefly of a large number of minor- ities and of a few masses which control their elec- tion districts. The zeal of the German socialists in their cause is shown by two facts : one of which is that more than a hundred and flfty agitators — trained and schooled, and either drawing a full or partial salary for their services or working out of love to the cause, — can be said to be in the employment of the Workingmen’s Party. The other fact is their activity in spreading their doctrine through the press. The central organ has 12,000 sub- scribers. Besides this, they have forty-one polit- ical sheets, one literary paper with a socialistic tone, and fourteen organs of trades - unions. Twenty-eight are printed by presses which social- ists have founded, of which fourteen exist at present (Mehring). Another sign of the growth of the Social Dem- ocratic Party is the fact that a number of profes- 192 SOCIALISM IN GERMANY SINCE LASSALLE. sors in the universities who lecture on political economy — although they have not joined its ranks, and in some instances, at least, reject its leading doctrines — give to it in a certain sense the hand of fellowship. They go by the name of Katheder- socialisten (or socialists in the professor’s chair), and have formed a union at Eisenach for social politics.” Among them are names well known to students in their science. Mehring (in his ‘^Social Democracy”) includes among them, as belonging to a school with leanings toward social- ism in the widest sense, Brentano, Scheel, Schmol- ler, Adolf Wagner; in a narrower sense, Rodber- tus, Schaeffle, F. A. Lange, and Diihring. This scientific socialism,” he adds, distinguishes itself by an uncommon number of interesting charac- ters ; but this advantage has a reverse side, in an entire want of agreement both as to their criti- cism of the present order of society and as to their positive demands. They have not made any lasting impression on the workingmen’s move- ment. But it is scientific socialism which to-day fills all patriotic hearts with anxiety.” One of these learned men has written a little work, entitled the Quintessence of Socialism,” of which I propose to speak in the next chapter. MILL ON SOCIALISM. 193 APPENDIX on Mr. J. S. Mill’s chapters on socialism, writ- ten in 1869, and published in the present year, 1879, in the Fortnightly Review. When Mr. Mill wrote the chapter on property, in his Political Economy, of which two sections are devoted to Communism and to St. Simon- ism and Fourierism, the problems touching labor and capital had only begun to be politically and socially important. In 1869 he formed a design of writing a book on the great social question, which was now showing the hold it was taking on the minds of philosophers and workingmen in various ways, especially by the progress of the International. Of this book only four chapters in their first rough drafts ” seem to have been com- posed. I give a very brief sketch of them here, the present work having already been written when they were first printed. Mr. Mill, after noticing the demands of work- ingmen in Great Britain, such as that wages should not depend on free contract, that “ usury ” should be abolished, and that land should not be private property, passes on to speak very briefly of the position taken by the same class on the Continent — a position which has been sufficiently explained in the text of this work. The great evils, of which socialists complain, are poverty, 9 194 MILL ON SOCIALISM. “little connected with individual deserts,” and competition. To competition of laborers, low wages are due ; to competition among producers, ruin and bankruptcy. Both these evils tend to in- crease with the increase of population ; and none are benefited but landholders, capitalists, and re- ceivers of fixed money incomes. Wealth enables its owners to undersell all other producers, and to engross the labor of a country, subjecting the workmen to such terms of payment for labor as the employers offer. Mr. Mill fortifies his asser- tions regarding the attacks of the socialists on the existing order of things by extensive quotations from Yictor Considerant, the Fourierite, Robert Owen, and Louis Blanc. He next examines the socialist objections to the present order of society ; one of which is that wages are low, and tend to fall still more. This assertion, he says, “is in opposition to all accurate information and to many notorious facts. It has yet to be proved that there is any country of the civilized world, where the ordinary wages of labor, estimated either in money or in articles of consumption, are declining; while in many they are, upon the whole, on the increase — an in- crease which is becoming not slower but more rapid. The exceptions are temporary and con- fined to certain branches of industry which are becoming superseded by others.” The socialists, especially M. Louis Blanc, Mr. MILL ON SOCIALISM. 195 Mill goes on to say, seem to have fallen into the error, which Malthus at first committed, ^‘o£ supposing that, because population has a greater power of increase than subsistence, its pressure upon subsistence must be always groivmg more severed The tendency to over-population is a fact which communism, as well as the existing order of society, would have to deal with.” Experi- ence shows that in the existing state of society the pressure of population on subsistence, which is the principal cause of low wages, though a great, is not an increasing evil.” And the prog- ress of civilization has a tendency to diminish it by a more rapid increase of the means of em- ploying labor, by opening new countries to labor- ers, and by improving the intelligence and pru- dence of a people. It is, however, of course an open question what form of society has the great- est power of dealing successfully with the pres- sure of population on subsistence. Mr. Mill next remarks that even the most en- lightened socialists have an imperfect and one- sided notion of the workings of competition. They forget that it is the cause of high as well as of low prices and values ; ” the buyers of labor and of commodities compete with one another, as well as the sellers. When it is perfectly free on both sides, its tendency is to equalize, not to raise or lower, the prices of articles ; to level inequali- ties of remuneration, and to reduce all to a gen- 196 MILL ON SOCIALISM. eral average. And, particularly, if it keeps down tlie price of articles on which wages are expend- ed, this is to the great advantage of those who depend on wages [when they are considered sim- ply as consumers]. Mr. Louis Blanc, and other socialists, affirm that low prices produced by competition are delusive, as leading to higher prices than before, and finally to the command of the market by the richest competitor. But the commonest experience, says Mr. Mill, shows that this state of things is wholly imaginary. 'No “ important branch of industry or commerce, formerly divided among many, has become, or shows any tendency to become, the monopoly of a few.” [But do not many smaller branches show it, and might not a combination of the strongest in important branches break down the rest ?] Great joint-stock companies can keep up prices, and some businesses pass out of the hands of smaller producers into fewer large ones ; but wffien they do this, prices are lowered by the sav- ing of cost.” Competition, however, if a security for lower prices, is by no means a security for quality. On this point socialists have made out the existence of a great and growing evil. This evil Mr. Mill thinks to be capable of cure by laws against frauds of adulteration, and by cooperative pur- chase from the wholesale merchants. Another misapprehension of socialists relates MILL ON SOCIALISM. 197 to the share of the product taken by others be- sides those who are directly engaged in the labor of production. ‘‘ As long as a man derives an in- come from his capital, he has not the option of withholding it from the use of others.” This in- come from capital is measured by interest, and in- terest apart from risk is in England about three and a third per cent. If a man were to give up the whole of this to his laborers, who already share among them the whole of his capital, as it is annually reproduced, the addition to their weekly wages would be inconsiderable. Of what he obtains beyond three per cent ” [Mr. Mill takes off one-third of one per cent, for risk], ^^a great part is insurance against the manifold losses to which he is exposed, and cannot be safely applied to his own use, but requires to be kept in reserve to cover those losses, when they recur. The remain- der is properly the remuneration of his skill and industry — the wages of his labor of superinten- dence.” “ The present system,” Mr. Mill continues, is not, as many socialists believe, hurrying us into a state of general indigence and slavery ; on the contrary, the general tendency is toward the slow diminution ” of existing evils. The author next passes on to the subject of the difficulties of socialism, making the natural dis- tinction between small communistic societies (distributed over an entire country, if the system 198 ]MILL ON SOCIALISM. slioiild succeed), and the management of the whole productive industry of a state by the gen- eral government. The second (which is now the only plan of socializing society that is advocated) has, he thinks, all the difficulties which attend on the first and many more. The first has the ad- vantage that it can be brought into operation by degrees. The second, which must resort to force if necessary, requires in those who would support it both a serene confidence in their own wisdom and a recklessness of other people’s sufferings, which Robespierre and St. Just scarcely came up to.” Yet ‘‘it has great elements of popularity which the more cautious form of socialism has not, because what it professes to do it promises to do quickly.” Mr. Mill next considers the motives to exertion which would naturally exist in both these forms of socialistic life, and comes to the conclusion that they have no advantage, as far as the general body is concer/ied, while as respects the managing heads it is placed at a considerable disadvantage. [It is implied in this conclusion that the manager is chosen by the community, that he receives no especial remuneration above others, and that all work has the same wages. As these conditions need not exist in small, volun- tary communities, like those which have been considered in our second chapter, and as the very contrast to, and separation from the outside world, which such societies present, may be a MILL ON SOCIALISM. 199 motive of some power, liis remarks do not fully apply to this kind of communities. Nor, again, do they necessarily apply to socialistic states, where the central power might, and probably would, ap- point all the managers and agents engaged in pro- duction and distribution. These would thus be government officers, naturally under the supervi- sion of higher authorities, and able to supervise the workingmen.] The motives, however, under communism, as Mr. Mill urges, in doing honest and efficient work, would be no stronger than those which now act on laborers ; and the principle of paying all workers and kinds of work alike, which seems to be necessary in socialistic produc- tion, may be in part superseded under the pres- ent form of industry [as by piece-work, by dis- missing, or rewarding, on a lower scale, the lazy or incompetent, by special rewards, like that of admitting the faithful or skilful to a share of the profits] . Another just criticism of the author is, that as private life in communistic associations would be brought in a most unexampled degree under the dominion of public authority, there would be less scope for the development of individual character and individual preferences, than has hitherto ex- isted among the full citizens of afiy state, belong- ing to the progressive branches of the human family. Yet Mr. Mill does ^^not seek to draw any in- 200 MILL ON SOCIALISM. ference against the possibility that communistic production is capable, at some future time, of be- ing the form of society best adapted to the wants and circumstances of mankind.” “ The various schemes for managing the productive resources of the country by public, instead of private agency have a case for trial, and some of them may eventually establish their claims to prefer- ence over the existing order of things ; but they are at present workable only by the elite of man- kind, and have yet to prove their power of train- ing mankind at large to the state of improve- ment which they presuppose.” [If they should turn out to establish their claims by and by, the utilitarian school of philosophers would find no difficulty in sacrificing the institution of prop- erty to the new Leviathan.] SCHAEFFLe’s QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM.” 201 CHAPTER VI. I. schaepfle’s “quintessence op socialism.” This short work of 69 pages aims to give a condensed account of wliat modern, especially German, socialism is in its leading principles, and of its consequences in a politico-economical re- spect. The author, who is an able and leading political economist of Southwestern Germany, shows a dispassionate, impartial spirit ; although one cannot help getting the impression that he is not decidedly averse to the movement which he describes. In the preface to his second edition he expresses the opinion that the wealthy and cultivated classes are, at least, as much interested in the thorough improvement of the politico-eco- nomical organization of society as the proleta- rians are ; ” and that in the restless, feverish strug- gles and uncertain issues of modern industrial ac- quisitiveness “families of wealth are not sure whether they may not, in the next or in the third generation, themselves sink to the proletarian condition. They especially are threatened in 9 * 202 schaeffle’s quintessence of socialism.” their estates and family life by the existing state of things.” Sounding thus a note of alarm, as if he would open the eyes of all to a new order of society in prospect, or, at least, possible, he asks, as his first question, what socialism is, and defines it as the substitution of collective ” capital for private capital ; that is, of the collective property of the community in the means of production. The col- lective organization of national work would set aside all concurrence, all competition, by putting the production and the distribution of all pro- ducts under official direction, either immediately or indirectly under the control of the state. For this end the sum of the needed supplies of every product must be fixed by a current official estimate of the required necessaries, made by authorities having to do with the production and disposal of commodities ; and such data must lie at the foundation of the social plan of industry. The occasional deficiencies or excesses of objects produced, as compared with the w^ants or de- mands of every period, would need to be periodi- cally balanced by means of supplies laid up in public storehouses. It is plain that some such starting-point is ne- cessary in the system. But it is not equally plain that to meet wants in this way would be as effi- cient as the present plan, that of acting through the energy of individual persons and through pri- sciiaeffle’s ‘‘quintessence of socialism.” 203 vate, separate capital. Those who are familiar with Whately’s beautiful discussion, — in which the supplies of the wants of London, through a series of public officers, are compared with similar sup- plies through private dealers, each having his own beat and being familiar with its necessities, — will doubt whether free individual interest v/ould not do the work which it does now, better than combined and, to a degree, enforced work. So that, unless the evils of the present system at some other point do not greatly overbalance its benefits, we must start with the impression that German socialism would from the first have a load greater than it could carry. On this plan in all operations of business, and, indeed, in all operations, the state, and the state alone, produces whatever is produced, and ■ pro- vides, in the system of production, for a supply of whatever is consumed. A departure this the widest possible from the present system of pri- vate work and private capital. “The reader,” says Mr. Schaeffle, “who has never concerned himself particularly with this revolutionary plan of organization, will scarcely comprehend it. We ourselves have spent years in getting to the bottom of it. And yet this plan has already a party on its side, which, owing to its hot zeal, its enthu- siasm and a faith that removes mountains, to its compact organization and international diffusion, takes the lead of many other great parties, con- 204 sciiaeffle’s quintecsence of socialism.” stantly gains proselytes, and looks with the assur- ance of victory toward the future.” It is, in- deed, true that the leaders among the German socialists are perfectly aware that the agitation for tlie new collective order of things is in its be- ginnings ; that the present system of production must root out small proprietors, and well-nigh complete the plutocratic process of separating the people into a proletarian multitude and a few over-grown millionaires, before the masses, espe- cially the country population and the small citi- zens, will or can assent to the piinciple of ^col- lectivism.’ At such an early stage of the prog- ress of a movement reserve in making known a positive programme is not at all striking. All prudent leaders of parties have, at a like stage of their agitation, done the same.” This caution, we may remark, is obviously necessary, for a detailed plan might contain par- ticulars which would make its execution impossi- ble or vastly enhance its difficulties. But, on the other hand, if society is to be overturned from its foundations, men will insist on seeing that utter ruin does not stare them in the face ; that a new ^ order of things is practicable ; that it involves far fewer evils than those which cling to the so- ciety of the present. To form such judgments, they must know more than that certain philoso- phers or partisans think that all will go right in the future. SCIIAEFFLe’s QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM.” 205 Although the socialists forbear to go into par- ticulars which do not flow out of their original and essential idea, they claim that time is work- ing with them in their movements. The days when the workman was the proprietor of his ma- chines and products, the days of home-work and cotton-looms, have given way to vast engines and vast manufactories ; but the laborers, crowded in enormous establishments, are schooled and con- centrated as a politico-social force. And so, al- though the state’s concentration of work, by the mechanism of general military service, is not ap- proved of by the leaders of proletariat ; it is not looked upon as an obstacle in their way. The army serves as a school, which in the long run is far from being dangerous to socialism, which drills its soldiers of the future, while it makes the nations hostile on flnancial accounts to their rulers. Everything that measures off the masses as a separate whole, that includes in itself a public union of individual forces on a vast scale, has a close resemblance, in one respect, at least, to socialism. Thus bayonets and centralization are not safe reliances for existing social order, since socialism may be forced to use them, and can use them most effectively, for its own politi- cal purposes. The Alpha and Omega of socialism is the transmutation of private competing capital into united collective capital.” In regard to the time 200 schaeffle’s quintessence of socialism.” Vv lien tills great change will be effected the leaders of the socialists entertain no sanguine hopes. The means used in the hope of effecting it are obvious enough. Some of them, such as the spread of productive associations, are not in reality con- formed to the social theory, but find their object in bringing the operatives together. Others are methods of agitation, derived from the theories of Marx in regard to capital and surplus value. Mr. Schaeffle takes pains to show that, when this agitation reaches even the charge of theft made against capital itself, it is not intended to apply to individual undertakers or capitalists, but to the system • while the private owner of a manufac- tory, for instance, may be admitted to be a very estimable citizen. This is no doubt true ; but is it not true, also, that the agitators have purposely excited a hostility in the minds of the working- class against the emploj-ers? And so, if ever socialism should venture on its last step, that step will be the more sure to be a violent one, the fur- ther the social demagogues depart from the spirit of conciliation and sober argument. Socialists do not regard as doubtful the final conversion of private into collective capital, nor does the uncommon difficulty of the transition to the new order of things give them much anxiety. For they reckon on the vast multitude of the ^ ex- propriated,’ as contrasted with the few ‘ expro- priators ; ’ on the considerations that the process sciiaeffle’s ‘^quintessence of sccialism.” 207 of destruction of the middle class will at length be complete, and that the continuance of private production by the help of workingmen, thorough- ly discontented and devoid of all faith in author- ity, must at length cease.” The questions of right on the part of the capi- talist, and of compensation when he shall liave come to the end of his power of private produc- tion, are next considered. The socialists say something like this : “ The ‘ Jjourgeois ’ may have a right to that wdiich he lias earned under the present system of production, and we can let him have a compensation for his private capital, just as he paid oif the feudal rights.” “ Social- ism is not disinclined to grant damages to the present class of private owners of property, if they good-naturedly allow themselves to be ex- propriated ; but the kind of expropriation must be such as will be consistent with the principles of the social state.” They could not receive tlie rents of former property ; but might be paid “ in means of enjoyment” even to the full money value of their possessions. “It is easily con- ceived,” says our author, “ that in this method of compensation the gigantic capital of the Roths- childs and their compeers, even when the fullest payment should be made to them, could pass over into a stifling abundance of means of enjoy- ment. Such vast possessions could continue with them only for a time. Private capital, however 208 schaeffle’s “ quintessence of socialism.” large, would necessarily be set aside and termi- nate at once as capital, and ere long as property ; for j)erj)etual rents, paid even in tlie shape of orders for means of enjoyment, would by no means, on grounds of principle, be granted by the socialis- tic state.” We apprehend, hovv'ever, that things would not come to such a pass as is here contem- plated. In the first the property of the upper class, if they were unwilling to give up their rights and should try the fortunes of war unsuccessfully, would be confiscated at the end of the struggle. In the second place, if the new state should agree to a compensation at all ade- quate to the claims, it would not be paid. The notion of a satisfaction or even of partial amends seems well-nigh chimerical, especially at the point of time when a new government, wholly inex- perienced, would be at the beginning of a wholly new experiment in the history of the world. The social state being conceived of as estab- lished, and having all production, transportation, and furnishing of supplies in its hands ; it would seem plain that not much choice would be left to pi-ivate persons, in reference to articles they would wish to use, and to the satisfaction of their desires. The state makes, brings, and offers at its storehouse, in exchange for certificates of liours’ work, everything which is placed within the reach of individuals, and has no competitor in these functions. Will human beings, who are sghaeffle’s quintessence of socialism.” 209 all of them agents of the state or workmen of the state, be content with such a bill of fare for life as the state sees fit to set before them ; and is not such a scheme of society a destruction of a very large part of individual liberty ? Schaeffle admits the force of this objection, and adds that socialism itself has done its best to repel men from itself ” at this very point. Many of its ad- herents have promised to the proletariat a half royal collective luxury of public feasts, of enjoy- ments from art and the like ; but have left over to private housekeeping and the personal free- dom of procuring supplies scarcely a square foot of liberty, scarcely an inch of domestic comfort and an agreeable home.” Our author, however, maintains that collective production can have its statistics of recurring in- dividual and family wants, and can provide for these wants as effectively as is now done in the open market under the sway of demand and sup- ply. He sees no reason why, on the system of social production, individual wants and requisi- tions may not meet with due attention. If so- cialism were to do away with this power of satisfying personal wants, it would deserve to be looked on as the deadly foe of all freedom, of all civilization, of all material and intellectual well- being. The one practical principle of all freedom — to be able to spend one’s own incomes according to his pleasure — would alone be too valuable to 210 schaeffle’s ^^quintessence of socialism.” be parted with for all the advantages of social reform. The first understanding with socialistn must be made on this very ground.” We thank our author for these expressions of his opinions. The programme of living is made by the socialist not for the really free, but for those whom they agitate. Those who have been used to better things and to free choices of their own are not taken into account. If production and the supply of wants through a nation can be put into the hands of the state, it is easier still to conceive of the means of commu- nication as being managed by the state alone. To a great extent the post, the telegraph, and the railroad are under public control already, in ad- vance of the socialistic state, and no essentially new arrangements would need to be made in this department of work. In respect to production, the principal depart- ment of work, Schaefile remarks that a stop needs not to be put, all at once, to private operations. One branch after another can be converted into the new form of industry. Nor will it be essen- tial that every kind of production should ever be I’equired to conform rigorously to the theory. Production for one’s own support, without sale to others, would be one of tliese exceptions. Pro- duction which consists in personal services, like that of the physician or the artist, would be another. In such cases concurrence or competi- schaeffle’s "‘quintessence of socialism.” 211 tion, the great bugbear of socialism, might be en- dured ; and the service would be remunerated by the tickets of work obtained by the workman for his labor and handed over to his personal helper. Those personal services, however, which need a considerable capital, would be regarded as public offices and be paid publicly, whether offices of the state, the commune, or the school. A radical consideration in all production is the cost ; and here the socialists claim that in their system, where every one is interested in the effi- ciency of every other, costs will be likely to be less, and, therefore, the dividend to each work- man greater, than in the present system of work and wages. Our author doubts whether socialis- tic labor will, of course, have this advantage ; but expresses no very positive opinion. To us it appears as if an unknown quantity enters into the question. Everything depends on the influ- ence of the new conditions of work and on the new causes in general acting upon the character of the workmen themselves. Will they be made manly, self-relying, conscientious, and provident, or the opposite of all this ? And within the states where capital and competition prevail, are there not possible and feasible means of raising up the working classes into something better than their present condition? The principal question, however, is a broader one. As Schaeffle states it, it is whether social- 212 schaeffle’s ^^quintessence of socialism.” ism will ever be in a condition to make use of that great psychological truth, in conformity with which, under the present laws of industry, pri- vate interest is made serviceable to production, — wliether on its own ground, it can ever rival the system of private capital in this respect. ‘‘We liold this question to be the decisive, although until now by no means the decided point, on which, in the long run, everything depends ; from which the victory or defeat of socialism, the reform or destruction of civilization, is to proceed, as far as causes can act which are within the province of political economy.” In considering this important point, which has less to do with the nature than with the working power of socialism, the author makes the just re- mark that it is not enough, in a million of pro- ducers, for any one of them to know that his fi- nal earnings depend on the fact that the others are as industrious as he. This fails to arouse the necessary self-control. It does not extinguish laziness and prevent the embezzlement of time due to all the rest. Socialism is bound to make every single laborer as strongly interested in the result, on his own private and separate account, as he is in the present system of labor. Whether it can succeed in this respect or not, no one is authorized to assert. The question stands at the door of a scientific discussion. But this, as the author thinks, can be asserted, that at present the SCHAEFFLe’s QUrNTESSP:NOE OF SOCIALISM.” 213 programme of the socialists lacks practical clear- ness of thought touching the necessity of organ- ized concurrence in work. And yet there is no doubt that, if the competition of the present form of industry should fall away, there would be need of emulation in work to take its place.” But how, we ask, could this exist when every- thing goes by the rule of the average worth of labor ? Our author accompanies these criticisms with another which shows that he as yet differs from the socialists, as it respects the theory of work, on a most important point. As long, says he, as the social theory takes into account, in determin- *ing the value of articles, only the social costs^ leaving out of sight the value in use^ as affected by place, time, etc., it will be wholly incapable of solving its o^vn problem of production by collec- tive capital in any method which political econ- omy can accept. So long as in this sphere it does not furnish something different and more positive, it can have no outlook for the future. Otherwise in proposing to give up, in favor of a more righteous process of distributing the results of labor (the shady sides of which cannot yet be found out by experience), a form of production which, with its many shady sides, contains, to a tolerable extent, many-sided securities, such as political economy demands — in such a proposal it can bring nothing to a practical issue, and, if 214 SCHAEFFLe’s QUINTESSENCE determined to carry its theory through by force, it will have but temporary success. There remain a number of very important re- sults of the socialist form of industry and capi- tal, of which we will speak in the next section of our work. II. SCHAEFFLE’S “ QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM” CONCLUDED. The principle of socialism opposes the continu- ance of private property not only as it respects the direct means of production, but also as to everything from which gains are indirectly ac- quired. Thus it wages war against all forms of private credit, against the whole system of loans, against leasing, renting, and hiring. Leases must come to an end, unless the state should undertake that business, because it has become, by the triumph of socialism, the sole proprietor of land. Houses and places of business cannot be hired, rented, or sold ; for they have all become public property, over which the state alone has control. Ground-rents must lapse, because the old owner of the house or soil is either paid oif or expropri- ated. The state must, like manufacturers now, make advances to the workingmen during the process of work ; but it will have abundant se- curity in its hands for such current prepayments. OF SOCIALISM ” CONCLUDED. 215 The state, if it wished to borrow on its own cred- it, would need to go into some foreign market ; and for its ordinary expenses would of necessity appropriate a part of the productions, in the crea- tion of which it had a share. Credit between pri- vate persons, all the operations of domestic or of foreign exchange, all investments waiting for a favorable change in the market, all speculation, would cease and be forgotten. Still further, as private capital, employed in trade and commerce, is impossible under the institutions of socialism, all trade, unless on the lowest scale conceivable, must come to an end, and with it all metallic currency. The circulation of the social state will be not greenbacks^ issued on the credit of the government — for socialism, with all its wrong views, has no such dishonesty in it as that would imply — but certificates ofwork^ representing labor actually accomplished by the workingmen — that is, by the community. We turn our attention first to trade and com- merce. In society, as it is now, the whole office of exchanging products falls to individuals, who act, each for himself, and who intend to remuner- ate themselves out of their transactions. Their success depends on individual skill and enterprise ; and the consumer is protected against high prices by their competition. In the social state the pas- sage of commodities from the producer to the con- sumer must put on an entirely new form. Com- 216 sciiaeffle’s quintessence petition is of all operations the most abhorred by socialism. There can he within its pale no buy- ing up of any product for the purpose of selling again. Everything (unless in some employments, products needed for the family), must go to the storehouse, and from thence, by ^‘social means of transportation,” wherever else it is wanted. How could the competition of dealers begin to ex- ist in such a system, and how could any dealer compete with the agents of the state ? Thus the sale of wares in the open market, together with trade, the profits of trade, the market, and the exchange, must cease altogether. The difference between the present order of things in an economical respect and the socialistic order is nowhere wider than just here. ‘^The three main problems, at present, to be solved in the market (or the speculation market, as Schaeffle calls it) are these : to determine the amount of things needed, to determine the quantity and quality of productions that can be procured to satisfy men’s needs, and to keep up continually a value in exchange which wfill preserve the equili- brium between production and consumption. But in the socialistic state the functionaries who would have to do with sales would ascertain the amounts needed, would distribute the national work accord- ingly among the different classes of people doing business, and the persons concerned in production, transportation, and storage ; and would assign to OF socialism” concluded. 217 the products a value according to the mass of socially necessary work-time spent upon them.’’ What contrast could be greater ? With this revolution another would go in com- pany. The corruption of the press in aifairs of business, its willingness to lend itself to private speculation, would cease when private competi- tion ceased ; and the whole system of costly and luxurious advertisements, as well as the enormous expense for the rent of elegant shops, would no longer be of any use. A metallic currency would disappear from the socialistic state, as readily and as soon as private capital and its operations should disappear. It would not be needed between the members of such a community any more than between the members of a family. In balances of trade with foreign countries it would be of use ; but not in settling balances within the state itself. That gold and silver would play no great part in such a state is plain from the consideration of their leading functions. As measures of value they are superseded by the average value of labor, es- timated by the whole sum of social products. As a circulating medium they would be superseded by tickets or certificates of actual labor in the past, which would be effective and current, as long as anything was in the government-stores, sub- ject to the calls of the people. This species of time-money will also suflice for 10 218 SCHAEFFLERS QUINTESSENCE the expenses of the public, as well as for the sat- isfaction of personal wants. The socialistic state, it must be remembered, like every other state, has nothing to pay its own expenses with. It must draw all its supplies from its own working people. Of course, if public expenses (for the state, the commune, the schools, etc.) needed one-third of the value of the hours of work, the certificates for these hours must be good to the workingman or other holder for two-thirds of their woi’th. The state would need to dispose of its third of prod- ucts remaining in the storehouses as it best might. That at times, as in famine or sudden war, a state which cannot readily borrow money, as a socialistic state could not, must be brought into serious straits is quite evident. At this point Mr. Schaeffie notices two difficul- ties, one of which has met us before. This is the theoretical and fundamental point of determining the value of commodities by the cost of work alone, without taking demand into consideration. The other is a practical difficulty — whether the socialistic state could ever master the enormous book-keeping necessary for its purposes,^ and could bring unlike kinds of work into just rela- tions by a standard of equal lengths of working time. He gives no confident answer to these questions of his own. “ In itself considered,” he remarks, ^‘to make use of the factor of utilitj^ in estimating social values is not a thing inconceiva- OF SOCIALISM ” CONCLUDED. 219 ble. Where all production goes forward on one plan, it will soon be perceived when and where a particular production exceeds or falls below the public demand. In the existing form of industry, this is known by prices in the market. Produc- tion is diminished, and individuals seek employ- ment elsewhere. This law of industry, now act- ing where capital and private property are found, must enter into the social system. The present error of socialists, in making value [i, e., value in exchange] the only factor in estimating costs, must be given up in regard to the appraisal of work and in regard to the appraisal of prod- ucts. When the value in use [as discovered by means of changes in demand] sinks, both must suffer abatements ; when it rises, both must have advances made in them. Without this introduc- tion of value in use into social estimates — that is, without imitating the present market in all its processes of settling value in exchange — it would be impossible, by any control of the system of work in a country, to bring the demand for com- modities into harmony, as it respects quantity and quality, with the supply of work and of goods. Three things depend on the right adjustment of the theory of value in exchange. Firsts this pos- sibility of preserving a balance in such a vast mass of work, production, and wants ; second^ the con- cession of the necessary individual freedom of work and of consumption ; and, thirds a general 220 SCHAEFFLe’s QUINTESSENCE stimulus, given, according to economical laws, to individuals in proportion to their working power or efficiency.” Unless socialism, our author concludes, is able to unite to its own unquestioned specific advan- tages all the good sides of the existing freedom of work and of economy, it can have no outlook for the future, nor any fair claim that it is able to make its theory a reality. It must remain a Utopia. — We add that, after such warnings from political economists who have no leanings against socialism, to put it to the test by experiment on the vast scale of a great nation like Germany, until impartial experts should be fully satisfied, would be madness. It is a pity, if it is ever to be tried, that it could not first have a colony of socialists for its subject. It ought to be, for the safety of the rest of the world, an experimentum in corpore vili. The last stage in which we shall accompany Mr. Schaeffle is implied in the questions which he undertakes to answer: “What shape would in- come eventually take in a social state, and how would it be used in the consumption and the for- mation of private property ? ” It is unnecessary to remind our readers that the entire income of individuals in the social state must come from work (excepting those cases where former capitalists receive annuities of “ means of enjoyment” — not of money — from the govern- OF socialism” concluded. 221 ment). The income of the state itself is drawn, in the same way, as a uniform deduction from that which is due to the citizens — that is, to the workers. Whatever the state had fixed upon as necessary to meet the public wants, and pay the public servants, that amount could be directly drawn from the store of products, which are all under the charge of public ofiicers. This ease and simplicity of taxation (or of getting a public income) has not been set forth, as it deserves to be, in the socialistic writers. As for the possible uses of private income, it may be spent or saved by the owner, or be trans- ferred to others on condition of reimbursement, or given away to a third person. 1. The use of his income — that is, of his certificates of work — would be uncontrolled in the social state, just as in states of the existing form ; the only restric- tion being what any state would impose, that it must not be spent for uses prejudicial to the welfare of the community. 2. To the title of savings and the formation of private property Mr. Schaeffle devotes quite a long discussion. The substance of what he says is this : While no property producing other prop- erty can be allowed by the social state to remain in private hands; property in means of enjoy- ment — such as articles of food, clothing, furni- ture, books, works of art — may be not only ac- quired, but transmitted by inheritance [and would 222 schaeffle’s quintessence naturally remain untaxed]. Socialists resent the charge of periodic division of private savings among the members of society, as well they might ; for if such a usage were introduced there would soon be nothing to divide. In regard to inheritance, it is true that hot-heads have wished to abolish it altogether ; but as long as capital, especially in the instruments o^ production, is taken out of the possibility of such transmission by belonging exclusively to the state or commu- nity, the sphere of the right of transmitting property would be so narrow that its exercise would produce no essential inequality, or other disturbance of the system. Moreover, if allowed, it might serve as a stimulus to a larger number of hours’ work. The leading socialists, therefore, find at this point no inconsistency with their gen- eral scheme. Whether socialism is favorable to family life, and to wedlock in its form of indissoluble mono- gamy, is an important point v^hich our author does not wholly pass over. Some socialists have had low and loose views on these all-important in- stitutions ; but the system does not necessarily call for a kind of community life which is opposed to the highest development of the family. — The relations of the system in itself considered, of the society cherished by it, of its infiueiice on ideals of morality and virtue, lie outside of the present dis- cussion, and must be considered in another place^ OF SOCIALISM ” CONCLUDED. 223 3. Less consistent with the nature of socialism does it appear that it should look with favor upon a loan to others of what a person has saved from the fruit of his toil. To do this in the way of a note drawing interest does, indeed, seem alto- gether opposed to the purpose for which capital had been abolished ; but to do it on promise of a future return, or to accompany such a loan with some kind of pledge or insurance, might well be permitted. So, also, ^^the concentra- tion of larger amounts for private purposes — such as travel, study, common efforts — would by no means be opposed to the principles of social- ism.” 4. The possibility and liberty of free gifts to relatives, to some third person, or to a society of persons, would not be forbidden by the nature of the social state. If the sums thus collected formed no fund, properly speaking, from which interest could be derived, there would be no re- striction imposed by the social state on their col- lection or distribution. Thus all the purposes of humanity, benevolence, and religion, of art and science, would meet with no public opposi- tion. One point needs to be touched upon by itself. Socialism, as it is apparent, is through and through irreligious and hostile to the Church. Socialists pronounce the Church to be a police institution in the hands of capital, and that it cheats the prole- 224 SCHAEFFLfe’s “ QUINTESSENCE tarian ‘ by bills of exchange on Heaven.’ It de- serves to perish.” Hatred to religion, however, is denied by Mr. Schaeffle to be essential to the system and nature of socialism. It is true that no endowed church could exist under its shadow ; lict such institutions might be maintained as could be supported by voluntary contributions, and were not connected with worldly interests and classes opposed to so- cialism. Even direct support of the Church by public authority, out of the national income [that is, by deductions drawn from the cost of work], would be, at all events, possible, although not veiy probable. And this voluntary method might be resorted to for various institutions outside of the state’s agency, for the promotion of social, religi- ous, scientific, technological, political, and social- istic efforts. Thus, if socialism confines itself to its true prin- ciples — that of realizing the system of collective production — it can come into opposition to no such free movements of unions of individuals as have been mentioned. “ Objections to all this proceed from the folly and frivolity of single socialists, not from the principle of the system. They have no support from the politico-economical principle which has more and more become the central point of socialism ; and which will, in all proba- bility, form the pivot on which the principal social contest win turn. The destruction of the ‘ high- OF socialism” concluded. 225 est and most ideal blessings of civilization ’ would certainly attach itself to a wild revolutionary en- deavor to make socialism a reality ; but such de- struction need not be the result of a development, in which the question at issue between the third and fourth classes of society is strictly limited to its scientific essence, and in which further prog- ress is made to adhere to the path of specific reform.” We close our consideration of this able, and in the main impartial, work with two remarks. The first is that, when the author, in the latter part of his work, shows socialism to be more expansible as a plan of industrial society than many have thought, his gain in this is rather scientific than practical. All that he says may be true ; but of what great importance is it, so long as the system itself is so narrow and restrictive ? It is as if one should seek to show that a man with two fingers can do every sort of thing which another man can do with five. True, he can, one may say; but can he do as much and do it as well ? Will not society be lame and crippled under socialism, after all ? The other remark is that a socialistic state may be very ingeniously constructed and neatly ar- ranged ; it may excite the admiration of able political economists ; but, after all, the theory of political economy is one thing — the living and act- ing state — the moral entity to which all the valua- 10 * 22G QUINTESSENCE OF SOCIALISM ” CONCLUDED. ble treasures of tlie individual man and of society are committed, is another. To this higher ques- tion — to the relations between this socialistic state and the most important human interests — we will now bespeak our readers’ attention. RECENT RELATIONS OF SOCIALISM. 227 CHAPTER VIL I. RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE STATE AND TO SOCIETY. We seem to have now reached some definite ideas in regard to the plans and aims of German socialism, which, in its politico-economical stage, is commanding the attention of thinkers in all civilized countries. Its programme is now hon- estly avowed, and its theory is ready, as far as the opinions of the party are concerned, to be re- duced to practice. If the hopes of the most san- guine members of the party were in any respect prophetic, it would be successful without long conflict. The feeling seems to be that the upper classes will be dismayed and be ready for a com- promise, when they see the forces of the fourth class, or proletariat, arrayed against them. We are the people, the latter naturally say. We have served out our time in military training; and those who conquered France by superior dis- cipline have a great advantage to start with in a domestic contest. 228 RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS But in such a thorough change of societj^ as socialism contemplates there is no room for com- promise. The plan is to take away all the means of production — all land, machinery, manufacto- ries, all means of transport — from private per- sons, and transfer property in them to the state ; to abolish all private trade, credit, business rela- tions, and the medium of circulation, without which these could not go on ; so that there is not a work in life, not an employment or pursuit, that would not be put on a wholly new basis. What room for compromise is there here ? There never was a revolution in history, since history told the story of the world, so complete as this. Nations have passed under the sway of conquerors; but an age or two brought back the rights of property and free management of their affairs to multi- . tildes of the conquered. Nations have been de- ported to distant settlements; but multitudes throve in the land of exile, or their descendants were restored to their properties in the old home. Is it conceivable that, with all the personal evils which stand at the very door of such a change in view, multitudes would succumb and compro- mise rather than risk their lives for an essential good and a sacred right, as they regard it, of themselves and their posterity ? As the issue in such a conflict is uncertain, so the form which the state, constructed on the ruins of private property would assume, would be un- TO THE STATE AND TO SOCIETY. 229 certain, except so far as the industrial changes should require some special conformation of the government. We have, then, a problem to solve, when the social state is to be considered, which has to take some uncertain factors into account. Butnve have more right to speculate on this point than socialists themselves have ; for our specula- tions can do little harm if they prove false, while theirs, if they prove false, may involve themselves and their countries in remediless ruin. Properly speaking, we need to look at two points — the governments under which the social- ists hope to carry out their industrial theory, and the form of state polity which the theory itself seems to render necessary. As for the inclina- tions and opinions of the socialists and commu- nists, there is no question that, as a body, from the commencement of the French Revolution, both in France and elsewhere, they have leaned toward the principle of equality as the main foundation of a well-regulated state. But equal- ity is a broad term, and the question at once arises how much must it include ? Liberty and equality stand side by side in all the declarations of French political Utopias. But it is evident that, if personal liberty has the breadth of rights which is conceded to it even in some arbitrary governments, equality of condition and inequality of situation, or of amount of worldly advantages, may be found together ; so that a conflict must 230 RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS necessarily arise between the two, which cannot easily be adjusted. Equality of condition^ the absence of all ranks and orders, secured by con- stitutions, would be accepted by all socialists as a sine qua non^ before the working class can be raised above the disadvantages which encoifhter them in modern society ; but inequality of situa- tion^ some power by which the free action of an individual may enable him to rise above a general level, is clung to, in existing society, far more te- naciously than the proper democratic principle of equality in political rights and the sameness of condition throughout society. The feeling of equality, then, is not confined to the equal diffusion of political rights ; but it ex- tends to material advantages. It is the feeling of one competitor toward another — the same feeling which has led and may again lead to the lot, as preventing a man of more influence and ability from gaining an oifice by his ability. The world is not full enough and never will be full enough of material goods to satisfy all ; and if the strug- gle for them were not checked by the social sys- tem, one would secure for himself more than another, if the state did not interpose. It is not to be denied that evils attend on the present sys- tem of unlimited power to gain wealth ; but the point which we now make is that, in seeking to prevent these evils, the social theories find it necessary to restrict the freedom of individuals, TO THE STATE AND TO SOCIETY. 231 especially the power of rising by enterprise, soundness of judgment, unbounded energy, and other qualities, which not only aid the individual in his advancement, but contribute to the im- provement of general society. When the individual is confined by law and public institutions in his sphere of operations, society loses a great part of its force ; and the state must acquire an equal or greater amount of force, or all the hopes of a community will be ship- wrecked. Thus, if private capital is to cease, the state must have the new function of general busi- ness director, or there will soon be no state at all. Is it not perfectly evident that the state must be- come exceedingly strong to undertake such new duties, in addition to many of its old ones ? And may we not argue with certainty, from the checks which society, as it now is, puts on the occasional violence and arbitrary power of the state, that, when society is stripped of its force in opinion and in action, a vast increase of independence, even a despotical sway must be gained by the state from this source also ? The state, then, under socialism must become strong and uncontrollable, not only because new offices are committed to it, but also because these offices are taken away from society and from its individual members, who now will no longer be able to oppose, or correct, or enlighten the state in favor of the interests of general society. What 232 RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS the form of the state in its socialistic era would be is of little importance. The essential characteris- tic is that it must become all but unlimited ; and our readers are well aware that all unlimited gov- ernments are more like one another, whether they be called monarchies or oligarchies or dem- ocracies, than they are each like to a limited gov- ernment of their own name. We can hardly question that genuine socialists would prefer that constitution which was best for their purposes. If it were an unlimited monarchy, provided no ranks or orders were allowed to exist, it could pass with the greatest ease into an unlimited democracy and vice versa. [See Appendix I., end of this chapter.] There is no doubt that during the period of strife with other parties the socialists will contend for universal suffrage^ and that their agitators will maintain democratic principles ; but, as one of their friends asserts, when they have reached their goal, they may find the general vote no longer essentially required. Their public mani- festoes, however, such as the programmes of Eisen- ach and Gotha, breathe the democratic spirit in an extreme. What can be more so than the de- mands made at Gotha of direct legislation, and of decision concerning war and peace by the peo- ple? But the leaders, doubtless, have much wiser opinions of their own. Schaeffle says Quintessenz,” p. 29) that the general right to TO THE STATE AND TO SOCIETY. 233 vote would not be absolutely necessary for social- ism after it had reached its goal.” A strong government would be especially need- ed in the period of transition and the beginnings of the new state ; for then old memories would not have died out, the power of combination would not have entirely ceased, and the difficul- ties that might attend the working of the new machine would encourage its enemies. But let us see how the destruction of private property in the means of production and the es- tablishment of the socialistic state would affect individuals and their rights. First of all, we mention the right of pro2yerty. This, we have seen, is swept wholly away, except so far as ter- minable annuities, ‘^payable in means of enjoy- ment,” may be granted to such rich men as do not oppose the change of order, and so far as workingmen may lay up their savings for the future pleasures (not the future profits) of them- selves and their heirs. This is as far as Schaeffle can go, with a seeming desire to bring socialism into a nearer likeness to existing polities. And, furthermore, there is in such a state no power be- longing to the individual to rise above his exist- ing condition. In fact, the author already quoted is at pains to show the social party that freedom of movement of laborers is necessary to act as a balance to changes in demand which must come upon their industrial republic. But, according to 234 RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS the programme, the workers are fixed in situa- tion, glehcB ascripti^ and removable by the state, as far as we can see, from one place and work- shop to another, as the Roman coloni or serfs were fixed, and only removable by the proprietor. Is not this the beginning of a new order of serf- dom, as the government officials of the workshops and storehouses might well become a new class of feudal lords ? It is impossible, if these conditions of society should be lasting, that some new rela- tions of a political and social kind should not gain a foothold in the new order of society. How far the workingmen would have self- government in prosecuting their employments we are unable to conjecture. In the ateliers of the French socialists to some extent the operatives could elect their own headmen and supervisors ; but we can hardly conceive of this as practicable in a vast system under government control. If, in great operations at present, the employer or undertaker has great responsibility thrown upon him as it respects styles and fashions of goods, changes of machinery, estimation of amount of demand, and other particulars; it would seem that the leading managers of manufactories in the social state ought to be invested with an equal share of responsibility, unless the system should fail utterly. There is one form of labor ^ and that of prime importance, about which we hav^e seen but few TO THE STATE AND TO SOCIETr. 235 opinions expressed. We refer to agriculture. Here the analogy of manufacturing industry readily suggests itself, and farming on a great scale, placed in the hands of an association of laborers, is one of the forms most naturally thought of. The association pays the state a rent; or the system is managed exactly as a manufactory would be, the laborers receiving tickets for their hours’ work, the cost of this labor being estimated after long calculation, and the tickets entitling the holder to draw from the storehouses whatever he may desire, according to the amount of his claims. But it is obvious that, as men will till separate pieces of ground and must use in part their own products for daily consumption, the difficulties attending exact equal- ity of distribution will be great. As this class of workingmen in some countries quite outnumbers all others, the problem is not only difficult, but of vast importance. It would seem that their liberty of moving from one place to another would naturally be more restricted than that of manufacturing workmen. [See Appendix II., end of chapter.] The intercourse of a socialistic country with foreign parts would wholly fall under the state’s control and direction. Such intercourse would be necessary for procuring raw materials which could not be cultivated at home, and articles of luxury from tropical countries. The commerce 236 RECENT SOCIALISM IN ITS RELATIONS could not be of great amount, and might be left in the hands of some maritime nation. The finances of the social state have already been noticed. They would be managed in the simplest manner* possible, as far as the original levy should go ; for they are nothing but first- fruits of the productions of the people. When thus gathered, the state could dispose of them as it pleased — at home or in foreign parts — in ex- changing its receipts with military or civil work, paying officers, supporting public charities. We can easily see that it would need at no time to be at a loss for funds, for in any emergency it could put its hand into the depositories of certificates of labor, and take the wages of a day or a month to itself all over the country. It must not be supposed, however, that these taxes would, of course, be a very small aliquot jyart of the entire product. As the state would play the part of the employer-capitalist and of the government too, it would need to expend money in both characters ; as, indeed, we have already had occasion to remark. It might then be found that the bitter complaints against capi- talists for ‘‘ robbing ” laborers related to nothing which the state would not do as readily. And in an exigency, when war, or famine, or internal re- volt, should fall upon the social state, it would be less able to provide for the sudden call than states are now. To borrow money at home would be TO THE STATE AND TO SOCIETY. 237 out o£ the question ; to borrow it abroad would be exceedingly difficult. The capacity of such a state to engage in de- fensive war would be extremely limited ; and in offensive war it would be a still weaker assailant. On the other hand, the motives for attacking it would be small, since the change in its polity would withdraw it from most of its former inter- course with foreign states, and it would live within itself. Internal dissensions might be fre- quent and chronic, as long as old local feuds con- tinued, for it would have no strong army pre- pared to repress local outbreaks. How far could such a state secure the regards of its inhabitants, and would patriotism be a strong sentiment among them? We can hardly bring ourselves in thought into the feelings of such communities ; but one cannot help believing that the ties which bind many nations to their countries, even when they are misgoverned, would be all gone. Centuries would flow away before they could have any history. They would live in comparative separation from the rest of the world. What progress they could have it is not easy to imagine. Their institutions would have become industrial, rather than political. The en- nobling influences of political and historical life would have all passed away. We add that the rich diversity found in the so- cial life of the peasantry would wholly cease under 238 THE INDIVIDUAL AND RELIGION the reign of socialism. Every civilized state in its present form presents the spectacle of innu- merable differences in employments, of men se- lecting their professions — the same family hav- ing representatives in several departments even among scientific men, artists, men of letters, in the learned professions, adorning and ennobling society. There is, in fact, an activity, and for the most part, a hopefulness in existing society which adds greatly to the enjoyment of life. But all this depends on the freedom of the individual to choose his career, and the power to choose greatly depends on the accumulation of property and the cultivation of mind and taste. In a so- cialistic state all this would be lost. The whole mass of living beings would be devoted to work under state agents. Can anything be conceived of more monotonous than the uniformity of such a system, not to speak of its incapacity to answer to the higher wants of man and to his privilege of shaping his life for himself ? II. THE INDIVIDUAL AND RELIGION IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. If the remarks we have now made have any jus- tice in them, they show that the socialistic state would increase in power by taking away power IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 239 from individuals, and from voluntary communi- ties of whatever kind. The number of persons freely using their own exertions for their own support would dwindle down almost to zero. Associations united together by any tie except that of common work would be almost unknown. Especially would the state, as the director of nearly all work, so impress its power on society, in its various communities, that opposition to the will of the state would be feeble ; and, if not fear, at least a want of interest in political affairs would, as it seems, pervade the whole nation There would be little of enterprise or of puhlio spirit in the people of a state under such a con- stitution. The possibility of rising in the world is taken away by the form of society, because there is only one class of people besides the agents and supervisors, and these are appointed by the government or by the communities. A very great stimiilus, in states where capital exists, is imparted by the form of society to all classes, especially to the humbler part of the small proprie- tors. The shoemaker or carpenter in such a coun- try as the United States, the man who has one or two journeymen on his working-benches, is in the best position to rear an honest and frugal family. He knows the value of knowledge ; he is a free man, able to judge and act in the affairs of his township and his state ; he values education for his children, if he had not had its advantages 240 THE INDIVIDUAL AND RELIGION himself. These are the persons who have an in- dividuality of their own ; who are cultivated by domestic life; who are not in a hurry nor discontented with their place in the world, but feel that the world is a good place for them and theirs to live in ; who want no help from the government, but rather to be left alone with their rights and their opportunities. There is a vast number of such persons, in a land like the United States, scattered over the farms and in the towns and villages, who have a stimulus, perhaps with- out knowing it, from our form of society ; and this spirit of enterprise they transmit to their children. But in the socialistic institutions I see nothing calculated to inspire hope or to elevate the workingman. His condition is unalterable, except that by working two or three hours longer, if the state will consent, he may receive two or three more certificates of hours’ work, which he may use as he will. In such a state, again, the circulation of knowl- edge will have obstacles put in its way ; not by direct power, indeed, but by tlie nature of the in- stitutions. Every modern programme, it is ti*ue, of the workingmen’s parties of every name, de- mands gratuitous, compulsory education for all children, and the opening of technological and other scientific schools over the land. Without doubt, they are sincere in this, for the agitators, having the boundless possibilities of the future IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 241 ill their hands, can weave out of them many glo- rious visions. But let us look at the spread of knowledge in a socialistic state. In whose hands would it be ? The state might undertake such an office ; but who supposes that it would be done well ? The state might produce as many yards of cloth or barrels of flour as were needed, and of as good quality, it may be, as capitalists could ; but neither state nor capitalist could make good books to order, and they would be sure to be bad if the state forced them into the places of educa- tion. It wants freedom of thought, independ- ence, a creative impulse to make good books in all departments but pure science ; and the state would not be likely to let books be printed at its expense, the principles of which, in government or in political economy, opposed its own. As for large printing-houses, established by as- sociations, they would scarcely be allowed in a state built on the exclusion of all private capital from its borders ; and the newspaper press would exist, if it existed at all, under great disadvan- tages. If sustained, it would derive its support from tickets of work, the circulation of the land. Its machinery and buildings would belong to the state, t)r to some association dependent on it ; and it could be crushed with no difficulty if it became obnoxious. In such a state, again, there would be little of in- telligent puhlic ojpinion. The nature of the state 11 242 THE INDIVIDUAL AND RELIGION would prevent all free spontaneous movement. We have already seen that the mobility of work- ingmen themselves — their freedom to remove elsewhere and seek other work — would meet with obstacles. The parts of the general society would be poorly united together by the intercourse of friends, travellers, and business. Indeed, society would become somewhat like the old caste sys- terns, with the upper castes left out. Whether the state would tolerate new opinions, and concede to advocates of private property the same right of attacking social institutions which socialists now have of attacking the present in- stitutions of society, may well be doubted ; for the moment the political economy on which the state was built began to be questioned, that mo- ment the state itself would be in danger. No sufficient reason against a change of polity would exist unless it were found in that science. That, therefore, is the industrial, political, social basis of the whole order of things. But we have gone, perhaps, into greater details than were called for respecting institutions which may never be realized, or, if set on foot, might move in an oblique direction, under some force of the ancient order of things which could not be neutralized. We will now pass on to another inquiry, the relation of communism and social- ism to religion. Here two points demand our consideration : the first, the attitude and feeling IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 243 of communists in the past toward revealed reli- gion and its institutions ; and the other, the in- quiry whether socialism in its nature must take a certain position toward religion, or whether it may be or become hostile, neutral, or friendly, as historical or social causes may determine. The earlier communists — Plato and his fol- lowers in Christian times, who conceived of small commonwealths as the places where their theories were to be tried — cannot be called ene- mies to religion ; although they show the essen- tial defect that marks most philosophic Utopias — the want of a full conviction that there is a de- fect in human nature, which nothing but religion, becoming a force within the soul, can cure. Plato was far from irreligion and insensibility to religious ideas, as is shown by the charm his best speculations have had for religious minds, both among the Christian Fathers and in later times. But most of the communists within the pale of Christendom, who have shown some sympathy with Christian ideas, have rejected Christian facts, and held simply to the sentiment of love or a somewhat exalted fraternity. Out of this prin- ciple in France was developed Religious Commu- nism. This fraternity was its seed-corn ; for, as another has said, in spite of the Revolution and its fearful irreligiousness, the old faith had struck too deep roots in many hearts, and even in whole circles, to be entirely banished out of its home. 244 THE INDIVIDUAL AND RELIGION Of Lamennais’s influence in propagating a form of doctrine into which some Christian thoughts infused themselves, and which, for all that, was communistic and anti-Christian, we have spoken in another place. Others followed in his steps, with a wider departure from the true spirit of the New Testament. And in the School of St. Simon, as well as among those who, like Leroux, were at flrst scholars of that school, religious ideas strayed about, as if trying to And a home from which they had been banished. Leroux himself had the same theosophic tendency, without a faith in Christ. As another says, he held that “ Christianity at its flrst appearance was a great step forward, and comprised truths until then perceived by the highest intellects only ; but that Christianity — such, at least, as it was understood to be during the Middle Ages — ^has exhausted all its juices. It has produced all that it could pro- duce for the advancement of humanity. Since the Reformation, for four centuries, it has ceased to preside over the movement of ideas in Europe. To-day it is dead, and nothing of it remains but its carcass. It pertains to philosophy to take its place and to construct a new religion. The ele- ments of this philosophical religion should be found in the past period of humanity. All that is to be done is to collect, bring together, and fonnulate them.” (A. Sudre.) A large part of the thinkers of France, and IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 245 nearly all of those who leaned toward commu- nism had discarded Christianity ; but, far worse than this, the great mass of the workmen in Paris and other towns of France were leavened with unbelief in God and Christ. A very strik- ing passage from one of the writings of Leroux, entitled Three Discourses to Philosophers, to Politicians, and to Artists,” Paris, 1831, so power- fully represents the state of religious belief among the workingmen at that time, that, although the extract is of some length, I cannot resist the temptation of quoting it : Since there are no longer on the earth any but material things— material goods, gold, or a dung-heap — every man that breathes has the right to say to you: “Give me my share of this gold, or this dung-heap.’’ “ The partition is made,” answers to him the spectre of society, as we have it to-day. “ I find it made badly,” replies the man, in his turn. “ But you were well content with it heretofore,” says the spectre. “Heretofore,” answers the man, “there was a God in heaven, a paradise to gain, a hell to fear. There was also on earth a society. I had my part in that society ; for, if I was a subject, I had, at least, a subject’s right— the right to obey without being abased. My master did not command me in the name of his selfishness ; his power over me as- cended back to God, who permitted inequality on the earth. We had the same morals, the same religion. In the name of these morals and this religion, to serve was to obey God, and to pay my protector on earth with devotion. Then, if I was inferior in the lay society, I was the equal of all in that spiritual society which they call the church. There in- 246 THE INDIVIDUAL AND RELIGION equality did not at all reign ; there all men were brothers. I had my part in this church, under the title of child of God and fellow-heir with Christ. And this church, more- over, was but the vestibule and the image of the real church, of the celestial church, toward which my gaze and my hopes turned. I had my part in the promised Paradise, and in view of that Paradise the earth faded away from my sight. The soldiers of the church on earth were at my service to direct me and aid me to gain the celestial church. I had prayer; I had the sacraments; I had repentance and the pardon of my God. I have lost all that. I have no Para- dise to hope for more ; there is no longer any church ; you have taught me that Christ was an impostor. I do not know whether there is a God ; but I know that they who make the law scarcely believe there is — or pretend to believe, which is much worse. You have reduced everything to gold and a dung-heap. I want my part of this gold and this dung-heap.” Thus, because the earth is an empty temple, and Christ has left his throne, there is nothing of value save what the man of toil can clutch and handle. The material world alone survives the ruins of faith, and is all the more precious. So the social leaders teach, so the followers believe, that the good time coming is to be a relief of material inequalities and discomforts, with some elevation of the taste and intelligence of the prol- etariat ; but expect nothing from the power of religion. I must believe that, in Germany, they have lapsed from the Bible and the faith of Lu- ther to as great an extent as the French have for- saken the faith of Pascal and St. Louis. IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 247 But let us appeal to witnesses drawn indis- criminately from socialists of various shades. The sentiments of Dupont, secretary of the In- ternational, and of Bakunin, we have already had occasion to cite. We place first in order a pas- sage from one of the writings of Marx: ‘^The evident proof of the radicalism of the German theory, and thus of its radical energy, is its start- ing-point from the decisive, positive abolition of religion. The critique of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the highest being for men ; and thus with the categorical imperative of over- throwing all relations in which man is a degraded, enslaved, forsaken, contemptible being; relations which one cannot better describe than by the ex- clamation of a Frenchman, on occasion of a pro- jected dog-tax: ‘Poor dogs! they are going to treat you like men.’ ” Again, Boruttau, who has been, I believe, editor of the YolJcsstaat^ said of socialism, in 1871, that “ it is a new viev/ of the world, which, in the department of religion, ex- presses itself as atheism; in that of politics, as republicanism; in that of economy, as commu- nism.” The same man had expressed himself, a little before, as follows : “ The hope of a satisfy- ing success of the socialistic revolution is a vision- ary Utopia, as long as we neglect to root out the superstition in a God, by a general and thorough enlightenment of the people. As none but social- ists are in a condition or are inclined to do this. 248 THE INDIVIDUAL AND EELIGION it is oiir duty to carry this work through with zeal and devotion ; and no man else is worthy of the name of socialist save he who, himself an atheist, devotes his exertions with all zeal to the spread of atheism.” This is plain enough ; but not plainer than the words of the Yorhote^ a Swiss paper, uttered about the same time — that he who seeks to bring science and religious faith into harmony, the function of his brain must already have been sadly brought into dishar- mony.” (From Jager.) Let these citations suffice to show — what, in- deed, no one can doubt— that socialism, to repeat Schaeffle’s already cited words, the socialism of to-day, is through and through irreligious and hos- tile to the church.” But a further inquiry sug- gests itself. Is this so because socialism is essen- tially irreligious ; or does it owe this quality not to its own doctrine, but to the men who first pro- fessed and propagated it? Has it made the workingmen atheists ; or were they atheists or, at least, impregnated with the virus of atheism already? We close this paper with a very brief answer to one or two of these questions, reserving the consideration of the essential relation of so- cialism to religion for the next article. First, then, the old German faith had begun to give way, within the church or churches them- selves, some time before socialistic principles were thought of. The decay of religious life, the de- IN THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 249 cay of religious faith, proceeding from the efforts of the early rationalists to take as much of the supernatural as was possible from the Scriptures — these causes acted in the church, and in the minds of its teachers and preachers, until many from among the people began to think that the church was only the police of the state, set up to keep the lower classes in order. Again, the freethinking which showed itself so mighty a destructive agent in France spread in Germany to a considerable extent, until the war of liberation caused a reaction. Then Germany began to teach philosophy to the rest of Europe ; but philosophy, in the shape given to it by Hegel, became pantheistic, and, when it went down among the people, atheistic. To this source the departure of the nation from the faith of the Scriptures must be ascribed. So, then, the work- ing-class was not so much to blame for their atlie ism as were those who had the intelligence of the country in their possession. ISTor was it unnatu- ral for the working-class to think that the rulers and the upper class considered religion as the tie to hold the country together and the restraining force to keep them quiet, without putting faith in it themselves. So thinking, the working-class could not but become disbelieving, and despise the upper class for its hypocrisy. 250 RELATIONS OF SOCIALISM TO RELIGION, III. RELATIONS OF SOCIALISM TO RELIGION, TO THE FAMILY, AND TO MARRIAGE. We deferred until the beginning of this sec- tion the question whether the hostile attitude of very many socialists to religion is a necessary or an accidental one ; whether a theory wliich would abolish private property, the free satisfaction of individual wants, and nearly all the personal value of the individual in the community, has sympa- thies with a religious life in the soul, such as the Scriptures set forth ; whether the existing want of faith, so deep-seated in this party, is likely to be as permanent as social principles themselves, or may give way to better convictions and conso- lations, when the evils in the present religious order of things shall have passed away. Here we readily admit that in some forms of smaller communistic societies there has been sin- cere religion, although not only private property, but marriage also and a considerable amount of personal freedom, have been sacrificed for the imagined benefit of those institutions. But these are societies voluntary at the entrance, and gen- erally allowing members to release themselves from their connection and take with them their property. There is also a certain degree of pres- TO THE FAMILY, AND TO MARRIAGE. 251 sure from the outside world, wdiicli helps them to be true to their convictions, and their life is free from many temptations. The communities as such hold property, buy and sell ; and the indi- vidual members feel nearly the same kind of ownership in the common property which is felt by the shareholders of a railroad. The people in a social state are to such a degree unlike them in most particulars that you cannot argue with safety from the one to the other. There is nothing in the nature of the state it- self which socialists propose to found, from which a good omen can be drawn in favor of the cultiva- tion of moral and spiritual truth. The leaders in Germany are Hegelians, and, as such, must be fatalists, so far as to recognize no personal power separate from and outside of the world. Hence, they lean toward absolute powder in all things. The state, says Ahrens, has an absolute power [in their eyes] ; it absorbs everything. It has the right to regulate everything — morality, the arts, religion, the sciences ; the individuals liave no rights but by its leave. The pantheism of Hegel concentrates itself here in political panthe- ism. The state, the present god, is the sovereign invested with absolute rights. This apotheosis of the state can have the sympathies of political absolutists, to whatever camp, monarchic or demo- cratic, they belong ; but it is profoundly in an- tipathy to political liberty. In fine, the whole 252 RELATIONS OF SOCIALISM TO RELIGION, philosophical conception of Hegel, with which his theory of rights and of the state is intimately allied, is rejected by conscience and reason. The idea of a God-progress, who develops himself across the ^vorld, in order to arrive at a clearer and clearer consciousness of himself, is a mon- strous application of anthropomorphism, which transfers to God that wdiich is found in finite and perfectible creatures. It is not the idea of God, of the infinitely and eternally perfect being, who is the sole foundation of the moral and religions sentiments of man.” (Seventh edition Droit Natiirel^'^ vol. i., p. 75.) From such a source few gleams of a light from Heaven could penetrate into the social state. Still fewer could come from an infidelity or athe- ism that has diffused itself among the working- men, and which would not be averse to the reign of almost absolute will in the state, if it carried out the will of the masses. But now let us sup- pose the state established. Is there anything in an absolute state, whether called by the name of aristocracy or democracy, that is favorable to the growth of religion ? If it should be entirely indif- ferent in regard to these interests, leaving them, as it naturally would, wholly to parents, shutting them out of schools, and making religion volun- tary in the strictest sense ; religious faith would have a poor chance, with such a start, with society against it, and with the state perfectly indifferent. TO THE FAMILY, AND TO MARRIAGE. 253 There is, indeed, nothing that we in the United States can find fault with in the declarations of the programme of Eisenach (1869) demanding sepa- ration of the Church from the state and of the school from the Church ; or in the demand of the programme of Gotha (1875), that religion be de- clared a private matter. Nor could we altogether dissent from those at the Congress of Brussels (1868), who insisted on the necessity of an ob- ligatory and integral instruction — that is to say, one comprising both scientific instruction, sepa- rated from every religious idea, and professional instruction.’’ But, as there would be no religi- ous education in the public schools and none of any account in the largest part of the families ; as religion at the start of the new state would be prostrate, with no ministers, perhaps without churches; as it must depend for its support on what workingmen could contribute from their certificates of daily work, minus what the govern- ment would need for its own uses, or on mis- sionaries from lands where capital was still in private hands (who would be not very welcome agents), the prospects of any common worship, or of any enterprise among the few believers in Chris- tianity, or of any hope of better things, as far as human eyes can discover, would be exceedingly small. We will now consider somewhat together the relations of the socialistic state to marriage and 254 RELATIONS OF SOCIALISM TO RELIGION, the family. Here we come to a part of our sub- ject where the socialists complain that they have been misunderstood, and even maligned, by the friends of existing order. The Germans forget that the opinions of Enfantin and of Fourier must have made a deep impression, and that it is excusable sometimes to charge on a whole body what only a part of it felt and thought. Count Gasparin, perhaps, in his EEnemie de la Fa- is liable to this imputation. If Fourier gives us one kind of communistic system, Cabet gives us another. His doctrine looks toward a se- vere monogamy, and the amiable man’s heart was evidently open to the pleasures of the family-circle. He honestly believes that “the inclination be- tween parents and children, he it as lively as pos- sible, will produce in a society organized on a plan of equality and community no one of the evils which, in the present system of inequality, it brings forth.” When, again, we draw a line between the small communistic societies and the socialistic state, it can be readily seen that the former must put the family in the background, >vhile the other need not have this effect. Of this we have already spoken, and will only repeat the remark that the comniimity, if small, supplies the place of the family ; while in the social state there is no such cause hostile to the family’s just place and influ- ence ; since the communities here are for indus- TO THE FAMILY, AND TO MARRIAGE. 255 trious purposes only, and nothing more than as- semblages of workingmen, each for the most part having his own home there. Thus the privacies of the family, its separate loves and enjoyments and secrets, may there flourish, if no other causes besides the nature of the state prevent. The question, however, will naturally be asked whether the abolition of inheritance will not act disastrously upon the interests of the family. As the socialistic state is built upon the destruction of family property, none can be transmitted, ex- cept those savings which take the form of mere personal enjoyments and can at the best be very small in amount. Whatever motives, therefore, drawn from the hope of leaving an inheritance to a wife and children, act upon men in society as it now is, to promote thrift and heighten family affections, nearly all these will be lost, when so- ciety shall suffer the changes which the socialists threaten. The wife of the workingman must look forward to a life of struggle for children yet helpless, or of greater discomfort and poverty. It is not, indeed, likely that the state would neg- lect the care of its helpless ones, for the aboli- tion of inheritance would create an imperative demand for its aid. But, however that may be, the prospect that a life of work would at its end leave a family helpless, would tend, by a sort of law of society, to make marriage less desirable than it is now and less sacred. If, added to this. 256 KELATIONS OF SOCIALISM TO RELIGION, religion should lose its hold, if materialism should prevail as the spirit of the community, as, with- out the counteraction of spiritual causes, it must, the society might become fearfully loose in its morals ; worse than any similar collections of persons now; worse than ignorant Africans on Southern plantations, because now a sentiment from outside does act on every class of men to some extent, even down to the lowest. We cannot doubt that the abolition of direct inheritance would cut off one of the strongest and least exceptionable motives which now stimu- late industry, economy, and the domestic virtues. With this, of course, we include the claim of the wife to a portion of the husband’s estate, which now law may enforce against his last will. If the unity of the family is a natural union, and if the permanence of the feeling of unity is a vast good to society for at least two generations ; the hope, on the part of the father, when he dies, that he can benefit his family by his labors and savings, must act on his whole life, and aid in forming the best civic habits and virtues. Fix a maxi- mum of landed property if you please, but do not attack the transmission of property, on which so much of the morality and welfare of the state depends. With regard to the sanctity of the marriage tie and to its dissolution by divorce, the feelings of a community will hold a due proportion to those TO THE FAMILY, AND TO MARRIAGE. 257 which they hold in respect to the family and to the state of marriage. Jager, in his “Socialise mus^'^ remarks that the possession of land and soil in common, if it arises out of materialism, leads also to community of wives, as being another expression of materialistic communism. This, however, is a tendency, but not a necessity. In an assembly of the German Workingmen’s Union at Berlin, Hasenclever (one of Lassalle’s friends and a member of the Reichstag) said that when the spoliation (of the working class by the capitalists) should cease, then first prosti- tution would cease, and the woman be given back to her calling — to the education of children. The •woman question would then be taken by the de- veloped socialistic or, more correctly speaking, communistic state under its own control ; for in this state, where the community bears the obliga- tion of educating and maintaining the children, where no private capital subsists, but all instru- ments of production are common property, the woman needs no longer, out of respect to her chil- dren, to be legally chained to one man. The bond between the sexes will be simply a moral one ; and then such a bond, if the characters did not harmonize, could be dissolved.” Jager (who appears to have given the sense of the words of Hasenclever, rather than the words themselves), then continues : “ These words approach already pretty near to community of wives ; but another 258 * RELATIONS OF SOCIALISM TO RELIGION, orator, Jorissen, expressed more openly tlie re- moval of all barriers, in saying that a maiden who disposed freely of her love was no prostitute — she was the free wife of the future. In the state of the future only love should direct the unions of the sexes. Between the married wife and the so-called prostitute there was only a quantitative difference. The children would ne- cessarily belong to the state, and the state pro- vide for both. These views did not exactly meet with full approbation ; but they met with no op- position based on principle.” But it is hot quite fair to argue from the ex- pressions of unprincipled leaders of the socialis- tic parties in Germany what will be the feelings and the conduct of the rank and file when they get into the promised land. It is but just to say, that now, while they are under private employers and capitalists, they are careful to save women and children from overwork, and to put them under full protection of the law. Among the demands of the Gotha programme, ‘^within so- ciety as it now exists,” we find prohibition of work on Sunday, prohibition of children’s work, and of all female work prejudicial to health and morality, with other regulations relating to the health of dwellings. They are, indeed, by no means the first that have moved in this direction. The English laws for the protection of women and children and for regulating the greed of TO THE FAMILY, AND TO MARRIAGE. 259 manufacturers in various ways — such as the re- striction of the liours of work and a system of sanitary rules — may now be said to form a code, with supervisors appointed to carry out its pro- visions. The evils of manufacturing industry are in the same way calling, in later years, for similar legislation in the United States. Thus the law of compulsory schooling in some States imposes a penalty on manufacturers who employ children for such a length of time as would inter- fere with school-hours, and prevents parents from making money out of their children at the ex- pense of their education. The humanity which is shown in programmes of socialistic parties did not, then, dawn upon the world with their forma- tion; but in those countries where capital is strongest and labor comparatively most depend- ent, there the spirit of humanity, kindled by Christian faith, has been at work to oppose the spirit of selfishness, and to put down all the evils of society which arise from covetous disregard of rights, from parental neglect, from the feeling that material prosperity is the greatest of national interests. The socialists had better wait until this humanity of capitalistic ” countries gives up its voluntary efforts and its humane legislation. That will be a strong argument in favor of a new order of things. In a socialistic state there might be education for all, reaching up into scientific truth ; there 2C0 RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. might be public festivities and amusements ; there might be a severe police against disorder and vice ; but I cannot see how the great institutions, which date from the earliest times of the world and ap- pear everywhere in communities raised above sav- age life, can be secured from decay or how their place can be supplied. IV. RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. We have thus far briefly considered some of those results of socialism in its last and most practicable form, which flow fr-om its despotical nature, or the union of social and political power in its political theory. We have also looked at it in its probable effects on the individual, on re- ligion and the family. We have found, if I am not deceived, that it takes away from the indi- vidual some of the strongest motives which exist in civilized communities as they are now consti- tuted ; that the father of a family could not rise above his condition or have any hope of rising, or of beneflting his family after his death, except to an extremely limited extent, by the results of his industry. We have seen that though the latest form of socialism is by no means hostile to the family, the conditions of a society under its control would by no means be favorable to the RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. 261 health and warmth of family life. We have seen, also, that socialism, material and earthly in its spirit, dependent on irreligious men for its prog- ress, supported by the voluntary contributions of the poor, would find it hard to keep its ground in the world. We now proceed to consider a few points rela- ting to public order, morality, and intelligence, so far as the form or spirit of socialism must affect them. And, first, as it regards security and quiet, it would have the same advantages over the present order of things which despotical states have over those where the individual has wdde rights, and is little under control. The vast mass of persons would be confined, practically, to their abodes. There would be no tramps, no public beggars, and no strangers coming to steal, or do what is nearly as bad ; for how could the former travel without tickets of work, or the latter pursue their trade, when there was nothing to steal. In fact, the eighth commandment would be far easier to keep than in society as it now is. The sixth com- mandment, too, might almost lie on the shelf ; for if now a large part of the crimes of violence originate in desires for the property of others, they would be greatly diminished, when property should cease to be in private hands, or be in such a shape that it would be hard to seize or take away. Then a number of crimes, such as forgery, embezzlement, counterfeiting — all crimes in fact 263 KELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. against property, and many of those which injure the person, would be much limited in their sphere of operation. And, owing to the same causes, the complaints of man against man, which are now brought be- fore the courts, would greatly decrease in number. Where the state did all the business, there would be no private breaches of contracts ; where inher- itance was unknown, or nearly so, there would be no probate of wills or quarrels growing out . of wills. Where the state did all the business of transportation, there could be no common carriers besides. And if an end were put to all these things, society evidently would return to a state of things in which lawyers, judges, and voluminous statutes would not be necessary. How far this simplification of life would be an indirect disad- vantage by cutting off some of those causes on which the spice, variety, and spirit of life depends, I will not stop to inquire ; but the direct good in several respects would be apparent. Yet it is not at all certain how far the commu- nities in the social state would be orderly or moral. Here several things are to be considered. What effect on morality will a state of things be likely to have, wdiere there is no public opinion of a higher class, which now has, if no other, an imperceptible infiuence. Or must a higher class crush down an inferior, so that its tastes become the worse because it feels itself to be below opin- RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. 263 ion ? It may be reasonably apprehended that if the workingmen of socialism should be able to sup- port themselves — say by six hours’ labor — their leisure would be a snare ; that beer or whiskey, quarrels and violence, with other kinds of vice, such as gambling, would be more rife than they are now. A despotical government, however, would find it not difiicult to keep these things under control. Another and a worse form of immorality, the crime of unchastity, would, one may fairly sup- pose, be peculiarly prevalent under socialistic in- stitutions. For, as we have seen, the abolition of inheritance must deduct something from the importance attached to the family, and the low materialistic views with which socialism starts, must deduct something more ; nor can one dis- cern anything in its institutions which is fitted to counteract these unhappy tendencies. Divorce, too, it is probable, would be granted on insufficient grounds, and marriage become an affair of con- venience. A lower depth would be reached in re- gard to the domestic relations than that to which society in Christian lands has hitherto fallen, unless the social state should contend, as for its existence, against these adverse infiuences. As a matter of course, the support of the poor, or more generally, of all who are incapable of labor, would fall upon the state. At present, property does this work by taxes and bequests. 2G4: RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. and whatever Christian states and Christian soci- ety have failed to do, they cannot be blamed for indifference to the needs of the helpless and for want of humanity. In the social state voluntary contributions of the living, and bequests from the dead would be in great measure cut off ; and the deductions from the products of work would be gi'eater burdens, it is probable, than any now fall- ing on the humbler classes of those who live by labor. Yet, it would seem to be feasible, if the state should use the proceeds of some of tlie “ ex- propriated ” lands under its control for the purpose of providing for the helpless and destitute. How the numbers of this class would compare with tliose in existing states, is not a problem to be easily solved. Some of the causes of distress, such as war* over-trading, and over-taxing, would be less ; but general famines could not be met nor prevented as easily as now, v/hen private trade can carry with ease the surplus food of one land to another which is suffering ; while a social govern- ment could neither borrow money in a foreign land, nor send surplus manufactures there as easily as now. On the whole, the problems of poverty and bad harvests do not look as if they could be m.ore easily solved than they are at present. The education of the people, which states of tlie old type have so much neglected, or even dreaded and opposed, has been advocated in all sorts of social programmes. Yfe have spoken of RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. 265 the position which the International took on this point, and of the resolutions favoring compul- sory education passed at Eisenach and Gotha (1869 and 1876), as well as insisting on gratuitous instruction in higher schools. Without question these expressions represent the earnest feeling of the socialists. But can the conditions of the state, or the current opinions of society always favor even a high grade of popular education? In states as they now are, the tendency is toward universal education : every class, even the hum- blest, in a large paii; of the United States, finds in it a source of hope and of advancement for the children of the class ; and more than a few who have founded their own fortune, like Packer and Cornell, have established places of higher education for the benefit of posterity. Such benefactors, of course, will be wanting in social states, where no considerable properties can be accumulated; nor will the wages of laborers be sure to sufiice for the payment of their children’s schooling. Taxes, therefore, or deductions from tickets of work, will have to be levied upon all, and the interest of all will be to make education in common schools as cheap as possible. It may thus be imperfect, for the training necessary to be- come a teacher takes time, which must be paid for before the teacher begins his work. As for high- er education, the demand for it will be less than now for several reasons. First, several of the 266 RELATIONS TO SOCIETY CONCLUDED. learned professions will be eliminated out of so- ciety, particularly lawyers and trained ministers, and with them the few who now have no business for life before them. There remain then chiefly physicians, who will be likely to be government employes, and all the many agents with various duties whom the government would want. Some of these would need a finished education in phy- sical science ; others would get along with one far less complete. But in regard to learning, espe- cially of that kind which spends its force in disci- pline of the mind and in cultivation, sesthetical or intellectual, it is not easy to see what feeling there will be of the want of it, or what due es- timate of its virtue, or ability to remunerate it to such an extent that it can have a healthful exist- ence. Nor will the loss to learning be small when the upper classes, so-called, shall have to be vdped out of society; when those highly-trained per- sons who, in the state life of the present, give the tone and the standard to a nation, start thoughts which pervade society and bear fruit for all time; who keep up the feeling in a nation, that there is something better than material good things, and that cultivation of soul and mind is better than utilized results of knowledge. The presence of an opulent class in a country is much more for the good of those below them, than for their ovm, particularly in this matter of educa- tion ; for if, as often happens, the rich have not the EILMAEXS OF BAEON J. EOTVOS. 267 energy or self-confidence to go forward in a course of hard thinking or of striving toward some ideal goal, they awaken others who would have slum- bered amid empty hopes. Can, then, a higher education or a high value put on common education — we may add, can ges- thetical cultivation and skill — be natural growths of a society which gives up private property, which cuts off the principal demands for a learned class and the means of encouraging art and science ? APPENDIX. In reference to the communist or social state we append, at the close of this Chapter, re- marks of Baron J. Eotvos in his ^^Einfiuss der herrschenden Ideen des 19 Jahrhundert auf dem Staat,” vol. i., ch. 11, p. 276 et seq., translated from his own German translation, 1854:. ‘‘ I find the dislike with which in modern times communism and socialism have been attacked, very easy to be understood. Even the greatness of the danger which threatens our entire social order through these doctrines, explains the vio- lence with which they are attacked. Yet men make a great mistake when they think that the dangers threatening us from this source can be warded off by the unmeasured accusations, or 268 KEMAKKS OF BAJ^ON J. EOTVOS. wholly false assertions which are brought forward against socialism. Of all the charges thus laid to the account of socialism, there are none which w'ere not once made against Christianity also.” He then proceeds to illustrate what he has said by the charges brought in the early centuries against Christianity, denies that there is an an- alogy between it and socialism, admits that the latter can make its doctrine suit the wants of men in society, and shows that it has controlled at least one large state, that of Peru under the Incas. Then he proceeds as follows (p. 183) : But all this shows not that communism is altogether impossible, but only that it cannot subsist without absolutism ; and it would be doing injustice to the communists to suppose that they themselves have not seen into this necessary con- sequence of their system. Hot only have promi- nent teachers in the communistic school, but even those who have employed themselves in framing constitutions for Utopias, for the purpose of making a higher order of things possible among men, have acknowledged that an authority with all power vested in it, was, for this end, indispen- sable. That this power, according to the commu- nistic theory, must be conferred by the free choice of the community, makes no essential difference in practice ; since the right of choice, where no other franchise is left to the people, can be only of short duration ; and communistic France, for REMARKS OF BARON J. EOTVOS. 269 example, would renounce it with the same frivo- lous readiness with which republican France elected Napoleon consul for ten years, then for life, and at last chose him emperor. The right of free choice, moreover, rests on the right of free concurrence, and nothing can be said against this which cannot be maintained against that. How then, in a system, tlie highest, or rather only aim of which is the establishment of equality, and an organization in which universal peace is to be secured by the exclusion of everything which produces any kind of rivalry, — how under such conditions can the principle of free suffrage, which is in such open contradiction to two ends to be secured [equality and non-competition], be long maintained ? That which is essential in communism is not at all those single schemes, against which men take the field with great outlay of wisdom and learn- ing. As Cabet, in his communistic profession of faith, expresses himself for the continuance of the family, whilst others hold the family to be inconsistent with the system of entire equality and the right of all to every enjoyment, so among the doctrines of communism hardly one is to be found concerning which the most important differences do not exist. The essentials of com- munism, in which all who adhere to it agree, con- sist rather in this — that complete equality is the end and object of the state, and the unconditional 270 REMARKS OF BARON J. EOTVOS. subjection of the individual under the state is as- sumed to be the means to this end. As, now, such complete subjection of the individual under the state’s power is only then possible, when des- potic power is conceded to the state, and as there is the closest possible approach to this principle of universal equality, when only a single jperson is an exception to this [rule of equality] ; it fol- lows that despotism is not only not in contradic- tion to the principles of communism, but also that it is the necessary form of it, and is that form in which its principles can be most completely ap- plied. Not the victory of communistic principles is impossible, but it is only impossible that these principles can be realized by any other m.eans than a completely despotical power. The victory of communism must, therefore, at the same time, be the victory of despotism.” Similar views to these of Eotvos may be found in other writers. We may be allowed to add here, as showing the vast increase of the state’s power, if it should usurp the most important functions of society, that the exercise of force founded on the judgments of the state must constantly occur. Thus, there must be something like an equilibrium kept up between different kinds of work ; work in the field must furnish adequate supplies for contemporaneous work in the man- ufactory and in other departments of life as VIEWS OF F. A. LANGE. 271 well as for itself. This equilibrium can be main- tained only by restricting production, in some de- partment where it would be an arbitrary and per- haps cruel act, or, if there was an absolute over- production, by sending the surplus abroad. The question in every case, which is now settled by private persons, would belong to the state, and, as far as we can see, would involve the state in a most complicated set of adjustments. It might be necessary, if the amount of labor was too great in one branch, to transfer laborers to another branch, whether they could or wished to take the new labor on themselves or not. And to every grumbler, the answer would be, You have an un- divided ten-millionth right in the state, and have got to work. The state must judge for you how and where, and how long you must work.” APPENDIX II. to Chapter VII. (see page 235). F. A. Lange, having been charged by von Sybel with being decidedly in favor of doing away with private property in land, replies as follows (Arbeiterfrage, ed. 3, note 8 to ch. vii., p. 403): “ I am in no way an unconditional adherent of community in land, but only an unconditional opponent of the prejudices prevailing in the coun- try against this social thought. I regard commu- 272 VIEWS OF F. A. LANGE. nity in land as the right plan only in those parts where, on account of the inordinate extent of the latifundia^ no private ownership of land exists as a thorough-going factor of social life, and de- termines the opinions and habits of the people — this above all in England. Yet even here I leave the possibility open of aiming at a satisfac- tory social reform, on the opposite plan of divid- ing the soil into small parcels, and of conveying it to small land-owners. In those countries, how- ever, where small landed properties are found to a sufficient extent — such as France, Switzerland, and West Germany — it seems to me that commu- nity in the soil, properly speaking, even on ac- count of the deep-rooted inclination of the people toward ownership of land, can have no chance of success. In such lands social progress is rather to be sought for, partly in free, cooperative, com- mon industry of neighbors, partly in the reform of the credit-system. Under all circumstances, however, I am of the opinion that in all places wffiere the true nature of private property in the soil is destroyed, and the right of property has become a bare means of levying tribute on foreign \vork, as it is especially in our large towns, it is very foolish to allow one’s self to be scared away, by vague conceptions of the sacredness [unantast- harJceit) of the foundations of our society, from measures which properly, on unprejudiced reflec- tion, must be acknowledged as the only right and VIEWS OF F. A. LANGE. 2T8 thorough ones. A law for the expropriation of property in towns, or, perhaps, still better, for the expropriation of ground-lots, within a girdle around the town which is not yet built upon, I would rather have passed to-day than to-morrow; and should be sure that this small step toward com- munity in the soil must needs be accompanied with the most beneficial consequences, if earned out from the beginning onward, in a somewhat rea- sonable way, and without any compulsion in ma- king transfers.” He then proceeds to say that the plan of turn- ing the present landholders into leaseholders of public domains, has one of its most essential points left wholly in the dark — that is, the eventual termination of the lease [Kiindigung der Pacht]. Without doubt the day after issuing such a uni- versal law of expropriation, the proprietors would at once, and in a body, find themselves in the con- dition of lessees of their own soil ; and for this great change a payment of equitable damages would be held out in prospect — ^which, indeed, in the case of a violent revolution, might be forgot- ten ; yet the intention would not at all be in this transfer of property to stop with a lease-system. The plan would rather be that the state should now, according to the measure of what necessity required, and of economical practicability, give the land on lease to those who would themselves cultivate it, and especially in the way of associated 12 * 274 VIEWS OF F. A. LANGE. or cooperative work. A law, however, by virtue of which in Germany the latifundia (only not all at one blow) should lie expropriated and given to rural workingmen on lease, I should unhesi- tatingly regard as a good one, although here the difficulties in carrying out would be greater than in the case of the towns.” Such are the views of a political economist who has decidedly social leanings, but does not be- long to the party of the socialists. He would make property in land within, or near towns, public, which was fit or likely to be used in build- ing houses intended for rent ; and he would pass on from the expedient of converting landholders into leaseholders under the state, to the ultimate method of having the leases of such a sort that the land should be cultivated by cooperative in- dustry. But latifundia (and how much land would be needed to constitute a latifundium he does not say) he would have taken from their proprietors. The plan of the author, taken as a whole, to be applied in Germany and England, but not prac- ticable in France and Switzerland, labors exceed- ingly. It is necessary that all houses and lots in cities, as well as houses for rent, if any, should belong to the state. It is necessary too, as it seems to the writer, that socialism must be uni- versal, or must be the source of universal confu- sion. Yet the safety of the state and of private VIEWS OF F. A. LANGE. 275 property seems to demand that large landed es- tates must be somehow or other broken up, and the number of persons owning the soil be greatly increased in those countries where now the land- lords are comparatively few ; and that as speedily as economic rules will allow. And this ought to be made permanent. 276 IS THE OVERTHKOW OF THE PRESENT CHAPTER YIII. I. IS THE OVERTHROW OP THE PRESENT FORM OP SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM PROBABLE? Is socialism a mere Utopia, or can it be real- ized in the world — if not by persuading men of its truth, yet, in the last resort, by revolutionary violence ? Can it get the power of the state into its hands in the United States ; or may we treat its boasts on European soil as mere bluster, and much more so when they talk of victories for its cause on our side of the Atlantic? Or, if there is no real danger, is there revealed in this agita- tion a social disease which calls for a cure ? And if so, what cure can be applied? To the first of these questions I intend to devote what remains, according to my plan, to be said upon the subject of socialism ; yet not v/ithout the hope of being able to suggest a few thoughts relating to a cure of the disease in society of which this is a symp- tom. If we go to the bottom of things, the strength of socialism — that which takes hold of the great FORM OF SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM PROBABLE ? 277 mass of the party — is not argument ; but the de- mand for equality, which has been called forth in modern times by new views of political rights and by the concession of rights to those who had either no rights, or incomplete ones before. The new views led to the new demands ; and these seemed so just, or it was felt to be so necessary to comply with them, that one privilege after another was broken down ; political equality was carried out extensively; and civil rights were made the same, or nearly the same for all. But the feeling of inequality was met by a fact as old as freedom — inequality of condition. Some mem- bers of society, whatever may have been the cause — ^whether it were birth, or education, or superior abilities, or better judgment, or what men call happy accidents — gained wealth or comforts which were beyond the reach of others ; and this more advantageous position was made permanent by laws and usages on which society was con- ceived to rest, such as free individual movement in matters of business, the security of property and its transmission by inheritance. Moreover, the progress of improvements in the great depart- ments of labor demanded a concentration of capi- tal, which made it harder than before for a man without capital to rise above the level assigned to him by birth. Thus equality of rights was practically counteracted, or made worth but little for great numbers in society by the consequences 278 IS THE OVERTHROW OF THE PRESENT of freedom. Equality of rights was met by in- equality of condition, which seemed to be grow- ing more marked and striking, as business, in order to be managed with the more success, re- quired larger capital. Thus society seemed to have a disease fastened upon it as bad as that which infested it before the new equality of rights began ; and those who indulged in politi- cal speculations, out of sympathy or of dissatisfac- tion with the present, looked for a remedy. The evils of the social system, they said — its poverty, its caste-like proletariat, its plutocracy, all grow- ing and growing by a kind of law — are due to un- restricted private enterprise. The remedy must be found in transferring all capital to the state. This train of thought, w^hen unfolded to men wdio wanted something better for themselves, and ac- companied by plausible theories of a new condi- tion of industry under the control of the state alone, is socialism. It deserves to be remarked that the feeling of equality worked in another channel also. In the older times, when there were few general w^ork- shops, and men w^orked in their owm abodes, or when workshops were small and this craving for equality did not press upon the laborers’ minds, the master and the workmen got along very w^ell together; but now, when great w^orkshops and great capital are needed, the employer is a mag- nate, quite above the former position of his office FORM OF SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM PROBABLE ? 279 relatively to liis workmen. This makes the dis- tance between the two the greater, and the new feeling of equality makes it seem to be the great- er. Men submit to power which comes from above or is impersonal ; but they chafe under the personal power of a man on the same political level with themselves. Hence, they would sub- mit to the state’s direction, if it took all industry into its hands, rather than to an undertaker or employer who is their equal in civil and political society. From these sources come the advantages which the socialists have in carrying out the plans of their parties. From these sources I say, and from baseless promises and theories of rights touching the returns of labor, which the workingmen rather believe than understand. The working- man thinks that he can lose nothing, if Bebel or Liebknecht is no prophet. He can gain some- thing if what they say is true. The world, in any case, needs him. But there is another and a very considerable portion of society wdiich knows that the success of socialism is the ruin of themselves and their families. How are they to be placated or put asleep ? Not, certainly, by those violent denunciations against the hourgeoisie^'^ which many socialists use, with the effect only of irri- tating that class and of alienating one class from another. But for this policy, the “ bourgeoisie ” miglit underrate the resources and the proba- 280 IS THE OVERTHROW OF THE PRESENT bility of success of the social movement; but now they are gradually taught that it means noth- ing less than their ruin, their extinction as a class, their having their property taken from them, and their reduction to the order of state workmen. IS’othing, in fact, but persuasion or violent revo- lution can lead holders of property in a country, however small it be, to acquiesce in so com- plete an overturning of society, and downfall of themselves, as the most modern socialism con- templates. Let us look at this alternative, and especially at the probable success of the social doctrine. One very important article of this new faith is that a law of nature — if so it can be called — is working on its side. The present is the age of complicated machinery, superseding the instru- ments which formerl}" a single man could own, and of vast amounts of capital in individual hands. But the change from the plan of small and do- mestic industry to the present wholesale industry is only a stage in the progress. As the house- wife working at her loom in odd hours has given way to the tenants of mammoth manufactories, so the small and less powerful of these manufac- tories iriust give way to the more powerful. The larger the scale of these operations, the fewer must be the employers. And the same is true of capitalists. They, too, must dwindle in number while they swell in size. Then they become an FORM OF SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM PROBABLE? 281 easier prey to those whom the system has made serfs, but to whom constitutions give liberty. I have touched on this before ; but I touch on it now again to say, firsts that, if any such law, fa- tal and inevitable, is at work, its progress must be measured not by years, but by centuries. The so- cialists have done existing order a favor by call- ing to it the attention of men. There is time to decide whether it is an essential evil, which noth- ing but violent surgical methods can cure, or one which society, once convinced of its existence and growth, can remove without destroying itself. If, even in this country, unfettered freedom can bring about a state of things in which a few great mer- chants, manufacturers, ship-owners, transporters, and money-lenders shall absorb the capital of the country, it will then be the time to rectify the evil, if it can be done, by appropriate legislation. Meanwhile, w^e will live in hope of something less radical than the destruction of society in order to destroy the evils growing out of private capi- tal. And, again^ I doubt very much whether the socialists can persuade men that the additional value, conferred by the labor of operatives on materials put into their hands, wholly belongs to them, so that they are plundered by their employ- ers, when they are paid on the present system. Nor will men, I imagine, be made to see that the state can compensate in a way, or to an amount. 282 IS THE OVEETHROW OF THE PRESENT unlike which is current in the present day. For both state and employer pay for all the instru- ments of production and the material to be worked up ; both make advances to the laborer before the product comes into market ; both, in reality, pay their own expenses, by sale of the manufactured articles ; only, if the goods sell at a loss, the employer bears the loss, in the one case, while, in the other, the state throws the loss on the whole number of the laborers in the country. And, after all this, the state, having nothing wherewith to pay its expenses save the products of labor, takes a part, it may be a considerable part, of these products {i. e., as we have seen, of the tick- ets of time representing them), for its expenses and those of its numberless agents. Which of these processes is best for the laborer, and gives him the greater share of the proceeds it may be reasonably doubted. Nor is it so evident that labor done for the state will be more effective and hearty than that done for a private employer, when the system seems to be built on the amount of average labor or the number of hours’ work as the divisor, and on the gross amount of products as the dividend. As we have had occasion to remark already, this is a cardinal point. The private employer has the remedy in his hands ; but in the socialistic state the workmen may all be paralyzed by the system, and there may be found to be such a want FORM OF SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM PROBABLE ? 283 of motive as to lower the amount of products much below what it ought to be. If this should be the case, it would be fatal to the whole theory of social work. Until the socialists can show that it is not, men whom they wish to convert to their theory will hesitate long before they admit it. Yet again j if the socialists should adhere so rigidly to their present scheme of work, which is the foundation of the entire system, as to pay no regard to the demand for specific articles, but only to the amount of labor incorporated in them, and should fail to provide for the mobility of la- borers, they would not persuade men that their system could be stable and prosperous. Unless it can accommodate itself to the changing fashions and wants of the community, as the present sys- tem of industry does with the quickness of a so- cial barometer — if we may so express ourselves — many will believe that it must collapse. Other states may suflFer terrible disasters, and recover from them by means of private enterprise; but the social state commits itself to one line of ac- tion, from which it cannot deviate and on which there is no going back. At least, this would be an apprehension which would make many slow in consenting to its exclusive control. But, after all, political economy and the inter- ests of work by no means make up the whole of life. There will be multitudes who may have very little knowledge on such points, who yet will 2S4 IS THE OVERTHROW OF THE PRESENT ask Ilow socialism will affect the individual, the family, the government, morals, religion, and all spiritual and moral forces, about which the social- ists seem to care little. Unless these can be sa.tis- fied that the character of the people to which they belong — taking that term in its widest ex- tent — will not be deteriorated by social institu- tions, they will not readily join in pulling do^vn existing ones, which, with all their defects, en- courage much that is noble in life and manners. And in this feeling many socialists will join ; for the breach with all the thoughts and habits of ancient society will be so entire, there will be such a divorce from history and the past, that many, to whom the question of work is not the all-absorbing one, will be unable to bring them- selves to participate in the social revolution, or even to wish it success. It seems certain, then, that the change in society must be effected, if effected at all, by violence. If the socialists should not wish to appeal to violent measures, such an appeal would come from the partisans of existing society. The advantage in such an appeal v/ould at first be greatly in favor of established order ; for, as the socialists have always shown the conviction that their question is not national, but universal, so the anti-socialists, of all political shades and national antipathies, will, as a matter of course, join their forces, for it is a question of self-preservation. Taa res agitur^ FORM OF SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM PROBABLE ? 285 paries cum pi'^oximus ardeL Tlie spirit of in- ternationalism would tlien pervade all nations ; for not only changes in government, but a wholesale destruction of property, would be involved in the struggle. Nor could there be any compromise, unless social principles on the part of the enemies of present society were abandoned — that is, unless the struggle came to be one for the mere rule of society and for spoils. The socialists could accept of no such issue or they woidd meet with certain ruin ; for their principles are their only strength. Now, in such a contest, it is not at all likely that the outbreak would be simultaneous everywhere in a circle of nations. It is not even likely that so- cialism would be so strong in all of them as to feel itself everywhere equal to the measures of vio- lence which would be necessary. There would be, then, an advantage on the side of existing order. Government and property, where they were strong, could aid the forces of society where the socialists were strong. The separate states in Europe, for instance, so often opposed in war to one another, would then be united against the foes of existing order. Could the result be doubtful? Property and capital would be on one side, and a large proh etarian mass on the other, without supplies or credit ; able to do vast mischief, without question, but not able to gain their end ; — no nearer to the time when all men with hands would be either the agents or the workingmen of the state. 286 OVERTHROW OF SOCIETY BY SOCIALISM. The socialistic party is, perhaps, encouraged by the seeming apathy of a large part of society in regard to their ultimate plans. But they can hardly believe that all who are not against them are for them. It takes a long time for many per- sons to conceive that any body of men really de- sire and are doing their best to bring about the greatest of changes — ^not to reform nor to trans- form, but to overthrow and build up again on a new foundation. To others the project seems an idle, Utopian scheme, from which sober men, who are attracted by some of its features, will in the end withdraw. To others still it may seem that a party, the basis of which is political econ- omy, has too narrow and uncertain a foundation for any success at first or stability afterward ; al- though they ought to be aware that political econ- omy is putting questions which make differences between parties, and between nations ; and has almost reached the place occupied heretofore by doctrines of personal liberty and of the nature of government. But, if the social movement makes much further progress, these persons will see that they must form an opinion on the great point at issue, and it cannot reasonably be doubted which side they wiU take. FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 287 FUTURE PROSPECTS OP SOCIALISM. Manufacturing industry on a large scale, by gathering many workingmen together, aids their united action and gives rise to a general opinion which is often tyrannical and overlooks the rights of others. As workingmen are brought into close contact with one another and to a degree are separated from their fellow-men, they are com- pacted into a class which stands over against capi- talists and over against the general community. The ease with which they can be acted on by re- formers and agitators gives them a false sense of their relative importance ; and, owing to the facil- ity of their concerted action, while other classes cannot readily unite, they throw other classes into the background. Socialistic influences have had little effect hitherto on those tillers of the soil who are not owners of land — such as farm-labor- ers and tenants of small farms, a numerous class in some countries where, greatly to the detriment of society, land is owned in large masses. If the agitation now so rife in parts of Europe should have the effect of subdividing the large estates and of converting tenants into proprietors, it would be a blessing for all time. At present many of this class might be led to sympathize 288 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. with socialism, if they could be reached by its emissaries. But, for a time, they would only count on its rolls ; they would have little weight. Over against the workingmen are placed by the socialists the hourgeoisie^ or third class, which consists of all who have property, whether in- vested in their business, or kept as a provision for their own and their families’ support. This class touches the proletarian class, which has only daily work for its dependence. Yet even this distinction from others of the bourgeoisie often disappears, as in the case of a man who lives by manual labor, deposits his surplus earnings in a savings-bank, and at length is able to buy a house or land. Some of its members, again, may envy others who have superior wealth, and on this side may be open to socialistic influences ; yet many others know well that the interests of all with whom they do business are closely linked to- gether. They are well aware that no industrious class, which^ does not live on social vice and is permanent, can be otherwise than helpful to the other classes of society ; and so their maxim is, if they are prudent and temperate : Live and let live.” The nature of the modern state presses to- ward the obliteration of class distinctions.” So says an eminent German, Heinrich von Treitsch- ke. This is true, because legislative power is not confined to the upper classes or their repre- FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 289 sentatives ; because education runs wider through and further down the stratification of society than formerly ; because the noble class, where it remains, has become relatively weaker ; and be- cause there are examples of states with no politi- cal gradations and where social differences are not aided by law. The socialistic agitation strives to keep up the feeling of class distinctions. Logically, and by way of definition, we may say that one who has nothing laid up and works with his hands belongs to one class ; and a man who owns his tools of trade and has direct connection with those who v/ant his products, belongs to another. A man who cuts kindling wood with a sawing-machine, and is the owner of a horse and wagon, has capi- tal and works also ; he must, therefore, be ranked with the bourgeoisie ” — with capitalists, for in- stance, who own instruments of production, and do not generally work with their hands. It is striking that no word has been coined in English or in German to represent this word and the other Yrenah. proletariat. Does not this show that there was no real use for their existence, until the socialists began to draw a wide line of separa- tion between these two conditions of society ? The question may now be put : “ What is and must be the feeling of this class toward the pro- ject of a socialistic state, when they begin to com^ prehend its nature and meaning ? ” 13 290 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 1. The essential characteristic of this portion of the community is that they own property which is the means of production ; and we cannot sepa- rate from them their helpers, of various names — journeymen, apprentices, clerks, porters, domestic servants, all the officials of public corporations, and the like — who, if they are not proprietors, may become such, and who know the value of property as an institution of society. Men may talk as they please about the evils of individual- ism and of a society founded on the selfish prin- ciple ; but after all there are two poles of human nature and society, which are both necessary : — that the human being should feel himself to be a separate entity, and that he should belong to a body as one of its members. Neither the varie- ties of human character, nor independence and enterprise, nor any of the higher practical virtues of our nature could exist without giving free scope to individuality ; that is, to freedom. The family furnishes a sphere for the exercise of both principles, and thus harmonizes the two tenden- cies of man. Socialism fetters individuality, and restricts the free choice of a career and the pro- curement of objects for gratifying the tastes and desires. This it does by almost destroying pri- vate property. It will not be strange, therefore, if all who have property, small or great in amount, shall stoutly oppose socialism, as being opposed to the free development of personality. FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 291 This feeling is as strong in the poor man who has property, as in the rich. A man may be satis- fied with a small amount of property; but that amount is precious. A benevolent man may value the privilege of acquiring property by means which he has chosen ; though he gives it away as fast as he makes it. The feeling is in all men. The feeling, however, seems to be particularly strong in owners of land. The connection of a farmer with his farm is more a love than a ra- tional estimate. It is like our love for our coun- try, founded on numberless events in the past which may now be forgotten. If everything which we own gives us a gratification as being ours, the ownership of the soil adds also to our feeling of importance. There is a portion of the earth’s surface where we have exclusive control, which we may forbid any one to enter upon, as we may shut the rest of the world out of our houses. Now can any one expect that a free cultivator, who determines for himself what he shall raise, what shall be wood-land, what shall be pasture- land, who pleases himself by planting and plan- ning for years to come — can any one expect that such a man will willingly surrender his acres to the state, leaving it to the state thenceforth to di- rect how they are to be manured and tilled and what part of the crop shall be his? The most accepted kind of socialistic cultivation of land 292 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. is by means of associations under state agents. Is it credible that an owner of a farm would will- ingly surrender it to the state and work for the state, getting his tickets of hours’ labor and hav- ing nothing to do with the choice of crops or the method of cultivation; taking, indeed, what his Avaiits require for the day or week, but reckoning for everything as a fiduciary or a serf ? To me, at least, it is incredible. He would regard it as a sinking down into serfdom. Nor is it more probable that a man thus dispos- sessed would be satisfied, at least in this country, with arguments adduced to show that he has no title, in justice, to his fields. “If the state ever had a title,” he would say, “ that title was con- veyed to those from whom I derived it, and mo- tives v/ere lield out to them to take the lands of- fered for sale ; the land offered and received was meant to be transferred in perpetuity ; constitu- tions and laws have confirmed the transferred land, which has now become mine, as much as the state can make it mine. The United States have parted by gift, or at a small price, with many millions of acres to settlers ; and would be bound, if a state of the Union were disposed to seize on the lands of its citizens, to resist and put down such attempts ; for the lands were either sold by the general gov- ernment before the state existed, or the right to them was retained, or it was parted with to the new states and conveyed by them to settlers. In FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 293 any case, the property, the state’s power of sell- ing over again, or of taking back, or of restrict- ing sales by settlers, was parted with forever ; and if such power should be usurped by the state the courts of the Union might be authorized to interfere. Indeed, such attempts by one of the states, imbued with socialistic principles, might provoke other states, if lands of their citizens were invaded and ^expropriated,’ to complain and to resent the wrong. Until, the]*efore,” he would say, the Federal Constitution and that of each and every state shall be altered so as to conform to the socialistic model, 1 may be quite sure of having powerful protectors against public as well as pri- vate invaders of my rights. If the United States attempted to do this, the state would resist ; if a state attempted it, the United States would bring the wrong before its tribunals. And, possibly, another of the states w^ould endeavor to redress the wrong done to one of its own citizens.” In countries with a less complicated form of government it might be easier, as far as the op- position from the classes interested in preserving the existing order of things could be counted on, to carry out the programme of destroying the indi- vidual right of property, especially of landed prop- erty ; but everywhere attempts to socialize ” all institutions will be met by determined resistance. 2. And that this resistance would in many countries be effectual ; that socialism, if it should 294 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. attempt violent revolution, would be put down, is made probable by the strength and resources of the conservative part of society — that is, of those who can be united in preserving and defending private property. We may, I believe, lay it down that the agricultural class in all countries which raise their own food must constitute full one-half of the population. In France, some years since, when the population was estimated to be about thirty-seven millions, the holders of lands amount- ed to 6,000,000, who, with their families, would make up considerably more than half of the in- habitants. This, indeed, includes owners of houses in towns, as well as in the country, together with a number of tenants ; but the small landholders are the largest class in the country. In the United States, according to the last census of 1870, the number of males in all occupations was just over twelve millions and a half. Of these nearly six millions belonged to the agricultural class and 2,707,421 were engaged in manufactur- ing and mining industry. Under the head of the professional and personal class 2,684,793 were counted, and under that of trade, commerce, and transportation 1,191,238. A part of this last de- scription of persons might join in socialistic move- ments, and a few of those pertaining to the other classes ; but we should probably go far beyond the truth if we admitted that one-third of the people might be won over to the socialistic side. FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 295 In the Scandinavian countries, and in Russia, since the abolition of serfdom, the part of the population which could be affected by socialistic movements must be small. The same is true of ^ Southwestern Germany, although to a less extent. In Great Britain the showing is not so -favor- able for the stability and order of existing society. In the Financial Reform Almanac for 18Y9, the number of persons in the professional classes is stated to be about six hundred and eighty-four thousand; in the commercial classes, 815,000; in the agricultural classes 1,657,000 ; in the in- dustrial, 6,140,000, including persons engaged in manufacturing employments, shopkeeping, etc., of whom 1,770,000 are women ; and in the domestic classes 5,905,000, of whom all but 244,728 are females, who are principally household servants. From these data we may with some confidence, if not with certainty, infer that operatives in manu- facturing employments, greatly outnumber agri- cultural workers ; and it is probable that the lat- ter could not be relied upon in a contest between capital and labor. The number of small land- owners is far less than in France or the United States, in proportion to the acreage of the king- dom. Yet the aids in preventing social disor- ganization — such as colonization and the readi- ness with which the governing classes have for a long time met the wants and the demands of the people — must not be left out of account. The 296 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. temper of the nation is not decidedly aristo- cratic, and classes have not had that embittered spirit toward each other which shows itself in portions of the Continent ; so that the principles of rank socialism, notwithstanding or, rather, on account of the freedom of speech and the press, have taken little hold of Great Britain. 3. It seems to the writer, also, that the social- ists undervalue the means and power of combina- tion of the classes which are naturally opposed to them, as much as the thinking men of these classes undervalue the force of the arguments for a social change, and the hold which socialistic ar- guments have already gained, and are likely to gain in the future over the minds of the working classes. The towns, the arenas of the new agita- tion, feel their strength unduly and despise the country, where ideas move slowly because men live apart. But this is a grievous error. If they cannot get the country people to act on their side — to give up their farms and houses and domes- tic animals to the state, and receive daily work for daily wages as the state’s laborers — their cause is lost. And that they cannot have this art of persuasion everything seems to show. If they think that because the workingmen are with them they can conquer the country, they will be griev- ously deceived. The cultivator of the soil can do without the manufacturing laborers more easily than these without them. FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 297 If, however, that to which we have referred al- ready more than once should be found to be a law of social progress — that the free use of private property must end in making a few capitalists of enormous wealth and a vast population of labor- ers dependent on them ; and if there could be no choice but between this disease of free society and the swallowing up of all property by the state — then, we admit, it would be hard to choose be- tween the two evils. Nothing would lead the mass of men to embrace socialism sooner than the conviction that this enormous accumulation of capital in a few hands was to be not only an evil infact^ if not prevented, but a necessary evil^ beyond prevention. AVe have no desire to see a return of the time of the latifundia^'^ or broad farms, which, as Pliny the Elder said, were the ruin of Italy. If such a tendency should mani- fest itself, it would run through all the forms of property. A Stewart or a Claflin would root out smaller tradespeople. Holders of small farms would sink into tenants. The buildings of a city would belong to a few owners. Small manufac- turers would have to take pay from mammoths of their own kind or be ruined. Then would the words of the prophet be fulfilled: ^^AYoe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the earth.’’ For, if this went to an extreme in a free country, the expropriated ” 13 * 298 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. could not endure it. They would go to some other country, and leave these proprietors alone in the land, or would drive them away. A revo- lution, slow or rapid, would certainly bring about a new order of things. But the danger of convulsions, or even of an overthrow of existing society, does not arise from any inevitable law, involving the loss of individ- ual freedom, or impairing the strength of the family principle. The legislation of England within the present century — defending the weak against the strong, protecting the health of opera- tives, guarding women and children against over- work, providing for the reference of disputes be- tween employer and workman to arbitrators, al- lowing unions and combinations between the workmen for carrying out their plans, giving them a larger interest atid right in political af- fairs — shows what an enlightened nation can do when social evils become alarming. And if the difficulties attending the free sale of landed prop- erties in small parcels could be removed, there can scarcely be a doubt that a land-owning peas- antry would be another strong force on the side of the stability of public institutions. But our fears do not proceed from any belief that govern- ments on the existing foundations of individual freedom cannot go on reforming, while yet they remain true to the principle of individual free- dom. These fears arise from the influence, now FUTURE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 299 manifest, of a low sort of unprincipled or fanatical demagogues ; from the insobriety of workingmen ; from the decay of religious faith, and the sure weakness of moral principle and the instability of social habits without this great regulator. Our hopes point (in the United States at least), to the conditions and tendencies of society ; to the con- tinual parcelling of estates among heirs; to the opening to all classes, by the facilities of educa- tion, of all positions and employments. And when we think of the materialistic and even atheistic dogmas, which hide the face of God from so many of the poor, we are consoled by the faith that the religion of Christ can never die, that it can revive a nation ^;t its lowest ebb of prosper- ity. The present century, more than any age be- fore, has tested the power of Christianity to propagate itself through all the races of man- kind. Even now it is showing its humane coun- tenance to the gloomy and rancorous communists of France, like a new friend, having nothing to do with state polity, but only with reforming the inner man, and in fact coming from abroad. If this friend of man can work in its own legitimate way, the peace of society will be restored, and whatever opposes the best interests of any por- tion of society must come to an end. IlJTDEX Ahrens, 251. Amana, communities at. See Inspirationists. American communities, 50-84. See Shakers ; Rapp ; Har- mony ; Zoarites ; Amana Inspirationists ; Perfection- ists ; Oneida; Wallingford; Brotherhood of Common Life. Anabaptists of Munster, 42-50; fanaticism of the sect at first, 42 ; opinions, 43 ; Thomas Miinzer, 43 ; Rottmann at Munster, 45 ; Anabaptists get possession of the city, 46 ; Mattbys and John of Leyden, 47, 48 ; the latter be- comes king, 49; new constitution of the city, 47, 48; siege of it, and destruction of the leaders, 49, 50. Antonelli, concerned in BaboeuFs conspiracy, 103. Aristotle, his criticism on Plato’s republic, 87, 89. Atkinson, Edward, on the share of the product going to the owner of capital, 169. Baboeuf, his conspiracy in 1796, 102-105. Bakunin, a Russian Nihilist, his adventures, 147 ; his opin- ions, ibid. ; forms an atheistic section in the Interna- tional, 149 ; expelled with the section, on the ground of forming a secret society, ibid. Bazard, a scholar of St. Simon, 107 ; breaks with Enfantin, 111 . S02 INDIi:X. Blanc, Louis, his career and writings, 122, 123 ; the ateliers, 123; a losing experiment, 124; he defends the family, but not inheritance, ibid. ; his importance in the prog- ress of socialism, 125. Boruttau, his atheism, 247. Brissot de Warville, 10, 102. Brotherhood of the New Life, 81-84. Brown, Thomas, his charges against the Shakers, 56, 57. Buchez, a disciple of St. Simon, 112. Buddhist mendicant order, 26-29. Buonarotti, concerned in Baboeuf’s conspiracy, 104 ; pub*- lished the plan in 1828, ibid. Cabet, Etienne, his career, 118; his “Voyage to Icaria,” ibid. ; his colony in the United States, ibid. ; unsuccess- ful, and why, ibid., 69 ; his opinions, especially his com- munistic creed, 119-122 ; humane and averse to force, 121 . Caimes, Prof., cited, 170. Campanella, his life, 93 ; his “ City of the Sun,” 93-95 ; hi& chief magistrate a religious autocrat, 95 ; loose as to marriage, ibid. Collectivism, definition, 4; a French term, used also by Germans, ibid. Commune in Paris, 1870, 154-158. Communism defined, 1, 2, 7 ; other definitions, 12. Communities in the United States, conclusions concerning them, 67-72. Community of goods in the early Christian church, 34-37 ; voluntary, local, temporary, ibid. Constant, the Abbe, his communistic ideas, 116. Dalai Lama, in Thibet, 29. Davis, Mr. J. Bancroft, on the socialistic voters in Germany, 190, Diognetus, epistle to, cited, 86. INDEX. 303 Dupont, E., Secretary of the International, 139, 143, 153. Dwight, Dr., on the Shakers, 56, 57. Eisenach, programme of the social Democratic Working- men’s Party there (in 1869), 183-186. Enfantin, a disciple of St. Simon, 109; his idea of mar- riage, 110-111. Egypt, home of the Therapeutae, 32; and of the earliest monks, 37. Eotvos, Baron J., on the essential despotism of socialism, 267-271. Equality, influence of the feeling of, for socialism, 277-279. Equals, conspiracy of the, 102. Comp. Baboeuf. Esquiros, a religious communist mentioned, 116. Essenes, 29-31 ; time of first appearance, 29 ; authorities for, 30 ; Dr. Lightfoot on, ibid. ; number of, in Judea, ibid. ; doctrines and practices of, ibid. Fourier, his principal works, 113 ; not fully a communist in principle, ibid. ; sought to make work agreeable, ibid. ; his phalanxes and phalansteries, 114 ; his fantastic no- tions, ibid. ; immoral views, 115. Gotha, union there of the Workingmen’s Union, and Work- ingmen’s Party, 187 ; a virtual extinction of the former, ibid.; programme of Gotha (1875), 187-190. Harmonist community, 61 , 75, 76. See Rapp. Harris, T. L., founder of Brotherhood of New Life, his views, 81-83. Hasenclever, a social democrat, on marriage, 257. Hatzfeld, Countess of, 173; relations to Lassalle, 173, 174; head of a branch of the Social Democratic Party after his death, 182. Hinds, on American communism, 74-84. 304 INDEX. Inheritance, discussions on, at Congress of Basel, 144-146 ; L. Blanc’s opinion as to, 124; relations to the family, 255, 256. Inspirationist communities, 64, 65, 78-80. Comp. Amana. International, or International Workingmen’s Society, 126- 158; its forerunners and preparations, 126-132 ; founded at London in 1864, 133, 134 ; principal founders, 132, 133 ; Mazzini, 133 ; rules, 134, 135 ; spread, 136, 137 ; others, besides workingmen, members, 138 ; congresses at Geneva, 138, 139 ; Lausanne, 139-141 ; Brussels, 143, 144; Basel, 144-146; schism in Switzerland, see Baku- nin ; Franco-Prussian war delays congresses, 146 ; con- gress at the Hague, 149, 150 ; difficulties of the Inter- national, 150-152 ; bitterness of the leading members, 152, 153 ; it had no direct part in the horrors of 1871 at Paris, 155, 156 ; yet the general committee excused them, 157, 158 ; was injured in its influence by the events at Paris, 158, 159. Jager, his “Mod erne Socialismus” often cited and much used, 10, 133, 248, 257, etc. John of Leyden, or Jan Bockelson. See Anabaptists, 44-50. Jorissen, a social democrat, on marriage, 258. J osephus on the Essenes, 30. Lamennais, his communistic ideas, 115. Land, problems concerning, in a socialistic state, 285. Comp. Lange. Lange, F. A., extract from his “ Arbeiterfriige ” on the aboli- tion of private property in land, 271-275. Lassalle, life and character of, 171, 172 ; great abilities of, and works, 173-175; relations to Countess of Hatzfeld, 173, 174 ; his “Workingmen’s Programme,” 176 ; founds the German Workingmen’s Union, 176 ; his vast exer- tions, 177, 178; death, 179 ; to what extent a socialist, 179, 180; his “iron law” of wages, 180; examined, 181 ; his productive associations, 179. INDEX. 305 Lee, Anne, foundress of the Shakers, 53-55. Leroux, Pierre, separated from Enfantin, 112 ; his theoso- phism, 117 ; his opinions, as stated by two of his schol- ars, 117, 118 ; on the decay of faith in France, 245, 246. Liebknecht, an early communist, 132 ; founder, with Rebel, of the Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party, 183. Lightfoot, Dr., now Bishop, on the Essenes, referred to, 30. Mably, followed Plato, 97 ; changed his views, ibid. ; stopped halfway in his communism, 97, 98 ; mistake as to Spar- ta, ibid. Marechal, a ferocious member of the ‘‘Equals,” 104. Marriage, in Plato’s republic, 89 ; inEnfantin’s scheme, 110; Cabet and L. Blanc defend it, 119, 124 ; German social- ists not loose on this point, in their theory, 254; their system tends to weaken the relation, 256-258. Marx, Karl, a socialist in early life, 130 ; a fugitive on ac- count of his opinions, ibid. ; finally, a kind of exile in London, ibid. ; principal founder of the International, 133 ; a Hegelian in his philosophy, 161 ; his work on “Capital,” ibid.; obscurity of his views, ibid. ; takes for granted the injustice of private property, 164 ; his lead- ing doctrine, that all increased value of material be- longs to the laborer examined, 165-171 ; his atheism, 247. Mazzini, present at the first meeting of the International, 133 ; had not much in common with the socialists, ibid. Mehring, his “ Social Democracy” cited, 174, 189, 191, 192, and elsewhere. Mill, J. S., on the remuneration of capital, 169 ; his chap- ters on socialism, a summary of, controverts the doc- trine that the pressure of population on subsistence must always be growing more severe, 195 ; denies that wages are low and tend to fall, 194 ; thinks that the socialist notion of the workings of competition is imperfect, 195, 196 ; taxes them with misapprehension as to the share of the product taken by capital, 197 ; speaks of the diffi- 306 INDEX. culties of socialism, 198, 199 ; admits the possibility of its being the best form of society at some future day, 200. More, Sir T., his Utopia, 89-92. Morelly, his “ Code of Nature,” 99 ; long unnoticed, ibid. ; to what his influence has been due, 100 ; his fundamental laws of society, 100, 101. Most, J. , his faith in the productiveness of labor in a social state, 22. Monastic orders, 37-41 ; monk and hermit compared, 40. Munster, Anabaptists of. See Anabaptists. Miinzer, Thomas, 42, 43. Mutualism, from the French, 1 ; sense of the word, 4. Nordhoff, Charles, his work on the communistic societies of the United States often cited, 53-66. Noyes, J. H. , founder of the communities of Perfectionists, his “ History of American Socialisms” cited, 52, 65, 66 ; his essential modification of his system in 1879, 73, 74. Oneida Community. See Perfectionists ; Noyes. Owen, R., 52, 61 ; failure of his communities in the United States, ibid. ; causes of the failure, 69. Pachomius, in Egypt, devises a union of Anchorites, 38. Perfectionists, of Oneida and Wallingford, their opinions and practices, 65, 66 ; modifications in their practice in 1 879, 73, 74. Philo the Jew, on the Essenes, 31 ; on the Therapeutae, 32, 33. Plato, his republic, 85-89 ; was it an “ idea” ? 87. Pliny the Elder, on the Essenes, 30. Property, individual or private, opposed by all communists, 1, 2; communities within the state have to acknowl- edge the right of, 3 ; how socialists would get rid of property, 36, C'omp. Schaeflle. Proudhon, not strictly a communist, 10, 11 ; cited, to show this, ibid. INDEX. 307 Ranke, cited as to the Anabaptists of Munster, 44-50. Rapp, George, founder of the Community of Harmony, 61. Religion under socialism, its prospects, 243-253. Rhys-Davids, his Buddhism cited, 27, and used, 28, 29. Rottmann, at Munster, helped on the Anabaptist movement, 45, 49. Rousseau not strictly a communist, 97. St. Simon, his life, 107 ; opinions, ibid. ; views of his follow- ers, 108, 109; schism among his followers. 111; L. Stein’s estimate of, ibid. ; had a number of noteworthy disciples, 112. Schaeffle, his “Quintessence of Socialism” reviewed at length and briefly examined, 201-226 ; his definition, 14; general plan, 201-204; they think time is working with them, 205 ; question of right, 207 ; compensation to capitalists, 207, 208 ; great promises to workingmen, 209; costs, question of, in social production, 211, 212; value in use disregarded by them, 213 ; wide sweep of the social plan, 214-218; difiBculties of socialism, 218- 220 ; private income under socialistic organization, 220- 222; religion, marriage, etc., 223-225. Schweitzer, Alexander, head of Lassalle’s Workingmen’s Union (from 1867 to 1871), 182, 183; intrigues against him by Liebknecht and others, ibid. ; failed of reelec- tion, ibid. Separatists. See Zoar. Shakers, 50-60 ; founder of the, 53 ; opinions of, 54-57 ; discipline of, 58-60; resemblances to some ancient com- munities, 50 ; numbers, 51 ; declining, 52. Socialism, definition of, 2 ; how it differs from communism, 7, 9 ; definition of, by a lecturer, 12 ; by Schaeffle, 14 ; the term used as synonymous for communism, 4 ; so- cialism, in the modern idea of it, makes the state the only capitalist ; has never been realized, 22 ; Morelly’s social- istic state, 99-101 ; the Equals and their plan, 104, 105; 308 INDEX. Fourier not strictly a socialist^ 113 ; Cabet was such, 118-122 ; L. Blanc prepared the way for German social- ism, 125 ; the International, socialistic. See Internation- al. Differences in the International in regard to private property, 144-146. Marx, the scientific organ of social- ism, 161 (see Marx) ; how far Lassalle was a socialist, 179 (see Lassalle) ; strict socialism triumphing since his death, 183-190; its power in Germany, at the polls, by the press, 190, 191 ; professors in the universities giving it a partial support, 192; the social state necessarily despotic, 229-231 ; yet at first must be democratic ip form, 232, 233 ; its relations to the land, 234, 235 ; it^ intercourse, 235; its finances, 236; its taxes, ibid.; weakness in war, 237 ; amount of patriotism in, 237 ; of hopefulness and enterprise in, 238, 239 ; circulation of knowledge in, 241 ; literature and public opinion in, 241, 242; relations of, to religion, 243-253; to mar- riage, 254-259 ; to some now existing evils, 260-263 ; to humanity, 263, 264; to education, 264-267. A social state necessarily despotic, 267-271 ; see Eotvos. The question of the overturn of existing society by social- ism considered, 276-286 ; opposition to it to be expected from smaller proprietors, 288 ; from small landholders, 291. Sparta, had some communistic elements in its ear^y instu tutions, 18 ; but these ceased before Aristotle’s time, 98, 99. State, the socialistic, its probable form, etc. See Socialism, Stein, L. , his social movements in France often cited, as, 111, 114. Sudre, A., his prize essay on communism and socialism cited, 101, 244 ; and elsewhere. Therapeutas, the, 32, 33. Tolain, a founder of the International, expelled for accept- ing a place in the French Assembly (1870), 157 ; his opinions on expropriating land, 142. INDEX. 309 Treitschke, von H., his “ Socialismus u . s. Gonner” cited, 174 ; his estimate of the socialists in Germany, 190. Utopia, meaning of the word, 90. Sir T. More’s work so called, 89-93. Workingmen’s Union, founded by Lassalle, 176-178 ; its des- tinies after his death, 182, 183. Workingmen’s Party, the Social Democratic, founded at Eisenach (1869), 183 ; really a branch of the Interna- tional, 184. See Eisenach ; Gotha. Zoar, or the Separatists, 62-64, 76-78. # jU