A

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

BY

THOMAS KIRKUP

FOURTH EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED

LONDON

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1909

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

The aim of the present book is twofold: to set forth the leading phases of the historic socialism, and to attempt a criticism and interpretation of the movement as a whole. In this edition the changes in the history are concerned chiefly with the revival of the International, which, since the Stuttgart Congress in 1907, may be regarded as an accomplished fact.

I have made it no part of my plan to dwell on details. The interest and significance of the history of socialism will be found, not in its details and accidents, but in the development of its cardinal principles, which I have endeavoured to trace. Readers desirous of detail must be referred to the writings of the various socialists, or to works that treat of special phases of the movement. Yet I hope that the statement of the leading theories is sufficiently clear and adequate to enable the reader to form his own judgment of the highly controversial matters involved in the history of socialism. I may add that in every case my account is drawn from an extensive study of the sources. These sources I have given both in the text and in footnotes. For the more recent development of the subject, however, the material is derived from such a multitude of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and journals, as well as from personal inquiry and observation, that it has not been found practicable to indicate them.

But the purely historical part of such a work is far from being the most difficult. The real difficulty begins when we attempt to form a clear conception of the meaning and significance of the socialistic movement, to indicate its place in history, and the issues to which it is tending. In the concluding chapters I have made such an attempt. The good reader who takes the trouble to go so far through my book can accept my contribution to a hard problem for what it is worth. He may at least feel assured that it is no hasty and ill-considered effort which is placed before him. The present volume grew out of the articles on socialism published in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. The views advocated there were first set forth in my Inquiry into Socialism, published in 1887. In this edition of the History they have in some points received such expansion and modification as time and repeated, self-criticism have suggested. I beg particularly to invite the attention of the reader to the last two chapters, in which the present position of socialism and its relation to some contemporary questions, such as those of Empire, are set forth.

To all thoughtful and discerning men it should now be clear that the solution of the social question is the great task which has been laid upon the present epoch in the history of the world. Socialism grew to be a very important question during the nineteenth century; in all probability it will be the supreme question of the twentieth. No higher felicity can befall any man than to have thrown a real light on the greatest problem of his time; and to have utterly failed is no disgrace. In such a cause it is an honour even to have done efficient work as a navvy or hodman.

For help with the notes on the recent progress of socialism I wish to express special obligations to Mr. H. W. Lee, secretary of the Social Democratic Party, to Mr. J. R. Macdonald, M.P., secretary of the Labour Party, and to Mr. E. R. Pease, secretary of the Fabian Society.

London, February 1909.

A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

INTRODUCTION

Though much has been said and written about socialism for many years, it still remains a questionable name which awakens in the mind of the reader doubt, perplexity, and contradiction.

But there can be no question that it is a growing power throughout the world. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the most intelligent and the best organised working-men of all civilised countries are passing over to it. The opinions which are being accepted by the foremost of the working-classes to-day will in all probability have the same attraction for their less advanced brethren to-morrow. It is a subject, however, which concerns all classes, and it is forcing to the front a wide group of problems which are every day becoming more urgent.

In view of this there is only one right and safe course; we should seek to know the truth about socialism. The discontent which tends to disturbance and revolution can be removed only by satisfying the legitimate needs and aspirations of those who suffer.

We all know that the propaganda of socialism has been attended with intemperate and violent language, with wild opinions which are often inconsistent with the first principles of social order, with revolutionary outbreaks leading to bloodshed, desolation and long-continued unrest and suspicion. These things are greatly to be deplored. But we shall be wise if we regard them as symptoms of wide-spread and deep-seated social disease. The best way to cure such disease is to study and remove the causes of it. No physician will have any success in combating a malady if he content himself with suppressing its symptoms.

For the study of socialism two things are essential on the part of the reader—good-will and the open mind. Socialism has at least a most powerful provisional claim on our good-will, that it professes to represent the cause of the sufferers in the world’s long agony, of the working-classes, of women, and of the down-trodden nations and races. If it can make any solid contribution in such a far-reaching cause it has the strongest right to be heard.

Need we say that no new movement like socialism can be understood or appreciated without some measure of the open mind? In the course of history it has been proved over and over again that established ideas and institutions are not always in the right in every respect, and that novel opinions, though presented in extravagant and intemperate language, are not always entirely wrong. Even the most prejudiced reader will do well to consider that a cause which now numbers millions of intelligent adherents, for which men have died and gladly suffered imprisonment and privation of every kind, may contain elements of truth and of well-justified hope for the future.

Above all things, it is essential to remember that socialism is not a stereotyped system of dogma. It is a movement which springs out of a vast and only partially shapen reality. It is therefore living and liable to change. It has a history on which we can look back; but it is above all things a force of the present and the future, and its influence in the future for good or evil will depend on how we the men of the present relate ourselves to it.

On the one hand, it would be a great wrong if we encouraged vain and delusive expectations; but it would be a wrong even greater, on the other hand, if from whim or prejudice or pessimism we did anything that might be an obstacle to truth and progress. In a subject so momentous the only right course is to eschew passion and prejudice, and to follow truth with goodwill and an open mind.

The word ‘socialism’ appears to have been first used in The Poor Man’s Guardian in 1833. In 1835, a society, which received the grandiloquent name of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, was founded under the auspices of Robert Owen; and the words socialist and socialism became current during the discussions which arose in connection with it.[^[1]] As Owen and his school had no esteem for the political reform of the time, and laid all emphasis on the necessity of social improvement and reconstruction, it is obvious how the name came to be recognised as suitable and distinctive. The term was soon afterwards borrowed from England, as he himself tells us, by a distinguished French writer, Reybaud, in his well-known work the Réformateurs modernes, in which he discussed the theories of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Through Reybaud it soon gained wide currency on the Continent, and is now the accepted world-historic name for one of the most remarkable movements of the nineteenth century.

The name was thus first applied in England to Owen’s theory of social reconstruction, and in France to those also of Saint-Simon and Fourier. The best usage has always connected it with the views of these men, and with the cognate opinions which have since appeared. But the word is used with a great variety of meaning, not only in popular speech and by politicians, but even by economists and learned critics of socialism. There is a growing tendency to regard as socialistic any interference with property undertaken by society on behalf of the poor, the limitation of the principle of laissez-faire in favour of the suffering classes, radical social reform which disturbs the present system of private property as regulated by free competition. It is probable enough that the word will be permanently used to express the change in practice and opinion indicated by these phrases, as a general name for the strong reaction that has now set in against the overstrained individualism and one-sided freedom which date from the end of the eighteenth century. The application is neither precise nor accurate; but it is use and wont that determine the meaning of words, and this seems to be the tendency of use and wont.

Even economic writers differ greatly in the meaning they attach to the word. As socialism has been most powerful and most studied on the Continent, it may be interesting to compare the definitions given by some leading French and German economists. The great German economist Roscher defines it as including ‘those tendencies which demand a greater regard for the common weal than consists with human nature.’[^[2]] Adolf Held says that ‘we may define as socialistic every tendency which demands the subordination of the individual will to the community.’[^[3]] Janet more precisely defines it as follows: ‘We call socialism every doctrine which teaches that the State has a right to correct the inequality of wealth which exists among men, and to legally establish the balance by taking from those who have too much in order to give to those who have not enough, and that in a permanent manner, and not in such and such a particular case—a famine, for instance, a public calamity, etc.’[^[4]] Laveleye explains it thus: ‘In the first place, every socialistic doctrine aims at introducing greater equality in social conditions; and in the second place, at realising those reforms by the law or the State.’[^[5]] Von Scheel simply defines it as the ‘economic philosophy of the suffering classes.’[^[6]]

Of all these definitions it can only be said that they more or less faithfully reflect current opinion as to the nature of socialism. They are either too vague or they are misleading, and they quite fail to bring out the clear and strongly marked characteristics that distinguish the phenomena to which the name of socialism is properly applied. To say that socialism exacts a greater regard for the common weal than is compatible with human nature is to pass sentence on the movement, not to define it. In all ages of the world, and under all forms and tendencies of government and of social evolution, the will of the individual has been subordinated to the will of society, often unduly so.

It is also most misleading to speak as if socialism must proceed from the State as we know it. The early socialism proceeded from private effort and experiment. A great deal of the most notorious socialism of the present day aims not only at subverting the existing State in every form, but all the existing political and social institutions. The most powerful and most philosophic, that of Karl Marx, aimed at superseding the existing Governments by a vast international combination of the workers of all nations, without distinction of creed, colour, or nationality.

Still more objectionable, however, is the tendency not unfrequently shown to identify socialism with a violent and lawless revolutionary spirit. As sometimes used, ‘socialism’ means nothing more nor less than the most modern form of the revolutionary spirit with a suggestion of anarchy and dynamite. This is to confound the essence of the movement with an accidental feature more or less common to all great innovations. Every new thing of any moment, whether good or evil, has its revolutionary stage, in which it disturbs and upsets the accepted beliefs and institutions. The Protestant Reformation was for more than a century and a half the occasion of civil and international trouble and bloodshed. The suppression of American slavery could not be effected without a tremendous civil war. There was a time when the opinions comprehended under the name of ‘liberalism’ had to fight to the death for toleration; and representative government was at one time a revolutionary innovation. The fact that a movement is revolutionary generally implies only that it is new, that it is disposed to exert itself by strong methods, and is calculated to make great changes. It is an unhappy feature of most great changes that they have been attended with the exercise of force, but that is because the powers in possession have generally attempted to suppress them by the exercise of force.

In point of fact socialism is one of the most elastic and protean phenomena of history, varying according to the time and circumstances in which it appears, and with the character and opinions and institutions of the people who adopt it. Such a movement cannot be condemned or approved en bloc. Most of the current formulæ to which it has been referred for praise or censure are totally erroneous and misleading. Yet in the midst of the various theories that go by the name of ‘socialism’ there is a kernel of principle that is common to them all. That principle is of an economic nature, and is most clear and precise.

The central aim of socialism is to terminate the divorce of the workers from the natural sources of subsistence and of culture. The socialist theory is based on the historical assertion that the course of social evolution for centuries has gradually been to exclude the producing classes from the possession of land and capital, and to establish a new subjection, the subjection of workers who have nothing to depend on but precarious wage-labour. Socialists maintain that the present system (in which land and capital are the property of private individuals freely struggling for increase of wealth) leads inevitably to social and economic anarchy, to the degradation of the working man and his family, to the growth of vice and idleness among the wealthy classes and their dependants, to bad and inartistic workmanship, to insecurity, waste, and starvation; and that it is tending more and more to separate society into two classes, wealthy millionaires confronted with an enormous mass of proletarians, the issue out of which must either be socialism or social ruin. To avoid all these evils and to secure a more equitable distribution of the means and appliances of happiness, socialists propose that land and capital, which are the requisites of labour and the sources of all wealth and culture, should be placed under social ownership and control.

In thus maintaining that society should assume the management of industry and secure an equitable distribution of its fruits, socialists are agreed; but on the most important points of detail they differ very greatly. They differ as to the form society will take in carrying out the socialist programme, as to the relation of local bodies to the central government, and whether there is to be any central government, or any government at all in the ordinary sense of the word; as to the influence of the national idea in the society of the future, etc. They differ also as to what should be regarded as an ‘equitable’ system of distribution. The school of Saint-Simon advocated a social hierarchy, in which every man should be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. In the communities of Fourier the minimum of subsistence was to be guaranteed to each out of the common gain, the remainder to be divided between labour, capital, and talent—five-twelfths going to the first, four-twelfths to the second and three-twelfths to the third. At the revolution of 1848 Louis Blanc proposed that remuneration should be equal for all members of his social workshops. In the programme drawn up by the united Social Democrats of Germany (Gotha, 1875) it was provided that all shall enjoy the results of labour according to their reasonable wants, all of course being bound to work.

It is needless to say also that the theories of socialism have been held in connection with the most varying opinions in philosophy and religion. A great deal of the historic socialism has been regarded as a necessary implicate of idealism. The prevailing socialism of the day is in large part based on the frankest and most outspoken revolutionary materialism. On the other hand, many socialists hold that their system is a necessary outcome of Christianity, that socialism and Christianity are essential the one to the other; and it should be said that the ethics of socialism are closely akin to the ethics of Christianity, if not identical with them.

Still, it should be insisted that the basis of socialism is economic, involving a fundamental change in the relation of labour to land and capital—a change which will largely affect production, and will entirely revolutionise the existing system of distribution. But, while its basis is economic, socialism implies and carries with it a change in the political, ethical, technical, and artistic arrangements and institutions of society, which would constitute a revolution greater than has ever taken place in human history, greater than the transition from the ancient to the mediæval world, or from the latter to the existing order of society.

In the first place, such a change generally assumes as its political complement the most thoroughly democratic organisation of society. The early socialism of Owen and Saint-Simon was marked by not a little of the autocratic spirit; but the tendency of the present socialism is more and more to ally itself with the most advanced democracy. Socialism, in fact, claims to be the economic complement of democracy, maintaining that without a fundamental economic change political privilege has neither meaning nor value.

In the second place, socialism naturally goes with an unselfish or altruistic system of ethics. The most characteristic feature of the old societies was the exploitation of the weak by the strong under the systems of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. Under the socialistic régime it is the privilege and duty of the strong and talented to use their superior force and richer endowments in the service of their fellow-men without distinction of class, or nation, or creed. Whatever our opinion may be of the wisdom or practicability of their theories, history proves that socialists have been ready to sacrifice wealth, social position, and life itself, for the cause which they have adopted.

In the third place, socialists maintain that, under their system and no other, can the highest excellence and beauty be realised in industrial production and in art; whereas under the present system beauty and thoroughness are alike sacrificed to cheapness, which is a necessity of successful competition.

Lastly, the socialists refuse to admit that individual happiness or freedom or character would be sacrificed under the social arrangements they propose. They believe that under the present system a free and harmonious development of individual capacity and happiness is possible only for the privileged minority, and that socialism alone can open up a fair opportunity for all. They believe, in short, that there is no opposition whatever between socialism and individuality rightly understood, that these two are complements the one of the other, that in socialism alone may every individual have hope of free development and a full realisation of himself.

Having shown how wide a social revolution is implied in the socialistic scheme of reconstruction, we may now state (1) that the economic basis of the prevalent socialism is a collectivism which excludes private possession of land and capital, and places them under social ownership in some form or other. In the words of Schäffle, ‘the Alpha and Omega of socialism is the transformation of private competing capital into a united collective capital.’[^[7]] Adolf Wagner’s more elaborate definition of it[^[8]] is entirely in agreement with that of Schäffle. Such a system, while insisting on collective capital, is quite consistent with private property in other forms, and with perfect freedom in the use of one’s own share in the equitable distribution of the produce of the associated labour. A thorough-going socialism demands that this principle should be applied to the capital and production of the whole world; only then can it attain to supreme and perfect realisation. But a sober-minded socialism will admit that the various intermediate stages in which the principle finds a partial application are so far a true and real development of the socialistic idea.

Even the best definitions, however, are only of secondary importance; and while we believe that those we have just mentioned give an accurate account of the prevailing socialism, they are arbitrary, abstract, and otherwise open to objection. As we have already seen, the system of Fourier admitted of private capital under social control. The absolute views of the subject now current are due to the excessive love of system characteristic of German thought, and are not consistent either with history or human nature.

(2) Socialism is both a theory of social evolution and a working force in the history of the nineteenth century. The teaching of some eminent socialists, such as Rodbertus, may be regarded as a prophecy concerning the social development of the future rather than as a subject of agitation. In their view socialism is the next stage in the evolution of society, destined after many generations to supersede capitalism, as capitalism displaced feudalism, and feudalism succeeded to slavery. Even the majority of the most active socialists consider the question as still in the stage of agitation and propaganda, their present task being that of enlightening the masses until the consummation of the present social development, and the declared bankruptcy of the present social order, shall have delivered the world into their hands. Socialism, therefore, is for the most part a theory affecting the future, more or less remote, and has only to a limited degree gained a real and practical footing in the life of our time. Yet it should not be forgotten that its doctrines have most powerfully affected all the ablest recent economic writers of Germany, and have even considerably modified German legislation. Its influence is rapidly growing among the lower and also among the most advanced classes in almost every country dominated by European culture, following the development of capitalism, of which it is not merely the negation, but in a far wider and more real sense is also the goal.

(3) In its doctrinal aspects socialism is most interesting as a criticism of the present economic order, of what socialists call the capitalistic system, with which the existing land system is connected. Under the present economic order land and capital (the material and instruments without which industry is impossible) are the property of a class employing a class of wage-labourers handicapped by their exclusion from land and capital. Competition is the general rule by which the share of the members of those classes in the fruits of production is determined. Against this system critical socialism is a reasoned protest; and it is at issue also with the prevailing political economy, in so far as it assumes or maintains the permanence or righteousness of this economic order. Of the economic optimism implied in the historic doctrine of laissez-faire, socialism is an uncompromising rejection.

(4) Socialism is usually regarded as a phase of the struggle for the emancipation of labour, for the complete participation of the working classes in the material, intellectual, and spiritual inheritance of the human race. This is certainly the most substantial and most prominent part of the socialist programme, the working classes being the most numerous and the worst sufferers from the present régime. This view, however, is rather one-sided, for socialism claims not less to be in the interest of the small capitalist gradually crushed by the competition of the larger, and in the interest also of the large capitalist, whose position is endangered by the vastness and unwieldiness of his success, and by the world-wide economic anarchy from which even the greatest are not secure. Still, it is the deliverance of the working class that stands in the front of every socialistic theory; and, though the initiative in socialist speculation and action has usually come from men belonging to the middle and upper classes, yet it is to the workmen that they generally appeal.

While recognising the great confusion in the use of the word ‘socialism,’ we have treated it as properly a phenomenon of the nineteenth century, beginning in France with Saint-Simon and Fourier, in England with Robert Owen, and most powerfully represented at the present day by the school of Karl Marx. As we have seen, however, there are definitions of the word which would give it a wider range of meaning and a more ancient beginning, compared with which capitalism is but of yesterday; which would, in fact, make it as old as human society itself. In the early stages of human development, when the tribe or the village community was the social unit, the subordination of the individual to the society in which he dwelt was the rule, and common property was the prevalent form. In the development of the idea of property, especially as regards land, three successive historical stages are broadly recognised—common property and common enjoyment of it, common property and private enjoyment, private property and private enjoyment. The last form did not attain to full expression till the end of the eighteenth century, when the principle of individual freedom, which was really a reaction against privileged restriction, was proclaimed as a positive axiom of government and of economics. The free individual struggle for wealth, and for the social advantages dependent on wealth, is a comparatively recent thing.

At all periods of history the State has reserved to itself the right to interpose in the arrangements of property—sometimes in favour of the poor, as in the case of the English poor law, which may thus be regarded as a socialistic measure. Moreover, all through history revolts in favour of the rearrangement of property have been very frequent. From the beginning there have existed misery and discontent, the contemplation of which has called forth schemes of an ideal society in the noblest and most sympathetic minds. Of these are the Utopias of Plato and Thomas More, advocating a systematic communism. And in the societies of the Catholic Church we have a permanent example of common property and a common enjoyment of it.

How are we to distinguish the socialism of the nineteenth century from these old-world phenomena, and especially from the communism which has played so great a part in history? To this query it is not difficult to give a clear and precise answer from the socialist point of view. Socialism is a stage in the evolution of society which could not arrive till the conditions necessary to it had been established. Of these, one most essential condition was the development of the great industrialism which, after a long period of preparation and gradual growth, began to reach its culminating point with the inventions and technical improvements, with the application of steam and the rise of the factory system, in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. Under this system industry was organised into a vast social operation, and was thus already so far socialised; but it was a system that was exploited by the individual owner of the capital at his own pleasure and for his own behoof. Under the pressure of the competition of the large industry, the small capitalist is gradually crushed out, and the working producers become wage-labourers organised and drilled in immense factories and workshops. The development of this system still continues, and is enveloping the whole world. Such is the industrial revolution.

Parallel with this a revolution in the world of ideas, equally great and equally necessary to the rise of socialism, has taken place. This change of thought, which made its world-historic announcement in the French Revolution, made reason the supreme judge, and had freedom for its great practical watchword. It was represented in the economic sphere by the school of Adam Smith. Socialism was an outcome of it too, and first of all in Saint-Simon and his school professed to give the positive and constructive corrective to a negative movement which did not see that it was merely negative and therefore temporary. In other words, Saint-Simon may be said to aim at nothing less than the completion of the work of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

Thus socialism professes to be the legitimate child of two great revolutions,—of the industrial revolution which began to establish itself in England towards the end of the eighteenth century, and of the parallel revolution in thought which about the same time found most prominent expression in France. Robert Owen worked chiefly under the influence of the former; Saint-Simon and Fourier grew up under the latter. The conspiracy of Babeuf, which took place in 1796, shortly after the French Revolution, is properly to be regarded as a crude revolutionary communism not essentially different from the rude efforts in communism made in earlier periods of history. With Saint-Simon and Owen historic socialism really begins, and is no longer an isolated fact, but has had a continuous and widening development, the succession of socialistic teaching and propaganda being taken up by one country after another throughout the civilised world.

We have seen, then, that the rise of socialism as a new and reasoned theory of society was relative to the industrial revolution and to the ideas proclaimed in the French Revolution, prominent among which, besides the much emphasised idea of freedom and the less easily realised ideals of equality and fraternity, was the conception of the worth and dignity of labour. Though Owen was most largely influenced by the former and Saint-Simon and Fourier by the latter, it is certain that all three were greatly affected by both the new movements. The motive power in Owen’s career was the philanthropy and humanitarianism of the eighteenth century. He had grown up in the midst of the industrial revolution; he was one of the most successful pioneers in the improvement of the cotton manufacture. No one could be more deeply conscious of the enormous abuses of the factory system; and no one better knew the wonderful services that might be rendered by technical improvement if only it were made subordinate to human well-being. In the career of Owen we see the new spirit of the eighteenth century seeking to bring the mechanism of the new industrial system under the direction of a nobler principle, in which the good of all should be the great and sole aim.

The position of Saint-Simon was considerably different, yet akin. As Owen had before his eyes the evils of a young but gigantic industrialism, Saint-Simon contemplated the hoary abuses of an idle and privileged feudalism, fearfully shaken no doubt by the Revolution, but still strong in Europe, and in France, as elsewhere, powerfully revived during the period after Waterloo. Saint-Simon saw that a new world, an industrial world resting on labour, had arisen, while the old feudal and theological world—fainéant courtiers and a clergy steeped in ignorance—still ruled. All this array of parasites, who had no longer any useful function to perform for society, Saint-Simon sought to replace by the industrial chiefs and scientific leaders as the real working heads of the French people. Only, he expected that these exceptionally gifted men, instead of exploiting the labour of others, should control an industrial France for the general good.

Neither Owen nor Saint-Simon was revolutionary in the ordinary sense. Owen was most anxious that the English and other Governments should adopt his projects of socialistic reform. Leading statesmen and royal personages befriended him. He had no faith in the political reforms of 1832; he reckoned the political side of chartism as of no account, and he preferred socialistic experiment under autocratic guidance until the workmen should be trained to rule themselves. The same autocratic tendency was very pronounced in Saint-Simon and his school. His first appeal was to Louis XVIII. He wished to supersede the feudal aristocracy by a working aristocracy of merit. His school claim to have been the first to warn the Governments of Europe of the rise of revolutionary socialism. In short, the early socialism arose during the reaction consequent on the wars of the French Revolution, and was influenced by the political tendencies of the time.

The beginning of socialism may be dated from 1817, the year when Owen laid his scheme for a socialistic community before the committee of the House of Commons on the poor law, the year also that the speculations of Saint-Simon definitely took a socialistic direction. The outlines of the history of socialism are very simple. Till 1850 there was a double movement in France and England. In the former country, after Saint-Simon and Fourier the movement was represented chiefly by Proudhon and Louis Blanc. In England, after Owen the movement was taken up by the body of Christian socialists associated with Maurice and Kingsley.

During the next stage in the development of socialism we see the influence chiefly of German and also Russian thinkers, but it is generally international both in its principles and sympathies. The prevalent socialism found its first expression in the manifesto of the Communist Party published in 1848. The same views were elaborated by Marx in his Kapital (1867), and have in later times been consolidated and modified by many writers in many lands, in the programmes of national parties and in the resolutions of international congresses.

In this Introduction we have tried to give a preliminary conception of our subject, and we shall now proceed to present the leading views of the men who have taken the chief part in originating and guiding the socialist movement.

CHAPTER II
EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM

SAINT-SIMON

The founders of the early socialism grew up under the influence of the too-confident optimism which characterised the early stages of the French Revolution of 1789. They had an excessive faith in the possibilities of human progress and perfectibility; they knew little of the true laws of social evolution—in fact, did not sufficiently recognise those aspects of life which Darwinism has brought out so clearly. These faults the early socialists shared with many other thinkers of the time in which they lived.

Comte Henri de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism, was born at Paris in 1760. He belonged to a younger branch of the family of the celebrated duke of that name. His education, he tells us, was directed by d’Alembert. At the age of nineteen he went as volunteer to assist the American colonies in their revolt against Britain.

From his youth Saint-Simon felt the promptings of an eager ambition. His valet had orders to awake him every morning with the words, ‘Remember, monsieur le comte, that you have great things to do’; and his ancestor Charlemagne appeared to him in a dream, foretelling a remarkable future for him. Among his early schemes was one to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific by a canal, and another to construct a canal from Madrid to the sea.

He took no part of any importance in the French Revolution, but amassed a little fortune by land speculation—not on his own account, however, as he said, but to facilitate his future projects. Accordingly, when he was nearly forty years of age he went through a varied course of study and experiment, in order to enlarge and clarify his view of things. One of these experiments was an unhappy marriage, which after a year’s duration was dissolved by the mutual consent of the parties. Another result of his experiments was that he found himself completely impoverished, and lived in penury for the remainder of his life.

The first of his numerous writings, Lettres d’un Habitant de Genève, appeared in 1803; but his early works were mostly scientific and political. It was not till 1817 that he began, in a treatise entitled L’Industrie, to propound his socialistic views, which he further developed in L’Organisateur (1819), Du Système industrial (1821), Catéchisme des Industriels (1823). The last and most important expression of his views is the Nouveau Christianisme (1825).

For many years before his death in 1825 Saint-Simon had been reduced to the greatest straits. He was obliged to accept a laborious post for a salary of £40 a year, to live on the generosity of a former valet, and finally to solicit a small pension from his family. In 1823 he attempted suicide in despair. It was not till very late in his career that he attached to himself a few ardent disciples.

As a thinker Saint-Simon was entirely deficient in system, clearness, and consecutive strength. His writings are largely made up of a few ideas continually repeated. But his speculations are always ingenious and original; and he has unquestionably exercised great influence on modern thought, both as the historic founder of French socialism and as suggesting much of what was afterwards elaborated into Comtism.

Apart from the details of his socialistic teaching, with which we need not concern ourselves, we find that the ideas of Saint-Simon with regard to the reconstruction of society are very simple. His opinions were conditioned by the French Revolution and by the feudal and military system still prevalent in France. In opposition to the destructive liberalism of the Revolution he insisted on the necessity of a new and positive reorganisation of society. So far was he from advocating social revolt that he appealed to Louis XVIII. to inaugurate the new order of things. In opposition, however, to the feudal and military system, the former aspect of which had been strengthened by the Restoration, he advocated an arrangement by which the industrial chiefs should control society. In place of the Mediæval Church, the spiritual direction of society should fall to the men of science. What Saint-Simon desired, therefore, was an industrialist State directed by modern science. The men who are best fitted to organise society for productive labour are entitled to bear rule in it.

The social aim is to produce things useful to life; the final end of social activity is ‘the exploitation of the globe by association.’ The contrast between labour and capital, so much emphasised by later socialism, is not present to Saint-Simon, but it is assumed that the industrial chiefs, to whom the control of production is to be committed, shall rule in the interest of society. Later on, the cause of the poor receives greater attention, till in his greatest work, The New Christianity, it becomes the central point of his teaching, and takes the form of a religion. It was this religious development of his teaching that occasioned his final quarrel with Comte.

Previous to the publication of the Nouveau Christianisme Saint-Simon had not concerned himself with theology. Here he starts from a belief in God, and his object in the treatise is to reduce Christianity to its simple and essential elements. He does this by clearing it of the dogmas and other excrescences and defects that have gathered round both the Catholic and Protestant forms of it, which he subjects to a searching and ingenious criticism. The moral doctrine will by the new faith be considered the most important; the divine element in Christianity is contained in the precept that men should act towards one another as brethren. ‘The new Christian organisation will deduce the temporal institutions as well as the spiritual from the principle that all men should act towards one another as brethren.’ Expressing the same idea in modern language, Saint-Simon propounds as the comprehensive formula of the new Christianity this precept: ‘The whole of society ought to strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poorest class; society ought to organise itself in the way best adapted for attaining this end.’ This principle became the watchword of the entire school of Saint-Simon; for them it was alike the essence of religion and the programme of social reform.

During his lifetime the views of Saint-Simon had little influence, and he left only a very few devoted disciples, who continued to advocate the doctrines of their master, whom they revered as a prophet. An important departure was made in 1828 by Bazard, who gave a ‘complete exposition of the Saint-Simonian faith’ in a long course of lectures in the Rue Taranne at Paris. In 1830 Bazard and Enfantin were acknowledged as the heads of the school; and the fermentation caused by the revolution of July of the same year brought the whole movement prominently before the attention of France. Early next year the school obtained possession of the Globe through Pierre Leroux, who had joined the party, which now numbered some of the ablest and most promising young men of France, many of the pupils of the École Polytechnique having caught its enthusiasm. The members formed themselves into an association arranged in three grades, and constituting a society or family, which lived out of a common purse in the Rue Monsigny.

Before long, however, dissensions began to arise in the sect. Bazard, a man of logical and more solid temperament, could no longer work in harmony with Enfantin, who desired to establish an arrogant and fantastic sacerdotalism, with lax notions as to marriage and the relations of the sexes. After a time Bazard seceded, and many of the strongest supporters followed his example. A series of extravagant entertainments given by the society during the winter of 1832 reduced its financial resources and greatly discredited it in character. They finally removed to Menilmontant, to a property of Enfantin, where they lived in a communistic society, distinguished by a peculiar dress. Shortly afterwards the chiefs were tried and condemned for proceedings prejudicial to the social order; and the sect was entirely broken up in 1832. Many of its members became famous as engineers, economists, and men of business. The idea of constructing the Suez Canal, as carried out by Lesseps, proceeded from the school.

In the school of Saint-Simon we find a great advance both in the breadth and firmness with which the vague and confused views of the master are developed; and this progress is due chiefly to Bazard. In the philosophy of history they recognise epochs of two kinds, the critical or negative, and the organic or constructive. The former, in which philosophy is the dominating force, is characterised by war, egotism, and anarchy; the latter, which is controlled by religion, is marked by the spirit of obedience, devotion, association. The two spirits of antagonism and association are the two great social principles, and on the degree of prevalence of the two depends the character of an epoch. The spirit of association, however, tends more and more to prevail over its opponent, extending from the family to the city, from the city to the nation, and from the nation to the federation. This principle of association is to be the keynote of the social development of the future. Hitherto the law of humanity has been the ‘exploitation of man by man’ in its three stages—slavery, serfdom, the proletariat; in the future the aim must be ‘the exploitation of the globe by man associated to man.’

Under the present system the industrial chief still exploits the proletariat, the members of which, though nominally free, must accept his terms under pain of starvation. This state of things is consolidated by the law of inheritance, whereby the instruments of production, which are private property, and all the attendant social advantages, are transmitted without regard to personal merit. The social disadvantages being also transmitted, misery becomes hereditary. The only remedy for this is the abolition of the law of inheritance, and the union of all the instruments of labour in a social fund, which shall be exploited by association. Society thus becomes sole proprietor, entrusting to social groups or social functionaries the management of the various properties. The right of succession is transferred from the family to the State.

The school of Saint-Simon insists strongly on the claims of merit; they advocate a social hierarchy in which each man shall be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his works. This is, indeed, a most special and pronounced feature of the Saint-Simon Socialism, whose theory of government is a kind of spiritual or scientific autocracy, culminating in the fantastic sacerdotalism of Enfantin.

With regard to the family and the relation of the sexes, the school of Saint-Simon advocated the complete emancipation of woman and her entire equality with man. The ‘social individual’ is man and woman, who are associated in the triple function of religion, the State, and the family. In its official declarations the school maintained the sanctity of the Christian law of marriage. On this point Enfantin fell into a prurient and fantastic latitudinarianism, which made the school a scandal to France, but many of the most prominent members besides Bazard refused to follow him.

Connected with the last-mentioned doctrines was their famous theory of the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh,’ deduced from the philosophic theory of the school, which was a species of pantheism, though they repudiated the name. On this theory they rejected the dualism so much emphasised by Catholic Christianity in its penances and mortifications, and held that the body should be restored to its due place of honour. It is a vague principle, of which the ethical character depends on the interpretation; and it was variously interpreted in the school of Saint-Simon. It was certainly immoral as held by Enfantin, by whom it was developed into a kind of sensual mysticism, a system of free love with a religious sanction.[^[1]]

The good and bad aspects of the Saint-Simon socialism are too obvious to require elucidation. The antagonism between the old economic order and the new had only begun to declare itself. The extent and violence of the disease were not yet apparent: both diagnosis and remedy were superficial and premature. Such deep-seated organic disorder was not to be conjured away by the waving of a magic wand. The movement was all too utopian and extravagant in much of its activity. The most prominent portion of the school attacked social order in its essential point—the family morality—adopting the worst features of a fantastic, arrogant, and prurient sacerdotalism, and parading them in the face of Europe. Thus it happened that a school which attracted so many of the most brilliant and promising young men of France, which was so striking and original in its criticism of the existing condition of things, which was so strong in the spirit of initiative, and was in many ways so noble, unselfish, and aspiring, sank amidst the laughter and indignation of a scandalised society.

FOURIER

Considered as a purely literary and speculative product, the socialism of Fourier was prior to those both of Owen and Saint-Simon. Fourier’s first work, Théorie des Quatre Movements, was published as early as 1808. His system, however, scarcely attracted any attention and exercised no influence till the movements originated by Owen and Saint-Simon had begun to decline.

The socialism of Fourier is in many respects fundamentally different from that of Saint-Simon; in the two schools, in fact, we find the two opposing types of socialism which have continued to prevail ever since. Saint-Simonism represented the principle of authority, of centralisation; while Fourier made all possible provision for local and individual freedom. With Saint-Simonism the State is the starting-point, the normal and dominant power; in Fourier the like position is held by a local body, corresponding to the commune, which he called the Phalange. In the system of Fourier the phalange holds the supreme and central place, other organisation in comparison with it being secondary and subordinate.

The deviser of the phalange, François Marie Charles Fourier[^[1]] was a very remarkable man. He was born at Besançon in 1772, and received from his father, a prosperous draper, an excellent education at the academy of his native town. The boy excelled in the studies of the school, and regretfully abandoned them for a business career, which he followed in various towns of France. As a commercial traveller in Holland and Germany he enlarged his experience of men and things. From his father Fourier inherited a sum of about £3000, with which he started business at Lyons, but he lost all he had in the siege of that city by the Jacobins during the Reign of Terror, was thrown into prison, and narrowly escaped the guillotine. On his release he joined the army for two years, and then returned to his old way of life.

At a very early age Fourier had his attention called to the defects of the prevalent commercial system. When only five years old he had been punished for speaking the truth about certain goods in his father’s shop; and at the age of twenty-seven he had at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of an immense quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. The conviction grew within him that a system which involved such abuses and immoralities must be radically evil. Feeling that it was his mission to find a remedy for it, he spent his life in the discovery, elucidation, and propagation of a better order; and he brought to his task a self-denial and singleness of purpose which have seldom been surpassed. For the last ten years of his life he waited in his apartments at noon every day for the wealthy capitalist who should supply the means for the realisation of his schemes. The tangible success obtained by his system was very slight. His works found few readers and still fewer disciples.

It was chiefly after the decline of the Saint-Simon movement that he gained a hearing and a little, success. A small group of enthusiastic adherents gathered round him; a journal was started for the propagation of his views; and in 1832 an attempt was made on lands near Versailles to establish a phalange, which, however, proved a total failure. In 1837 Fourier passed away from a world that showed little inclination to listen to his teaching. A singular altruism was in his character blended with the most sanguine confidence in the possibilities of human progress. Perhaps the weakest point in his teaching was that he so greatly underestimated the strength of the unregenerate residuum in human nature. His own life was a model of simplicity, integrity, kindliness, and disinterested devotion to what he deemed the highest aims.

The social system of Fourier was, we need not say, the central point in his speculations. But as his social system was moulded and coloured by his peculiar views on theology, cosmogony, and psychology, we must give some account of those aspects of his teaching. In theology Fourier inclined, though not decidedly, to what is called pantheism; the pantheistic conception of the world which underlay the Saint-Simon theory of the ‘rehabilitation of the flesh’ may be said to form the basis also of the social ethics and arrangements of Fourier. Along with this he held a natural optimism of the most radical and comprehensive character. God has done all things well, only man has misunderstood and thwarted His benevolent purposes. God pervades everything as a universal attraction. Whereas Newton discovered that the law of attraction governs one movement of the world, Fourier shows that it is universal, ruling the world in all its movements, which are four—material, organic, intellectual, and social. It is the same law of attraction which pervades all things, from the cosmic harmony of the stars down to the puny life of the minutest insect, and which would reign also in the human soul and in human society, if the intentions of the Creator were understood. In the elucidation of his system Fourier’s aim simply is to interpret the intentions of the Creator. He regards his philosophy, not as ingenious guesses or speculations, but as discoveries plainly traceable from a few first principles; discoveries in no way doubtful, but the fruit of clear insight into the divine law.

The cosmogony of Fourier is the most fantastic part of a fantastic system. But as he did not consider his views in this department an essential part of his system, we need not dwell upon them. He believed that the world is to exist for eighty thousand years, forty thousand years of progress being followed by forty thousand years of decline. As yet it has not reached the adult stage, having lasted only seven thousand years. The present stage of the world is civilisation, which Fourier uses as a comprehensive term for everything artificial and corrupt, the result of perverted human institutions, themselves due to the fact that we have for five thousand years misunderstood the intentions of the Creator. The head and front of this misunderstanding consists in our pronouncing passions to be bad that are simply natural; and there is but one way of redressing it—to give a free and healthy and complete development to our passions.

This leads us to the psychology of Fourier. He recognised twelve radical passions connected with three points of attraction. Five are sensitive (tending to enjoyment)—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Four are affective (tending to groups)—love, friendship, ambition, and familism or paternity. The meaning and function of these are obvious enough. The remaining three, the alternating, emulative, and composite (which he calls passions rectrices, and which tend to series or to unity), are more special to Fourier. Of the three the first is connected with the need of variety; the second leads to intrigue and jealousy; the third, full of intoxication and abandonment, is born of the combination of several pleasures of the senses and of the soul enjoyed simultaneously. The passions of the first two classes are so far controlled by the passions rectrices, and especially by the composite passion; but even the passions rectrices obviously contain elements of discord and war. All, however, are ultimately harmonised by a great social passion, which Fourier calls Unitéisme. Out of the free play of all the passions harmony is evolved, like white out of the combination of the colours.

The speedy passage from social chaos to universal harmony contemplated by Fourier can, as we have seen, be accomplished only by one method, by giving to the human passions their natural development. For this end, a complete break with civilisation must be made. We must have new social arrangements suitable to human nature and in harmony with the intentions of the Creator. These Fourier provides in the phalange. In its normal form the phalange was to consist of four hundred families or eighteen hundred persons, living on a square league of land, self-contained and self-sufficing for the most part, and combining within itself the means for the free development of the most varied likings and capacities. It was an institution in which agriculture, industry, the appliances and opportunities of enjoyment, and generally of the widest and freest human development, are combined, the interests of individual freedom and of common union being reconciled in a way hitherto unknown and unimagined.

While the phalange is the social unit, the individuals composing it will arrange themselves in groups of seven or nine persons; from twenty-four to thirty-two groups form a series, and these unite to form a phalange—all according to principles of attraction, of free elective affinity. The dwelling of the phalange was the phalanstère, a vast, beautiful, and commodious structure, where life could be arranged to suit every one, common or solitary, according to preference; but under such conditions there would be neither excuse nor motive for the selfish seclusion, isolation, and suspicion so prevalent in civilisation.

In such an institution it is obvious that government under the form of compulsion and restraint would be reduced to a minimum. The officials of the phalange would be elected. The phalange, itself was an experiment on a local scale, which could easily be made, and once successfully made would lead to world-wide imitation. They would freely group themselves into wider combinations with elected chiefs, and the phalanges of the whole world would form a great federation with a single elected chief, resident at Constantinople, which would be the universal capital.

In all the arrangements of the phalange the principle of free attraction would be observed. Love would be free. Free unions should be formed, which could be dissolved, or which might grow into permanent marriage.

The labour of the phalange would be conducted on scientific methods; but it would, above all things, be made attractive, by consulting the likings and capacities of the members, by frequent change of occupation, by recourse to the principle of emulation in individuals, groups, and series. On the principle that men and women are eager for the greatest exertion, if only they like it, Fourier bases his theory that all labour can be made attractive by appealing to appropriate motives in human nature. Obviously, also, what is now the most disgusting labour could be more effectually performed by machinery.

The product of labour was to be distributed in the following manner:—Out of the common gain of the phalange a very comfortable minimum was assured to every member. Of the remainder, five-twelfths went to labour, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent. In the phalange, individual capital existed, and inequality of talent was not only admitted, but insisted upon and utilised. In the actual distribution the phalange treated with individuals. With regard to the remuneration of individuals under the head of capital no difficulty could be felt, as a normal rate of interest would be given on the advances made. Individual talent would be rewarded in accordance with the services rendered in the management of the phalange, the place of each being determined by election. Labour would be remunerated on a principle entirely different from the present. Hard and common or necessary work should be best paid; useful work should come next, and pleasant work last of all. In any case the reward of labour would be so great that every one would have the opportunity of becoming a capitalist.

One of the most notable results of the phalange treating with each member individually is, that the economic independence of women would be assured. Even the child of five would have its own share in the produce.

The system of Fourier may fairly be described as one of the most ingenious and elaborate Utopias ever devised by the human brain. But in many cardinal points it has been constructed in complete contradiction to all that experience and science have taught us of human nature and the laws of social evolution. He particularly underestimates the force of human egotism. From the beginning progress has consisted essentially in the hard and strenuous repression of the beast within the man, whereas Fourier would give it free rein. This applies to his system as a whole, and especially to his theories on marriage. Instead of supplying a sudden passage from social chaos to universal harmony, his system would, after entirely subverting such order as we have, only bring us back to social chaos.

Yet his works are full of suggestion and instruction, and will long repay the study of the social economist. His criticisms of the existing system, of its waste, anarchy, and immorality, are ingenious, searching, and often most convincing. In his positive proposals, too, are to be found some of the most sagacious and far-reaching forecasts of the future landmarks of human progress. Most noteworthy are the guarantees he devised for individual and local freedom. The phalange was on the one hand large enough to secure all the benefits of a scientific industry and of a varied common life; on the other it provides against the evils of centralisation, of State despotism, of false patriotism and national jealousy. Fourier has forecast the part to be played in the social and political development of the future by the local body, whether we call it commune, parish, or municipality. The fact that he has given it a fantastic name, and surrounded it with many fantastic conditions, should not hinder us from recognising his great sagacity and originality.

The freedom of the individual and of the minority is, moreover, protected against the possible tyranny of the phalange by the existence, under reasonable limits and under social control, of individual capital. This individual capital, further, is perfectly mobile; that is, the possessor of it, if he thinks fit to migrate or go on travel, may remove his capital, and find a welcome for his labour, talent, and investments in any part of the world. Such arrangements of Fourier may suggest a much-needed lesson to many of the contemporary adherents of ‘scientific socialism.’

While, therefore, we believe that Fourier’s system was as a whole entirely utopian, he has with great sagacity drawn the outlines of much of our political and social progress; and while we believe that the full development of human passions as recommended by him would soon reduce us to social chaos, a time may come in our ethical and rational growth when a widening freedom may be permitted and exercised, not by casting off moral law, but by the perfect assimilation of it.

CHAPTER III
FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848

The year 1830 was an important era in the history of socialism. During the fermentation of that time the activity of the Saint-Simon school came to a crisis, and the theories of Fourier had an opportunity of taking practical shape. But by far the greatest result for socialism of the revolutionary period of 1830 was the definite establishment of the contrast between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in France and England, the two countries that held the foremost place in the modern industrial, social, and political movement. Hitherto the men who were afterwards destined consciously to constitute those two classes had fought side by side against feudalism and the reaction. Through the restricted franchise introduced at this period in the two countries just mentioned the middle class had become the ruling power.

Excluded from political privileges and pressed by the weight of adverse economic, conditions, the proletariat now appeared as the revolutionary party. The first symptom in France of the altered state of things was the outbreak at Lyons in 1831, when the starving workmen rose to arms with the device, ‘Live working, or die fighting.’ Chartism was a larger phase of the same movement in England. The theories of Saint-Simon and Fourier had met with acceptance chiefly or entirely among the educated classes. Socialism now directly appealed to the working men.

In this chapter our concern is with the development of the new form of socialism in France. Paris, which had so long been the centre of revolutionary activity, was now, and particularly during the latter half of the reign of the bourgeois King, Louis Philippe, the seat of socialistic fermentation. In 1839 Louis Blanc published his Organisation du travail, and Cabet his Voyage en Icarie. In 1840 Proudhon brought out his book on property. Paris was the school to which youthful innovators went to learn the lesson of revolution. At this period she counted among her visitors Lassalle, the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany; Karl Marx, the chief of scientific international socialism; and Bakunin, the apostle of anarchism.

The socialistic speculation associated with the three men last mentioned was to have a far-reaching influence; but it did not attain to full development till a later period. The socialistic activity of Louis Blanc and Proudhon culminated during the revolution of 1848, and exercised considerable influence on the course of events in Paris at that time.

LOUIS BLANC

The socialism of Saint-Simon and Fourier was, as we have seen, largely imaginative and Utopian, and had only a very remote connection with the practical life of their time. With Louis Blanc the movement came into real contact with the national history of France. In Louis Blanc’s teaching the most conspicuous feature was that he demanded the democratic organisation of the State as preparatory to social reorganisation. His system, therefore, had a positive and practical basis, in so far as it allied itself to a dominant tendency in the existing State.

It is unnecessary here to recapitulate in detail the life of Louis Blanc. He was born in 1811 at Madrid, where his father was inspector-general of finance under Joseph during his uncertain tenure of the Spanish throne. At an early age he attained to eminence as a journalist in Paris, and in 1839 established the Revue du progrès, in which he first brought out his celebrated work on Socialism, the Organisation du travail. It was soon published in book form, and found a wide popularity among the workmen of France, who were captivated by the brilliancy of the style, the fervid eloquence with which it exposed existing abuses, and the simplicity and democratic fitness of the schemes for the regeneration of society which it advocated.

The greater part of the book is taken up with unsparing denunciations of the evils of competition, which, as common to Louis Blanc with other socialists, need not detain us. More interesting are the practical measures for their removal, proposed in his treatise.[^[1]] Like the socialists that preceded him, L. Blanc cannot accept the views which teach a necessary antagonism between soul and body; we must aim at the harmonious development of both sides of our nature. The formula of progress is double in its unity: moral and material amelioration of the lot of all by the free co-operation of all, and their fraternal association.[^[2]] He saw, however, that social reform could not be attained without political reform. The first is the end, the second is the means. It was not enough to discover the true methods for inaugurating the principle of association and for organising labour in accordance with the rules of reason, justice, and humanity. It was necessary to have political power on the side of social reform, political power resting on the Chambers, on the tribunals, and on the army: not to take it as an instrument was to meet it as an obstacle.

For these reasons he wished to see the State constituted on a thoroughly democratic basis, as the first condition of success. The emancipation of the proletarians was a question so difficult that it would require the whole force of the State for its solution. What is wanting to the working class are the instruments of labour; the function of Government is to furnish them. If we had to define what we consider the State to be, we should reply, ‘The State is the banker of the poor.’

Louis Blanc demanded that the democratic State should create industrial associations, which he called social workshops, and which were destined gradually and without shock to supersede individual workshops. The State would provide the means; it would draw up the rules for their constitution, and it would appoint the functionaries for the first year. But, once founded and set in movement, the social workshop would be self-supporting, self-acting, and self-governing. The workmen would choose their own directors and managers, they would themselves arrange the division of the profits, and would take measures to extend the enterprise commenced.

In such a system where would there be room for arbitrary rule or tyranny? The State would establish the social workshops, would pass laws for them, and supervise their execution for the good of all; but its rôle would end there. Is this, can this be tyranny? Thus the freedom of the industrial associations and of the individuals composing them would not only remain intact; it would have the solid support of the State. The intervention of a democratic Government on behalf of the people, whom it represented, would remove the misery, anarchy, and oppression necessarily attendant on the competitive system, and in place of the delusive liberty of laissez-faire, would establish a real and positive freedom.

With regard to the remuneration of talent and labour L. Blanc takes very high ground. ‘Genius,’ he said, ‘should assert its legitimate empire, not by the amount of the tribute which it will levy on society, but by the greatness of the services which it will render.’ This is no mere flourish of eloquence; it is to be the principle of remuneration in his association. Society could not, even if it would, repay the genius of a Newton; Newton had his just recompense in the joy of discovering the laws by which worlds are governed. Exceptional endowments must find development and a fitting reward in the exceptional services they render to society.

L. Blanc therefore believed in a hierarchy according to capacity; remuneration according to capacity he admitted in the earlier editions of his work, but only provisionally and as a concession to prevalent anti-social opinion. In the edition of 1848, the year when his theories attained for a time to historic importance, he had withdrawn this concession. ‘Though the false and anti-social education given to the present generation makes it difficult to find any other motive of emulation and encouragement than a higher salary, the wages will be equal, as the ideas and character of men will be changed by an absolutely new education.’[^[3]] Private capitalists would be invited to join the associations, and would under fixed conditions receive interest for their advances; but as the collective capital increased, the opportunities for so placing individual capital would surely diminish. The tyranny of capital would, in fact, receive a mortal wound.

The revolution of 1848 was an important stage in the development of democracy. In ancient and also in mediæval times the democracy was associated with city life; the citizens personally appeared and spoke and voted in the Assemblies. The modern democracy has grown in large States, extending over wide territories, and the citizen can exercise political power only through elected representatives. Hence the importance of the franchise in modern politics. The evolution of the modern democracy has gone through a long succession of phases, beginning with the early growth of the English Parliament, and continued in the struggles of the Dutch against the Spaniards, in the English Revolutions of 1642 and 1688, in the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789. In the early struggles, however, the mass of the people had no very great share. It was hardly till 1848 that the working class made its entrance on the stage of history—in Europe at least.

The revolutionary disturbances of 1848 affected nearly the whole of western and central Europe. It was a rising of the peoples against antiquated political forms and institutions; against the arrangements of the Treaty of Vienna, whereby Europe was partitioned according to the convenience of ruling houses; against irresponsible Governments, which took no account of the wishes of their subjects.

In France, the country with which we are now specially concerned, the revolution was a revolt of the people against a representative monarchy with a very restricted franchise. It was not a deeply-planned rising, and, indeed, was a surprise to those who wished it and accomplished it. Yet it marked a most important stage in the progress of the world, for, as a result of it, men for the first time saw the legislature of a great country established on principles of universal suffrage, and the cause of the working men recognised as a supreme duty of government.

Louis Blanc was the most prominent actor in what may be called the social-democratic side of the French Revolution of 1848. Through his influence with the working classes, and as representing their feelings and aspirations, he obtained a place in the Provisional Government. He was supported there by others like-minded with himself, including one working man, whose appearance in such a capacity was also a notable event in modern history. But though circumstances were so far favourable, he did not accomplish much. It cannot be said that his plans obtained a fair hearing or a fair trial. He was present in the Provisional Government as the pioneer of a new cause whose time had not yet come.

The schemes for social reconstruction which he contemplated were certainly not carried out in the national workshops of that year. From the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the subject, subsequently instituted by the French Government, and from the History of the National Workshops, written by their director, Emile Thomas, it is perfectly clear that the national workshops were simply a travesty of the proposals of Louis Blanc, established expressly to discredit them. They were a means of finding work for the motley proletariat thrown out of employment during the period of revolutionary disturbance, and those men were put to unproductive labour; whereas, of course, Louis Blanc contemplated nothing but productive work, and the men he proposed inviting to join his associations were to give guarantees of character. It was intended, too, by his opponents that the mob of workmen whom they employed in the so-called national workshops would be ready to assist their masters in the event of a struggle with the socialist party.

A number of private associations of a kind similar to those proposed by Louis Blanc were indeed subsidised by the Government. But of the whole sum voted for this end, which amounted to only £120,000, the greater part was applied to purposes quite foreign from the grant. It was not the intention of the moving spirits of the Government that they should succeed. Moreover, the months following the revolution of February were a period of industrial stagnation and insecurity, when any project of trade, either on the old or on the new lines, had little prospect of success. Under these circumstances, the fact that a few of the associations did prosper very fairly may be accepted as proof that the scheme of Louis Blanc had in it the elements of vitality. The history of the whole matter fully justifies the exclamation of Lassalle that ‘lying is a European power.’[^[4]] It has been the subject of endless misrepresentation by writers who have taken no pains to verify the facts.

As one of the leaders during this difficult crisis, Louis Blanc had neither personal force nor enduring political influence sufficient to secure any solid success for his cause. He was an amiable, genial, and eloquent enthusiast, but without weight enough to be a controller of men on a wide scale. The Labour Conferences at the Luxembourg, over which he presided, ended also, as his opponents desired, without any tangible result.

The Assembly, elected on the principle of universal suffrage, which met in May, showed that the peasantry and the mass of the French people were not in accord with the working classes of Paris and of the industrial centres. It did not approve of the social-democratic activity urged by a section of the Provisional Government. The national workshops also were closed, and the proletariat of Paris rose in armed insurrection, which was overthrown by Cavaignac in the sanguinary days of June. Louis Blanc was in no way responsible for the revolt, which can be called socialistic only in the sense that the proletariat was engaged in it, the class of which socialism claims to be the special champion.

PROUDHON

Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in 1809 at Besançon, France, the native place also of the socialist Fourier. His origin was of the humblest, his father being a brewer’s cooper, and the boy herded cows and did such other work as came in his way. But he was not entirely self-educated; at sixteen he entered the college of his native place, though his family was so poor that he could not procure the necessary books, and had to borrow them from his mates in order to copy the lessons. There is a story of the young Proudhon returning home laden with prizes, but to find that there was no dinner for him.

At nineteen he became a working compositor, and was afterwards promoted to be a corrector for the press, reading proofs of ecclesiastical works, and thereby acquiring a considerable knowledge of theology. In this way he also came to learn Hebrew, and to compare it with Greek, Latin, and French. It was the first proof of his intellectual audacity that on the strength of this he wrote an Essai de grammaire générale. As Proudhon knew nothing whatever of the true principles of philology, his treatise was of no value.

In 1838 he obtained the pension Suard, a bursary of 1500 francs a year for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which was in the gift of the Academy of Besançon. Next year he wrote a treatise On the Utility of Keeping the Sunday, which contained the germs of his revolutionary ideas. About this time he went to Paris, where he lived a poor, ascetic, and studious life, making acquaintance, however, with the socialistic ideas which were then fermenting in the capital.

In 1840 he published his first work, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (What is Property?) His famous answer to this question, La propriété c’est le vol (Property is theft), naturally did not please the academy of Besançon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he held it for the regular period.[^[1]]

For his third memoir on property, which took the shape of a letter to the Fourierist, M. Considérant, he was tried at Besançon, but was acquitted. In 1846 he published his greatest work, the Système des contradictions économiques, ou philosophie de la misère. For some time Proudhon carried on a small printing establishment at Besançon, but without success; and afterwards held a post as a kind of manager with a commercial firm at Lyons. In 1847 he left this employment, and finally settled in Paris, where he was now becoming celebrated as a leader of innovation.

He regretted the sudden outbreak of the revolution of February, because it found the social reformers unprepared; but he threw himself with ardour into the conflict of opinion, and soon gained a national notoriety. He was the moving spirit of the Représentant du Peuple and other journals, in which the most advanced theories were advocated in the strongest language; and as member of Assembly for the Seine department he brought forward his celebrated proposal for exacting an impost of one-third on interest and rent, which of course was rejected. His attempt to found a bank which should operate by granting gratuitous credit, was also a complete failure; of the five million francs which he required, only seventeen thousand were offered. The violence of his utterances led to an imprisonment at Paris for three years, during which he married a young working woman.

As Proudhon aimed at economic rather than political innovation, he had no special quarrel with the Second Empire, and he lived in comparative quiet under it till the publication of his work, De la justice dans la révolution et dans l’église (1858), in which he attacked the Church and other existing institutions with unusual fury. This time he fled to Brussels to escape imprisonment. On his return to France his health broke down, though he continued to write. He died at Passy in 1865.

Personally, Proudhon was one of the most remarkable figures of modern France. His life was marked by the severest simplicity and even puritanism; he was affectionate in his domestic relations, a most loyal friend, and strictly upright in conduct. He was strongly opposed to the prevailing French socialism of his time because of its utopianism and immorality; and, though he uttered all manner of wild paradox and vehement invective against the dominant ideas and institutions, he was remarkably free from feelings of personal hate. In all that he said and did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual social and academic discipline; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness, and his exaggerations. But he is always vigorous, and often brilliant and original.

It would obviously be impossible to reduce the ideas of such an irregular thinker to systematic form. In later years Proudhon himself confessed that ‘the great part of his publications formed only a work of dissection and ventilation, so to speak, by means of which he slowly makes his way towards a superior conception of political and economic laws.’ Yet the groundwork of his teaching is clear and firm; no one could insist with greater emphasis on the demonstrative character of economic principles as understood by himself. He strongly believed in the absolute truth of a few moral ideas, with which it was the aim of his teaching to mould and suffuse political economy. Of these fundamental ideas, justice, liberty, and equality were the chief. What he desiderated, for instance, in an ideal society was the most perfect equality of remuneration. It was his principle that service pays service, that a day’s labour balances a day’s labour—in other words, that the duration of labour is the just measure of value. He did not shrink from any of the consequences of this theory, for he would give the same remuneration to the worst mason as to a Phidias; but he looks forward also to a period in human development when the present inequality in the talent and capacity of men would be reduced to an inappreciable minimum.

From the great principle of service as the equivalent of service he derived his axiom that property is the right of aubaine. The aubain was a stranger not naturalised; and the right of aubaine was the right in virtue of which the Sovereign claimed the goods of such a stranger who had died in his territory. Property is a right of the same nature, with a like power of appropriation in the form of rent, interest, etc. It reaps without labour, consumes without producing, and enjoys without exertion.

Proudhon’s aim, therefore, was to realise a science of society resting on principles of justice, liberty, and equality thus understood; ‘a science, absolute, rigorous, based on the nature of man and of his faculties, and on their mutual relations; a science which we have not to invent, but to discover.’ But he saw clearly that such ideas, with their necessary accompaniments, could be realised only through a long and laborious process of social transformation. As we have said, he strongly detested the prurient immorality of the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. He attacked them not less bitterly for thinking that society could be changed off-hand by a ready-made and complete scheme of reform. It was ‘the most accursed lie,’ he said, ‘that could be offered to mankind.’

In social change he distinguishes between the transition and the perfection or achievement. With regard to the transition he advocated the progressive abolition of the right of aubaine, by reducing interest, rent, etc. For the goal he professed only to give the general principles; he had no ready-made scheme, no Utopia. The positive organisation of the new society in its details was a labour that would require fifty Montesquieus. The organisation he desired was one on collective principles, a free association which would take account of the division of labour, and which would maintain the personality both of the man and the citizen. With his strong and fervid feeling for human dignity and liberty, Proudhon could not have tolerated any theory of social change that did not give full scope for the free development of man. Connected with this was his famous paradox of anarchy, as the goal of the free development of society, by which he meant that through the ethical progress of men government should become unnecessary. Each man should be a law to himself. ‘Government of man by man in every form,’ he says, ‘is oppression. The highest perfection of society is found in the union of order and anarchy.’

Proudhon’s theory of property as the right of aubaine is substantially the same as the theory of capital held by Marx and most of the later socialists. Property and capital are defined and treated as the power of exploiting the labour of other men, of claiming the results of labour without giving an equivalent. Proudhon’s famous paradox, ‘Property is theft,’ is merely a trenchant expression of this general principle. As slavery is assassination inasmuch as it destroys all that is valuable and desirable in human personality, so property is theft inasmuch as it appropriates the value produced by the labour of others in the form of rent, interest, or profit without rendering an equivalent. For property Proudhon would substitute individual possession, the right of occupation being equal for all men.

With the bloodshed of the days of June French socialism ceased for a time to be a considerable force; and Paris, too, for a time lost its place as the great centre of innovation. The rising removed the most enterprising leaders of the workmen and quelled the spirit of the remainder, while the false prosperity of the Second Empire relieved their most urgent grievances. Under Napoleon III. there was consequently comparative quietness in France. Even the International had very little influence on French soil, though French working men had an important share in originating it.

CHAPTER IV
EARLY ENGLISH SOCIALISM

Compared with the parallel movement in France the early socialism of England had an uneventful history. In order to appreciate the significance of Robert Owen’s work it is necessary to recall some of the most important features of the social condition of the country in his time. The English worker had no fixed interest in the soil. He had no voice either in local or national government. He had little education or none at all. His dwelling was wretched in the extreme. The right even of combination was denied him till 1824. The wages of the agricultural labourer were miserably low.

The workman’s share in the benefits of the industrial revolution was doubtful. Great numbers of his class were reduced to utter poverty and ruin by the great changes consequent on the introduction of machinery; the tendency to readjustment was slow and continually disturbed by fresh change. The hours of work were mercilessly long. He had to compete against the labour of women, and of children brought frequently at the age of five or six from the workhouses. These children had to work the same long hours as the adults, and they were sometimes very cruelly treated by the overseers. Destitute as they so often were of parental protection and oversight, with both sexes huddled together under immoral and insanitary conditions, it was only natural that they should fall into the worst habits, and that their offspring should to such a lamentable degree be vicious, improvident, and physically degenerate.

In a country where the labourers had neither education nor political or social rights, and where the peasantry were practically landless serfs, the old English poor law was only a doubtful part of an evil system. All these permanent causes of mischief were aggravated by special causes connected with the cessation of the Napoleonic wars, which are well known. It was in such circumstances, when English pauperism had become a grave national question, that Owen first brought forward his scheme of socialism.

Robert Owen, philanthropist, and founder of English socialism, was born at the village of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, North Wales, in 1771.[^[1]] His father had a small business in Newtown as saddler and ironmonger, and there young Owen received all his school education, which terminated at the age of nine. At ten he went to Stamford, where he served in a draper’s shop for three or four years, and, after a short experience of work in a London shop, removed to Manchester.

His success at Manchester was very rapid. When only nineteen years of age he became manager of a cotton-mill, in which five hundred people were employed, and by his administrative intelligence, energy, industry, and steadiness, soon made it one of the best establishments of the kind in Great Britain. In this factory Owen used the first bags of American Sea-Island cotton ever imported into the country; it was the first cotton obtained from the Southern States of America. Owen also made remarkable improvement in the quality of the cotton spun. Indeed there is no reason to doubt that at this early age he was the first cotton-spinner in England, a position entirely due to his own capacity and knowledge of the trade, as he had found the mill in no well-ordered condition and was left to organise it entirely on his own responsibility.

Owen had become manager and one of the partners of the Chorlton Twist Company at Manchester, when he made his first acquaintance with the scene of his future philanthropic efforts at New Lanark. During a visit to Glasgow he had fallen in love with the daughter of the proprietor of the New Lanark mills, Mr. Dale. Owen induced his partners to purchase New Lanark; and after his marriage with Miss Dale he settled there, in 1800, as manager and part owner of the mills. Encouraged by his great success in the management of cotton-factories in Manchester, he had already formed the intention of conducting New Lanark on higher principles than the current commercial ones.

The factory of New Lanark had been started in 1784 by Dale and Arkwright, the water-power afforded by the falls of the Clyde being the great attraction. Connected with the mills were about two thousand people, five hundred of whom were children, brought, most of them, at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children especially had been well treated by Dale, but the general condition of the people was very unsatisfactory. Many of them were the lowest of the population, the respectable country-people refusing to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the factories. Theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were alike neglected; most families lived only in one room.

It was this population, thus committed to his care, which Owen now set himself to elevate and ameliorate. He greatly improved their houses, and by the unsparing and benevolent exertion of his personal influence trained them to habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. He opened a store, where the people could buy goods of the soundest quality at little more than cost price; and the sale of drink was placed under the strictest supervision. His greatest success, however, was in the education of the young, to which he devoted special attention. He was the founder of infant schools in Great Britain; and, though he was anticipated by Continental reformers, he seems to have been led to institute them by his own views of what education ought to be, and without hint from abroad.

In all these plans Owen obtained the most gratifying success. Though at first regarded with suspicion as a stranger, he soon won the confidence of his people. The mills continued to prosper commercially, but it is needless to say that some of Owen’s schemes involved considerable expense, which was displeasing to his partners. Wearied at last of the restrictions imposed on him by men who wished to conduct the business on the ordinary principles, Owen, in 1813, formed a new firm, whose members, content with 5 per cent of return for their capital, would be ready to give freer scope to his philanthropy. In this firm Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker, William Allen, were partners.

In the same year Owen first appeared as an author of essays, in which he expounded the principles on which his system of educational philanthropy was based. From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing forms of religion, and had thought out a creed for himself, which he considered an entirely new and original discovery. The chief points in this philosophy were that man’s character is made not by him but for him; that it has been formed by circumstances over which he had no control; that he is not a proper subject either of praise or blame—these principles leading up to the practical conclusion that the great secret in the right formation of man’s character is to place him under the proper influences, physical, moral, and social, from his earliest years. These principles, of the irresponsibility of man and of the effect of early influences, are the keynote of Owen’s whole system of education and social amelioration. As we have said, they are embodied in his first work, A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of these essays (there are four in all) being published in 1813. It is needless to say that Owen’s new views theoretically belong to a very old system of philosophy, and that his originality is to be found only in his benevolent application of them.

For the next few years Owen’s work at New Lanark continued to have a national and even a European significance. His schemes for the education of his workpeople attained to something like completion on the opening of the institution at New Lanark in 1816. He was a zealous supporter of the factory legislation resulting in the Act of 1819, which, however, greatly disappointed him. He had interviews and communications with the leading members of Government, including the Premier, Lord Liverpool, and with many of the rulers and leading statesmen of the Continent. New Lanark itself became a much-frequented place of pilgrimage for social reformers, statesmen, and royal personages, amongst whom was Nicholas, afterwards Emperor of Russia. According to the unanimous testimony of all who visited it, the results achieved by Owen were singularly good. The manners of the children, brought up under his system, were beautifully graceful, genial, and unconstrained; health, plenty, and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown, and illegitimacy was extremely rare. The most perfect good-feeling subsisted between Owen and his workpeople; all the operations of the mill proceeded with the utmost smoothness and regularity; and the business still enjoyed great prosperity.

Hitherto Owen’s work had been that of a philanthropist, whose great distinction was the originality and unwearying unselfishness of his methods. His first departure in socialism took place in 1817, and was embodied in a report communicated to the Committee of the House of Commons on the Poor Law. The general misery and stagnation of trade consequent on the termination of the great war were engrossing the attention of the country. After clearly tracing the special causes connected with the war which had led to such a deplorable state of things, Owen pointed out that the permanent cause of distress was to be found in the competition of human labour with machinery, and that the only effective remedy was the united action of men, and the subordination of machinery. His proposals for the treatment of pauperism were based on these principles.

He recommended that communities of about twelve hundred persons should be settled on spaces of land of from 1000 to 1500 acres, all living in one large building in the form of a square, with public kitchen and mess-rooms. Each family should have its own private apartments, and the entire care of the children till the age of three, after which they should be brought up by the community, their parents having access to them at meals and all other proper times. These communities might be established by individuals, by parishes, by counties, or by the State; in every case there should be effective supervision by duly qualified persons. Work, and the enjoyment of its results, should be in common.

The size of his community was no doubt partly suggested by his village of New Lanark; and he soon proceeded to advocate such a scheme as the best form for the reorganisation of society in general. In its fully developed form—and it cannot be said to have changed much during Owen’s lifetime—it was as follows. He considered an association of from 500 to 3000 as the fit number for a good working community. While mainly agricultural, it should possess all the best machinery, should offer every variety of employment, and should, as far as possible, be self-contained. In other words, his communities were intended to be self-dependent units, which should provide the best education and the constant exercise of unselfish intelligence, should unite the advantages of town and country life, and should correct the monotonous activity of the factory with the freest variety of occupation, while utilising all the latest improvements in industrial technique. ‘As these townships,’ as he also called them, ‘should increase in number, unions of them federatively united shall be formed in circles of tens, hundreds, and thousands,’ till they should embrace the whole world in one great republic with a common interest.

His plans for the cure of pauperism were received with great favour. The Times and the Morning Post, and many of the leading men of the country, countenanced them; one of his most steadfast friends was the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria. He had indeed gained the ear of the country, and had the prospect before him of a great career as a social reformer, when he went out of his way at a large meeting in London to declare his hostility to all the received forms of religion. After this defiance to the religious sentiment of the country, Owen’s theories were in the popular mind associated with infidelity, and were henceforward suspected and discredited.

Owen’s own confidence, however, remained unshaken, and he was anxious that his scheme for establishing a community should be tested. At last, in 1825, such an experiment was attempted under the direction of his disciple, Abram Combe, at Orbiston, near Glasgow; and in the same year Owen himself commenced another at New Harmony, in Indiana, America. After a trial of about two years both failed completely. Neither of them was a pauper experiment; but it must be said that the members were of the most motley description, many worthy people of the highest aims being mixed with vagrants, adventurers, and crotchety wrong-headed enthusiasts.

After a long period of friction with William Allen and some of his other partners, Owen resigned all connection with New Lanark in 1828. On his return from America he made London the centre of his activity. Most of his means having been sunk in the New Harmony experiment, he was no longer a flourishing capitalist, but the head of a vigorous propaganda, in which socialism and secularism were combined. One of the most interesting features of the movement at this period was the establishment in 1832 of an equitable labour exchange system, in which exchange was effected by means of labour notes, the usual means of exchange and the usual middlemen being alike superseded. The word ‘socialism’ first became current in the discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, formed by Owen in 1835.

During these years also his secularistic teaching gained such influence among the working classes as to give occasion, in 1839, for the statement in the Westminster Review that his principles were the actual creed of a great portion of them. His views on marriage, which were certainly lax, gave just ground for offence. At this period some more communistic experiments were made, of which the most important were that at Ralahine, in the county of Clare, Ireland, and that at Tytherly, in Hampshire. It is admitted that the former, which was established in 1839, was a remarkable success for three and a half years, till the proprietor, who had granted the use of the land, having ruined himself by gambling, was obliged to sell out. Tytherly, begun in 1839, was an absolute failure. By 1846 the only permanent result of Owen’s agitation, so zealously carried on by public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, was the co-operative movement, and for the time even that seemed to have utterly collapsed. In his later years Owen became a firm believer in spiritualism. He died in 1858 at his native town at the age of eighty-seven.

The causes of Owen’s failure in establishing his communities are obvious enough. Apart from the difficulties inherent in socialism, he injured the social cause by going out of his way to attack the historic religions and the accepted views on marriage, by his tediousness, quixotry, and over-confidence, by refusing to see that for the mass of men measures of transition from an old to a new system must be adopted. If he had been truer to his earlier methods and retained the autocratic guidance of his experiments, the chances of success would have been greater. Above all, Owen had too great faith in human nature, and he did not understand the laws of social evolution. His great doctrine of the influence of circumstances in the formation of character was only a very crude way of expressing the law of social continuity so much emphasised by recent socialism. He thought that he could break the chain of continuity, and as by magic create a new set of circumstances, which would forthwith produce a new generation of rational and unselfish men. The time was too strong for him, and the current of English history swept past him.

Even a very brief account of Owen, however, would be incomplete without indicating his relation to Malthus. Against Malthus he showed that the wealth of the country had, in consequence of mechanical improvement, increased out of all proportion to the population. The problem, therefore, was not to restrict population, but to institute rational social arrangements and to secure a fair distribution of wealth. Whenever the number of inhabitants in any of his communities increased beyond the maximum, new ones should be created, until they should extend over the whole world. There would be no fear of over-population for a long time to come. Its evils were then felt in Ireland and other countries; but that condition of things was owing to the total want of the most ordinary common sense on the part of the blinded authorities of the world. The period would probably never arrive when the earth would be full; but, if it should, the human race would be good, intelligent, and rational, and would know much better than the present irrational generation how to provide for the occurrence. Such was Owen’s socialistic treatment of the population problem.

Robert Owen was essentially a pioneer, whose work and influence it would be unjust to measure by their tangible results. Apart from his socialistic theories, it should, nevertheless, be remembered that he was one of the foremost and most energetic promoters of many movements of acknowledged and enduring usefulness. He was the founder of infant schools in England; he was the first to introduce reasonably short hours into factory labour, and zealously promoted factory legislation—one of the most needed and most beneficial reforms of the century; and he was the real founder of the co-operative movement. In general education, in sanitary reform, and in his sound and humanitarian views of common life, he was far in advance of his time. Like Fourier, also, he did the great service of calling attention to the advantages which might be obtained in the social development of the future from the reorganisation of the commune, or self-governing local group of workers.

Still, he had many serious faults; all that was quixotic, crude, and superficial in his views became more prominent in his later years, and by the extravagance of his advocacy of them he did vital injury to the cause he had at heart. In his personal character he was without reproach—frank, benevolent, and straightforward to a fault; and he pursued the altruistic schemes in which he spent all his means with more earnestness than most men devote to the accumulation of a fortune.

In England the reform of 1832 had the same effect as the revolution of July (1830) in France: it brought the middle class into power, and by the exclusion of the workmen emphasised their existence as a separate class. The discontent of the workmen now found expression in Chartism. As is obvious from the contents of the Charter, Chartism was most prominently a demand for political reform; but both in its origin and in its ultimate aim the movement was more essentially economic. As regards the study of socialism, the interest of this movement lies greatly in the fact that in its organs the doctrine of ‘surplus value,’ afterwards elaborated by Marx as the basis of his system, is broadly and emphatically enunciated. While the worker produces all the wealth, he is obliged to content himself with the meagre share necessary to support his existence, and the surplus goes to the capitalist, who, with the king, the priests, lords, esquires, and gentlemen, lives upon the labour of the working man (Poor Man’s Guardian, 1835).

After the downfall of Owenism began the Christian socialist movement in England (1848-52), of which the leaders were Maurice, Kingsley, and Mr. Ludlow. The abortive Chartist demonstration of April 1848 excited in Maurice and his friends the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of the English working class—a feeling which was intensified by the revelations regarding ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ published in the Morning Chronicle in 1849. Mr. Ludlow, who had in France become acquainted with the theories of Fourier, was the economist of the movement, and it was with him that the idea originated of starting co-operative associations.

In Politics for the People, in the Christian Socialist, in the pulpit and on the platform, and in Yeast and Alton Locke, well-known novels of Kingsley, the representatives of the movement exposed the evils of the competitive system, carried on an unsparing warfare against the Manchester School, and maintained that socialism, rightly understood, was only Christianity applied to social reform. Their labours in insisting on ethical and spiritual principles as the true bonds of society, in promoting associations, and in diffusing a knowledge of co-operation, were largely beneficial. In the north of England they joined hands with the co-operative movement inaugurated by the Rochdale pioneers in 1844 under the influence of Owenism. Productive co-operation made very little progress, but co-operative distribution soon proved a great success.

CHAPTER V
FERDINAND LASSALLE

I. Life

In 1852 the twofold socialist movement in France and England had come to an end, leaving no visible result of any importance. From that date the most prominent leaders of socialism have been German and Russian.

German socialists also played a part in the revolution of 1848 and in the years that preceded it; but as the work that makes their names really historical was not performed till a later period, we have postponed the consideration of it till now, when we can treat it as a whole. The most conspicuous chiefs of German socialism have been Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lassalle, and Rodbertus. Of these, Lassalle[^[1]] was the first to make his mark in history as the originator of the Social Democratic movement in Germany.

Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau in 1825.

Like Karl Marx, the chief of international socialism, he was of Jewish extraction. His father, a prosperous merchant in Breslau, intended Ferdinand for a business career, and with this view sent him to the commercial school at Leipsic; but the boy, having no liking for that kind of life, got himself transferred to the university, first at Breslau, and afterwards at Berlin. His favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he became an ardent Hegelian, and in politics was one of the most advanced. Having completed his university studies in 1845, he began to write a work on Heracleitus from the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon interrupted by more stirring interests, and did not see the light for many years.

From the Rhine country, where he settled for a time, he went to Paris, and made the acquaintance of his great compatriot Heine, who conceived for him the deepest sympathy and admiration. In the letter of introduction to Varnhagen von Ense, which the poet gave Lassalle when he returned to Berlin, there is a striking portrait of the future agitator. Heine speaks of his friend Lassalle as a young man of the most remarkable endowments, in whom the widest knowledge, the greatest acuteness, and the richest gifts of expression are combined with an energy and practical ability which excite his astonishment; but adds, in his half-mocking way, that he is a genuine son of the new era, without even the pretence of modesty or self-denial, who will assert and enjoy himself in the world of realities. At Berlin, Lassalle became a favourite in some of the most distinguished circles; even the veteran Humboldt was fascinated by him, and used to call him the Wunderkind.

Here it was also, early in 1846, that he met the lady with whom his life was to be associated in so striking a way, the Countess Hatzfeldt. She had been separated from her husband for many years, and was at feud with him on questions of property and the custody of their children. With characteristic energy Lassalle adopted the cause of the countess, whom he believed to have been outrageously wronged, made a special study of law, and, after bringing the case before thirty-six tribunals, reduced the powerful count to a compromise on terms most favourable to his client.

The process, which lasted eight years, gave rise to not a little scandal, especially that of the Cassettengeschichte. This ‘affair of the casket’ arose out of an attempt by the countess’s friends to get possession of a bond for a large life-annuity settled by the count on his mistress, a Baroness Meyendorf, to the prejudice of the countess and her children. At the instigation of Lassalle, two of his comrades succeeded in carrying off a casket, which was supposed to contain the document in question (but which really contained her jewels), from the baroness’s room at a hotel in Cologne. They were prosecuted for theft, one of them being condemned to six months’ imprisonment. Lassalle himself was accused of moral complicity, but was acquitted on appeal.

His intimate relations with the countess, which continued till the end, certainly did not tend to improve Lassalle’s position in German society. Rightly or wrongly, people had an unfavourable impression of him, as of an adventurer. Here we can but say that he claimed to act from the noblest motives; in the individual lot and suffering of the countess he saw the social misery of the time reflected, and his assertion of her cause was a moral insurrection against it. While the case was pending, he gave the countess a share of his allowance from his father; and after it was won, he received according to agreement, from the now ample resources of the lady, an annual income of four thousand thalers (£600). Added to his own private means, this sum placed the finances of Lassalle on a sure footing for the rest of his life. His conduct was a mixture of chivalry and business, which every one must judge for himself. It was certainly not in accordance with the conventionalities, but for these Lassalle never entertained much respect.

In 1848 Lassalle attached himself to the group of men, Karl Marx, Engels, Freiligrath, and others, who in the Rhine country represented the socialistic and extreme democratic side of the revolution, and whose organ was the New Rhenish Gazette. But the activity of Lassalle was only local and subordinate. He was, however, condemned to six months’ imprisonment for resisting the authorities at Dusseldorf. On that occasion Lassalle prepared the first of those speeches which made so great an impression on the men of his time; but it was not delivered. It contains the first important statement of his social and political opinions. ‘I will always joyfully confess,’ he said, ‘that from inner conviction I am a decided adherent of the Social Democratic republic.’

Till 1858 Lassalle resided mostly in the Rhine country, prosecuting the suit of his friend the countess, and afterwards completing his work on Heracleitus, which was published in that year. He was not allowed to live in Berlin because of his connection with the disturbances of 1848. In 1859 he returned to the capital disguised as a carter, and finally, through the influence of Humboldt with the king, received permission to remain.

In the same year he published a remarkable pamphlet on The Italian War and the Mission of Prussia, in which he came forward to warn his countrymen against going to the rescue of Austria in her war with France. He argued that if France drove Austria out of Italy she might annex Savoy, but could not prevent the restoration of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel. France was doing the work of Germany by weakening Austria, the great cause of German disunion and weakness; Prussia should form an alliance with France in order to drive out Austria and make herself supreme in Germany. After their realisation by Bismarck, these ideas have become sufficiently commonplace; but they were nowise obvious when thus published by Lassalle. In this, as in other matters, he showed that he possessed both the insight and foresight of a statesman.

In the course of the Hatzfeldt suit Lassalle had acquired no little knowledge of law, which proved serviceable to him in the great work, System of Acquired Rights, published in 1861. The book professes to be, and in a great measure is, an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions; but it is largely dominated also by abstract conceptions, which are not really drawn from history, but read into it. The results of his investigation are sufficiently revolutionary; in the legal sphere they go even farther than his socialistic writings in the economic and political. But with one important exception he made no attempt to base his socialistic agitation on his System of Acquired Rights; it simply remained a learned work.

Hitherto Lassalle had been known only as the author of two learned works, and as connected with one of the most extraordinary lawsuits of the nineteenth century, which had become a widespread scandal. Now began the brief activity which was to give him an historical significance. His revolutionary activity in 1848, though only a short phase in his career, was not an accident; it represented a permanent feature of his character. In him the student and the man of action were combined in a notable manner, but the craving for effective action was eminently strong. The revolutionary and the active elements in his strangely mixed nature had for want of an opportunity been for many years in abeyance.

A rare opportunity had at last come for asserting his old convictions. In the struggle between the Prussian Government and the Opposition he saw an opportunity for vindicating a great cause, that of the working men, which would outflank the Liberalism of the middle classes, and might command the sympathy and respect of the Government. But his political programme was entirely subordinate to the social, that of bettering the condition of the working classes; and he believed that as their champion he might have such influence in the Prussian State as to determine it on entering on a great career of social amelioration.

The social activity of Lassalle dates from the year 1862. It was a time of new life in Germany. The forces destined to transform the Germany of Hegel into the Germany of Bismarck were preparing. The time for the restoration and unification of the Fatherland under the leadership of Prussia had come. The nation that had so long been foremost in philosophy and theory was to take a leading place in the practical walks of national life, in war and politics, and in the modern methods of industry. The man who died as first German Emperor of the new order ascended the throne of Prussia in 1861. Bismarck, whose mission it was to take the chief part in this great transformation, entered on the scene as Chief Minister of Prussia in the autumn of 1862. The Progressist party, that phase of German Liberalism which was to offer such bitter opposition both to Bismarck and Lassalle, came into existence in 1861.

For accomplishing this world-historic change the decisive factor was the Prussian army. The new rulers of Prussia clearly saw that for the success of their plans everything would depend on the efficiency of the army. But on the question of its reorganisation they came into conflict with the Liberals, who, failing to comprehend the policy of Bismarck, refused him the supplies necessary for realising ideals dear to every German patriot.

In the controversy so bitterly waged between the Prussian monarchy and the Liberals, Lassalle intervened. As might be expected, he was not a man to be bound by the formulas of Prussian Liberalism, and in a lecture, On the Nature of a Constitution, delivered early in 1862, he expounded views entirely at variance with them. In this lecture his aim was to show that a constitution is not a theory or a document written on paper; it is the expression of the strongest political forces of the time. The king, the nobility, the middle class, the working class, all these are forces in the polity of Prussia; but the strongest of all is the king, who possesses in the army a means of political power, which is organised, excellently disciplined, always at hand, and always ready to march. The army is the basis of the actual working constitution of Prussia. In the struggle against a Government resting on such a basis, verbal protests and compromises were of no avail.

In a second lecture, What Next?, Lassalle proceeded to maintain that there was only one method for effectually resisting the Government, to proclaim the facts of the political situation as they were, and then to retire from the Chamber. By remaining they only gave a false appearance of legality to the doings of the Government. If they withdrew it must yield, as in the present state of political opinion in Prussia and in civilised Europe no Government could exist in defiance of the wishes of the people.

In a pamphlet subsequently published under the title of Might and Right, Lassalle defended himself against the accusation that in these lectures he had subordinated the claims of Right to those of Force. He had, he said, not been expressing his own views of what ought to be; he had simply been elucidating facts in an historical way, he had only been explaining the real nature of the situation. He now went on to declare that no one in the Prussian State had any right to speak of Right but the old and genuine democracy. It had always cleaved to the Right, degrading itself by no compromise with power. With the democracy alone is Right, and with it alone will be Might.

We need not say that these utterances of Lassalle had no influence on the march of events. The rulers pushed on the reorganising of the army with supplies obtained without the consent of the Prussian Chambers, the Liberal members protesting in vain till the great victory over Austria in 1866 furnished an ample justification for the policy of Bismarck.

But their publication marked an important crisis in his own career, for they did not recommend him to the favourable consideration of the German Liberals with whom he had previously endeavoured to act. He and they never had much sympathy for one another. They were fettered by formulas as well as wanting in energy and initiative. On the other hand, his adventurous career; his temperament, which disposed him to rebel against the conventionalities and formulas generally; his loyalty to the extreme democracy of 1848, all brought him into disharmony with the current Liberalism of his time. They gave him no tokens of their confidence, and he chose a path of his own.

A more decisive step in a new direction was taken in 1862 by his lecture, The Working-Men’s Programme; On the special Connection of the Present Epoch of History with the Idea of the Working Class. The gist of this lecture was to show that we are now entering on a new era of history, of which the working class are the makers and representatives. It is a masterly performance, lucid in style, and scientific in method of treatment. Yet this did not save its author from the attentions of the Prussian police. Lassalle was brought to trial on the charge of exciting the poor against the rich, and in spite of an able defence, published under the title of Science and the Workers, he was condemned to four months’ imprisonment. But he appealed, and on the second hearing of the case made such an impression on the judges that the sentence was commuted into a fine of £15.

Such proceedings naturally brought Lassalle into prominence as the exponent of a new way of thinking on social and political subjects. A section of the working men were, like himself, discontented with the current German Liberalism. The old democracy of 1848 was beginning to awake from the apathy and lassitude consequent on the failures of that troubled period. Men imbued with the traditions and aspirations of such a time could not be satisfied with the half-hearted programme of the Progressists, who would not decide on adopting universal suffrage as part of their policy, yet wished to utilise the workmen for their own ends. A Liberalism which had not the courage to be frankly democratic, could only be a temporary and unsatisfactory phase of political development.

This discontent found expression at Leipsic, where a body of workmen, displeased with the Progressists, yet undecided as to any clear line of policy, had formed a Central Committee for the calling together of a Working Men’s Congress. With Lassalle, they had common ground in their discontent with the Progressists, and to him in 1863 they applied, in the hope that he might suggest a definite line of action. Lassalle replied in an Open Letter, with a political and social-economic programme, which, for lucidity and comprehensiveness of statement, left nothing to be desired. In the Working Men’s Programme, Lassalle had drawn the rough outlines of a new historic period, in which the interests of labour should be paramount; in the Open Letter he expounds the political, social, and economic principles which should guide the working men in inaugurating the new era. The Open Letter has well been called the Charter of German Socialism. It was the first historic act in a new stage of social development. We need not say that it marked the definite rupture of Lassalle with German Liberalism.

In the Open Letter the guiding principles of the Social Democratic agitation of Lassalle are given with absolute clearness and decision: that the working men should form an independent political party—one, however, in which the political programme should be entirely subordinated to the great social end of improving the condition of their class; that the schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch[^[2]] for this end were inadequate; that the operation of the iron law of wages prevented any real improvement under the existing conditions; that productive associations, by which, the workmen should secure the full product of their labour, should be established by the State, founded on universal suffrage, and therefore truly representative of the people. The Leipsic Committee accepted the policy thus sketched, and invited him to address them in person. After hearing him the meeting voted in his favour by a majority of 1300 against 7.

A subsequent appearance at Frankfort-on-the-Main was even more flattering to Lassalle. In that as in most other towns of Germany the workmen were generally disposed to support Schulze and the Progressist party. Lassalle therefore had the hard task of conciliating and gaining a hearing from a hostile audience. His first speech, four hours in length, met at times with a stormy reception, and was frequently interrupted. Yet he gained the sympathy of his audience by his eloquence and the intrinsic interest of his matter, and the applause increased as he went on. When, two days afterwards, he addressed them a second time, the assembly voted for Lassalle by 400 to 40. It was really a great triumph. Like Napoleon, he had, he said, beaten the enemy with their own troops. On the following day he addressed a meeting at Mainz, where 700 workmen unanimously declared in his favour.

These successes seemed to justify Lassalle in taking the decisive step of his agitation—the foundation of the Universal German Working Men’s Association, which followed at Leipsic on May 23, 1863. Its programme was a simple one, containing only one point—universal suffrage. ‘Proceeding from the conviction that only through equal and direct universal suffrage[^[3]] can a sufficient representation of the social interests of the German working class and a real removal of class antagonisms in society be realised, the Association pursues the aim, in a peaceful and legal way, especially by winning over public opinion, to work for the establishment of equal and direct universal suffrage.’

Hitherto Lassalle had been an isolated individual expressing on his own responsibility an opinion on the topics of the day. He was elected President, for five years, of the newly founded Association, and was therefore the head of a new movement. He had crossed the Rubicon, not without hesitation and misgiving.

In the summer of 1863 little was accomplished. The membership of the Association grew but slowly, and, according to his wont, Lassalle retired to the baths to recruit his health. In the autumn he renewed his agitation by a ‘review’ of his forces on the Rhine, where the workmen were most enthusiastic in his favour. But the severest crisis of his agitation befell during the winter of 1863-4. At this period his labours were almost more than human; he wrote his Bastiat-Schulze,[^[4]] a considerable treatise, in about three months, defended himself before the courts both of Berlin and the Rhine in elaborate speeches, conducted the affairs of his Association in all their troublesome details, and often before stormy and hostile audiences gave a succession of addresses, the aim of which was the conquest of Berlin.

Lassalle’s Bastiat-Schulze, his largest economic work, bears all the marks of the haste and feverishness of the time that gave it birth. It contains passages in the worst possible taste; the coarseness and scurrility of his treatment of Schulze are absolutely unjustifiable. The book consists of barren and unprofitable controversy, interspersed with philosophic statements of his economic position, and even they are often crude, confused, and exaggerated. Controversy is usually the most unsatisfactory department of literature, and of the various forms of controversy that of Lassalle is the least to be desired, consisting as it so largely did of supercilious verbal and captious objection. The book as a whole is far below the level of the Working Men’s Programme and the Open Letter.

After all these labours little wonder that we find him writing, on the 14th of February: ‘I am tired to death, and strong as my constitution is, it is shaking to the core. My excitement is so great that I can no longer sleep at night; I toss about on my bed till five o’clock, and rise up with aching head, and entirely exhausted. I am overworked, overtasked, and overtired in the frightfullest degree; the mad effort, beside my other labours, to finish the Bastiat-Schulze in three months, the profound and painful disappointment, the cankering inner disgust, caused by the indifference and apathy of the working class taken as a whole—all has been too much even for me.’

Clearly the great agitator needed rest, and he decided to seek it, as usual, at the baths. But before he retired, he desired once more to refresh his weary soul in the sympathetic enthusiasm which he anticipated from his devoted adherents on the Rhine. Accordingly, on the 8th May 1864, Lassalle departed for the ‘glorious review of his army’ in the Rhine country. ‘He spoke,’ Mehring tells us, ‘on May 14th at Solingen, on the 15th at Barmen, on the 16th at Cologne, on the 18th at Wermelskirchen.’ His journey was like a royal progress or a triumphal procession, except that the joy of the people was perfectly spontaneous. Thousands of workmen received him with acclamations; crowds pressed upon him to shake hands with him, to exchange friendly greetings with him.

On the 22nd May, the first anniversary festival of the Universal Association, held at Ronsdorf, the enthusiasm reached its climax. Old and young, men and women, went forth to meet him as he approached the town; and he entered it through triumphal arches, under a deluge of flowers thrown from the hands of working girls, amidst jubilation indescribable. Writing to the Countess of Hatzfeldt about this time of the impression made on his mind by his reception on the Rhine, Lassalle says, ‘I had the feeling that such scenes must have been witnessed at the founding of new religions.’

The speech of Lassalle at Ronsdorf corresponded in character with the enthusiasm and exaltation of such a time and such an audience. The King of Prussia had recently listened with favour to the grievances of a deputation of Silesian weavers, and promised to help them out of his own purse. Von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, had published a short treatise, in which he expressed his agreement with Lassalle’s criticism of the existing economic system. As his manner was, Lassalle did not under-estimate the value of those expressions of opinion. ‘We have compelled,’ he declared, ‘the workmen, the people, the bishops, the king, to bear testimony to the truth of our principles.’

It would be easy to ridicule the enthusiasm for Lassalle entertained by those workmen on the Rhine, but it will be more profitable if we pause for a moment to realise the world-historic pathos of the scene. For the first time for many centuries we see the working men of Germany aroused from their hereditary degradation, apathy, and hopelessness. Change after change had passed in the higher sphere of politics. One conqueror after another had traversed these Rhine countries, but, whoever lost or won, it was the working man who had to pay with his sweat and toil and sorrow. He was the anvil on which the hammer of those iron times had fallen without mercy and without intermission. His doom it was to drudge, to be fleeced, to be drilled and marched off to fight battles in which he had no interest. Brief and fitful gleams of a wild and desperate hope had visited these poor people before, only to go out again in utter darkness; but now in a sky which had so long been black and dull with monotonous misery, the rays were discernible of approaching dawn, a shining light which would grow into a more perfect day. For in the process of history the time had come when the suffering which had so long been dumb should find a voice that would be heard over the world, should find an organisation that would compel the attention of rulers and all men.

Such a cause can be most effectually furthered by wise and sane leadership: yet it is also well when it is not too dependent on the guidance of those who seek to control it. The career of Lassalle always had its unpleasant features. He liked the passing effect too well. He was too fond of display and pleasure. In much that he did there is a note of exaggeration, bordering on insincerity. As his agitation proceeded, this feature of his character becomes more marked. Some of his addresses to the workmen remind us too forcibly of the bulletins of the first Napoleon. He was not always careful to have the firm ground of fact and reality beneath his feet. Many of his critics speak of the failure of his agitation; with no good reason, considering how short a time it had continued, hardly more than a year. Lassalle himself was greatly disappointed with the comparatively little success he had attained. He had not the patience to wait till the sure operation of truth and fact and the justice of the cause he fought for should bring him the reward it merited. On all these grounds we cannot consider the event which so unworthily closed his life as an accident; it was the melancholy outcome of the weaker elements in his strangely mixed character.

While posing as the spokesman of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were well known as among the most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had become agitator and the champion of the workers. In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he had met a young lady, a Fräulein von Dönniges, for whom he at once felt a passion which was ardently reciprocated. He met her again on the Rigi, in the summer of 1864, when they resolved to marry. She was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional and original in character. It would appear from her own confession that she had not always respected the sacred German morality.

But she had for father a Bavarian diplomatist then resident in Geneva, who was angry beyond all bounds when he heard of the proposed match, and would have absolutely nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian, Count von Racowitza. Lassalle, who had resorted to every available means to gain his end, was now mad with rage, and sent a challenge both to the lady’s father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took place on the morning of August 28, 1864. Lassalle was mortally wounded, and died on the 31st of the same month. In spite of such a foolish ending, his funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents he has since been regarded with feelings almost of religious devotion.

How the career of Lassalle might have shaped itself in the new Germany under the system of universal suffrage which was adopted only three years after his death, is an interesting subject of speculation. He could not have remained inactive, and he certainly would not have been hindered by doctrinaire scruples from playing an effective part, even though it were by some kind of alliance with the Government. His ambition and his energy were alike boundless. In the heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges his dream was to be installed as the President of the German Republic with her elevated by his side. As it was, his position at his death was rapidly becoming difficult and even untenable; he was involved in a net of prosecutions which were fast closing round him. He would soon have had no alternative but exile or a prolonged imprisonment.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of the most extraordinary endowments. The reader of his works feels that he is in the presence of a mind of a very high order. Both in his works and in his life we find an exceptional combination of gifts, philosophic power, eloquence, enthusiasm, practical energy, a dominating force of will. Born of a cosmopolitan race, which has produced so many men little trammelled by the conventionalism of the old European societies, he was to a remarkable degree original and free from social prejudice; was one of the men in whom the spirit of daring initiative is to a remarkable degree active. He had in fact a revolutionary temperament, disciplined by the study of German philosophy, by the sense of the greatness of Prussia’s historic mission, and by a considerable measure of practical insight, for in this he was not by any means wanting. In Marx we see the same temperament, only in his case it was stronger, more solid, sell-restrained, matured by wider reflection, and especially by the study of the economic development of Europe, continued for a period of forty years.

But on the whole, Lassalle was a vis intemperata. He was deficient in sober-mindedness, self-control, and in that saving gift of common sense, without which the highest endowments may be unprofitable and even hurtful to their possessors and to the world. His ambitions were not pure; he had a histrionic as well as a revolutionary temperament; he was lacking also in self-respect; above all, he had not sufficient reverence for the great and sacred cause of which he had become the champion, a cause which is fitted to claim the highest motives, the purest ambitions, the most noble enthusiasms. His vanity, his want of self-restraint, his deficient sense of the seriousness of his mission as a Social Democratic leader, in these we see the failings that proved his undoing. Throughout the miserable intrigue in which he met his death a simple, straightforward sense of what was right and becoming would at once have saved him from ruin. Yet he was privileged to inaugurate a great movement. As the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany, he has earned a place on the roll of historic names. He possessed in a notable degree the originality, energy, and sympathy which fit a man to be the champion of a new cause.

We may go further and say that at that date Germany had only two men whose insight into the facts and tendencies of their time was in some real degree adequate to the occasion—Bismarck and Lassalle. The former represented a historic cause, which was ready for action, the regeneration and unification of Germany to be accomplished by the Prussian army. The cause which Lassalle brought to the front was at a very different stage of progress. The working men, its promoters and representatives, and Lassalle, its champion, had not attained to anything like clearness either as to the end to be gained or the means for accomplishing it. It was only at the crudest and most confused initial stage.

II. Theories of Lassalle

The socialistic position of Lassalle may generally be described as similar to that of Rodbertus and Karl Marx. He admits his indebtedness to both of those writers, but at the same time he cannot be regarded as a disciple of either of them. Lassalle himself was a thinker of great original power; he had his own way of conceiving and expressing the historic socialism.

Lassalle supplies the key to his general position in the preface to his Bastiat-Schulze, when, quoting from his System of Acquired Rights, he says: In social matters the world is confronted with the question, whether now when property in the direct utilisation of another man no longer exists, such property in his indirect exploitation should continue—that is, whether the free realisation and development of our labour-force should be the exclusive private property of the possessor of capital, and whether the employer as such, and apart from the remuneration of his intellectual labour, should be permitted to appropriate the result of other men’s labours.[^[1]] This sentence, he says, contains the programme of a national-economic work, which he intended to write under the title, Outlines of a Scientific National Economy. In this sentence also, we need not say, the fundamental position of socialism is implied. He was about to carry out his project when the Leipsic Central Committee brought the question before him in a practical form. The agitation broke out and left him no leisure for such a work. But he had often lamented that the exposition of the theory had not preceded the practical agitation, and that a scientific basis had not been provided for it.

The Bastiat-Schulze was itself a controversial work, written to meet the needs of the hour. Lassalle has never given a full and systematic exposition of his socialistic theory. All his social-economic writings were published as the crises of his agitation seemed to demand. But, as he himself says, they compensate by the life and incisiveness of the polemical form of treatment for what they lose in systematic value. We may add that it is often a scientific gain, for in the career of Lassalle we see socialism confronted with fact, and thereby to a large extent saved from the absoluteness, abstractness, and deficient sense of reality which detract so much from the value of the works of Marx and Rodbertus. The excessive love of system so characteristic of German theorists may be as remote from historic reality and possibility as the utopian schemes of French socialists. It is, however, also a natural result of Lassalle’s mode of presentation that he is not always consistent with himself either on practical or theoretical questions, especially in his attitude towards the Prussian State.

On the whole, we can most clearly and comprehensively bring out the views of Lassalle if we follow the order in which they are presented in his three leading works, the Working Men’s Programme, the Open Letter, and the Bastiat-Schulze.

The central theme of the Working Men’s Programme is the vocation of the working class as the makers and representatives of a new era in the history of the world. We have seen that Lassalle’s System of Acquired Rights was an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions. In his social-economic writings we find the application of the same method to economic facts and institutions. The Working Men’s Programme is a brilliant example of the historical method, and indeed is a lucid review of the economic development of Europe, culminating in the working men’s State, the full-grown democracy.

In the mediæval world the owners of land controlled politics, the army, law, and taxation in their own interest, while labour was oppressed and despised. The present régime of the capitalist classes is due to a gradual process of development continued for centuries, and is the product of many forces which have acted and reacted on each other: the invention of the mariner’s compass and of gunpowder; abroad the discovery of America and of the sea-route to India; at home the overthrow of the feudal houses by a central government, which established a regular justice, security of property, and better means of communication. This was to be followed in time by the development of machinery, like the cotton-spinning machine of Arkwright, itself the living embodiment of the industrial and economic revolution, which was destined to produce a corresponding political change. The new machinery, the large industry, the division of labour, cheap goods, and the world-market—these were all parts of an organic whole. Production in mass made cheap goods possible; the cheapening of commodities called forth a wider market, and the wider market led to a still larger production.

The rulers of the industrial world, the capitalists, became the rulers also of the political; the French Revolution was merely a proclamation of a mighty fact which had already established itself in the most advanced portions of Europe. But the marvellous enthusiasm of the Revolution was kindled by the fact that its champions at the time represented the cause of humanity. Before long, however, it became manifest that the new rulers fought for the interests of a class, the bourgeoisie; and another class, that of the proletariat, or unpropertied workers, began to define itself in opposition to them. Like their predecessors, the bourgeoisie wielded the legal and political power for their own selfish ends. They made wealth the test and basis of political and social right; they established a restricted franchise; shackled the free expression of opinion by cautions and taxes on newspapers, and threw the burden of taxation on the working classes.

We have seen that the development of the middle class was a slow and gradual process, the complex result of a complex mass of forces. Considering that the special theme of the Working Men’s Programme is the historical function of the working class, it is certainly a most serious defect of Lassalle’s exposition that he says so little of the causes which have conditioned the development of the working class as the representatives of a new era. Their appearance on the pages of Lassalle as the supporters of a great rôle is far too sudden.

On the 24th of February 1848, he says, broke the first dawn of a new historical period. On that day in France a revolution broke out, which called a workman into the Provisional Government; which declared the aim of the State to be the improvement of the lot of the working class; and which proclaimed direct and universal suffrage, whereby every citizen who had attained the age of twenty-one should, without regard to property, have an equal share in all political activity. The working class were therefore destined to be the rulers and makers of a new society. But the rule of the working class had this enormous difference from other forms of class rule, that it admits of no special privilege.

We are all workers, in so far as we have the will in any way to make ourselves useful to the human society. The working class is therefore identical with the whole human race. Its cause is in truth the cause of entire humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, its rule is the rule of all.

The formal means of realising this is direct universal suffrage, which is no magic wand, but which at least can rectify its own mistakes. It is the lance which heals the wounds itself has made. Under universal suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress also, for which it affords unlimited expression and development.

The people must therefore always regard direct universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands. And we need not fear that they will abuse their power; for while the position and interests of the old privileged classes became inconsistent with the general progress of humanity, the mass of the people must know that their interests can be advanced only by promoting the good of their whole class. Even a very moderate sense of their own welfare must teach them that each individual can separately do very little to improve his condition. They can prevail only by union. Thus their personal interest, instead of being opposed to the movement of history, coincides with the development of the whole people and is in harmony with freedom, culture, and the highest ideas of our time.

This masterly treatise of Lassalle concludes with an appeal to the working class, in which we see the great agitator reach the high level of a pure and noble eloquence. Having shown at length that the working class are called to be the creators and representatives of a new historical era, he proceeds: ‘From what we have said there follows for all who belong to the working class the duty of an entirely new bearing.

‘Nothing is more suited to stamp on a class a worthy and deeply moral impress than the consciousness that it is called to be the ruling class, that it is appointed to raise its principle to be the principle of an entire epoch, to make its idea the ruling idea of the whole society, and so again to mould society after its own pattern. The high world-historic honour of this vocation must occupy all your thoughts. The vices of the oppressed, the idle amusements of the thoughtless, and the harmless frivolity of the unimportant beseem you no longer. Ye are the rock on which the church of the future should be built.’

Pity that in the miserable squabble which terminated his life he did not realise that the leader of the working class should also be inspired by a sense of the nobility of his calling.

This exposition of the vocation of the working class is closely connected with another notable feature of Lassalle’s teaching, his Theory of the State. Lassalle’s theory of the State differs entirely from that generally held by the Liberal school. The Liberal school hold that the function of the State consists simply in protecting the personal freedom and the property of the individual. This he scouts as a night-watchman’s idea, because it conceives the State under the image of a night-watchman, whose sole function it is to prevent robbery and burglary.

In opposition to this narrow idea of the State, Lassalle quotes approvingly the view of August Boeckh: ‘That we must widen our notion of the State so as to believe that the State is the institution in which the whole virtue of humanity should be realised.’

History, Lassalle tells us, is an incessant struggle with Nature, with the misery, ignorance, poverty, weakness, and unfreedom in which the human race was originally placed.[^[2]] The progressive victory over this weakness, that is the development of the freedom which history depicts.

In this struggle, if the individual had been left to himself, he could have made no progress. The State it is which has the function to accomplish this development of freedom, this development of the human race in the way of freedom. The duty of the State is to enable the individual to reach a sum of culture, power, and freedom, which for individuals would be absolutely unattainable. The aim of the State is to bring human nature to positive unfolding and progressive development—in other words, to realise the chief end of man: it is the education and development of the human race in the way of freedom.

The State should be the complement of the individual. It must be ready to offer a helping hand, wherever and whenever individuals are unable to realise the happiness, freedom, and culture which befit a human being.

Save the State, that primitive vestal fire of culture, from the modern barbarians, he exclaims on another occasion.

To these political conceptions Lassalle is true throughout. It certainly is a nobler and more rational ideal of the State than the once prevalent Manchester theory. When we descend from theory to practice all obviously depends on what kind of State we have got, and on the circumstances and conditions under which it is called upon to act.

That the State should, through its various organs, support and develop individual effort, calling it forth, rendering it hopeful and effectual, never weakening the springs of it, but stimulating and completing it, is a position which most thinkers would now accept. And most will admit with regret that the existing State is too much a great taxing and fighting machine. The field of inquiry here opened up is a wide and tempting one, on which we cannot now enter. We are at present concerned with the fact that the State help contemplated by Lassalle was meant not only to leave the individual free, but to further him in the free realisation of himself.

The Iron Law of Wages may well be described as the key to Lassalle’s social-economic position. It holds the same prominent place in his system of thinking as the theory of surplus value does in that of Marx. Both, it may be added, are only different aspects of the same fact. Lassalle insists chiefly on the small share of the produce of labour which goes to the labourer; Marx traces the history of the share, called surplus value, which goes to the capitalist.

Lassalle’s most careful statement of the Iron Law, to which he frequently recurs in subsequent writings, is contained in his Open Letter (p. 13). ‘The Iron Economic Law, which, in existing circumstances, under the law of supply and demand for labour, determines the wage, is this: that the average wage always remains reduced to the necessary provision which, according to the customary standard of living, is required for subsistence and for propagation. This is the point about which the real wage continually oscillates, without ever being able long to rise above it or to fall below it. It cannot permanently rise above this average level, because in consequence of the easier and better condition of the workers there would be an increase of marriages and births among them, an increase of the working population and thereby of the supply of labour, which would bring the wage down to its previous level or even below it. On the other hand, the wage cannot permanently fall below this necessary subsistence, because then occur emigration, abstinence from marriage, and, lastly, a diminution of the number of workmen caused by their misery, which lessens the supply of labour, and therefore once more raises the wage to its previous rate.’

On a nearer consideration, Lassalle goes on to say, the effect of the Iron Law is as follows:—

‘From the produce of labour so much is taken and distributed among the workmen as is required for their subsistence.

‘The entire surplus of production falls to the capitalist. It is therefore a result of the Iron Law that the workman is necessarily excluded from the benefits of an increasing production, from the increased productivity of his own labour.’[^[3]]

Such is Lassalle’s theory of the Iron Law of Wages. He accepts it as taught by Ricardo and the economists of the orthodox school in England, France, and Germany. We believe that his statement of it is substantially just and accurate; that it fairly reflects the economic science of his time, and, under the then prevailing economic conditions, may be described as a valid law.

Lassalle held that the customary standard of living and the operation of the law generally were subject to variation. Still it may reasonably be maintained that he has not sufficiently considered the fact that, like capital, the Iron Law of Wages is an historical category. He has not overlooked the fact, and could hardly do so, as the Iron Law is an implicate and result of the domination of capital. But his method of exposition is too much the controversial one, of pressing it as an argumentum ad hominem against his opponents in Germany, and, as usual, in controversy truth is liable to suffer. It may therefore be argued that under the competitive system as now existing, changes have occurred which render Lassalle’s theory of the Iron Law inaccurate and untenable. Even while the present system continues to prevail, the law may undergo very extensive modification through the progress of education and organisation among the workmen, and through the general advance of society in morality and enlightenment. The question of modification of the Iron Law is one of degree, and it may fairly be contended by critics of Lassalle that he has not recognised it to a sufficient degree.

On the other hand, it may also be rationally maintained that in so far as education and organisation prevail among the workmen, in so far does capitalism, with all its conditions and implicates, tend to be superseded. Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, Factory Legislation, are all forms of the social control of economic processes, inconsistent with competitive economics. The more they gain ground, the more does capitalism tend to break up and disappear. From this higher point of view, we may fairly contend that considerations which have been urged as destructive of Lassalle’s argument are really symptoms of the decline of capitalism. The Iron Law is an inevitable result of the historical conditions contemplated by Lassalle. These conditions have changed, but the change means that capitalism is passing away. We are thus thrown back on the wider question, whether capitalism is disappearing, a question which it would at present be premature to discuss.

In any case the position of Lassalle is perfectly clear. He accepted the orthodox political economy in order to show that the inevitable operation of its laws left no hope for the working class; and that no remedy could be found except by abolishing the conditions in which those laws have their validity—in other words, by abolishing the present relations of labour and capital altogether. The great aim of his agitation was to bring forward a scheme which would strike at the root of the evil. The remedy for the evil condition of things connected with the Iron Law of Wages is to secure the workmen the full produce of their labour, by combining the functions of workmen and capitalists through the establishment of productive associations. The distinction between labourer and capitalist is thereby abolished. The workman becomes producer, and for remuneration receives the entire produce of his labour.

The associations founded by Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle went on to argue, would effect no substantial improvement in the condition of the working class. The unions for the supply of credit and raw materials do not benefit the working class as such, but only the small hand-workers. But hand-labour is an antiquated form of industry, which is destined to succumb before the large industry equipped with machinery and an adequate capital. To provide the hand-workers with the means of continuing their obsolete trades is only to prolong the agony of an assured defeat.

The consumers’ unions, or co-operative stores as we call them in England, also fail, because they do not help the workman at the point where he needs it most, as producers. Before the seller, as before the policeman, all men are equal; the only thing the seller cares for is that his customers are able to pay. In discussing the Iron Law, we saw that the workman must be helped as producer—that is, in securing a better share of his product. The consumers’ unions may indeed give a restricted and temporary relief. So long as the unions include only a limited number of workmen, they afford relief by cheapening the means of subsistence, inasmuch as they do not lower the general rate of wages. But in proportion as the unions embrace the entire working class and thereby cause a general cheapening of the means of subsistence, the Iron Law of Wages will take effect. For the average wage is only the expression in money of the customary means of subsistence. The average wage will fall in proportion to the general cheapening of the means of subsistence, and all the pains taken by the workmen in founding and conducting the consumers’ unions will be labour lost. They will only enable the workman to subsist on a smaller wage.

The only effectual way to improve the condition of the working class is through the free individual association of the workers, by its application and extension to the great industry. The working class must be its own capitalist.

But when the workmen on the one hand contemplate the enormous sums required for railways and factories, and on the other hand consider the emptiness of their own pockets, they may naturally ask where they are to obtain the capital needed for the great industry? The State alone can furnish it; and the State ought to furnish it, because it is, and always has been, the duty of the State to promote and facilitate the great progressive movements of civilisation. Productive association with State credit was the plan of Lassalle.[^[4]]

The State had already in numerous instances guaranteed its credit for industrial undertakings by which the rich classes had benefited—canals, postal services, banks, agricultural improvements, and especially with regard to railways. No outcry of socialism or communism had been raised against this form of State help? Then why raise it when the greatest problem of modern civilisation was involved—the improvement of the lot of the working classes? Lassalle’s estimate was, that the loan of a hundred million thalers (£15,000,000) would be more than sufficient to bring the principle of association into full movement throughout the kingdom of Prussia.

Obviously the money required for the promotion of productive associations did not require to be actually paid by the Government; only the State guarantee for the loan was necessary. The State would see that proper rules for the associations should be made and observed by them. It would reserve to itself the rights of a creditor or sleeping partner. It would generally take care that the funds be put to their legitimate use. But its control would not pass beyond those reasonable limits: the associations would be free; they would be the voluntary act of the working men themselves. Above all, the State, thus supporting and controlling the associations, would be a democratic State, elected by universal suffrage, the organ of the workers, who form an overwhelming majority of every community.

But if we are to conceive the matter in the crudest way and consider the money as actually paid, wherein would the enormity of such a transaction consist? The State had spent hundreds of millions in war, to appease the wounded vanity of royal mistresses, to satisfy the lust of conquest of princes, to open up markets for the middle classes; yet when the deliverance of humanity is concerned the money cannot be procured!

Further, as he takes care to explain, Lassalle did not propose his scheme of productive associations as the solution of the social question. The solution of the social question would demand generations. He proposed his scheme as the means of transition, as the easiest and mildest means of transition.[^[5]] It was the germ, the organic principle of an incessant development. Lassalle has indicated, though only in vague outline, how such an organic development of productive associations should proceed. They would begin in populous centres, in cases where the nature of the industry, and the voluntary inclination of the workmen to association, would facilitate their formation. Industries, which are mutually dependent and work into each other’s hands, would be united by a credit union; and there would further be an insurance union, embracing the different associations, which would reduce their losses to a minimum. The risks would be greatly lessened as a speculative industry constantly tending to anarchy, and all the evils of competition would be superseded by an organised industry; over-production would give place to production in advance. In this way the associations would grow until they embraced the entire industry of the country. And the general application of the principle would give an enormous advantage in international competition to the country adopting it, for it would be rational, systematic, and in every way more effective and economical.

The goal of the whole development, as conceived by Lassalle, was a collectivism of the same type as that contemplated by Marx and Rodbertus. ‘Division of labour,’ he says, ‘is really common labour, social combination for production. This, the real nature of production, needs only to be explicitly recognised. In the total production, therefore, it is merely requisite to abolish individual portions of capital, and to conduct the labour of society, which is already common, with the common capital of society, and to distribute the result of production among all who have contributed to it, in proportion to their performance.’[^[6]]

In the controversial work against Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle has at greater length expounded his general position in opposition to the individualist theories of his opponents. He contends that progress has not proceeded from the individual; it has always proceeded from the community. In this connection he sums up briefly the history of social development.

The entire ancient world, and also the whole mediæval period down to the French Revolution of 1789, sought human solidarity and community in bondage or subjection.

The French Revolution of 1789, and the historical period controlled by it, rightly incensed at this subjection, sought freedom in the dissolution of all solidarity and community. Thereby, however, it gained, not freedom, but license. Because freedom without community is license.

The new, the present period, seeks solidarity in freedom.[^[7]] He then proceeds in his theory of conjunctures to prove that, instead of each man being economically responsible for what he has done, each man is really responsible for what he has not done. The economic fate of the individual is determined by circumstances over which he has no control, or very little. What does Lassalle mean by a conjuncture? We can best understand it by reference to a great economic crisis which has occurred since his time. No better example of a conjuncture can be found than in the recent history of British agriculture. In 1876, agriculture, still the most important industry of the country, began to be seriously threatened by American competition. The crisis caused by the low prices due to this competition was greatly aggravated by bad seasons, such as that of 1879. The farmers, obliged to pay rent out of capital, were many of them ruined. In consequence of the diminished application of capital to land the opportunities of labour were greatly lessened. Rents could no longer be paid as formerly. All three classes directly concerned in English agriculture suffered fearfully, without any special individual responsibility in the matter. In Ireland, where the difficulty, great in itself, was intensified by the national idea, an economic crisis grew into a great political and imperial crisis. In the eyes of the impartial inquirer, who of all the millions of sufferers was personally responsible?

Such wide-spread disasters are common in recent economic history. They are a necessary result of a competitive system of industry. Lassalle is justly angry with the one-sided and ill-instructed economists that would hold the individual responsible for his fate in such a crisis. Statesmen little understand their duty who would leave their subjects without help in these times of distress. And it must always be a praiseworthy feature of socialism that it seeks to establish social control of these conjunctures as far as possible, and to minimise their disastrous effects by giving social support to those menaced by them.

The main burden of the Bastiat-Schulze is Lassalle’s account of capital and labour.

For Lassalle capital is a historic category, a product of historical circumstances, the rise of which we can trace, the disappearance of which, under altered circumstances, we can foresee.

In other words, capital is the name for a system of economic, social, and legal conditions, which are the result severally and collectively of a long and gradual process of historical development. The Bastiat-Schulze is an elucidation of these conditions. The following may be taken as a general statement of them:—

(1) The division of labour in connection with the large industry.

(2) A system of production for exchange in the great world-markets.

(3) Free competition.

(4) The instruments of labour, the property of a special class, who after paying

(5) A class of free labourers in accordance with the Iron Law of Wages, pocket the surplus value. Property consists not in the fruit of one’s own labour, but in the appropriation of that of others. Eigenthum ist Fremdthum geworden.[^[8]]

In this way capital has become an independent, active, and self-generating power which oppresses its producer. Money makes money. The labour of the past, appropriated and capitalised, crushes the labour of the present. ‘The dead captures the living.’ ‘The instrument of labour, which has become independent, and has exchanged rôles with the workmen, which has degraded the living workmen to a dead instrument of labour, and has developed itself, the dead instrument of labour, into the living organ of production—that is capital.’[^[9]] In such highly metaphorical language does Lassalle sum up his history of capital. We have already commented on that aspect of it, the Iron Law of Wages, which Lassalle has most emphasised. The whole subject is much more comprehensively treated in the Kapital of Karl Marx; therefore we need not dwell upon it further at present.

It will not be wrong, however, to say a word here about the use of the word capital, as current in the school of socialists to which Lassalle and Marx belong. It is not applied by them in its purely economic sense, as wealth utilised for further production: it is used as the name of the social and economic system in which the owners of capital are the dominant power. With them it is the economic factor as operating under the existing legal and social conditions, with all these conditions clinging to it. It would be much better to restrict the word to its proper economic use, and employ the new word capitalism as a fairly accurate name for the existing system.

The function of capital under all social systems and at all historical epochs is fundamentally the same; it is simply wealth used for the production of more wealth. But the historical, legal, and political conditions under which it is utilised vary indefinitely, as do also the technical forms in which it is embodied.

No real excuse can be offered for the ignorance or confusion of language of controversialists who maintain that the object of socialism is to abolish capital. So far from abolishing capital, socialists wish to make it still more effective for social well-being by placing it under social control. What they wish to abolish is the existing system, in which capital is under the control of a class. It would be a considerable gain in clearness if this system were always called capitalism.

We have already remarked upon Lassalle’s theory of the State, and his treatment of the Iron Law of Wages. Our further criticism of his social-economic position can best be brought out by reference to his controversy with Schulze-Delitzsch, the economic representative of German Liberalism.

In general it may be said that Lassalle meets the one-sided individualism of Schulze by a statement of the socialistic, theory, which is also one-sided and exaggerated. His view of the influence of the community as compared with that of the individual is the most prominent example of this. The only accurate social philosophy is one which gives due attention to both factors; both are of supreme importance, and either may fitly be the starting-point of investigation and discussion.

His theory of conjunctures is overstated. It is to a considerable degree well founded; in the great economic storms which sweep over the civilised world the fate of the individual is largely determined by conditions over which he has no control. Yet now as ever the homely virtues of industry, energy, sobriety, and prudence do materially determine the individual career.

For our present purpose, however, it is more important to consider Lassalle’s polemic against the practical proposals of his opponent. Lassalle contended that the unions for providing credit and raw material would benefit the hand-workers only, whereas hand-labour is destined to disappear before the large industry. But, we may ask, why should not such methods of mutual help be utilised for associations of working men even more than for isolated workers? These unions may be regarded as affording only a very partial and limited relief to the workmen, but why should the principle of association among workmen stop there?

The system of voluntary co-operation must begin somewhere; it began most naturally and reasonably with such unions, and it proceeds most naturally and reasonably along the line of least resistance to further development. In these unions the workmen have been acquiring the capital and experience necessary for further progress. No limit can be assigned to the possible evolution of the system. They are properly to be regarded as only the first beginnings of social control over the economic processes, the goal and consummation of which we find in socialism. If in the controversial struggle Lassalle had listened to the clear voice of science, he would have seen that, for his opponent as well as for himself, he must maintain that all social institutions are subject to and capable of development.

For the methods of Schulze it may be claimed that they do not provide a ready-made solution of the social question, but they are a beginning. For the associations of Schulze, not less than for those of Lassalle, we may contend that they supply the organic principle of an incessant development. In this way the workmen may attain to the complete management of their own industrial interests with their own joint capital. They may thus obtain for themselves the full product of their labour, in which case the objection of Lassalle, with regard to the increase of population, under the influence of the cheap provisions supplied by the stores, would no more apply to the scheme of Schulze than they would to his own. In both cases we are to suppose that the means of subsistence would be more abundant and more easily obtained; in both cases there might be the risk of a too rapidly increasing population. We may suppose that this increase of population would be met by a still greater increase in the product of labour, all going to the workers. But for the schemes of Schulze there would be this great advantage that, the capital and experience of the workers having been acquired by their own exertions, they would have all the superior training requisite for the solution of the population question, and all other questions, which can be obtained only from a long course of social discipline.