A history of socialism E-Book

Thomas Kirkup

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

A

HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

BY

THOMAS KIRKUP

© 2024 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385747213

PREFACE

A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II EARLY FRENCH SOCIALISM

SAINT-SIMON

FOURIER

CHAPTER III FRENCH SOCIALISM OF 1848

LOUIS BLANC

PROUDHON

CHAPTER IV EARLY ENGLISH SOCIALISM

CHAPTER VI RODBERTUS

CHAPTER VII KARL MARX

CHAPTER VIII THE INTERNATIONAL

CHAPTER IX THE GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER X ANARCHISM

CHAPTER XI THE PURIFIED SOCIALISM

CHAPTER XII SOCIALISM AND THE EVOLUTION THEORY

CHAPTER XIII RECENT PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM

CHAPTER XIV TENDENCIES TOWARDS SOCIALISM

CHAPTER XV THE PREVALENT SOCIALISM

CHAPTER XVI CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

INDEX

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.

[1]

Holyoake, History of Co-operation, vol. i. p. 210, ed. 1875.

[2]

Quoted by Adolf Held, Sozialismus, Sozialdemokratie und Sozialpolitik, p. 30.

[3]

Ibid. p. 29.

[4]

Les origines du socialisme contemporain, p. 67.

[5]

Le socialisme contemporain, p. iv.

[6]

Schönberg’s Handbuch der pol. Oekonomie, art. ‘Socialism.’

[7]

Quintessenz des Socialismus, p. 12.

[8]

Lehrbuch der pol. Oekonomie, Grundlegung, p. 174.

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.

[1]

An excellent edition of the works of Saint-Simon and Enfantin was begun by survivors of the sect in (Paris) 1865, and now numbers forty vols. See Reybaud, Études sur les réformateurs modernes (7th edition, Paris 1864); Janet, Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme (Paris, 1878); A. J. Booth, Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism (London, 1871).

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