SIX BOOKS ON ECONOMICS.* THE uninitiated complain that there is
a lack of authoritative exposition on the part of the Socialists, and that, except in the now antiquated pages of Marx, there is no serious attempt to grapple in detail with the economic difficulties of the Socialist ideal. The two works on Socialism which head our list do not repair this omission, but they have an interest and authority of their own.
It is an easy task for one like M. Jaures, gifted with
• (1) Studies in Socialism. By Jean Jauras. Translated, with an Introduction, by Mildred Minturn. No. 1TI. of "The Socialist Library," Edited by J. Ramsay MacDonald. London : Independent Labour Party. [1s. net.]—(2) Easays in Socialism New and Old. By E. Belfort Bar. London: E. Grant Richards. Os. net.]—(S) Municipal Ownership in Great Britain. By Hugo Richard Meyer. London: Macmillan and Co. [6s. 6d. net.' —(4) Interest and Saving. By E. C. H. Gonner, M.A. Same publishers. [Sc. 6d. net.] —(5) The German Workman: a Study in National Efficiency. By William Harbutt Dawson. London : P. S. King and Son. [s. net.]—(6) Studies in American Trade Unionism. Edited by Jacob H. Hollander, Ph.D., and George E Barnett, Ph.D. London : Hodder and Stoughton. 112e. net.) imagination and eloquence, to denounce the shortcomings of our social system. It is another thing to set out a new evangel in concrete detail. He has recently attempted the task in the French Chamber, with the significant result that his Utopia was subjected to the trenchant and destructive criticism of that representative Liberal, M. Clemenceau. The civilised world watched the encounter with the deepest interest, for the occasion seemed to mark a permanent rupture between the Liberal and the Socialist Parties. The French Socialist has realised that is liberalisme c'est M. Jaures belongs to the opportunist section of the party. This gives him an advantage in controversy, for he can leave his ultimate ideal misty and undefined. Denunciation of existing anomalies and vague appeals to fraternity and justice serve to carry positions which seem to belong to the enemy, and he is, no doubt, content with the fact to which Mr. Herbert Spencer was fond of pointing as a danger,—namely, that we cannot be constantly taking steps in the direction of a certain object without ultimately arriving there. "There is one undoubted fact," says M. Jaures in Studies in Socialism (p. 41), "which transcends all others. It is that the prole- tariat is growing in numbers, in solidarity, and in self-
consciousness They no longer limit their hopes to the abolition of the worst faults of the present society ; they now wish to create a social order founded on a different principle." He then recalls "the famous saying of Lassalle, the Proletariat is the rock on which the Church of the future shall be built"; and proceeds : "And for my part I say that it is not only a rock it is a vast coherent but active force." To Marx, he continues, belongs the merit of having "brought the Socialist thought into prole- tarian life, and proletarian life into Socialist thought Socialism will only realise its ideal through the victory of the proletariat, and the proletariat will only complete its being through the victory of Socialism." Yet on p. 72 M. Jaures writes : "Marx was mistaken. It was not from absolute desti- tution that absolute liberation could come." On the contrary, the evidence of improved conditions is irresistible, or, as M. Jaures grudgingly puts it, "the tendency to sink is not the stronger." The analysis made by Marx of the capitalist system serves, it should be noted, two purposes. It is an indictment of the existing order, and as such a justification for revolutionary change. It is also a prophecy of the end of capitalism, as of a thing crushed under the weight of its own defects. The prophecy has been falsified by events, but the analysis which was admittedly inadequate for prediction is still held sufficient to justify the desire to overturn the existing system. It might be argued that, if the situation is improving, it is perhaps tolerable ; but the Socialist is bent on making his experiment. Marx, with the narrow, logical directness which characterises his thought, saw that if Socialism is to be made acceptable he must show how under it industry is to be regulated, and without flinch- ing he proposed to substitute for our present currency a currency of social-labour notes. This proposal, absolutely necessary and logical on the premisses as we believe it to be, produces consternation in the mind of the practical man. It is like the detailed exposition of M. Jaures in the Chamber, —the vague sentiment is attractive, but in the light of day the glamour disappears.
Mr. Belfort Bax, who is vouched for by his publisher as one "who has given the greater part of his life to the Socialist cause," is more unreservedly of the Marxian party. "The predominance of scientific socialism," he tells us in his Essays in Socialism (p. 56), "or as it is sometimes called, Marxism, is assured among the workmen of the continent," but "in England, as we all know, we have many socialisms promulgated by persons who are anxious to show themselves original, and who for this and other reasons are shy of joining the one English Socialist body, which is in line with the great Socialist movement of Proletarian emancipation throughout the civilised world." This body, we gather, is the Social Democratic Federa- tion, and in a later chapter entitled "Treacherous Toleration and Faddist Fanaticism" he denounces bitterly the tem- porising policy of "the average Fabian, the Webbite," and asks : "Now are we to be condemned to hug such a man as this to our bosom as a comrade I' " The predictions of Marx as to the collapse of the capitalist system are manifestly false. He had not reckoned, suggests Mr. Bax, with the possibility of expansion. "Let the present expansion," he says, "of the sphere of action of the capitalist system go on unchecked, or receive a further impulse, and the hopes of socialism must be indefinitely postponed" (p. 324). This explains the motive of the savage assault which Mr. Ban makes on Imperial expansion. It might, however, be pointed out that the growth of industry is intensive as well as extensive. Socialism will be indefinitely postponed not so much by Imperial expansion as by the growth of the purchasing power of a proletariat whose tendency, according to M. Jaures, is "not to sink." Civilisa- tion, then, unfortunately for the Socialist theory, does not blow up spontaneously, and, as both our authors seem to admit, the danger of this is receding. There is nothing left, therefore, for Mr. Ban but to scold his opportunist comrades because they will not come on. This he does with amusing vehemence and paradox throughout the greater part of the volume.
The remaining books on our list are less revolutionary; but for the purpose of this review they can be brought (owing to exigencies of space and with apologies, to • the authors) under a common denominator, if regarded in relation to this problem of the proletariat. Mr. Meyer is an American economist who has made for his countrymen a patient study of municipal ownership in Great Britain. The difficulty of regulating monopolised trades when entrusted to private enterprise gave rise to municipal trading, at first merely as a convenient alternative. Of late years municipal Socialism has applied itself to trade with enthusiasm, in the hope that thus a beginning will be made in the supersession of private enterprise by a State organisa- tion of industry. Mr. Meyer's book, Municipal Ownership in Great Britain, is written from the anti-Socialist point of view. It is mainly historical, and will be found a useful compilation by those who wish to know the legislative and administrative course of events.
The two essays of which Mr. Gonner's volume, Interest and Saving, is composed " attempt an analysis of the connection which exists between interest and the process of saving whereby wealth is accumulated and capital supplied." We confess that the issues involved seem often to be too much overshadowed by the number and magnitude of the hypo- theses under which each case is considered. If interest were abolished, would the motives for saving go with it, or would the desire to provide for deferred consumption be sufficient to induce saving to continue as before ? This and similar problems are discussed with much minuteness in a way that recalls Mr. Shandy's theory of auxiliary verbs. It is for the student an admirable exercise in dialectics, and from our present point of view it is interesting as showing the wide realm of speculation through which the teacher of economics is prepared to range. The chapter on "Interest in the Com- petitive and Socialistic States" should be read, if only for the sake of experiencing the mental bewilderment which is induced by the hypothesis that every motive in commerce is to become something different from what it now is.
Mr. Dawson's volume is an elaborate and interesting study of the paternalism of the German Government. How far the difficulties which arise from the very existence of a proletariat are to be overcome by such methods is a question which time only will solve. The German Workman is a valuable addition to our information. Mr. Dawson's attitude to his subject is optimistic, but not altogether uncritical; but from material so controversial the difficulty of formulating conclusions on which a prudent man would venture to act seems to us enormous. Take, for instance, the case of the Poor Law. The investi- gating student who has no practical experience of administra- tion seems often to ignore the fact that every system of Poor Law has its own special danger of collecting a dependent population. Wherever there is a Poor Law there is some leakage, and before we give our confidence to any guide he must show himself competent to discover to us where that leakage occurs. Mr. Dawson may be right in placing the balance of advantage where be does, but his knowledge and insight would be superhuman if he had detected everywhere the weakening of fibre which paternalism necessarily involves. As a practical question the danger is that, for example, by adopting foreign methods of Poor Law, while we shall certainly get the foreign type of pauper, we have not an equal certainty of getting rid of our own type.
Our last volume, Studies in American Trade Unionism, consists of essays by different authors. In an admirable introduction Professor Hollander explains that the investiga- tions have been carried out by students of the Johns Hopkins University, and that the expenses have been met by an anonymous donor and by a grant from the Carnegie inatitn- tion. "The intelligent trade unionist has come to realise that the main purpose of the political economist is to investigate, not to advocate; and that organised labour gains nothing by dogged adherence to practices reasonably demonstrated as fallacious." In this pacific spirit the inquiry was undertaken. Endeavour has been made to avoid what Professor Hollander calls "economic microscopics," and to investigation, the main purpose above imputed to the economist, the duty of arrangement and explanation has to some extent been added. In nearly four hundred pages we are given an elaborate account of almost every conceivable combination in the contracts by which labour is exchanged for wages. It would be ungrateful to complain of the vastness of this accumulation of facts, this lengthened diary of insignificant events. Such monographs are necessary in the search for an underlying principle. Some day perhaps the touch of genius will come to illumine these details, and to evolve therefrom a rule of justice and of liberty which will give peace to the troubled world of industry. It is something that contending factions recognise the impartiality of those who invite us to the study of this array of facts. It is in work such as this, and not in the misty vapours of Socialism, that a key to the difficulties of the proletariat will be found.
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