CONTEIsiPOICARY SOCIALISM.*
BEFORE treating of Socialism, it is well to know what meaning we attach to the word. A generation ago it was used chiefly to describe the theories of the 0 wenites, St. Simonians, Icarians, White Quakers, and others. But these communities are now as dead as the Utopian ideas on which they were based. Then there are Socialists and Socialists. John Stuart Mill called himself a Socialist, because, to use his own words, he looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious, when the rule that those who do not work shall not eat will prevail, "when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending in great measure on the accident of birth, shall be made on an acknowledged principle of justice." But Mr. Cairnes says that if this be Socialism, he is also a Socialist, and probably every man of generous mind and just feeling would say the same. For Mill simply yearned after that ideal justice, that economic millennium for which all who do not believe in the perfection of our existing social system are either hoping or working. And the apostles of the primitive Church, and many of their successors of modern times, were they not also in this sense Socialists ? Did not Christ tell the rich young man who had great possessions to sell all that he had and give it to the poor ? And that this was no mere esoteric teaching is proved by the fact that His disciples practised among themselves the communism which, in their eyes, the acceptance of Christianity seemed to involve. At Jerusalem, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles, "all that believed had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." But these were voluntary Socialists ; they believed in the Com- mandments, and they had no idea of invoking the power of the State to deprive the rich of their possessions, or to establish an ideal system with which religion had nothing to do,—a system, moreover, which, in the absence of the spirit of brotherly love and capacity for self-sacrifice that came
* Contemporary Socialism. By John Rae. London : W. Lthister, Limited.
only of faith (whether in God or a Cause), could not possibly endure. The aim of contemporary Socialism, and that which, in the opinion of our author, distinguishes it from the Communism of Owen and other dreamers, is the democratising of labour,—the formation of a State in which power and property shall apper- tain to labour alone ; where birth and wealth, instead of being claims for distinction, shall disqualify for citizenship; where only he who works shall enjoy ; "and where accordingly, as the indis- pensable pre-requisite of the whole scheme, the land of the country, and all other instruments of production, shall be made the joint property of the community, and the conduct of all industrial operations be placed under the direct administration of the State. Furthermore, all this is contended for as a matter of simple right and justice to the labouring classes, on the ground that the wealth of the nation belongs to the hands that made it ; it is contended for as an obligation of the State, because the State is held to be merely the organised will of the people, and the people is the labouring-class ; and it is contended for as an object of immediate accomplishment,—if possible, by ordinary Constitutional means, but, if not, by revolution."
This form of Socialism Mr. Rae defines as "Revolutionary Socialist Democracy ;" and if Germany be not the country of its conception, it is the country where it has most thriven. Its adherents probably number not far short of a million adult males ; and many who oppose the movement on political grounds have, nevertheless, adopted some of its more essential prin- ciples. The proposal of Prince Bismarck to put a tax on tobacco, and to use the proceeds for the support of aged and invalid labourers, was a striking instance of State Socialism in high quarters ; and the cause is advocated by some of Germany's ripest scholars and most advanced thinkers.
If Professor Sch5nberg's definition of Socialism as "a system of moral administration of social interests" be the true one, it is making rapid progress, not alone in Germany, but elsewhere. A measure to which this description applies was passed the other day by a British Parliament at the instance of a Con- servative Government, and other measures of the same sort are both in the air and on the statute-book. This, however, is social reform by evolution, not by revolution ; and Continental Socialists as a body aim at nothing less than taking forcible possession of the State, and carrying out their programme by the strong hand of power. But to do this would be the sheerest despotism, and involve the total suppression of individual freedom—a fact to which many leading Socialists are fully alive ; and, seeing no possibility of reconciling State Socialism with personal liberty, they propose to abolish the State altogether. These are the Anarchists ; and in Elisee Reclus and Prince Krapotkine they have leaders of brilliant genius and proved sincerity. The former will not so far bow to the existing order as to marry his daughters in the accepted manner ; and the latter prefers to stay in prison rather than appeal against an unjust and almost certainly illegal sentence, or accept pardon for the imputed offence which he denies having committed. But to be an Anarchist requires a robustness of faith which it is given to few to possess. An Anarchist must believe more implicitly in the goodness of human nature than it is possible for an ordinary Christian to believe at all times in the goodness of God. For he holds that, after laws have been swept away and institutions abolished, men and women will spontaneously form themselves into "groups," according to their occupations and affinities, and work together peacefully for their common good. This, they say, is what comes to pass at gold-mines, new settlements in wild countries, and such-like places, where, owing to accidental causes, com- munities are occasionally formed in which law and convention are conspicuous by their absence. The miners, settlers, and population generally divide their profits and earnings on equitable principles, the fortunate share their gains with the un- fortunate; when a man finds a nugget, he adds it to the common hoard ; robbery aud strife are unknown, law-snits impossible, and crime only begins with the appearance of policemen and other agents of authority.
Anarchy is a dream, and you can no more conflate a dream than a prophecy ; yet it is so far good that acceptance of its tenets implies a profound disbelief in the possibility of pro- ducing a social millennium by legislative enactments. In this respect, A narchy is the very antithesis of Social Democracy; and of the two, belief in the impotence, rather than in the omni- potence, of rulers and law-makers, is perhaps the more reason- able faith. Social reform, to be permanent, must be accompanied
or preceded by a moral transformation, by changes in the habits and ideas both of the well-to-do and the disinherited, which, in the nature of things, cannot be otherwise than gradual. The great object of the movement in its present phase is to redress the inequalities of fortune and remove the anomalies which, to use the words of J. S. Mill, cause the produce of labour to be apportioned "almost in an inverse ratio to the labour," giving "the largest portion to those who never work at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so on in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life."
But an attempt to cure these evils by revolution, or by hasty or ill-considered legislation, would, as all experience shows, render the second condition of the labouring classes worse than their first. Social reform was retarded, not hastened, by the Communard insurrection of 1871. Even now marked progress is being made. During the last thirty or forty years the lot of the working-classes, due in great measure to their own efforts, has vastly improved. Their wages are higher, the cost of living is less, and economic causes are at work which bid fair still further to raise their condition. There probably never was a time when the rewards of manual labour were so high and the gains of capital so low. Economists tell us that were it not for the wars of the last half-century the normal rate of interest would not exceed two or three per cent., and it is now sinking steadily towards that point. This depreciation in the value of capital, however alarming it may be for people who have money to place or who live partially or wholly on the interest of their investments, is fall of promise for the vast multitude of wage- earners. It implies a great addition to the circulating capital of civilised countries and of that fund whereby enterprise is promoted and labour remunerated. A low rate of interest, moreover, implies a low rate of profit and a relatively high rate of wages. For if people who were formerly satisfied with a return of ten per cent. from capital invested in trade and mann- tures have now to be satisfied with five or six, consumers and wage-earners must benefit by the difference ; and it is a sig- nificant fact that, whereas the rate of interest was never so low as at present, wages on the other hand were hardly ever so high and the necessaries of life so plentiful and cheap,—another proof that the social problem is much more likely to be solved by a policy of laisser faire than of State meddling. Mr. Rae's book is both able and opportune, and one which every student of contemporary Socialism ought to possess. We think, however, that he errs in attributing to Socialist ideas and the teaching of Bakunine the crimes which have marked the course of the Russian revolutionary movement. Whatever may- be the pious opinions or ultimate aims of its leaders, that move- ment is essentially political. We are unable to recall a single murder, or attempt to murder, committed by a so.called Nihilist the motive of which was not either personal or political. In the beginning, the movement was as peaceful as any agitation could be. The crowds of Nihilists arrested in 1875, when the Govern- ment first took alarm, were accused of nothing worse than dis- tributing tracts and holding clandestine meetings (every sort of meeting is clandestine in Russia). Then they began to resist arrest,—killing, or trying to kill, the gendarmes who attempted to take them ; lastly, assuming the offensive, they carried the war into the enemy's camp by "executing," as they termed it, men who, by their cruelty to prisoners or otherwise, had, in the opinion of one of the " groups " or executive committees, deserved the penalty of death. How exclusively political were the motives of the men who committed the fatal mistake of compassing the death of Alexander II. is shown by the letter of the St. Petersburg Executive Committee to the son ten days after the father's assassination. The reforms demanded in this letter were a general amnesty for all political offenders and the convocation of a representative Assembly, and, pending the meeting of the Assembly, freedom of the Press, freedom of public meetings, and freedom of electoral addresses. "Our party," declared the executive committee, "will submit unconditionally to the National Assembly which meets on the bases of the foregoing conditions, and will offer no opposition to the Government which the National Assembly may sanction." In all this not a word about Nihilism or Socialism ; and what- ever else an Assembly elected by Russian peasants might sanction, it certainly would neither sanction the deposition of the Czar nor the abolition of private property.
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