James Bonar

“ Not only the independent artisans and workers in domestic industries, but the small capitalists and employers who cannot afford to introduce the economies and sell at the low prices of their large rivals are disappearing. But the growth of the proletariat, together with the concentration of business into fewer hands and larger companies, will cause the downfall of the present system of industry. The proletariat will realize its own strength; and the means and materials of production will be concentrated finally into the hands of the commonwealth for the good of all. ”

“ Definition.—Socialism is that policy or theory which aims at securing by the action of the central democratic authority a better distribution, and in due subordination thereunto a better production, of wealth than now prevails. ”

“ We are told that having been nothing, the working-classes will be everything; having so long been the ruled, they will be the rulers; they have produced for all the rest, the product will now be theirs instead of another's. This doctrine is not essential to socialism; it is indeed hardly consistent therewith. It would not be fair to press it, for no men know better than the scientific socialists that under modern conditions it is in most cases quite impossible to say what is the product of one man's labour. Articles are not made at one stretch by one individual. ”

“ Many, like Bebel and Kautsky, kept up the old adoration of Marx; but many, like Eduard Bernstein, rightly felt that to give up Marx is not to give up socialism, any more than to give up Genesis is to give up theology. ”

“ Nowhere is democracy sturdier than in Australia, the separate states of which have since 1900 been federated as one commonwealth. But while it has a protective tariff and makes no pretence of a laissez-faire policy, the central government is less socialistic than the separate confederated states. The progress even of these has been, as in England, rather in municipal than in state socialism. It is true that crown lands, mines and railways figure more largely. But to find state socialism in its vigour we must pass to New Zealand. ”

“ Anarchism, when at all rational, resolves the state into its component municipalities and small groups. The question which carries us beyond anarchism is how such groups can last and be secure without a central state. They could only be so on the assumption of a change in human nature of which their is no sign. It seems not improbable that in the far future the strong central government will be so democratic and at the same time so wise with the wisdom of a great representative council that all that is sound in the contentions and aspirations of anarchists and socialists will be secured by it. ”

“ It is certainly a partial fulfilment of the aspirations of those whose theory or principle is socialism. The most important form of modern socialism, which may be called for convenience “social democratic” socialism, is founded on economic theory more or less clearly understood; it is therefore often described as economic or scientific socialism. Many men have become socialists less from logic than from sympathy with suffering. But modern socialism without disowning sentiment knows the need of facts and sound reasoning better than its predecessors, whom it calls Utopian. ”

“ So a change of heart, which is also a change of view, is to socialism, as a religion, what economic and political theory is to it as a creed. All that is best in anarchism shares this spiritual feature with socialism. It is of a higher type than the human sympathy which went with utopian socialism ”

“ This revolution, like that which overturned feudalism, is simply the next stage of an evolution happening without human will, fatally and necessarily, by virtue of the conditions under which wealth is produced and shared in our times. ”

“ On the other hand, there is no visible assignable limit to municipal or local socialism, as long as the state's parliament leaves it a free course. If the localities choose to make social experiments there seems no rule of general policy to prevent them, if we put aside experiences of financial failure or of the tendency to corruption. The great fear conjured up by the vision of socialism has been the fear of a new despotism. ”

“ Communism has the same end in view; and socialism and communism (q.v.) are often confused in popular thought. But the communist need not be a socialist; he may be an anarchist, an opponent of all government; while the socialist need not be a communist. The socialists of the 20th century rarely, if ever, demand that all wealth be held in common, but only that the land, and the large workshops, and the materials and means of production on a large scale shall be owned by the state, or its delegate the municipality. The despotism of gilds would not now be tolerated. ”

“ It was impossible, too, to ignore the progress that Germany had made in wealth and industry since the creation of the Empire in 1871. Germany has been fast becoming a manufacturing country; and, though the growth of large manufacturing towns in the Rhine valley and elsewhere has multiplied socialists, it has added to the income of the German workman. He is further from poverty and distress; and his socialism means an endeavour after a larger life, not, as formerly, a mere struggle against starvation. ”

“ The exponents of paternal socialism have no clear consciousness of the change in the state itself. They think they can still use the old tools. They see that the people have changed, but they do not see that if the past cannot be revived for a people neither can it be revived for a state. ”

“ Socialism, as a policy, begins with the beginnings of politics. As a theory, it begins whenever the state is perceived to have a distinct office from other factors in the order of society, and that office is so magnified that the whole or main charge of the economic resources of the people is assigned to the state, whether for production or for distribution. There was anarchism among the Cyrenaics and Cynics. ”

“ The ultimate result, to judge by the old countries, may be that each nation will include a community of groups more or less socialistic in organization, but will not itself be a socialistic state. The socialistic experiment is more likely to be tried by provinces than by states, by districts than by provinces, by towns than by districts. They all get their compulsory powers, as delegated to them, from the central authority; but the central authority itself has shown little power of originative action, and it lacks the minute knowledge of the people on the spot. ”

“ In the country districts democracy is still imperfectly conscious of its own power. There are acts on the statute book that would well equip a parochial socialism; but socialists seem to be able to do little more than accelerate slightly what seems to be the inevitably slow pace of political reform in England. Whether the extension of the franchise to women will quicken the rate of reform is uncertain.
With every allowance, the change in English politics has been real, and it has been due in a great measure to the growth of organization among working men. ”

“ But social democracy in Germany, its own country, is not bound up with Berlin. Italy as a whole must make progress in social and political development before it can receive the new ideas and still more before it can grow beyond them. The burden of taxes leads to revolts of sheer despair, followed by repression which has extended to socialistic clubs (fasci dei lavoratori) and even workmen’s unions. State socialism in the form of state railways has not been very efficient. Factory legislation is behind that of other civilized countries, and is of very recent origin (1902) . ”

“ The struggle to-day is between the middle classes and the working classes. At present those who do not possess capital are obliged to work for such wages as will keep them alive, and the gains from inventions and economics are secured by the employers and capitalists. The labourer works at his cost price, which is “the socially necessary wages of subsistence” (the bare necessaries of a civilized life) ; but he produces much more than his cost, and the surplus due to his “unpaid labour” goes to the employer and capitalist. ”

“ Lassalle desired it for his own nation first. Both of them were in a sense Hegelians. From Hegel they had learned that the world of men, like the world of things, was in constant process of development; but unlike Hegel they regarded human evolution as purely materialistic, effected always by a struggle between classes in society for the outward means of well-being. Feudalism, itself the result of such a struggle, had given place to the rule of the middle classes. ”

“ There is, of course, a large body of socialists outside any organization. Partly from the teachings of socialists and partly from literary descriptions of the aims and reasons of socialism, there are multitudes who think socialistically without defining their own position with the exactness of the scientific socialist. It is often these amateurs who fall readily into Utopias and who confound the boundaries between socialism and communism. ”

“ According to socialists and anarchists and indeed all of us who are not incurable optimists, the hungry generations have trodden the working man down too much to make him instantly or even speedily fit to do the work of government himself. ”

“ There are theorists who find the exploitation of the tenant by the landlord to be the main evil whether it involves the degradation of the labourer or not. As some theologians confine their criticism to the Old Testament, so Henry George and Professor A. Loria, shunning the name of socialist, would not directly attack the system of modern large capitals but the appropriation of land. The social-democrat attacks both. ”

“ Modern socialism, as defined above, is (a) opposed to the policy of laissez-faire, which aims at the least possible interference with industrial competition between private persons or groups of persons, and (b) suspicious of a policy of mere regulation, which aims at close surveillance and control of the proceedings of industrial competitors, but would avoid direct initiative in production and direct attempts to level the inequalities of wealth. The leading idea of the socialist is to convert into general benefit what is now the gain of a few. ”

“ The strictest public regulation of trade and industry will probably continue to be that of the state, rather than of the municipality, for local rules can be evaded by migration, the state's only by emigration. But the smaller bodies are likely to display more adventurous initiative; and it is significant that they appear in the imagination nearer to the individual than the state even of a small people can ever appear to its own citizens. ”

“ The borderland between large production and small may be sometimes debateable; and, as soon as the socialistic nationalizing of large production is extended to small, the way is open to the Utopias of communism. Communism is an idea far more utopian than socialism. ”

“ The contributions of the various hands and minds concerned from first to last in the production of a pocket-knife or a pair of trousers would travel over our stage like Banquo's ghostly descendants in a line that seemed to have no ending. What the socialists demand, when they are not declaiming to uncritical sympathizers, is not that a man should have what he makes but that what is made by great capitals or on great estates should be so distributed that it is not engrossed by individuals, but satisfies the wants of as many as possible. ”

“ The attempt to transform all industries by protection has not been made by the English state in these days. It remains broadly true that, since the English state became more democratic (Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884) , its socialism has become more and more of the municipal character. The end in view having more to do with economics than with politics, it mattered little theoretically whether the power exercised was that of the central authority acting directly or the delegated power in the hands of the smaller public bodies. ”

“ This is what Lassalle called the “brazen law of wages,” founded on Ricardo's supposed doctrine that (a) the value of an article that is not a monopoly is determined by its cost in labour, and (b) the wages of labour tend to be simply the necessaries of life. The tendency of the labouring population to increase beyond the means of steady employment is a frequent benefit to the capitalists in the periodic expansions of investment and enterprise, arising in response to new inventions and discoveries. Large business in modern economy swallows up small. ”

“ While among civilized peoples the suffering has on the whole grown less, the influence of socialism has grown greater; and this is largely owing to the efforts made by the best socialists to reason faithfully and collect facts honestly. The remarkable extension of socialism in Germany may be traced in great part to the special circumstances which have made social democracy the chief effective organizer of working men in that country. But modern socialism is not a purely German product. To scientific socialism England, France and Germany have all made contribution. ”