Socialist

“ Long before there was what can be called a Socialist movement, there were men groping after the Socialist plan, examining society with lanterns lit from the lamp of Socialism, making demands which were partial discoveries of Socialism itself, in the same way that many pioneers set foot on America before America itself was explored. ”

“ Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle, may be anything else, but it is not socialism. ”

“ Every one who complained of social inequalities, every dreamer of social Utopias, was called a Socialist. The enthusiastic Christian, pleading for a return to the faith and practices of primitive Christianity, and the aggressive atheist, proclaiming religion to be the bulwark of the world's wrongs; the State worshiper, who would extol Law, and spread the net of government over the whole of life, and the iconoclastic Anarchist, who would destroy all forms of social authority, have all alike been dubbed Socialists, by their friends no less than by their opponents. ”

“ True, there is still a good deal of talk about the Social Revolution, and there may be a few Socialists here and there who use the term in the sense I have described; who believe that capitalism will come to a great crisis, that there will be a rising of millions in wrath, a night of fury and agony, and then the sunrise of Brotherhood above the blood-stained valley and the corpse-strewn plain. ”

“ In the defeat or victory of the working class party in this new struggle for freedom lies the defeat or triumph of the common people of all economic groups, as well as the failure or the triumph of popular government. Thus the Socialist Party is the party of the present day revolution, which marks the transition from economic individualism to Socialism, from wage slavery to free co-operation, from capitalist oligarchy to industrial democracy. ”

“ Still, it is but fair to express my belief that it is to the interest of the workers, no less than of the rest of society, that the change to a Socialist state be made as easy and peaceable as possible. Socialists, being human beings and not monsters, naturally desire that the transition to Socialism shall be made with as little friction and pain as possible. ”

“ The Socialist is like a man in a tangled wood, having to turn now to the right, now to the left, and even occasionally to turn back upon his steps, but guided all the time by a compass and a general map of the country he is traversing. ”

“ Generated by capitalist society, heir to the slavery of ages, outcast of civilisation, the working-class will prove a fitting instrument of the movement of history, and by the brain and sinew of Labour will arise the Socialist Commonwealth, a society wherein poverty, privilege, and oppression will find no place, and wherein all may lead a full, free and joyous existence. ”

“ In the course of my work as an agitator (and socialist agitation is the best School of Socialism) I met many sterling socialists who had never been Utopians as I had. They were born fighters, so to speak, and had been full of the class spirit, and fighting the capitalists in the trade-union and elsewhere in every way they could think of, long before they had ever heard of the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth. And these men are among our best and most uncompromising socialists. ”

“ Any action tending to obscure this position, any position keeping the class struggle in the background, is a virtual betrayal of Socialist principles, serving only to confuse the issues in the minds of the workers and to make it more difficult for them to understand their class position and the reasons for it, and to see the road which must be followed if they are to achieve their emancipation—serving only, in brief, to retard the development of their class consciousness. ”

“ Singly we are sand-grains, together we are the simoom. Our great teacher, Moses, was the first Socialist. The legislation of the Old Testament—the land laws, the jubilee regulations, the tender care for the poor, the subordination of the rights of property to the interests of the working-men—all this is pure Socialism! ”

“ For what is the essence of modern Socialism as Marx taught it?—the political independence of Labour. And what is the foremost duty of a Socialist in the class struggle?—to divorce Labour from the parties of the possessing class. ”

“ To understand the effect on the whole socialist movement, one must distinguish clearly the two contrasting types of socialism. It is the curse of the orthodox, or Marxian, type of socialism, that it was "made in Germany." ”

“ Well, it is the political prejudice which in time, and after being hammered into shape and tempered on the anvil of reason, becomes Socialism. Through the work of both the poet and the novelist ran the broad and deep tendency towards democracy, towards social equality and economic justice—that is, towards Socialist change. ”

“ The socialists were revolutionists, inasmuch as they struggled to overthrow the society of the present, and out of the material to build the society of the future. I, too, was a socialist and a revolutionist. ”

“ Thus we have seen during the past century the magnets round which men's minds have centred change again and again and human interests change with them. Political enfranchisement, scientific discovery, the accumulation of wealth, religion have dominated thought, and have created philosophies, outlooks, systems of criticism, motives. Fluctuations in the Socialist movement and a varying emphasis placed upon aspects of the Socialist creed, have marked these changes as the tides mark the varying course of the moon. ”

“ Bearing in mind that the watchword of Socialism is Evolution, not Revolution, and that its battlefield is Parliament, its immediate programme becomes of the utmost importance. In this programme, as in the Socialist theory itself, there are to be found some interesting survivals of a historic past. ”

“ We call this phase of the Socialist movement the utopian phase, meaning by that the pre-scientific phase, when Socialism added to a perfectly sound criticism of the present and a pretty clear insight into the future, methods of reconstruction which were inadequate and unsuitable to society. ”

“ All the more so after the war, the German National Socialist state, which pursued this goal from the beginning, will tirelessly work for the realization of a program that will ultimately lead to a complete elimination of class differences and to the creation of a true socialist community. ”

“ It is in this sense and for these reasons that the Socialist party has formulated in its congresses the rule and aim of its action—international understanding of the workers; political and economic organization of the proletariat as a class party for the conquest of government and the socialization of the means of production and exchange; that is to say, the transformation of capitalist society into a collectivist or communist society. ”

“ It is interesting as a matter of personal experience to note that the strength of Socialism is not found in the slummy and most miserable quarters in towns, but in those quarters upon which the sun of prosperity manages to shine. It is the skilled artisan, the trade unionist, the member of the friendly society, the young workman who reads and thinks, who are the recruits to the army of Socialism. ”

“ We should reach the ideal of the socialist, but not through governmental repression. Government would change its character, and would become the administration of a great co-operative society. It would become merely the agency by which the common property was administered for the common benefit. ”

“ Thus it will be seen that the talk of revolution as a Socialist method is wrong. Revolution can never bring Socialism, because the change which Socialists contemplate is one which will affect every fibre of society, and which must therefore be an organic process. ”

“ It is like a city towards which roads run from all points of the compass—a pilgrims' way for the devout, a trade route for the merchant, a bridle path for the philosopher; and so we have many aspects of Socialism. We have, for instance, the Independent Labour Party approaching it down political pathways, the Christian Socialist section, like the Church Socialist League, approaching from religious quarters, scientific Socialist groups, coming by way of biological or other scientific roads, and soon. ”

“ Many persons who have thought of Socialism as a scheme, the plan of a new social edifice, have been disappointed not to find in all the voluminous writings of Marx any detailed description of such a plan, any forecast of the future. But when they have grasped the fundamental principles of the Marxian system of thought, they realize that it would be absurd to attempt to give detailed specifications of the Socialist state. ”

“ One of the greatest of the difficulties which beset the path of the Socialist is the refusal on the part of his opponents to give an accurate statement of what Socialism means and what the purpose of Socialism is. ”

“ Remembering this, we turn to the writers of the last century and find that our Socialism freely tinges their work. The wells of refreshment of which they drank are those which we frequent. Wordsworth's magnificent sonnet which stands up like the doleful message of an Israelitish prophet: "The world is too much with us," is the vision which the Socialist sees and seeks to guard against. ”

“ I hope we are not going to have that fallacious and sinister doctrine preached to us, also, from the pulpit of Christ Church. Do I understand, Mr. Farrar, that you are a socialist?”
“A Christian socialist, yes,” was the answer. “So far as socialism is in accord with the articles of our religion, with the canons of our Church, and with the message of Jesus Christ, I am a socialist. I believe, gentlemen, that socialism is coming, and that eventually it will be the policy of the state. ”

“ Only America, with its wide unsettled plains, its slack social organisation and untrammelled freedom, was in a position to offer even a temporary success to utopianism. The political movement in Europe impinged upon the Socialist movement, changed its character, hardened its will, and, for the time being, narrowed its vision. What was to have been a movement joined by all classes of society led by sweet reason and austere justice, became an agitation of the suffering proletariat [1] class, conscious of its wrongs and clamant for its rights, determined to exercise its power. ”

“ The Socialist movement will return to idealism, for, though sometimes an unrecognised power, idealism has always existed in Socialism. But in Marx's time the great need was to organise the movement and engraft it upon the mind of the masses, to give it political form, to gather the democracy under its banners and start them on their march. ”

“ We will try to discover what the Socialist movement is doing in politics, how much of theory has been merged in political practice, what its everyday parliamentary drudgery is, and, if possible, to tell in what direction the movement is tending. ”

“ In short, here we have the Socialist political ideal working itself from theory into reality through class struggle. But there is the usual important modification of the Marxian conditions; viz., the liberal bourgeois prove a potent ally to the Socialists in the press and on the floor of the Chamber of Representatives. ”

“ But when the passions and longing they awaken, the principles and motives they proclaim, the rules and methods they demand, are all gathered together and systematised as a guide for practical politics and an impulse for immediate activity, it is Socialism which they create and encourage as their economic environment—Socialism, the revolt against individualist commercialism, the hypothesis from which the future organisation of society is to be built up, the ideal city to which the feet of men seeking a rational life and a moral community must always wander. ”

“ If you think the aims and endeavors of the Socialists deserve your hatred, try to crush them; if, on the contrary, you are convinced, that they are good, that the Socialists endeavor to promote the happiness and welfare of mankind, join them! And if you do not like to act publicly, help them secretly, Try to propagate their principles among your acquaintances, explaining them in your intercourse, destroying the falsehoods brought forth against them. Tell them, that Socialism is the true and only party of the working people. ”

“ By this, the long-wished-for opportunity was offered to "True Socialism" of confronting the political movement with the socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. ”

“ A Socialist? Yes. Once on a time more radical than now, when the more universal tendencies have entered in, he still believes in the principles of Socialism, as do so many of the "young," all over Europe. ”

“ Socialism, then, in the modern, scientific sense, is a theory of social evolution. Its hopes for the future rest, not upon the genius of some Utopia-builder, but upon the inherent forces of historical development. The Socialist state will never be realized except as the result of economic necessity, the culmination of successive epochs of industrial evolution. ”

“ As the Socialist movement has outgrown the influence of the early Utopians, its adherents have abandoned the habit of speculating upon the practical application of Socialist principles in future society. The formulation of schemes, more or less detailed, has given place to firm insistence that Socialism must be regarded as a principle, namely, the efficient organization of wealth production and distribution to the end that the exploitation of the wealth producers by a privileged class may be rendered impossible. ”