1911 Berry Street Essay: The Reverend Nicholas Paine Gilman

 Socialism is an appropriate subject, I must think, to bring before an audience like this. It is a great scheme for social improvement. Where can one find a body of men more likely to be rationally interested in such a matter than the clergy of the Unitarian Church? From the beginnings of our gospel in this country it has been a gospel for man, a gospel for the actual world, based on reason, respecting human nature and all nature. Building there a doctrine in accord with science and with morality, we have built well, and we have seen the Christian world gradually coming round to our position, Of nature trusts the mind that builds for aye, Convinced that there, there only, she can lay Secure foundations.

Interest in social reform has characterized Unitarianism from the first. Naturally, because of our long interest, we have never been hysterical. As we have believed in reason in religion, so we have believed in reason in reform. Trusting to human nature in constructing our theology, we trust to human nature in laying out our programme of philanthropy and progress. Our ideal is always a realizable ideal: the methods we accept are rational and naturally progressive. The spirit to which we bow is one off airness all around, of justice to all sorts and conditions of men. Every friend of the ideal is, inevitably, a critic of the actual. We of the clergy are professional critics every Sunday, as well as helpers, of mankind. We can therefore sympathize with those who criticise human life sharply. But there is no true criticism which is not, at the same time, appreciation. We have a right, therefore, to criticise the critics, if only we have behind us reason, science, philosophy. If our criticism is scientific, philosophic, above all, reasonable, it will stand. May this spirit characterize this hour!

We are living in a world where capital, the means of production, is mainly private. We are invited by the socialist to transform this world into one wherein all capitals shall be united into one public, non-competing means of production, a collective capital. The modern socialist who thus invites us is, obviously, a severe critic of existing society. He paints a very black picture of the world as it is, and gives us a very rosy view of the world that might he. In the process of reformation human nature might need to undergo great change. Its motives for action might need to be transformed in large degree, and its scale of values might often need to be revised. Great credulity is required to accept the revolutionary socialistic faith. Vast confidence would be necessary to risk the throw upon the productivity of a socialistic regime. This is often called an unbelieving age, but it is in fact an age of Christian Science, of Spiritism, of Socialism: all these make an unprecedented demand upon man’s capacity for belief. This demand is cheerfully met by many an optimistic soul, for whom facts have few terrors and strict reasoning no attractions. But the critical spirit invoked against the present order by the socialist, with the utmost harshness and lack of proportion, may turn and attack those who raise it so bitterly. Only a small part, probably, of the keenness and acerbity which they display would suffice to destroy their own ideal construction.

Socialism, like pragmatism, is, comparatively speaking, a new name for an old thing. The name is hardly seventy-five year sold: the thing, that is to say, the idea for which the word stands, is as old as Plato. In the world of ideas, socialism is very venerable,—as venerable as discontent is natural. Both the “Lord Christ’s heart and Plato’s brain” have known it. But in the world of external facts it is as yet unborn: many attempts have been made to bring it to the birth, but so far they have been attended with little success. The socialist is, therefore, an impassioned advocate, not of things as they are, but of things as they are not:he is an orator of the ideal, an ambassador from Utopia. That fair land, never yet realized, has all the attractions of the non-existent, and none of the faults and defects of the actual. Checks may be drawn to any amount on the Bank of Utopia. These who wish to pass them need never be afraid that these checks will be protested on the ground that they have no funds in the bank; but such currency is valid only in the sphere of the ideal. To reach this sphere, so familiar to the imagination, the boldest aviators have not yet flown high enough. Let us try to keep to the solid earth for an hour, in our discussion. I may only remind you that many things need not be said, but may be taken for granted on the part of any one who loves his kind. Those who wish to do simple justice to the society that has the great virtues of having lived many centuries, and of working passably well still, need not get angry with the advocates of untried panaceas. The brute force of the existing is with the conservative: reason will be on their side if they are reasonable.

Modern socialism dates from Karl Marx. It is some seventy years old. It began with the “Communist Manifesto” of1848. Marx’s notable treatise, “Das Kapital” (1867) has been its Bible. Frederick Engels was the Barnabas of this Paul. All preceding socialisms were authoritatively set down by him as “Utopian;”this one is exalted as “scientific,” the highest word of praise in the month of the socialist; while Utopian is to him, as to the Philistine, a synonym for impossible and irrational. The great preachers of the gospel of Utopian socialism were Plato and Sir Thomas More, Saint-Simon and Fourier, with others in recent time. “To all these,” says Engels, “Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason, and justice.” But” absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school.” For all these “pocket versions of the New Jerusalem,” as he called them, Marx held supreme contempt. “To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis. This basis in reality is due to Marx. Two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a science.” (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, by F. Engels, p. 44.)

Let us examine briefly the bases of this scientific socialism. First, let us look at “the materialistic conception of history.” The phrase “the materialistic conception of history” should be discarded in favor of one free from a misleading word. Marx was, in truth, a philosophical materialist; but this fact should not prejudice one against the very important truth in his theory. As Professor Seligman says, in his eminently fair and scientific treatment of the matter, “The Economic Interpretation of History” is the proper phrase for the idea. As Marx gives the definite statement in the third volume of his “Capital”: “It is always the immediate relation of the owner of the conditions of production to the immediate producers—a relation each of whose forms always naturally corresponds to a given stage in the methods and conditions of Labor, and thus in its social productivity—in which we find the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and thus also of the political forms” (III. 2, pp. 324, 325.) Now, “if originality can properly he claimed only for those who not alone formulate a doctrine, but first recognize its importance and its implications, … there is no question,” says Professor Seligman, “that Marx must be recognized as, in the truest sense, the originator of the economic interpretation of history.” He continues: “We understand, then, by the theory of economic interpretation of history, not that all history is to be explained in economic terms alone, but that the chief considerations in human progress are the social considerations, and that the important factor in social change is the economic factor. Economic interpretation of history means, not that the economic relations exert an exclusive influence, but that they exert a preponderant influence, in shaping the progress of society.” For the extreme vigor and ability with which Karl Marx treated this theory he must be ranked high among economists. But his socialism is not bound up with the application of the theory to existing society. History shows us that economic changes take place slowly, as in the case of feudalism advancing into modern society. As Rodbertussaid, correcting one error in Marx’s application of his theory, socialism, if it is to triumph at all, can only triumph in a distant future. The expectation of a cataclysm of our society at some undated time is very naive, and very unscientific, and very contradictory of a true economic interpretation of history.

Again, Marx was certainly in error when he made the chief phenomenon in history, the class struggle, the conflict of classes. No reasonable person can doubt the existence of class-conflict in our day. One great strike is sad proof enough of its reality. Even the peaceful actions of the trade unions are a steady reminder of the probability of long-continued class struggle. But it is altogether untrue to fact to make the conflict of classes the one important matter in the economic interpretation of history, as Marx proceeded to do. The co-operation of employer and employee is a far more important and constant factor in the history of civilization, and this co-operation is steadily becoming more steadfast and unbroken, as methods of industrial peace are being perfected all over the world. An irreconcilable conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat belongs only to the Hegelian dialectic, which pervades so much of Marxian socialism. This dialectic is the source and reason of its simplicity and clear-cut antagonisms. The workman represents the thesis of the always developing idea; the capitalist represents the antithesis; the synthesis will be socialism, the complete triumph of the proletariat. Now the multiplicity and complexity of the actual world are entirely missed by such philosophy. Lines of division and union, instead of being few and broad, are very many and very intricate: the classes are variously made up on the different lines.

When one reads the literature of socialism, nothing is more striking than the monotony of its all-too-simple division of the world of man into two classes only, the poor and the rich, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But look around you here in America, and see how little this clear-cut division is true to the complexity of the actual situation. Every degree of poverty is here, every degree of wealth is here, and there is no such thing existing as a union of all those who have against all those who have not. There is constant movement upward and downward, the vast number of changes being from poverty to possession, as, e. g., the swarms of immigrants are assimilated and become propertied Americans. Marx’s Hegelian formula gives way, in this Darwinian evolutionary world, to a complexity and diversity which find no real recognition in “Das Kapital.” The result is class-conflict here and there, now and then; but, on the whole great field of our,class union, class co-operation.

In this country more than in any other socialism must go to school to democracy, not to class, but to Demos, if it is to make any headway. Democracy is over a hundred years old here. Socialism has scarcely cut its eye-teeth. This tuition is likely to be severe and unrelenting. The distinction is at once to be made between the social programme and the democratic programme of the social-democratic party of Germany. In their list of demands to be made of the present state they ask for universal suffrage, a two-year term for representatives, payment for representatives, local government, the rights of free speech and of public meeting, free schools, and numerous other privileges which have long been realities with us. Other demands made in the standard programme of Erfurt, such as direct legislation, woman suffrage, the income tax, the eight-hour day, are being debated among us; and the decision will be made by a majority of the voters, fairly counted, as they do not count them in Prussia. We are familiar with the obstacles and difficulties encountered by any proposed reform in the <st1:country-regionw:st=”on”>United States</st1:country-regionw:st=”on”>.Each has to meet the need of long discussion and the probability of much variation in the popular mind from time to time. But the substantial methods which democracy has here tried and approved for more than a hundred years will long continue, and the fundamental principles of which the social democrat demands the recognition will be thoroughly tested by the reason of the whole public. We do not need instruction from the socialists how to run a democratic state. But we can safely say, after a hundred years and more of experience with democracy, that socialism is not competent to teach us with authority the fundamental principles of government. Socialism is raw and untrained in the art of doing things. If the world is coming round to democracy, as we believe, all the more confidently do we assert that socialism must carefully go to school to it.

In every scheme of economics the conception of value is central. What is the source of value? Adam Smith answered, “Labor,” and he held to this view throughout his great treatise, though with some modifications. Ricardo, his great successor as an economist, held the same general view, but with essential modifications; which have been well stated by Professor Marshall and Professor Conner, the latest editor of Ricardo. “When he [Ricardo] speaks of Labor with a capital, including under it the exertion of capital, they [modern socialistic schools] speak of labor with a small initial, meaning plain toil, often plain manual toil. When he introduces the important modifications consequent no alterations in the Standard of Comfort, into the law of wages, they omit the modifications, and often cite his authority to justify what he denied…. The modern socialistic schools, we are told, base themselves on Ricardo. It is quite true. They do, and they do so justly, we are assured by writers who ought to know better. As a matter of fact, this claim is based on a series of misunderstandings”(Conner, p. lvii, I.)

Marx’s demonstration that value is due to labor begins with the statement that, when any two commodities are exchanged, this shows that there is in them a third something which the two commodities possess in common. Using his dialectic method of straining out all other properties, he finds only one common property left, that both are the products of labor. The broad proposition is that “the magnitude of value contained in a commodity is measured by the quantity of abstract human labor embodied in it, and this quantity is measured again by the duration of the effort.” Now, in the search for the common quality which is the cause of value, Marx begins, as Böhm-Bawerk says, by carefully putting into the sieve only “those exchangeable things which contain the property which he desires finally to sift out as a common factor. . . . He acts as one who urgently desiring to bring a white ball out of the urn takes care to secure this result by putting in white balls only.” He limits his inquiries to commodities, and “adopts, without explicit warning, a definition of commodities which includes only products of labor and excludes virgin soil, natural meadows, and all other gifts of nature.” But, passing over this, we know that goods upon which very different amounts of labor have been spent have the same price. So Marx, to meet this objection, declares that the labor, which is the cause of value is “not the actual effort put forth by any specific individual, but a homogeneous funded quantity, socially necessary labor, the labor required under normal conditions of skill, intensity, and up-to-date appliances.” The unit in this homogeneous fund is a quantum of unskilled labor, simply average labor, the labor power, which on the average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every individual. Skilled labor counts only as multiplied “simple labor.” Without quoting here any of the economists who object to this extraordinary statement, it may be enough to say that abstract human labor is a thing with which most people may safely be said to have no acquaintance, while the “actual effort put forth by a specific individual,” which Marx rejects, is precisely what the ordinary man means by labor. It does not require so keen a mind as Böhm-Bawerk’s to detect the metaphysical juggling which Marx here practices. His “homogeneous funded quantity” exists nowhere, outside of the sophistical pages of “DasKapital.” It is not, you see, the amount of labor actually put into a commodity that makes its value, but the amount of “socially necessary labor.” If one stupid man takes a day to make a chair of wood and a capable man makes three in the same time, Marx says only one-third of a day’s work is “socially necessary,” shifting the whole matter of the determination of value upon society. The fact is, of course, that the amount of labor used in making the chair is only one item in the account: the amount of intelligence is another item—the amount not of work of hand, but skill of mind.

Here, as elsewhere, the socialist disciple will point out that Marx says, or implies, precisely the opposite thing on another page. This is true, and it marks a constant habit of his mind. On scarcely any point has he failed to assume directly contradictory positions: the only thing the economist can do is to take the most frequent, the most emphatic assertions on a given point, and get what harmony he can out of them. Obviously, the proof of such a statement as this would be out of place in an address like this. Be it enough for me to say that here is the most common of objection on the part of the economists. Having assumed an indefensible definition of value as due to labor only, Marx shifts from one line of defence to another, usually without warning. If labor is the cause of value, where does society come in with its “socially necessary” judgment? Society is to pass this judgment, and this judgment is not an ascertainment of how many hours men actually spend on a job or a commodity, but a statement of society’s own feelings as to the necessity or desirability of the thing; that is to say, its utility.

Utility Marx has ruled out; but now he brings it in by the side door, raising a good deal of metaphysical dust to cover the transaction, telling us, e. g., that the value of each single yard of linen cloth “is the materialized form of the same definite and socially fixed quantity of homogeneous human labor.” “Homogeneous human labor,”—’tisa fine phrase; but what can it mean, except that all human effort is reducible to a statement, in hours or days, of simple muscular exertion? So the labor of Raphael on his Sistine Madonna is just so many times that of the hod-carrier on the palace which holds it! This being conceded, Marx has to answer only two demands made upon him by the inquisitive mind. How many times is the labor of the artist superior to that of the workman? And how do you ascertain their proportions scientifically? To such reasonable inquiries, Marx replies, in substance, “Society determines how much ‘socially necessary’ labor goes into each work.” The plain man will be content to call this pure claptrap. In his innocence he will say that valuation is a social judgment; that society recognizes the general importance of the amount of labor of hand or head spent upon a commodity as a factor in fixing its price, but that this is far from being the only factor; and, as for human labor being homogeneous, it is highly heterogeneous, and the higher forms are not capable of being stated in terms of day labor on the street. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” differs in kind from the corn and potatoes of the ordinary farmer. How many days’ labor in bricklaying can be called equal to one day’s work of the Chief Justice of the United States in writing opinions?

But, says the Marxian, labor is not labor except when applied to making a useful object in the quantity required by society. “This,” says Prof. O. D. Skelton, in his very clever “Critical Analysis of Socialism,” recently issued, “is as though one should assert that the air is the sole factor in the growth of a tree, and afterwards hedge by explaining that air is not air unless certain conditions of soil and sunshine be present.” It is not uncommon, one may say here, for the enthusiastic disciple of Marx to speak of him as on a par with Darwin. If Darwin had had as little success in converting naturalists to “natural selection” as Marx has had in converting the economists to his doctrine of value and surplus-value, the comparison would be more striking. “The modern Aristotle” is another socialistic judgment on Marx, but, as some one has said, “the modern Thomas Aquinas” would be much more appropriate, in view of Marx’s scholastic methods and his super-subtlety in defining what is plain and his neglect of much that is important and real. “Das Kapital” is a work of great ability; but its atmosphere is that of the British Museum, where it was written, far more than of the farm or the factory. The practically unanimous voice of the economists of the world rejects the whole theoretic basis of so-called “Scientific Socialism.”

On the side of theory the standing of so-called “Scientific Socialism” with the leading economists of today, who represent the only science in question, is a lack of standing. The manner in which the ablest and most candid of them speak of it may be seen in quotations, which I must make brief, from two or three. Prof. Alfred Marshall is thefore most of English economists today. In his unfinished “Principles of Economics” he thus speaks of the “surplus value” doctrine of Marx, which Engels declared to be his second great contribution to Scientific Socialism (pp. 630-631): Marx and his followers argue “that labor always produces a surplus above its wages, and the weal and tear of capital used in aiding it; and that the wrong done to labor lies in the exploitation of this surplus by others. But this assumption that the whole of this surplus is the product of labor already takes for granted what they ultimately profess to prove by it; they make no attempt to prove it, and it is not true. It is not true that the spinning of yarn in a factory, after allowance has been made for the wear and tear of the machinery, is the product of the labor of the operatives. It is the product of their labor (together with that of the employer and subordinate managers) and of the Capital; and that Capital itself is the product of labor and waiting; and therefore, the spinning is the product of labor (of many kinds), and of waiting…. The strength of Rodbertus’ and Marx’s sympathies with suffering must always command our respect; but what they regarded as the scientific foundations of their practical proposals appears to belittle more than a series of arguments in a circle to the effect that there is no economic justification for interest, while that result has been all along latent in their premises; though in the case of Marx, it was shrouded by the mysterious Hegelian phrases with which, to us his own phrase, he ‘coquetted.’

I will quote Prof. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, thefamous Austrian economist, a little more fully. Marx, he says, “has not proved his fundamental proposition that labor alone governs exchange relations either objectively from the external, tangible, objective world of facts, with which, on the contrary, they are in opposition; or subjectively, from the motive of the exchanging parties; but he gives it to the world in the form of an abortive dialectic, more arbitrary and untrue to facts than has probably ever before been known in the history of our science” (“Karl Marx and the Close of his System,” p. 216.) “What will be the final judgment of the world? Of that I have no manner of doubt. The Marxian system has a past and a present, but no abiding future. Of all sorts of scientific systems those which, like the Marxian system, are based on a hollow dialectic, are most surely doomed. A clever dialectic may make a temporary impression en the human mind, but cannot make a lasting one. In the long run, facts and the secure linking of causes and effects win the day. In the domain of natural science, such a work as Marx’s would even now be impossible. Socialism will certainly not be overthrown with the Marxian system, neither practical nor theoretic Socialism. As there was a Socialism before Marx, so there will be one after him. Marx will retain a permanent place in the history of the social sciences for the same reasons, and with the same mixture of positive and negative merits as his prototype, Hegel. Both of them were philosophical geniuses. Both of them, each in his own domain, had an enormous influence upon the thought and feeling of whole generations, one might almost say upon the spirit of the age; the specific theoretical work of each was a most ingeniously conceived structure built up by a magical power of combination, of numerous storeys of thought held together by a marvellous mental grasp, but—a house of cards” (Ibid., pp. 220-221 ) .<

Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, perhaps our ablest living American economist, certainly one of the fairest-minded of them, in his treatment of socialism thus sums up: “The economic theory of ‘scientific socialism’, as we have seen, is completely erroneous. It starts out with the defective labor theory of value; it unjustifiably restricts labor to manual labor; it misconceives the theory of profits; and it erects into a veritable fetish the doctrine of class-conflict.” “Socialism as a movement, however,” he adds, like Professor Böhm-Bawerk,” is not bound up with any such• scientific or unscientific theories. Practical discontent, not scientific formulae, has engendered modern socialism. To Lasalle, and not to Marx, must be ascribed the real paternity of socialism, as a practical movement” (“Principles of Economics,” first ed., PP. 561-562.)

The case, then, for Marxian socialism, which is socialism distinctively, stands in brief thus. It is largely a closet-philosophy, drawn not from study of real life, but from a vicious dialectic. It omits factors in value which are important, and hence it distorts and misrepresents the actual situation. Every now and then it comes into fatal collision with ordinary effort. It mistakes the nature of profits. It omits in its rewards the all-important employer, or entrepreneur, and gives to manual labor a primacy which in the real world it never has held. Its sympathies for the poor are strong, but its sense of justice for all others is very deficient. In a word, it is a theory forced upon facts, not a theory drawn from them. It is not strange, therefore, that acute observers consider the days of Marxian socialism numbered.

In Germany whether the Social-Democratic party shall split in a few years or not is problematical; but Americans, who have observed our own recent politics, cannot consider the future of the socialist “stand-patters” brilliant. The German insurgents against: the party creed are well led by strong men: a minority of80 against 289 in the last Congress at Magdeburgis a body not to be despised. It represents the feeling and thought of South Germany, and may safely be taken as the spokesman of the future. These German revisionists are at one with the Fabians of England, the Moderates of Italy, Holland, and France: they are the party of “animated moderation” in the socialism of the future. They will be the majority of the party in time, and their lines of agreement with radical reforms will be plainer and plainer as the days go by. Marxianism, as a whole, may be said to have much of the imposing nature of a logical system. At the least, it makes a great showing of logical force and consistency. This showing does not satisfy the experts in economics or politics, while it seems to satisfy the multitude. The consensus of the incompetent is with the socialist majority, they may well claim. But, as I have said, socialists will have to learn a great deal from democracy in this country and in England. An occasional mayor is elected here as a rebuke to both the national parties, going through our masquerade of national politics in municipal elections. In two or three years he is dropped, and the party appears no more in that place. As a national party, the socialists of the United States, in 1908, made the small gain of 4 per cent. on their vote of 1904. They elected an able man, Victor L. Berger, as a representative from Milwaukee. He, by the way, is a strong revisionist, and it is not probable that he will play the ridiculous part of refusing to vote appropriations in Congress after the manner of the orthodox socialists in Germany .In elections other than national in our country, in the “off-years, “the socialists will probably throw a larger vote than in the Presidential years. But students of American politics will be very much surprised if any third party obtains a permanent success in our country, so wedded to the two-party system. Third parties come and go with us; but they do not succeed in permanently dispossessing either of the other two. We have had our Grangers and our Farmers’ Alliances, calling for government ownership of all means of public communication and transportation, for twenty years or more. We have had our Populists, but these have gone as they came, many of their ideas surviving. It would not be strange if the socialists, as a national party, do likewise intime.

Germany, of course, is the country to which we most commonly look to form an idea of the probable future of socialism. We have to bear in mind that it is a Social-Democratic party which is there in question. A few words first about the facts of recent elections. In1903 the party threw something more than three millions of votes, an increase of 43 per cent. over the preceding election. In 1907 it threw a little over three and a quarter millions, an increase of 8.2 per cent. over 1903. The socialist vote in 1903 was 31.7 per cent. of the whole vote. In 1907 it was 29per cent. Absolutely, and relatively to the population, there was a gain, though not on such a scale as before; but, in spite of the larger vote in 1907,they retained but 40 out of the 79 seats which they held in the previous Reichstag. This was due to the very antiquated and unfair electoral system of Prussia. In the last three years, in the by-elections, the socialists have gained twelve members, making 52 seats they now hold. Rebel had confidently predicted for1907 a vote of four millions and an increase of seats from 79 to 100. The chief reasons for the slightness of the gain on the popular vote were two, says Mr. William Harbutt Dawson in his able work on “The Evolution of Modern Germany” (1908.) (Mr. Dawson is a veteran student of German conditions, concerning which he has written some seven authoritative works. Especially upon socialism in that country is he first-class, impartial authority.) One cause of the comparative set-back was the greater unity which prevailed among the opponents of socialism. The middle classes, which had been apathetic, awoke, believing that they had been allowing socialism to become too strong. In 1907the middle classes, therefore, combined against socialism, with the results seen. Mr. Dawson repeats in his latest volume an earlier forecast, which he has seen no reason to change: “The time will come when the adherents of Social Democracy will no longer be contented with purely theoretical propagandism…. The transformation of the State and society according to the patterns prepared by Marx and Lasalle, by Bebel and Liebknecht, is not to be thought of. Even did the Socialists attain, not only in the Imperial Diet, but in every State Legislature, a representation fully equal to their electoral strength, they would always be at the mercy of a combination of the other parties, every one of them bound, in spite of the widest differences in political theories, to the maintenance of the present social order. For it is not true that the possibilities of the growth of Socialism in Germany are indefinite. In general its converts will, in the future, as in the past, be restricted to the laboring classes. And even from these two great deductions must be made. In the first place, the Roman Catholics, who form a third of the population of the country, may safely be left out of account; and in the second place, the rural laborers will never be wholly won over to Socialism, however great the conquests possible in that, as yet, almost unexplored ground. Thus in the Legislature the Social-Democrats can never become a majority party.”

The second cause of the halt in the high tide of socialist success in Germany is the lessened unity among the socialists themselves. This is shown in the increasing numbers who have turned their backs on the orthodox creed of the party. “Almost without exception,” says Mr. Dawson, “the literary spokesmen of Social Democracy agree that the last elections have entirely shattered the entire system of Socialist dogma, so far as the middle classes are concerned.” It has been a favorite prophecy from Marx down that modern society steadily tends to become divided into only two classes, the few rich, always growing richer, and the many poor, always growing poorer. But there has been growing up in flat contradiction of this prophecy a middle class drawn from the laboring class, and this class, as the latest election showed, holds the balance of political power. As a well-known socialist wrote: “The disappointment at the result is nothing else than disappointment that the view hitherto dominant in Socialist circles as to the evolution of the proletariat and the middle class was a fallacious one. The theory of social impoverishment and economic catastrophe has had to be abandoned. Its more tenacious defenders have even today not admitted it, but they conceal their retreat behind all sorts of phrases. The fact is, nevertheless, incontrovertible, that this view has gone the way of all outlived theories, and has no longer an open representative in our party. We have, however, hitherto feared to draw thelogical consequences from the altered situation. The attempt is still made to build up our movement on the proved fallacy that an ever-increasing part of the population is cast into the proletariat, to become wage-earners; that the sum-total of misery increases, at least relatively; that the middle class is gradually disappearing…. Yet all the time we see a new and numerous middleclass growing up.” The right of this class to exist, one might say, is denied by the Social Democracy, but still it exists. “We have shown the small peasant that, under the pressure of the large estates, he will be crushed.” Yet he is not crushed: “the small farmers have greatly increased and economically have strengthened their position. The small peasant is better off today than ten or fifteen years ago.” The new middle classis estimated at five and a half millions, counting in it “all the peasants, tradesmen, artisans, foremen, the minor civil and municipal servants, teachers, and other professional men who have, during the past two decades, emerged from the wage-earning class, by an evolution which is still in full operation today.” Yet this class “has been absolutely ignored by the Social Democracy,” which has identified its triumph with the destruction of the small middle class. “The influences which are slowly but surely diminishing the sum and degree of poverty” cannot be ignored, and “this hope of Socialism is tacitly regarded as lost.”

A further and powerful cause of the temporary eclipse of German socialism in 1907 was the comparative barrenness of its parliamentary activity. “No political party in Germany is so strong numerically as the Social Democratic party, yet intrinsically none is so weak, and in practical influence none is so ineffectual. The reason is that, throughout the whole of its history, the party has been trying to achieve positive results by negative means.” “The fact is that Socialism does not know and has never known what it wants. Challenged to affirm a positive State policy, it takes refuge in phrases, or flatly denies its obligation to contemplate the practical realization of its own theories. If a reason be sought for this barrenness, the petrified dogmas and programme which lie so heavily upon the party will furnish all the explanation that is needful” (Dawson.) Said HerrParvus: “Our party forms a rich assortment of the most various opinions which are in contradiction to our programme. The one and indivisible Socialist party is made up of a mass of schools and directions, for the most part incoherent and incompatible, and they are only kept together by a common antagonism to individualistic Capitalism. Officially and before the world, the party still rests on the theories of Marx and the programmes which have been drawn up in accordance with them. Yet opposed to this superstitious reverence for hoary dogma is an energetic body of young revisionists and outspoken rebels.”

On one point, of the first political importance, there is an open break between these revisionists and the main body of the socialist “stand-patters,” to give them an American name. The Socialist Congress has voted repeatedly in late years that socialist members of the legislature shall not “vote the budget,”—that is, help to pass appropriation bills,—as this would he equivalent to indorsing the existing system. The inconsistency of such an order with voting, holding seats, and various other acts of all the socialists, is very evident. In spite of this order, however, the socialist deputies in Bavaria,Würtemberg, and Baden persist in voting the budget. At the latest Congress held in Magdeburg,Sept. 10-24, 1910, resolutions of practical expulsion from the party for such sinners, if they continue to sin, were voted by a large majority. But the undaunted delegates from these countries declared that they should hereafter act as before, according to their own best judgment. The Socialists of South Germany are much more moderate than those of the North, and they live on pleasant terms with their governments. As Mr. Dawson writes:-

“It is not likely, that the uncompromising attitude which has doomed the party to barrenness and failure in the past will long he allowed to continue, . . . but the concessions which will have to be made will weaken some of the characteristics of Socialism which are most pernicious in the eyes of the burgher parties. An alliance between Radicalism and Social Democracy no longer seems inconceivable today.” “Looking to the immediate future, therefore, it seems less likely that the existing divisions within the Socialist ranks upon questions of doctrine and policy will lead to disintegration, than that they will be resolved by such modifications in the party’s attitude toward questions of practical politics as will facilitate action with other groups equally interested in the welfare of the people. No renunciation of ultimate aims will be required of the idealists of the party, but they will probably see the wisdom of joining their ‘realist’ colleagues in concentrating attention upon reforms realizable in the present, and making each of these a starting-point for new effort” (Evolution of Modern Germany, p.466.)

German socialism has passed through various stages of evolution toward a rational and energetic political party, and there is no good reason for supposing that the evolution has ended. In 1848 Marx and Engels called upon the proletarians of all countries to unite. “The Communists seek not to conceal their views and purposes. They declare openly that their aims can be attained only by a violent overthrow of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a counter-revolution. The proletariat have nothing to lose except their chains they have a world to gain.” We may allow Mr. Spargo, writing in 1909, to claim that these words, written in the revolutionary year 1848, meant only a peaceful revolution. Sixty years ago to the men of 1848, there was probably more blood and iron in them. However that may be, the new conditions of 1871 made armed revolution very unwise. The grant of universal suffrage in 1871 called for new tactics, for new weapons. Twenty years later the Erfurt Congress declared that the Social Democratic party is “henceforth a political and parliamentary party.” A future revolution was discountenanced, as well as violent revolution in the past; and the socialist State is to evolve gradually, from the present State. Marx abandoned the “iron law of wages,” and Liebknecht called it “unscientific” in the Halle Congress of 1890.Referring in 1900 to the doctrine, “Labor is the source of all wealth,” Bebel says, “We know better now.” This process of learning to know better continues steadily in the field of German socialism: as Bebel says, the party has its moultings. It has had them in the past, and it will have them in the future. Enough, perhaps too much, of Marxian socialism. Let those who will read the recent crushing analyses of the doctrines by Professor Skelton and by Professor Simkhovich (in the Political Science Quarterly for 1908-09.)

But, as there was socialism before Marx, sot here will be socialism after his day is gone by. State socialism, as they call it in Germany, is one of the forms which seem most likely to continue. This is not the supersession of all private capital and private business, but the extension of the sphere of the State in various directions. Again, we naturally think of Germany first in this connection. Bismarck, following out the lines of the paternal Prussian State, introduced the great German system of insurance against sickness, accident, and old age. The funds providing against these constant ills of man do not supersede the private employer. He, as well as the workman himself, contributes in various proportions to these purposes. In Germany you see the State railroad, in many respects admirably managed, and the State telegraph system. It is, of course, simply a matter of comparative fitness to our American conditions whether we, too, shall have a parcel-post, a telegraph service, and a telephone service carried on by the nation or the city. While the parcel-post is a very natural extension of the mail service, the size of our country militates against a national telegraph or telephone service, and it would seem prohibitory of a national railway service. In all these directions the vast increase necessary in the number of the government employees to carry out such plans would be a matter of the first importance to consider. It would be a dangerous factor in future politics unless civil service reform methods should become thoroughly rooted in our national life. Regulation of a strict kind of all public utility services by the government, with private operation, appears at present to be the natural alternative: When New Zealand is named, we at once see that the main question to consider is not that of a difference of race,—for New Zealand is thoroughly English,—but a vast difference of size. Would State insurance of all kinds work well here? That does not seem to be a matter within close range at present, but it is by no means impossible in the distant future, as a matter for our separate Commonwealths. If Mr. Lloyd George makes a brilliant success of his new plans, the question might become a live one over here. The States of our nation, in my opinion, would do wisely to experiment carefully and soon with the legal regulation of labor disputes,—a matter strangely outside of law altogether too much by us, so far. The State might well raise the general level of all competition by regulations which would apply to railroads and other public utilities. The State can moralize their labor relationships, as it has moralized certain fields of trade and manufacture already. In State regulation is a prodigious field of extension of State activity, far to he preferred to State ownership.

It seems to me very probable that here, as in Germany, the socialists will lose most of their strength to some radical reform party, each step to he taken deliberately by one of our two great parties, which will profit or will suffer by the results, according to its wisdom.

Marxian socialism is the most formidable attempt yet made to establish socialism on a foundation of logic and science. Compared with it, all other recent systems of socialism lack foundation and backbone. They spring out of a warm heart for the sorrows of man, but in their constructive work they lack connection with fact, and justice to the men who represent the established order’ at its best is conspicuously absent. Most of our popular socialists do not suffer from the “intolerable disease of thought.” An epigrammatic clergyman of our body, in the last half of the last century, used to say that Radicalism had two great friends, Death and Thought. They are the two great enemies of socialism. Death is gradually removing the pillars of the old orthodox socialism, and Thought is destroying the validity of their so-called scientific claims. The places of Bebel and Liebknecht will be poorly supplied by such men as H. C. Wells and John Spargo, with all their merits. These agreeable writers have no powerful and consistent scheme to offer us, and they cannot play fast-and-loose for long with the logic of the accepted order. It is in vain for one to attempt to smuggle under Marx’s cloak the opportunism which Marx rejected, or for another to slip gradually away from all that is most characteristic of reasoned socialism, and retain the name. Socialism, for most people who lightly take the name nowadays, means nothing tangible or expressible. You read Mr. Wells’ books, for example, with much sympathy. After you have read several of them, you are told that the news is that he is no longer a socialist, but has left even the Fabians! Such is the latest phase of one who has been telling us that our economic system might become “almost infinitely more productive than it is, if we took the socialist path.”! Pleased with the poetry of socialism (in Rev. C. R.Brown’s excellent antithesis), you call yourself, perhaps, a Christian socialist, forgetting that its prose has to reckon with the economists and to answer the hard question, “Who shall pay the bills of socialism?” Abroad, socialism has had occasionally to reckon with the acceptance of Power and Responsibility in high places by its members. But John Burns and M. Miller and soon cease to be orthodox. Their statesmanship soon swallows, up their extreme socialistic theories.

Moderation, then! I would suggest to all who commend to us the historic example of our Abolitionists, that the actual remedy for slavery was not found by them. History should be read more wisely. A truer analogy might say that, as the Abolitionists did not abolish slavery, so the socialists will not abolish capitalism. Instead of taking a name which marks a theory already decadent and discredited among thinking men, let our philanthropists consider the vast possibilities of persistent social reform. It is a process always needed, never ended,—a work demanding all our wisdom, all our patience, all our discrimination, all our zeal, all our consecration. Many are the special problems of our present day. Each of us will do his best by turning his hand, by preference, to a single task instead of simply shouting one remedy for all our ills. Socialism is an exploded cure-all, foreign to our genius as a people, not taught by our past, not indicated as our probable future. An indication of its probable future in our country may be seen by the vote taken by the socialists in 1908 to drop the public ownership of land from its programme. I believe in opportunism, but not in such opportunism, for the simple purpose of catching votes. A party capable of taking such action as this just mentioned ought to write over its shop-windows the sign, “Our convictions altered while you wait.”

Individualism is but the name of one tendency in our life. In our present civilization we are all socialists when Together in the word of the hour. So we are all individualists when the single soul is called to do its best. As our sound psychologists tell us, society is as unreal as the individual: both are but aspects of the one reality, human life. Let us cease, then, to contend about partial theories, and unite on the common life, which needs all the wealth of our secular power, all the force of our common sense, the strength of our general mind, the power of our entire nature. The right way is the way of natural evolution, which we are largely following now. Let us seek to moralize the rich, that they may increase the Common wealth by fair taxes and by generous gifts. Let us try to moralize the poor out of the worship of wealth and into the fuller practice of cooperation. Let us all increase fraternity, while retaining liberty. More of humane interest, more of the brotherly touch, more of reasonableness! So shall we reach and practice the enduring individualism and the persistent socialism that are but two aspects of man thoroughly socialized.