The following essay was written by one of the (then) not-ready-for-prime-time American economists, John Bates Clark, in his early thirties when he was teaching political economy and history at Carleton College in Northridge, Minnesota where (and when) Thorstein Veblen and his siblings were undergraduates. Political economy was a course in the senior year curriculum. I was reading this essay to get a sense of what the word “socialism” would have meant to a well-read, educated American back when Rutherford B. Hayes was President and still eight years before an English translation of the first volume of Marx’s Capital was to appear.
John Bates Clark was of that founding generation of American academic economists trained-in-Germany, so he was of course completely familiar with, indeed he reflects the German debates of where to draw the line between individualism and socialism in economic affairs and between reform and revolution in political affairs. Here are three teasers from Clark’s essay that follows:
“The intelligent attitude of the social philosopher is, therefore, that of recognizing the general direction which social development is taking, but avoiding that mental confusion which mistakes the socialistic ideal for an object of immediate practical effort. The most intelligent socialist will be the most zealous opponent of what commonly terms itself socialism.”
“…it is only a question of time when the abuses of overgrown corporations controlling legislatures and making or marring the prosperity of cities and even states, at their sovereign pleasure, shall more than counterbalance the abuses which would arise from their assumption and management by the state.”
“The socialistic ideal itself is valuable, not when it is used to incite men to frantic attempts to reach it, but when, by giving definiteness to their intelligent hopes, it is made to lighten the moderate steps by which only they can expect to approach it.”
The historian wants to be on guard against the all-too-easy glib recognition of patterns and sequences shared by past and present. But this is just a blog that is trying (among other things) to build a convenient on-ramp to the past for the those who have had what they believe to be a full and complete scholarly life without having any need to lug baggage of historical material with them. My point is to have visitors to Economics in the Rear View Mirror read the following essay, not simply to appreciate the humane insights it provides but to read it with the debate (Hope v. Change) between the Democratic presidential contenders of 2016, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in mind. Paul Krugman appears to unleash John-Bates-Clark (implicitly) when he weighs in on Bernie v. Hillary.
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THE NATURE AND PROGRESS OF TRUE SOCIALISM.
John B. Clark
The New Englander and Yale Review, Vol. 38, July, 1879, pp. 565-581.
History has lately been said to move in cycles and epicycles; its phenomena tend to recur, at intervals, in regular succession. An anarchic condition may be followed by despotism, that by democracy, and that, again, by anarchy; yet the second anarchy is not like the first, and when it, in turn, yields to despotism, that also is different from the former despotism. The course of history has been in a circle, but it is a circle whose center is moving. The same phenomena may recur indefinitely; but at each recurrence the whole course of events will have advanced, and the existing condition will be found to have had its parallel, though not its precise duplicate, in some previous condition. There is nothing permanent in history, and there is nothing new. That which is will pass away, and that which will take its place will be like something that has already existed and passed away. History moves, like the earth, in an orbit; but, like the earth, it moves in an orbit the center of which is describing a greater orbit.
That any particular social condition has existed in the past, and has passed away, is no evidence that it will not return, but is rather an evidence that it will return, though in a different form. That socialism existed in the highly developed village-community of the middle ages, and that it existed in a ruder form in antiquity, is, as far as it goes, an evidence that it may appear again, though in a shape adapted to its new surroundings. The earlier cycles of the historic movement are too distant for tracing, and it is impossible to say how many times it may have appeared and disappeared in prehistoric times; but the last cycle may be traced with reasonable distinctness. We have been made familiar, of late, with the village-community of mediaeval times. Beginning at that point, we may trace the economic history of Europe through a series of conditions growing successively less and less socialistic, until we reach the aphelion of the system, the extreme anti-socialistic point, and begin slowly to tend in an opposite direction. I should locate this turning point at a period about a hundred years ago. While Adam Smith was formulating the present system of Political Economy, the world was, in economic matters, at its farthest limit in the direction of individualism, and was about commencing slowly to progress in a socialistic condition.
It is necessary to dissociate from the meaning of the term socialism, as I intend to use it, the signification of lawlessness and violence which is apt to be attached to it. I do not mean by socialism a certain rampant political thing which calls itself by that name, and whose menacing attitude at present is uniting well meaning men against it. The socialism which destroys property and arms itself to resist law is rather socialistic Jacobinism, or communism of the Parisian type. Political socialism, even when moderate and law-abiding, has no right to the exclusive use of the generic term; it is a part only of a very general movement, the signs of which are to be seen in other things than communistic newspapers and Lehr-und Wehr-Vereins.
I mean by socialism, not a doctrine, but a practical movement, tending not to abolish the right of property, but to vest the ownership of it in social organizations, rather than in individuals. The organizations may be private corporations, village-communities, cities, states, or nations, provided only that working men be represented in them. The object of the movement is to secure a distribution of wealth founded on justice, instead of one determined by the actual results of the struggle of competition. Wherever numbers of men unite in the owning of capital, as they already do in the performing of labor, and determine the division of the proceeds by some appeal to a principle of justice, rather than by a general scramble, we have a form of socialism.
The word thus signifies a more highly developed condition of social organization. Within the great organism which we term the state, there are many specific organisms of an industrial character. Such are nearly all our manufactories. These have the marks of high organic development in a minute differentiation of parts; labor is minutely subdivided in these establishments. One man grinds in the ax-factory, and, during his brief lifetime, is not, in economic relations, an independent being, but only a part of the grinding organ of an ax-making creature whose separate atoms are men. All the laborers of the factory, taken collectively, compose an organism which acts as a unit in the making of axes. This ax-making body, however, with its human molecules, is acting in a subordinate capacity—it is hired. As a whole it is serving an employer, and it desires to become independent. The same ambition which prompts the apprentice to leave his master and start in business for himself, is now prompting these organizations of employés to desire a similar promotion. Industrial organisms are seeking what individuals have long been encouraged to seek—emancipation. It is the old struggle for personal independence, translated to a higher plane of organic life.
The modes in which this end is sought are various, and, in so far as the object is realized by any of them, competition is held in abeyance within the organizations, and the division of the product is determined by justice rather than force.
Justice is by no means excluded under the present system. What we term competition is, in practice, subject to such moral limitations that it can be so termed only in a qualified
sense. Moral force, however, now acts only as a restraining influence; it fixes certain limits within which competition is encouraged to operate in determining the distribution of property. Socialism proposes to definitely abandon the competitive principle. If completely realized, as we shall see that it cannot be, it would give to every man, not whatever he might be able to get by force in the industrial arena, but what, in abstract justice, he ought to receive; and moral influence would no longer content itself with prescribing rules, however minute, for the economic gladiators, but would bid them sheath their swords and submit their fortunes to its immediate arbitration. This is ideal socialism, and any actual tendency toward it is practical socialism.
The original force in the movement is moral; mere diversity of interest does not produce permanent social changes. Such diversity of interest always exists where property is to be distributed; but the sense of justice overrules discontent if the distribution is equitable. When a company of thieves are dividing their booty, mere diversity of interest would prompt each one to try to seize the whole of it; but the captain is allowed to divide it into equal shares. The interests of every member of the gang are antagonistic to those of every other; yet there is no outward conflict. In this criminal company the sense of right is sufficiently strong to overrule discontent as long as justice presides over the distribution. Let justice be disregarded, and there will be an uproar. All societies present these phenomena, desires antagonistic, justice as the mediator; it is when the mediation becomes imperfect that social revolutions occur.
If there were not at present something more than a conflict of interest between employers and employed, there would be no thought of reorganizing society. There is such a conflict; but there is behind it a sense of injustice in the distribution of wealth. Singularly enough, there is less disposition to question the existence of the injustice than there is to deny the existence of conflicting interests. We are constantly being told that no intelligent conflict between capitalists and laborers is possible; that their interests are completely identical, and that their normal relation is one of paradisaical harmony. Frequently as this statement is reiterated, the laborers fail to be convinced, and the relation between them and their employers grows, in fact, constantly less paradisaical. There is confusion of thought in prevalent discussions, and the first thing to be done is to analyze the actual relation of capitalists and laborers, and try to remove the confusion.
There is harmony of interest between the two classes in the operation of production; but there is diversity of interest in the operation of distribution. Capitalists and laborers are interested that as much wealth as possible shall be produced, for both are dependent on the product. The mill must be run, or neither owner nor employé can receive anything. When, however, the product is realized, the relation changes; the question is now one of division. The more there is for the owner, the less can go to the men, and here is a source of conflict. The crew of a whaling ship may work with good will until the cargo is brought into port, and then wrangle over their respective shares. They will not go to the length of burning the ship, for they all need it for farther use. Certain limits are thus set to the conflict that arises over the division; but these limits are liable to be broad, and within them the conflict continues.
For clearness of illustration a case has been selected in which production and distribution are separated in time; ordinarily they both go on together, and the relation of employers and employed is, therefore, not an alternation in time from a condition in which their interests harmonize, to one in which they antagonize, but presents a permanent harmony in one respect and a permanent antagonism in another. Both parties are interested in continued and successful production; but in the mere matter of distribution their antagonism of interest is as permanent as their connection. To ignore either side of the relation is unintelligent. If it be incendiary to proclaim only an irrepressible conflict between capital and labor, it is imbecile to reiterate that there is no possible ground of conflict between them, and that actual contests result from ignorance.
While there is no such thing as harmony of interest between participants in any distributing process, there is, fortunately, such a thing as harmony of justice, and if this had been reached or approximated, there would be no need of reforms. It is not merely a sense of unsatisfied want, but a sense of unsatisfied desert, that is prompting men to seek a new mode of distributing wealth.
There are two kinds of distribution, there are good things to be divided when the production is completed, and there are disagreeable things to be shared during the process. After the voyage is over it is oil-barrels that are to be counted and divided, and each man wants as many as possible; during the voyage it is toils and dangers that are to be borne collectively, and each man desires to have as few as possible. In each part of the distributive process there are antagonistic interests which can never be removed, and between which justice only can mediate. Socialism proposes to directly invoke such mediation in both parts of the process; “work according to ability, and compensation according to need,” is the ideal of Louis Blanc. We know that it is an ideal only, and that society cannot reach it; but we ought to know that society may and does tend toward it by many different ways, which, taken collectively, are effecting a sure and healthful reorganization of industrial conditions.
While, at present, the distribution of the product of industry is a more prominent question than the distribution of the labor which secures it, in a completely socialistic condition the reverse would be the case. In a commune the compensation would be the fixed, and the labor the variable element; and here is the chief difficulty of the system. Justice could probably mediate more easily in the distribution of the product than in that of the labor. If pauperism threatens the present system, laziness would threaten an ideally socialistic one. It would be difficult to make men work when their living should no longer depend on it.
The true conception of practical socialism is not that of an ideal scheme, against which this and other objections would be valid, but rather of an actual tendency, showing itself in many specific ways, and working gradually towards an ideal, which unpractical theorists may have grasped and stated, but which would only be put farther out of reach by measures of disorganization and violence. There are socialistic waves on the surface of society; but beneath them there is an undercurrent flowing calmly and resistlessly in the direction of a truer socialism.
Practical socialism is not identical with economic centralization, but it is caused by it. The concentration of industries in a few great establishments produces evils for which practical socialism in some form is the only permanent remedy. Yet these evils may be temporarily alleviated by measures tending to retard this process of concentration. Two classes of remedies for labor troubles are likely to be in operation together, one class resisting and retarding the inevitable growth of centralization, and the other accepting centralization, and rather facilitating it than otherwise, but endeavoring to remove the evils which it occasions. Only the latter are socialistic measures; yet the former need to be considered, not only because they attack similar evils, but because they serve to gain time for the testing of socialistic measures. Haste is the worst enemy of social reform, and whatever gains time for its earlier steps is, therefore, its truest ally.
Of these non-socialistic measures the most important is the prudential and legal restraining of population, advocated by Malthus. So much has been said on this subject that farther discussion is uncalled for here. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the measure. In one way it retards centralization; in another it improves the condition of laborers when centralization has taken place. It will become doubly important as the socialistic tendency proceeds; the absence of such restraints would be fatal to a definitely communistic scheme.
Emigration is next in importance. The great West, as long as it lasts, is the hope of the world, the refuge from economic, as well as from political oppression. Land properly subdivided secures a union of capital and labor, and vests them both in an individual; the diffusion of population tends to individualism. As long as such diffusion is practicable it is preferable to socialism. Small farmers are the best material ever created for the making of orderly and prosperous states. Self-reliant and inseparably committed to the preservation of order, they are the natural enemy of the social agitator—provided, always, they are not too much in debt. Small merchants and artizans are apt to be associated with small farmers, and are next to them in value to a state. Professional men, with limited fields of labor, come in the same category. These are the elements of the ideal New England village, as it existed a hundred years ago, but as it exists no longer in that locality, though its counterpart may be found, in less perfection, at the West. Such a community is the culmination of the principle of individualism, and exhibits its very best results. Long may such communities continue, and far distant be the day when they shall have everywhere yielded to manufacturing and mercantile towns, with their dense population, their poverty, ignorance, and not unnatural discontent. Yet the prospect of such a transformation hangs now like a threatening shadow over the land. Population cannot scatter itself forever. The world is beginning to seem small; emigration from the east and that from the west already meet. The days of diffusion are limited, and those of concentration are at hand.
The present situation has thus its element of discouragement as well as of encouragement; discouraging is the inevitable growth of economic centralization; encouraging is the prospect of removing the evils which that process entails by measures, in a broad sense, socialistics, and of retarding, by other measures, the centralizing process itself. To the broad view the prospect is, on the whole, exceedingly hopeful; but it takes a correct and comprehensive view of the nature of true socialism to make it appear so. The prospect of delaying the concentration of industries is the better from the fact that that process is partly owing to causes within our control; we have hastened it by our own acts. If it be an object to keep our rural communities as long as possible, an effective means of doing so would be to stop making laws, the effect of which is to break them up. Protective tariffs favor manufactures at the expense of agriculture, and therefore hasten centralization. A law of this kind may properly be called “An act to hasten the depopulation of rural villages, to encourage poverty and ignorance, to facilitate the extension of revolutionary ideas, to increase the power of demagogues and to precipitate social tumults.” A moderate free trade policy would have a great many effects not to be discussed here; but one of them would be to prolong the duration of the best forms of individualism.
Such measures, at best, only postpone the great question; they do not settle it, and nothing can settle it except what I have termed, in a broad sense, true socialism. Unknown to social theorists, the way for true socialism has been preparing for a hundred years, and a consideration of these preliminary steps helps to give the true conception of it, as a general development, directed by the Providence which presides over all history.
Among these preliminary changes is the growth of business corporations. These institutions are not beloved by working men, since they are aggregations of capital, but little of which is owned by employés. They mean, to the laborer, an employer without a soul, instead of an employer with one, and they sometimes grind the laborers as few individuals would grind them. Yet the stock company has the capacity easily to become a coöperative institution, and has been its necessary forerunner. It has developed the plan of organization on which coöperative societies may succeed. A slight change in the existing company would make it a coöperative society in complete running order, with its business established and its success assured. Certain foreign experiments in railway management show that the soul need not be entirely wanting in an ordinary corporation, when it is not wanting in its managers; in its present form it may have a rudimentary soul, the presence of which makes a vast difference in the welfare of its laborers. When the corporation shall fairly pass the point in its development where it acquires a fully grown corporate soul, it will become a coöperative society, a beneficent form of true socialism.
Federative governments have paved the way for whatever of political socialism is hopeful and legitimate. The village commune of the middle ages existed at a time when the city or village, and not the individual citizen, was the political unit in the general government. Men were citizens of their towns rather than of their country; and the town, as a whole, was a subject of the king. With the breaking down of city walls and of civic isolation, the citizen became a member of a general society. When the town ceased to be the political unit, it ceased, at the same time, to be the economic unit; it no longer held its lands in common. The partial revival of the federative principle in politics has made it easier to partially restore the socialistic principle in economic matters. There are now cities, states, and nations, each of which acts as an organic unit in many political relations, and the chance of their acting as an organic unit in industry is greatly increased. Enterprises that would be impracticable for a nation may be possible for a state or a city.
We have now to consider institutions that are definitely socialistic. Of these, coöperative societies are first in order, and, thanks to recent experiments and discussions, may be spoken of as something better than visionary schemes. Tried under favorable circumstances, they have become accomplished facts. These circumstances are probably not realized, as yet, over the greater part of this country. The Rochdale association owes its success to conditions not all of which can be found in any part of America. There was a large homogeneous population of manufacturing employés, well organized, and imbued with the teachings of Owen. There was an absence of retail shops that were either good or cheap. There was a universal prevalence of the credit system among dealers; and there was an absence, among them, of that sharp competitive spirit which, in this country, leads merchants to strive to outdo each other in reducing prices to a minimum. The association, therefore, had exceptionally good material in its members and its managers, and had an unusual field for securing custom by the virtual reduction of prices which it was able to offer to its patrons. The absence of these advantages, at present, in this country proves, not that coöperation has no legitimate home here, but rather the opposite; it shows that too sweeping conclusions against the measure should not be drawn from past failures. These failures are accounted for, and their causes are not permanent. The requisite conditions are likely to be realized in the future, and with them will come a higher degree of success for the new principle than we have seen here as yet. That success is to be regarded as assured already, on better evidence than the result of any particular experiment, namely, the general course of events, of which such an experiment is one of many indications, an eddy, that tells the direction of the undercurrent.
The Rochdale store has been called an experiment in “coöperative distribution,” in distinction from manufacturing enterprises, which have been classed as “coöperative production;” an unscientific use of terms, since mercantile industry is productive, like any other. This store represents a peculiar kind of coöperative production. Mr. Mill has pointed out that it is not completely coöperative, in that the managers, clerks, porters, &c., are not paid by shares in the profits, and has suggested that to give them such shares would make the experiment complete. Yet these employés are few in number in proportion to the shareholders and customers, who are the real parties in the experiment. Coöperative stores organized by working men in manufacturing villages are of the nature of mixed coöperation. The essential particularity about them is that men who are employés in one industry become proprietors in another. There is a union of capital and labor in the same hands, but not in the same industry; while the labor of the men is engaged in one enterprise, they accumulate capital and employ it in another. While, therefore, such experiments may greatly benefit the working men, they cannot remove the cause of conflict between them and their employers in their own original industry. The store may help the mill operatives to cheap goods, but their relation to the owner of the mill remains unaltered. The same is true of all experiments in mixed coöperation; they are beneficent undertakings, but do not remove the root of the evil.
On a par with mixed coöperation is that partial coöperation in which laborers do not own capital, but are paid by a share of profits, instead of by wages. Mr. Mill’s illustrations of this system, taken from the workshops of Paris, are sufficiently familiar; but an illustration nearer at hand and brilliantly successful is offered by the New Bedford whale fishery. The crews of whaling vessels were regularly paid by a share of the cargo, and the hearty good will which they showed, in a kind of work in which superintendence by the owner was impossible, proves the efficiency of this measure in intensifying the harmony of interest and of feeling which should exist between employers and employed, as far as production is concerned. This plan does not, in theory, remove the conflict of interest which exists in reference to distribution; it is still possible to wrangle over the size of the shares. The seamen who received each a two-hundredth part of the cargo might strike for the one-hundred-and-fiftieth. Strikes did not, in fact, occur, because custom had determined what appeared to be the rightful share of each person, and they all submitted to such arbitration.
The share system, if generally introduced, would work to the advantage of the laboring class in times of prosperity, and to their disadvantage in times of depression. Under unsettled conditions neither employers nor employed are likely to favor the plan; the employers, because they do not wish to sacrifice the chance of becoming rapidly rich in prosperous periods; and the workmen, because they do not wish to run the risk of receiving less than they now do in times of adversity. Under settled conditions the plan might be expected to work to the advantage of both parties. A minimum would doubtless be determined upon below which the shares of the laborers should not be allowed to fall. With the general prevalence of more settled conditions in industry the adoption of the share system becomes more probable.
Coöperation is complete only when laborers own the capital which is employed in the industry in which they are engaged. Here the conflict of interest between capital and labor is reduced to a minimum, and justice has the freest scope in determining the distribution of the product. This most desirable form of coöperation is the most difficult. In a small way it is in operation where a number of partners in a shop do all the work. Where small industries prevail, however, there is little need of coöperative experiments. In the departments of transportation and of manufactures concentration is most rapid and most merciless to the laborer, and while the evils of railroad monopolies are more likely to be remedied by state action, those arising from overgrown manufacturing enterprises call urgently for private coöperation. The difficulties are in proportion to the desirability of the end, arising from the amount and character of the capital required, the complicated nature of the process, and the fierce competition to be sustained. These difficulties account for past failures in this direction, and deprive them of their weight as arguments against the ultimate prevalence of the system. Difficulties will be surmounted, if the principle of the system is right and is in the general line of economic progress.
Complete coöperation has succeeded on the largest scale in agriculture. The economic motive for this mode of living is less urgent in this department of industry than in others; but success is easier, and in the chief experiment of the kind, a religious motive has supplemented the economic. The Shakers, the Amana communists, the Perfectionists and others have been united by other than economic bonds, and the success of their experiments is not only nor chiefly in proving that agricultural socialism is possible, but in showing that this mode of living is favorable, as it seems to have been in Jerusalem of old, to religious brotherhood among men. Indeed the bit of communistic history furnished by the book of Acts appears to have, as one object at least, to refute the arguments of those who claim that socialism is not merely impracticable, but ultimately and forever undesirable, and who can see only evil in the successive steps of society in that direction. The early Christian commune was a success religiously, if not otherwise; and if modern communes can be made successful economically and religiously, if, while removing evils purely economic, they also ally themselves with the spirit of religious fraternity, then their growth will be as sure, though possibly as slow, as the growth of the fraternal spirit among men.
Public industry is the most general form of socialism, and it is here that its political battles are to be fought. Political socialism demands that the government shall own the capital of the country, and that the proceeds of its use shall be divided according to principles of abstract justice. There is no harm in this as an ideal, but there is ruin in it as an immediate practical aim. It is not only best that we should tend-toward this ideal, but it is inevitable that we should do so; yet it is insane to try to reach it at once. Here is the dividing line between the false political socialism and the true; the one sees an ideal, and would force humanity to it through blood and fire; the other sees the ideal, and reverently studies and follows the course by which Providence is leading us toward it.
The intelligent attitude of the social philosopher is, therefore, that of recognizing the general direction which social development is taking, but avoiding that mental confusion which mistakes the socialistic ideal for an object of immediate practical effort. The most intelligent socialist will be the most zealous opponent of what commonly terms itself socialism. Facts sustain this inference; the German government, in its practical workings, is strongly socialistic; and yet it suppresses pronounced socialism by arbitrary methods; and there is no inconsistency in this. That Germany, by regular means, is becoming markedly socialistic, is a reason for resisting attempts to precipitate, and thus completely thwart the beneficial movement. Were theoretical socialism to be inaugurated in practice, practical socialism would be put backward a hundred years.
German governments own railroads, telegraph lines, forests, and mines; they conduct manufactures, maintain parcel posts, and do much of the banking business of the country. The functions of government the world over are increasing with all reasonable rapidity. While, therefore, socialistic Jacobinism may seek to destroy a government in order to precipitate its visionary schemes, intelligent socialism will uphold it and await the general growth of the movement with such contentment as it may.
The increase of the economic functions of the government is regarded, in this country, with apprehension, not so much because it is in itself undesirable, as on account of the practical difficulties to be surmounted before it can be safely accomplished. Given an untrustworthy government, and the less you commit to it the better, is a summary of the prevalent argument. It is not singular that immigrants from a country where the government, if oppressive, is honest and efficient, should be less conscious of the practical difficulties, and more impatient to secure the result in view, and that, from such material, a pronounced socialistic party should be organized. If the condition of our civil service is unfavorable to the adoption of the measures of political socialism, the federative character of our government is favorable to it. Cities, states, and the nation as a whole, may, at sometime, find themselves performing functions which, in the aggregate, equal those of the German government. We are crowded in this direction by a powerful vis a tergo, the increasing abuses of economic centralization, and it is only a question of time when the abuses of overgrown corporations controlling legislatures and making or marring the prosperity of cities and even states, at their sovereign pleasure, shall more than counterbalance the abuses which would arise from their assumption and management by the state.
One socialistic measure has attracted little attention in proportion to its importance, namely, prison industry. The employment of prisoners in industries conducted directly by the state government itself, is, perhaps, the most practicable and the most unquestionably beneficial of any of the measures of this nature. The socialistic ideal is realized in a great prison conducted in this manner; there is “labor applied to public resources,” and there is strict equity in the division of the profits. In such institutions all the profits, and more, go to the laborers. The system of letting prison labor, under contract, to private employers, neutralizes the benefits to be derived from this legitimate form of socialism, and is contrary alike to the principles of Political Economy and to those of morality.
Public work-houses for tramps would be an extension of the system, and would have the incalculable advantage of dissociating the tramp question from the general labor question. Such a measure ought to be highly satisfactory to most of the parties concerned; to the government, because its burden of watchfulness would be lessened; to the citizen, because he would be made more secure; and to the well meaning political socialist, because his party would be well rid of its most dangerous element. It would probably not be equally satisfactory to the reckless and criminal hangers-on in the socialist party; though, in consistency, it ought to be so, since it might have the effect of placing them in a commune under government auspices, the operation of which would be more regular and successful than that of any which they could hope of themselves to establish. The proposal of such a measure would test the honesty of declared political socialists; if well meaning they would advocate it; if desirous of confusion and plunder, they would oppose it.
If breadth of view is necessary anywhere, it is so in discussing the general socialistic tendency of modern life. No limiting of the vision to particular phases of the question is to be admitted. A narrow view sees the menacing attitude of socialistic Jacobinism, and steels itself to resist anything that calls itself by the dangerous name; a broader view will distinguish true socialism from false, and see that the best protection against the false is the natural progress of the true. Present institutions contain in themselves the germs of a progress that shall ultimately break the limitations of the existing system, and give us the only socialism that can be permanent or beneficial. In many ways capital is vesting itself in social organizations, instead of in individuals. Labor is organizing itself, private coöperation is increasing, and governments of every kind are assuming new economic functions. The true socialism is progressing, and the best way to make it progress more rapidly is to enact sufficient laws for the suppression of the false.
Socialism, in the broad sense, meets an imperative human want, and must grow surely, though not, as reformers are wont to estimate progress, rapidly. The prime condition of success in its growth is slowness; haste means all manner of violence and wrong. Only step by step can we hope to approach the social ideal which is beginning to reveal itself; impatience would place us farther away than ever.
The condition of permanence in socialistic changes is mental and moral progress. The permanence of republics has long been known to depend on these conditions; they are short-lived where the people are ignorant or bad. True socialism is economic republicanism, and it can come no sooner, stay no longer, and rise, in quality, no higher than intelligence and virtue among the people.
The beauty of the socialistic ideal is enough to captivate the intellect that fairly grasps it. It bursts on the view like an Italian landscape from the summit of an Alpine pass, and lures one down the dangerous declivity. Individualism appears to say, “Here is the world; take, every one, what you can get of it. Not too violently, not altogether unjustly, but, with this limitation, selfishly, let every man make his possessions as large as he may. For the strong there is much, and for his children more; for the weak there is little, and for his children less.”
True socialism appears to say, “Here is the world; take it as a family domain under a common father’s direction. Enjoy it as children, each according to his needs; labor as brethren, each according to his strength. Let justice supplant might in the distribution, so that, when there is abundance, all may participate, and when there is scarcity, all may share in the self-denial. If there is loss of independence, there will be gain of interdependence; he who thinks less for himself will think more for his brother. If there is loss of brute force gained in the rude struggle of competition, there is gain of moral power, acquired by the interchange of kindly offices.[“] The beautiful bond which scientists call altruism, but which the Bible terms by a better name, will bind the human family together as no other tie can bind them.
Sufferers under an actual system naturally look for deliverance and for a deliverer. The impression has prevailed among working men that a new device of some kind might free them from their difficulties. Ideal socialism seems to meet this expectation, and those who preach it as an immediate practical aim naturally receive a hearing. The way in which the old system is defended is often as repulsive as the new teaching is attractive. When one teacher bids the poor submit, and another bids them hope, they will not be long in choosing between them. Yet there is no royal road to general comfort. There is much to be gained by reverently studying the course of Providence, but comparatively little by inventing new schemes of society. The new dispensation is not coming with observation, and it has no particular apostles. The socialistic ideal itself is valuable, not when it is used to incite men to frantic attempts to reach it, but when, by giving definiteness to their intelligent hopes, it is made to lighten the moderate steps by which only they can expect to approach it.
Image Source: Amherst Yearbook Olio ’96 (New York, 1894), pp. 7-9. Picture above from frontispiece.
