CHAPTER IV: DOCTRINES THAT OWE THEIR INSPIRATION TO CHRISTIANITY
Everyone who knows the Bible at all or has the slightest acquaintance with the writings of the early Fathers must have been struck by the number of texts which they contain bearing upon social and economic questions. And one has only to recall the imprecations of the prophets as they contemplate the misdeeds of merchants and the greed of land-grabbers, or strive to catch the spirit of the parables of Jesus or the epistles of the Fathers concerning the duty of the rich towards the poor—a point emphasised by Bossuet in his sermon on The Eminent Dignity of the Poor—or dip into the folios of the Canonists or the Summa of Aquinas, to realise how imperative were the demands of religion and with what revolutionary vehemence its claims were upheld.[1027]
But not until the middle of the nineteenth century do we meet with social doctrines of a definitely Christian type, and not till then do we witness the formation of schools of social thinkers who place the teaching of the Gospel in the forefront of their programme, hoping that it may supply them with a solution of current economic problems and with a plan of social reconstruction.[1028] It is not difficult to account for their appearance at this juncture. Their primary object was to bear witness to the heresy of socialism, and the nature of the object became more and more evident as socialism tended to become more materialistic and anti-Christian. It became the Church’s one desire to win back souls from the pursuit of this new cult. It was the fear of seeing the people—her own people—enrol themselves under the red flag of the Anti-Christ that roused her ardour.[1029] But to regard it as a mere question of worldly rivalry would be childish and misleading. Rather must we see in it a reawakening of Christian conscience and a searching of heart as to whether the Church herself had not betrayed her Christ, and in contemplation of her heavenly had not forgotten her earthly mission, which was equally a part of her message; whether in repeating the Lord’s Prayer for the coming of the Kingdom and the giving of daily bread she had forgotten that the Kingdom was to be established on earth and that the daily bread meant, not charity, but the wages of labour.
Both doctrines and schools are of a most heterogeneous character, ranging from authoritative conservatism to almost revolutionary anarchism, and it will not be without some effort that we shall include them all within the limits of a single chapter. But it is not impossible to point to certain common characteristics, both positive and negative, which entitle us to regard them all as members of one family.
As a negative trait we have their unanimous repudiation of Classical Liberalism. This does not necessarily imply a disposition to invoke State aid, for some of them, as we shall see, are opposed even to the idea of a State. Neither does it imply a denial of a “natural order,” for under the name of Providence and as a manifestation of the will of God the “order” was a source of perennial delight to them. But man was to them an outcast without lot or portion in the “order.” Fallen and sinful, bereft of his freedom, it was impossible that of himself he should return to his former state of bliss. To leave the natural man alone, to deliver him over to the pursuit of personal interest in the hope that it might lead him to the good or result in the rediscovery of the lost way of Paradise, was clearly absurd. It was as futile in the economic as it was in the religious sphere. On the contrary, the Christian schools maintained that the “natural” man, the old man, the first Adam of the New Testament, must somehow be got rid of before room could be found for the new man within us. Every available force, whether religious, moral, or merely social, must be utilised to keep people from the dangerous slope down which egoism would inevitably lead them.[1030]
The new doctrines are also distinct from socialism, despite the fact that their followers frequently outbid the socialists in the bitterness of their attacks upon capital and the present organisation of society. They refuse to believe that the creation of a new society in the sense of a change in economic conditions or environment is enough. The individual must also be changed. To those who questioned Christ as to when the Kingdom of God should come, He replied, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation … for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” and His answer is witness to the fact that social justice will only reign when it has achieved victory over human hearts. Social Christianity must never be compared with the socialism of the Liberals or the Associationists, for the latter believed man to be naturally good apart from the deteriorating effects of civilisation. Nor must it ever be classed with the collectivism of Marx, which has its basis in a materialistic conception of history and class war. Some of these Christian authors, it is true, regard State Socialism with a certain degree of favour and would possibly welcome co-operation, but to most of them legal coercion does not seem very attractive and they prefer to put their faith in associations such as the family, the corporation, or the co-operative society. We could hardly expect otherwise, seeing that every church is an organisation of some kind or other. The Catholic Church especially, whatever opinion we may have of it, is at once the greatest and the noblest association that ever existed. Its bonds are even stronger than death. The Church militant below joins hands with the Church triumphant above, the living praying for the dead and the dead interceding for the living.
From a constructive standpoint they defy classification. They have a common aspiration in their hope of a society where all men will be brothers, children of the one Heavenly Father,[1031] but many are the ways of attaining this fraternal ideal. In the same spirit they speak of a just price and a fair wage much as the Canonists of the Middle Ages did. In other words, they refuse to regard human labour as a mere commodity whose value varies according to the laws of supply and demand. The labour of men is sacred, and Roman law even refused to recognise bartering in res sacræ. But when it becomes a question of formulating means of doing this, the ways divide. Numerous as are the Biblical texts which bear upon social and economic questions, they are extraordinarily vague. At least they seem capable of affording support to the most divergent doctrines.
Some might consider it a mistake to devote a whole chapter to these doctrines, seeing that they are moral rather than economic, and that, with perhaps the exception of Le Play, who is only indirectly connected with this school, we have no names that can be compared with those already mentioned. But not a few intellectual movements are of an anonymous character. The importance of a doctrine ought not to be measured by the illustrious character of its sponsor so much as by the effect which it has had upon the minds of men. No one will be prepared to deny the influence which these doctrines have exercised upon religious people, an influence greater than either Fourier’s, Saint-Simon’s, or Proudhon’s. Moreover, they are connected with the development of important economic institutions, such as the attempt to revive the system of corporations in Austria, the establishment of rural banks in Germany and France, the development of co-operative societies in England, the growth of temperance societies, the agitation for Sunday rest, etc. Nor must we forget that the pioneers of factory legislation, the founders of workmen’s institutes, men like Lord Shaftesbury in England, Pastor Oberlin, and Daniel Legrand the manufacturer, were really Christian Socialists.
I: LE PLAY’S SCHOOL
Le Play’s[1032] school is very closely related to the Classical Liberal, some of its best known representatives actually belonging to both. There is the same antipathy to socialism and the same dread of State intervention.
But it is not difficult to differentiate from the more extreme Liberal school which finds its most optimistic expression in the works of certain French writers. The cardinal doctrine of that school, namely, that individual effort is alone sufficient for all things, finds no place in Le Play’s philosophy. Man, it seemed to him, was ignorant of what his own well-being involved. In the realm of social science no fact seemed more persistent or more patent than error. Every individual appeared to be born with a natural tendency to evil, and he picturesquely remarks that “every new generation is just an invasion of young barbarians that must be educated and trained. Whenever such training is by any chance neglected, decadence becomes imminent.”[1033]
Among the errors more particularly denounced by Le Play were the special idols of the French bourgeois—the “false dogmas of ’89” as he calls them.[1034] It seemed to him that no society could ever hope to exist for any length of time and still be content with the rule of natural laws, which merely meant being ruled by the untamed instincts of the brute. It must set to and reform itself. Hence his book is entitled Social Reform, and the school which he founded adopted the same title.
Some kind of authority is clearly indispensable; the question is what it should be. The old paterfamilias relation immediately suggests itself as being more efficacious than any other, seeing that it is founded in nature and not on contract or decree, and springs from love rather than coercion. The family group under the authority of its chief, which was the sole social unit under the patriarchal system, must again be revived in the midst of our complex social relations. But parental control cannot always be relied upon, for the parent is frequently engrossed with the other demands of life, and there is positive need for some social authority. This new social authority will not be the State—that is, if Le Play can possibly avoid it. The first chance will be given to “natural” authorities—those authorities which rise up spontaneously. The nobility is well fitted for the task where it exists. In the absence of nobility, or where, as was unfortunately the case in France, they were impervious to a sense of duty, society must fall back upon the landed proprietors, the employers, and persons of ripe judgment—men who hardly deserve the title of savants, but nevertheless with considerable experience of life. Failing these it could still appeal to the local authorities, to those living nearest the persons concerned, to the parish rather than the county, the county rather than the State. State intervention is indispensable only when all other authorities have failed—in the enforcement of Sunday observance, for example, where the ruling classes have shown a disposition to despise it. The necessity for State intervention is evidence of disease within the State, and the degree of intervention affords some index of the extent of the malady.[1035]
Seeing that he attaches such importance to the constitution of the family, Le Play is also bound to give equal prominence to the question of entail, which determines the permanence of the family. Herein lies the kernel of Le Play’s system. He distinguishes three types of families:
1. The patriarchal family. The father is the sole proprietor, or, more correctly, he is the chief administrator of all family affairs. At his death all goods pass by full title to the eldest son. Such is the most ancient form of government of which we have any record. It is the political counterpart of the pastoral régime, and both may still be seen in full operation on the Russian steppes.
2. The family group. Children and grandchildren no longer remain under paternal authority throughout life. With a single exception they leave the family hearth and proceed to found new homes. Whoever remains at home becomes the heir, after first becoming his father’s associate during the latter’s lifetime. He becomes the new head of the family by paternal wish, and not of legal right or necessity. The property thus passes to the worthiest, to him who is thought best able to preserve it. It is this régime, Le Play thinks, that explains the extraordinary stability of China; and the same system, though somewhat shaken, is the source of England’s strength and vitality. There were some parts of France where, in spite of the Civil Code, a similar system was still in vogue. There was one such family in particular, that of the Pyrenean peasant Melouga, whose history showed a wonderful continuity, and the story of that family recurs as a kind of leitmotiv through the whole of the writings of Le Play and his immediate disciples. The Melouga family has since become extinct.
3. The unstable family, where all the children, as soon as they arrive at maturity, quit the home and set up for themselves. At the father’s death the family, already scattered, is completely dissolved. The patrimony is divided equally between all its members, and any business which the father may have possessed, whether agricultural or industrial, goes into immediate liquidation. This is the régime born of individualism which is characteristic of all modern societies, especially France.
Le Play’s sympathy is entirely with the second, for the family group seems to hold the balance evenly between the two antagonistic forces which are both indispensable for the welfare of society, namely, the spirit of conservatism and the spirit of innovation. Under the patriarchal system the former preponderates,[1036] while under the régime of the unstable family it is utterly wanting. The latter reminds us of Penelope’s web—each generation making a fresh beginning. But this periodical division of wealth fails to give the desired degree of equality, for the removal of every trace of solidarity between the members means that the one may become rich and the other sink into poverty. Everyone fights for his own hand. Moreover, when children only remain with their parents for just a short period of tutelage there is a powerful incentive given to race suicide, as is clearly shown in the case of France. As soon as the offspring find themselves in a position of self-sufficiency they leave the old home, just as the young animal does. Under such circumstances it is clearly to the interest of parents to have as few children as possible.[1037]
The family group, on the other hand, entrusts its traditions and their preservation to the keeping of the child who remains at home. Those who leave have their way to make, and become heirs of that industrial spirit which has made England the mistress of the world. True fraternal equality is also preserved, for the old home always remains open—a harbour of refuge to those who fail in the industrial struggle. To mention but one instance, the “old maid,” whose lot is often exceedingly hard, need never be without a home.
Apart from moral reform, there seemed only one way of establishing the family group in France, namely, by greater freedom of bequest, or at the very least by increasing the amount of goods that may be given to any one child, so that a father might be able to transmit the whole of his land or his business to any one of his children on condition that the heir fairly indemnified each of his brothers should their respective shares be insufficient.[1038]
A father’s authority over his children is an indispensable element in the stability of society, and a master’s authority over his men, though derivative in character, is scarcely less so. The continuance of social peace largely depends upon the latter, and the preservation of social peace should be the essential aim of social science.[1039] We are continually meeting with the expression “social peace” in the writings of Le Play and his school, and the associations which they founded became known as “Unions of Social Peace.”
Play’s first essay, an admirably planned Exposition of Social Economics, was published in 1867. The sole object of its author was to further the establishment of such institutions as were likely to promote understanding among all persons employed in the production of the same goods. We might even be tempted to say that the whole co-partnership movement started by Dollfus at Mulhouse in 1850 with the utterance of the famous phrase, “The master owes something to the worker beyond his mere wages,” was inspired by Le Play.[1040] Le Play pinned his faith to the benevolent master. It was quite natural that the apostle of the family group should regard the factory as possessing a great deal of the stability and many of the other characteristics of the family, such as its quasi-permanent engagements[1041] and its various grades of working men all grouped together under the authority of a well-respected chief.
Le Play’s thesis that the salvation of the working classes can only come from above seems to have even less foundation than the opposite doctrine of syndicalism, which claims that their deliverance is in their own hands, and it was once for all refuted in a brilliant passage of Stuart Mill’s:[1042] “No times can be pointed out in which the higher classes of this or any other country performed a part even distantly resembling the one assigned them in this theory. All privileged and powerful classes as such have used their power in the interest of their own selfishness.… I do not affirm that what has always been must always be. This at least seems to be undeniable, that long before the superior classes could be sufficiently inspired to govern in the tutelary manner supposed, the inferior classes would be too much improved to be so governed.”
Besides the master and the State there was still another factor of social progress which is of prime importance at the present time, namely, working men’s unions. One might reasonably have expected a more sympathetic treatment for them at Le Play’s hands, especially when we remember that they were proscribed by the “false dogmas of ’89.” But he had little faith in union, whether a corporation or a co-operative society.[1043] Trade unionism especially seemed rather useless, because it tended to destroy the more natural and more efficient organisation which appeared to him to be merely an extension of the family group. It is true that Le Play never saw unionism in operation, but it is hardly probable that he would have modified his opinion. At any rate, the attitude of his disciples is not much more favourable.
One feels tempted to say that there is nothing very new in all this. The remark would have been particularly gratifying to Le Play, who considered that invention was impossible in social science and that what he himself had done was merely to make a discovery.
The discovery of “the essential constitution of humanity,” as he called it, was, he thought, the outcome of his methods of observation. His method was really always more important than his doctrine. It has always enjoyed a considerable measure of success, and it seems to-day as if it would survive the doctrine. Le Play was brought up as a mining engineer and had travelled extensively.[1044] Twenty years of his life had been spent in this way, and during that period he had travelled over almost the whole of Europe, even as far as the Urals. It was while staying in the neighbourhood of those mountains that he conceived the idea of writing monographs dealing with individual families belonging to the working classes, a method of investigation which he is never weary of contrasting with that other “disdainful method of invention.”[1045]
To write a family monograph[1046] à la Le Play is not merely to relate its history, to describe its mode of life, and to analyse its means of subsistence, but also to sum up its daily life in a kind of double-entry book-keeping where every item of expenditure is carefully compared and balanced with the receipts. But there is much that is artificial and a great deal that is childish in this seemingly mathematical precision, where not merely economic wants but such needs as those of education, of recreation, and of intemperance, virtues as well as vices, are catalogued and reckoned in terms of £ s. d. Its advantage lies in its holding the attention of the observer, even when he is a mere novice at the work, by obliging him to put something in every column and allowing nothing to escape his notice.[1047]
But when Le Play proceeds to declare that this method has revealed the truth to him and helped him to formulate the doctrines of which we have just given a résumé it really seems as if he were making a great mistake. Actually it has only revealed what Le Play expected to find; in other hands it might have yielded quite different results. He declares that it has proved to him that only those families which are grouped under paternal authority and which obey the Ten Commandments are really happy.[1048] That may be, but how would he define a happy family? “A happy family is one that dwells in unity and abides in the love of God.” He has thus armed himself with a definite a priori criterion of happiness;[1049] but there is nothing to prove that the unstable disorganised family of the Parisian factory hand may not be infinitely more happy than the family group of Melouga or the patriarchal family of the Bashkirs of Turkestan.
A comparison has often been drawn between Le Play’s school and the German Historical school. It is pointed out that both schools lay great emphasis upon the method of observation and focus attention upon the institutions of the past, and that to some extent they both represent a reaction against Liberalism and Classical optimism. But the resemblance is wholly superficial. At bottom the two schools are not merely different, but even divergent. The German school seeks the explanation of the present in the past, while Le Play’s school is merely out to learn a few lessons. The one studies the germ which is to develop and to bear fruit, while the other admires the type and the model to which it thinks it necessary to conform. The one is evolutionary, the other traditional, and the conclusions of the former are radical in the extreme, and even socialistic, while those of the latter are usually conservative.
And so Play’s true position is in the chapter dealing with Social Christianity, and not among the writers of the Historical school.
His unshaken belief in the natural propensity of man to evil and error is sufficient to give him his place. But we must beware of confusing his doctrine with that of the Social Catholics, for, unlike them, he is rather prone to invoke the authority of the Mosaic law, especially the Decalogue, and to take his illustrations from England, which is a Protestant country, or from China or Mohammedan lands. His importance among authorities on social questions is not very great, but his attitude towards Church and clergy was on the whole defiant,[1050] and the plan of reform of which we have just given an outline is very different from that of the Social Catholics.
There was a schism in the school in 1885. The “Unions of Social Peace,” with their organ, La Réforme sociale, have on the whole remained faithful to the programme as outlined in this chapter. The dissenting branch, on the other hand, with M. Demolins and the Abbé de Tourville as leaders, has developed the doctrine on its ultra-individualistic or Spencerian side, so that only in origin can it be regarded as at all connected with the school of Le Play.
The “School of Social Science,” as it is called—at least, that is the name it has given to its review—claims that it is still faithful to the method of the master. It even goes so far as to say that Le Play was ignorant of the full possibilities of this method, and condemns his failure to establish a positive science by means of it. In reality, however, the master’s method has quite a subordinate rôle in the activities of this new school, for the simple reason that it is practically useless except for the production of monographs. The new school arranges its facts according to their natural relations, and attempts to link the study of social science to the study of geographical environment.[1051] The study of environment receives some attention in the works of Le Play himself, but it has assumed much greater importance since then. To give but a single instance, the new school attempts to show how the configuration of the Norwegian fiord, the almost complete absence of arable land, and the consequent recourse to fishing as a means of livelihood, even the very dimensions of their sea-craft, have helped to fix the type of family and even the political and economic constitutions prevalent among the Anglo-Saxon race. In a similar fashion, the vast steppes of central and southern Asia have begotten a civilisation of their own. It is the Historical materialism of the Marxian school reappearing in the more picturesque and more suggestive guise of geographical determinism.[1052]
The new school, however, is not very favourably inclined to Le Play’s programme of social reform, especially its teaching concerning the family. Their aim is not the preservation of the family, but the placing of each child in a position to found a family of his own as soon as possible. Their object is neither family nor communal solidarity, but self-help, not the family group, but the single individual family, not the English, but the American home. Demolins is an ardent believer in the struggle for existence, and no one has ever professed greater contempt for the solidarist doctrine. “Social salvation, like eternal life,” says he, “is essentially a personal affair”—a singularly heterodox declaration, by the way, for if salvation is a purely personal matter of what use is the Church?[1053]
II: SOCIAL CATHOLICISM
The term “Catholic Socialism,” which is occasionally employed as an alternative to the above title, is objected to by the majority of Catholics as being excessively restrictive. The generic term “Christian Socialism” was first employed by a Frenchman, Francis Huet, in a book entitled Le Règne social du Christianisme, published in 1853.[1054]
But at least two other authors, namely, Buchez in his Essai d’un Traité complet de Philosophie au point de vue du Catholicisme et du Progrès (1838-40), and the fugitive Abbé de Lamennais in La Question du Travail (1848), can lay considerable claims to priority in the matter. Buchez was the founder of the Co-operative Association of Producers (1832), and Lamennais outlined a scheme of co-operative banks almost exactly like those afterwards established in Germany by Raiffeisen.[1055]
Present-day Catholicism, however, shows no great desire to honour any of them. The one ambition of these three republicans was to effect a union between the Church and the Revolution.[1056] The most advanced of the Social Catholics of to-day, on the other hand, would be well satisfied could they establish some kind of understanding between the Church and democracy. Such at least is the programme recently laid down by M. Marc Sangnier, the founder of the Sillon.
About the same time we find Monseigneur von Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence, preaching a doctrine which drew its inspiration, not from “the false dogmas of ’89,” but from the institutional life of the Middle Ages, from the guilds and the other corporative associations, which are minutely described by him and his disciples, especially Canon Moufang and the Abbé Hitze. Some such institutional activity was again to form the corner-stone of Social Catholicism.[1057]
During the period of the Second Empire most of the Social Catholics seem to have fallen asleep, but they were aroused from their slumbers by the disaster of 1870. The Comte Albert de Mun proved the inspirer this time, and his noble eloquence, which led to the formation of unions of Catholic working men, was instrumental in giving the movement a vigorous start. The same period witnessed the appearance of L’Association catholique, a review which took as its programme the study of economic facts in a Catholic spirit—an object that has always been kept steadily in view.
Organisation in the form of corporations was given first place in the Social Catholic programme.[1058] Le Play’s corner-stone—the family organisation—was not rejected, but they considered that though the family was to remain the basis for moral reform a wider association of an economic character must serve as a basis for economic reform.
At first sight this may seem somewhat surprising. The connection between these professional associations and the teaching of the Gospel is not very evident, nor is it very clear how such organisations could ever hope to Christianise society. But although the Gospels know nothing of a corporative or any other régime we must not forget their prominence during the Middle Ages—when the authority of the Church was in the ascendant. As long as this régime lasted what we understand as the social question—the vexed problem as to whether we possess sufficient moral strength to keep the peace between capital and labour—never presented itself. The problem is, of course, somewhat different to-day, but its solution may possibly require the exercise of similar virtues, namely, obedience to a detailed system of organisation coupled with a feeling of brotherhood—the chastening of the whole complexity of social relations by the spirit of Christianity.
Some of their opponents have not hesitated to charge these Catholics with a desire to return to the feudalism of the Middle Ages, which is of course utterly false. What the Social Catholics wished to do was to build up the new social structure upon the basis of the modern trade union, or upon syndicalism; and the proof that the foundation is not at any rate too narrow lies in the fact that the new schools of socialists can conceive of none better. With this as the foundation they looked forward not merely to the development of a new society, but also to the rise of a new ethic. The fact that they forestalled the socialists in this respect shows that the Social Catholics were at least not hopelessly antiquated.
Early in the history of the movement they tried to organise a kind of mixed syndicat consisting both of masters and men, because this seemed to them to offer the best guarantee for social peace. But the results proved disappointing, and they were soon forced to relinquish that idea and to content themselves with a separate organisation of masters and men co-operating only in matters relating to the regulation of work or the settling of differences.[1059] Such collateral unions, it was at first thought, would gradually become the organs of labour legislation, and the State would entrust them with the discharge of that function because of their greater freedom in the making of experiments. All questions affecting the interests of a trade, the hours of labour, Sunday observance, apprenticeship, the sanitary condition of the workshops, the labour of women and children, and even the rate of wages paid, instead of being regulated as they are at present by brutal, inflexible laws which are seldom suited to meet every individual case, would henceforth be settled by the union, and the rules of the union would be incumbent upon all the members of the trade or profession, both masters and men. Everyone would be free to enter the union or to decline membership just as he chose, but no member would be allowed to violate the rules of the union or to lower the conditions of labour in any way. “Free association within an organised profession,” such is the formula.[1060]
To those Liberals who feign indignation at seeing purely private institutions thus invested with legislative authority it may be answered that the “labour union” so constituted forms an association which is as natural and as necessary—understanding by this that it is independent of the voluntary conventions of the parties interested—as one based upon community of residence. Everybody admits that the inhabitants of the commune ought to submit to the rule of the organised majority. What difference would it make if the majority thus organised constituted a corporation rather than a commune?[1061]
Some go so far as to regard these professional associations as possessed of an important political rôle, and would even go the length of making this new corporative unit the basis of a new franchise for the election of at least one of the two Chambers.
It is not very easy, perhaps, to get a clear idea of what a society built upon a plan of this kind would really be like, but the difficulty is no greater in this case than in some others.
In the first place it would have to be a society professing the Catholic faith.[1062] Should the enemies of religion or even the indifferent by any chance ever gain the upper hand in the social unit the whole structure would immediately fall to the ground. Its realisation, accordingly, is quite hypothetical.
It would also be a society founded upon brotherhood in the full sense of the term. The only real brotherhood is that founded upon the fatherhood of God, and not upon any socialistic conception of equality. But even brotherhood and a common parentage may not be sufficient to prevent irregularities, and the family relation in addition to this almost inevitably implies the rights of the youngest and the duties of the oldest. Within the corporative unit already outlined true equality would always reign, for the humblest, meanest task would be of equal dignity with the most exalted office in the State, and everyone would be content and even proud to live where God had placed him.[1063]
Such a society would be a pure hierarchy. All the authority and responsibility, all the duties involved, would be on the master’s side. On the worker’s side would be rights respected, life assured on the minimum level, and a re-establishment of family life.[1064]
Social Catholicism further undertook to disprove the first article in the socialist creed, namely, that “the emancipation of the workers can only be accomplished by the workers themselves.” It maintained that, on the contrary, this object could only be accomplished by the help of the masters and of all the other classes in society, not excluding even the non-professional classes, landed proprietors, rent-receivers, and consumers generally,[1065] all of whom ought to be informed of the responsibilities which their different positions impose upon them and of the special duty which is incumbent upon all men of making the most of the talents with which the Master has entrusted them.
The German Christliche Gewerkvereine, which gets most of its recruits among the Catholics, is already taking an important part in German political life and is doing something to counterbalance the “Reds,” or the revolutionary socialists. They advocate the union of masters and men, but are extremely anxious not to be confused with the “Yellows,” or those who advocate mixed unions. In other words, they are independent both of the masters and the socialists.
State intervention might be necessary at first in order to establish the corporative régime, but once founded it would naturally monopolise all the legislative and police power which affects labour in any way, especially in the matter of fixing wages,[1066] arranging pensions, etc. The legislature would still find ample material to exercise its powers upon outside these merely professional interests, especially in regulating the rights of property, prohibiting usury, protecting agriculture, etc.[1067]
“The State,” says the Immortale Dei, an Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII—repeating a text of St. Paul—“is the minister of God for good.” Elsewhere St. Paul declares that the Law is the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, and if we paraphrase this to mean that the function of law is to lead men to a higher conception of brotherhood we have a fairly exact idea of what Social Catholicism considered to be the function of the State. Occasionally the party has betrayed signs of more advanced tendencies which would bring it more into line with modern socialism. But for the most part such indications have been of the nature of individual utterances, which have generally resulted in the formal disapproval of Rome and the submission of the rebel.
It was M. Loesewitz in 1888 who made the first violent attack upon the so-called productivity theory of capital in L’Association catholique.[1068] It caused quite a sensation at the time, and provoked a disapproving reply from the Comte de Mun. Afterwards, however, the article became the programme of a party known as “Les jeunes Abbés.” Nor must we omit to mention the growth of the Sillon, founded in 1890, the political ambition of whose members is the reconciliation of the Church and democracy and even republicanism, and whose economic aim is the abolition of the wage-earner and his master.[1069] This is also the aim of the syndicalists, and Article 2 of the Confédération générale du Travail (C.G.T.) declares that one of the avowed objects of the federation is the disappearance of the wage-earner and the removal of his master. Instead of seeking a solution of the problem in the parallel action of syndicats of men on the one hand and of masters on the other, it would suppress the latter altogether, leaving the men the right of possessing their own instruments of production and of keeping intact the produce of their labour. It is true that the Sillon is under the ban of the Pope, but this essentially syndicalist movement is still in existence.
If the Catholic school has experienced some difficulty in throwing out a left wing it has never been without a right wing which has always shown a predilection for the masters. “The problem is not how to save the worker through his own efforts, but how to save him with the master’s co-operation”—the benevolent master of Le Play’s school over again.[1070] The right wing, moreover, thinks that the existing institutions would prove quite equal to a solution of the so-called social question if they were once thoroughly permeated with the Christian spirit or if the leaders really knew how to deal with the people.
III: SOCIAL PROTESTANTISM
Belief in the essentially individualistic nature of Protestantism is fairly widespread.[1071] For confirmation there is the emphasis it has always laid upon the personal nature of salvation and its denial of the necessity for any mediator between God and man, save only the Man Christ Jesus, whereas Roman Catholicism teaches that only through the Church—that great community of the faithful—is salvation ever possible. Protestantism is the religion of self-help, and naturally enough its social teaching is somewhat coloured by its theological preconceptions. Nor must we lose sight of its connection with middle-class Liberalism; and thus while in politics it is generally regarded as belonging to the left, in matters economic it is generally on the extreme right.[1072]
Whatever truth there may be in this attempt to sum up its doctrine and history, we shall find as a matter of actual fact that on economic grounds it is much more advanced than the Social Catholic school; and its extreme left, far from being content with the extinction of the proletariat, also demands the abolition of private property and the establishment of complete communal life.
Social Protestantism, or Christian Socialism as it is known in England, has a birthday which may be determined with some degree of accuracy. It was in the year 1850 that there was founded in England a society for promoting working men’s associations, having for its organ a paper entitled The Christian Socialist.[1073] Its best known representatives were Kingsley and Maurice, who subsequently became respectively professors of history and philosophy at Cambridge. A small number of lawyers also joined the society, among whom Ludlow, Hughes, and Vansittart Neale are the most familiar names. Kingsley was much in the public eye just then, not only because of his impassioned eloquence, but also on account of the success of his novel Alton Locke, which is perhaps the earliest piece of socialistic fiction that we possess. It is the story of a journeyman tailor and his sufferings under the sweating system—the horrors of which were thus revealed to the public for the first time.[1074]
The object which the Christian Socialists[1075] had in view, as we have already seen, was the establishment of working men’s associations. What type they should adopt as their model was not very easily determined. The trade unions, little known as yet, were just then struggling through the convulsions of their early infancy. Moreover, they were exclusively concerned with professional matters, with the struggle for employment and the question of wages, and altogether did not seem very well fitted to develop the spirit of sacrifice and love which was indispensable for the realisation of their ideal. Neither did the co-operative associations of consumers seem very attractive. True they had attained to some degree of success at Rochdale, but they were inspired by the teaching of Owen, which was definitely anti-Christian. The fact also that they merely proposed to make life somewhat less costly and a little more comfortable implied a certain measure of stoicism which hardly fitted them to be the chosen vessels of the new dispensation. And so the Christian Socialists naturally turned their attention to producers’ associations, just as the earliest Social Catholics had done before them. But it would be a mistake to imagine that they owed anything to Buchez, whom they appear to have ignored altogether. The reawakened interest in the possibilities of association which exercised such a fascination over John Stuart Mill in 1848 had touched their imagination, and Ludlow, one of their number, had the good fortune to be resident in Paris, and so witnessed this glorious revival. Such associations seemed to be just the economic instruments needed if a transformation was ever to be effected, and the very process of establishing them, it was hoped, would supply a useful means of discipline in the subordination of individual to collective interests. But the process of disillusion proved as rapid as it was complete. Contrary to what was the case in France, it cannot be said that they were ever really attempted in England.
But the work of the “Association” had not been altogether in vain. Defeated in its attempts to arouse the worker from his lethargy, and thwarted in its efforts by legal restrictions of various kinds, it began a campaign in favour of a more liberal legislation in matters affecting the welfare of the working classes. The result was the passing of the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts of 1852-62, which conferred legal personality for the first time upon co-operative associations, with consequent benefit to themselves and to other working men’s associations.
The Christian Socialists thought that the methods by which their ideals might be attained were of quite secondary importance. Experience had taught them that voluntary association or legislation even by itself could never be of much avail until the whole mental calibre of the worker was changed.[1076] What they strove for above all else was moral reform, and whenever they use the word “co-operation” they conceive of it not merely as a particular system of industry, but rather as the antithesis of the competitive régime or as the negation of the struggle for existence. Their thoughts are admirably summed up in a letter of Ludlow’s to Maurice written from Paris in March 1848, in which he speaks of the necessity for “Christianising socialism.”
Christian Socialism in England, though it has survived its founders, has been obliged to change its programme. It has abandoned the idea of a producers’ association, but still advocates other forms of co-operation. Just now its chief demand is for a reorganisation of private property, which is a particularly serious question in England, where the land is in the hands of a comparatively few people. In the words of the Psalmist, the Christian Socialists often cry out, “The earth is the Lord’s,” and they are never weary of pointing out how under the Mosaic law the land was redistributed every forty-nine years with a view to bringing it back to its original owners. And so it finds itself supporting the doctrines of Henry George, who may himself be classed as one of the Christian Socialists.[1077] There is also the Institutional Church, with its network of organisations for the satisfaction of the material, intellectual, and moral needs of the worker, which is becoming a prominent feature of modern English Church life. Moreover, several of the Labour leaders—Keir Hardie, for example—are earnest Christians. The Federation of Brotherhoods, which to-day includes over 2000 societies, with a membership of over a million working men, combines an ardent evangelical faith with a strong advocacy of socialism.[1078]
In the United States of America Christian Socialism is still more aggressive and outspoken in its attacks upon capitalism. The earliest society of Christian Socialists was founded at Boston in 1889. Since then these associations have multiplied rapidly. The latest of them defines its objects in the following terms: “To help the message of Jesus to permeate the Christian Churches and to show that socialism is necessarily the economic expression of the Christian life.” A little farther on it declares itself persuaded “that the ideal of socialism is identical with that of the Church, and that the gospel of the co-operative commonwealth is the Gospel of the Kingdom of God translated into economic terms.”[1079]
For the other extreme—the extreme right—we must look to Germany. In 1878 Pastors Stöcker and Todt founded the Christian Social Working Men’s Party, which, despite its title, drew most of its recruits from the middle classes. Later on Stöcker became Court preacher, and during his occupation of that post this kind of socialism found such favour in official quarters that he was able to say that it was his personal conviction that a social revolution was within the bounds of practical politics.[1080] But in 1890 the Emperor William II dismissed his pastor, and Christian Socialism immediately lost its official status.[1081]
At the Congress of Erfurt in 1896 two young pastors of Frankfort named Naumann and Goehre[1082] tried to win the adherence of the working classes by endeavouring to give the Protestant churches a more distinctively socialist bias. But the suggestion was condemned by the official Lutheran Church, the masters opposed it, and it received but very slight support from the Social Democrats. Altogether the movement proved abortive, and the pastors have long since turned aside to other interests.
In Switzerland also the movement is making considerable headway, and in Professor Ragaz and Pastors Kutter[1083] and Pflüger, the latter of whom has recently been made a deputy, it has found advocates whose views are at any rate sufficiently advanced.
In France there is at least one—there may possibly be more—Social Protestant school. But as it only includes a small fraction of Protestantism, which is itself in a hopeless minority, its influence is not very great. There are several important social movements, however, such as the crusades against alcoholism and pornography, the revival of co-operation and the demand for the erection of “People’s Palaces”—known as Solidarités—which are entirely due to the activities of this school. An association for the inductive study of social questions was founded in 1887 by Pastor Gouth, another pastor named Tomy Fallot being its president and inspirer.[1084] At first the demands of this group were extremely moderate, co-operation being their only mode of action and solidarity their social doctrine.[1085] This new doctrine of solidarity, although rather belonging to the Radical wing, being the very antithesis of Christian charity, as we shall see by and by, has been enthusiastically welcomed by the Social Protestants. The Protestants even claim that it was originally their own peculiar doctrine, and that other schools merely borrowed it; for where can be found a fuller expression of the law of solidarity than the two Christian doctrines of the fall and redemption of man? “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Curiously enough there is another group of young pastors who closely resemble what is known in Catholic circles as the Abbots’ Party. They are dissatisfied with the moderate claims of the Catholics as a whole, and like their American colleagues they demand the establishment of a form of collectivism.[1086] They think, at any rate, that the question of property ought to come up for consideration almost immediately.
In short, it seems true to say that in almost every country Social Christianity is gradually evolving into Christian Socialism, and the change of title is an index to the difference of attitude. In other words, Social Protestantism accepts the essential principles of international socialism, such as the socialisation of the means of production, class war, and internationalism, and endeavours to show that they are in complete accordance with the teaching of the Gospels.
But the stress which it lays upon the necessity for moral reform saves Social Protestantism from being hopelessly confused with collectivism, and the fact that it believes that individual salvation is impossible without social transformation helps to distinguish it from individual Protestantism.[1087] Conversion implies a change of environment. What is the use of preaching chastity when people have to sleep together in the same room without distinction of age or of sex? “Society,” says Fallot, “ought to be organised in such a fashion that salvation is at least possible for everyone.” “The régime of the great industry,” says M. Gounelle, “is the greatest obstacle to the salvation of sinners that the religion of Christ has yet met.” Protestant Socialism remains individualistic in the sense that while seeking to suppress individualism in the form of egoism as a centripetal force, it wishes to uphold it and to strengthen it as a principle of disinterested activity—as a centrifugal force. It takes for its motto those words of Vinet which may be found carved on the pedestal of his statue at Lausanne: “I want man to be his own master in order that he may give better service to everybody else.”[1088]
IV: THE MYSTICS
No review of Christian Social doctrines, however summary, can afford to omit the names of certain eminent writers who, though belonging to none of the above-mentioned schools, and having no definite standing either as socialists or economists, being for the most part littérateurs, historians, and novelists, have nevertheless lent the powerful support of their eloquence to the upholding of somewhat similar doctrines.[1089]
Tolstoy and Ruskin are the best known representatives of this movement on the borderland of Social Christianity, although they are by no means the only ones.[1090] These two grand old men, who both died at an advanced age, appeared to their contemporaries in much the same light as the prophets of old did to Israel. True descendants of Isaiah and Jeremiah, they exultantly prophesied the downfall of capitalism—the modern Tyre and Sidon—and announced the coming of the New Jerusalem—the habitation of justice. Their language even is modelled on Holy Writ, and Ruskin, we know, was from his youth upwards a diligent reader of the Bible.[1091] Both of them condemn the Hedonistic principle and denounce money as an instrument of tyranny which has resulted in setting up something like a new system of slavery,[1092] and they both advocate a return to manual labour as the only power that can free the individual and regenerate social life. They differ, however, in their conception of future society, which to Ruskin must be aristocratic, chivalrous, and heroic, while Tolstoy lays stress upon its being equalitarian, communal, and above all ethical. The one looks at society from the standpoint of an æsthete, the other from that of a muzhik: the one would breed heroes, the other saints.
Thomas Carlyle also deserves mention. Among the numerous books which he wrote we may mention, among others, his French Revolution (1837) and his Heroes and Hero-worship. Chronologically he precedes both Tolstoy and Ruskin, and his influence upon economic thought was greater than either of theirs. But we could hardly put him among the Christian Socialists because of his extreme individualism, and if he were to be given a place at all it would be with such writers as Ibsen and Nietzsche. His economic ideas, however, run parallel to Ruskin’s; and nowhere except perhaps in the choruses of the old Greek tragedies do we get anything approaching the passion which is displayed in their declamations against the present economic order.[1093]
Carlyle is possibly the strongest adversary that the old Classical school ever encountered. It was he who spoke of political economy as “the dismal science.” That abstract creation of the Classicists, the economic man, afforded him endless amusement, and he very aptly described their ideal State as “anarchy plus the policeman.” He is no less fierce in his denunciation of laissez-faire as a social philosophy.[1094] But he left us no plan of social reconstruction, being himself content to wait upon individual reform—a trait which brings him into intimate connection with the Christian Socialists.[1095]
Ruskin, on the other hand, has given us a programme of social regeneration which might be summarised as follows:[1096]
1. Manual labour should be compulsory for everybody. His readers were reminded of those words of St. Paul, “If any would not work, neither should he eat.” He thought it both absurd and immoral that a man should live in idleness merely by using money inherited from his ancestors to pay for the services of his fellow-men. Life is the only real form of payment; in other words, labour ought to be given in return for labour. To live upon the fruits of dead labour is surely absurd and contradictory. And it must be real human labour. Machinery of all kinds must be renounced except that which may be driven by wind or water—natural forces which, unlike coal, do not defile, but rather purify.
Ruskin wanted labour to be artistic, and he longed to see the artisan again become an artist as he was in the Middle Ages (which is a somewhat hasty generalisation perhaps). In practice this is not very easy. Some of his immediate disciples have set up as artistic bookbinders, but the number of people who can find employment at such trades must be exceedingly few.
Tolstoy, on the other hand, does not strive for artistic effect. His heart is set upon rural work, which he magnificently describes as “bread work,” and which seemed to him sufficiently noble without embellishment of any kind.
2. Work for everyone is the natural complement and the necessary corrective of the preceding rule of no idleness and no unemployment. In society as at present organised everybody is not obliged to work, while some individuals are obliged to be idle.[1097] This monstrous inequality must be remedied. There would be no difficulty about finding plenty of work for everyone if everyone did something. Under such a system there would be no unemployment, although there would be more leisure for some.
3. Labour would no longer be paid for according to the exigencies of demand and supply, which tend to reduce manual work to the level of a mere commodity. It would be remunerated according to the eternal principles of justice, which would not of necessity imply an appeal to any written law, but solely to custom, which even now fixes the salaries of doctors, lawyers, and professors. In these professions there are no doubt some individual inequalities, but there is also the norm, and it is a breach of professional etiquette to take less than this. The norm does occasionally find expression in the rules of the association, and in some such way Ruskin would fix not merely a minimum but also a maximum wage. Whatever profession a person follows, whether he be workman, soldier, or merchant, he should always work not merely for profit but for the social good. He must, of course, be suitably rewarded if his position as a worker is to be maintained and the work itself efficiently performed, but it can never be done if gain becomes the end and labour merely the means.
4. The natural sources of wealth—land, mines, and waterfalls—and the means of communication should be nationalised.
5. A social hierarchy graded according to the character of the services rendered should be established. The gradation must be accepted in no intolerant spirit, and must be respected by everybody. Chivalry is as necessary in an industrial as in a military society, and a new crusade against Mammonism[1098] should be preached both far and wide.
6. Above all else must come education—not mere instruction. What needs developing above everything is a sense of greatness, a love of beauty, respect for authority, and a passion for self-sacrifice. What especially need acquiring are the faculties of admiration, of hope, and of love.[1099]
Only the last item on the programme seems anywhere near realisation, but that by itself would justify our reference to Ruskin’s scheme. Not only has the suggestion resulted in the creation of working men’s colleges at Oxford and of Ruskin Colleges elsewhere, but it has also given rise to the garden city movement. These new cities are built with the express purpose of relieving the worst features of industrial life, and are so planned as not to interfere in any way either with the beauties of nature or with the health of the citizens.[1100]
Ruskin speaks of himself somewhere as an out-and-out communist, but his communism had also a touch of the aristocrat and the æsthete about it which possibly proved a recommendation in English society. Tolstoy is a much more thoroughgoing communist, and is violently opposed to “that low, bestial instinct which men call the right of private property.”[1101] His cry was “Back to the land,” and the practice of coaration; his ideal the mir. He was not anxious to know that everyone was working at some trade or other, but he thought everyone ought to produce his own food, which is the one inevitable law of human existence. Division of labour, which has been so extravagantly praised by economists, he thought of as a mere machination of the devil enabling men to evade the Divine commandment. At any rate it should only be adopted when the need for it arises, and after consultation with all the parties interested, and not indiscriminately, as is at present the case, with competition, over-production, and crises as the result.[1102]
If we are to take Tolstoy’s words literally, as he suggested we should take Christ’s words, then the society that he dreamt of is very far beyond even the communist ideal. More towns, more commerce, more subdivision of trades, more money, more art for art’s sake—such was to be the economic Nirvana of the communists.