(c) The socialism of Karl Marx is exclusively a working-class gospel. This is its distinctive trait and the source of the power it wields. To some extent it also explains its persistence. Other socialist systems have been discredited and are gone, but the Marxian gospel—no longer, of course, the sublime masterpiece it was when its author first expounded it—has lost none of its ancient vigour, despite the many transformations which it has undergone.
The socialists of the first half of the nineteenth century embraced all men without distinction, worker and bourgeois alike, within their broad humanitarian schemes. Owen, Fourier, and Saint-Simon reckoned upon the co-operation of the wealthy governing classes to found the society of the future. Marxism implies a totally different standpoint. There is to be no attempt at an understanding with the bourgeoisie, there must be no dallying with the unclean thing, and the prohibition is to apply not only to the capitalists, but also to the intellectuals[1004] and to the whole hierarchical superstructure that usually goes by the name of officialdom. Real socialism aims at nothing but the welfare of the working classes, which will only become possible when they attain to power.
It may, of course, be pointed out that socialism has always involved some such struggle between rich and poor, but it is equally correct to say that the battle has hitherto been waged over the question of just distribution. Beyond that there was no issue. But in the Marxian doctrine the antagonism is dignified with the name of a new scientific law, the “class war”—the worker against the capitalist, the poor versus the rich. The individuals are the same, but the casus belli is quite different. “Class war” is a phrase that has contributed not a little to the success of Marxism, and those who understand not a single word of the theory—and this applies to the vast majority of working men—will never forget the formula. It will always serve to keep the powder dry, at any rate.
“Class war” was not a new fact. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”[1005] But although it has always existed, it cannot continue for ever. And the great struggle that is now drawing nigh and which gives us such a tragic interest in the whole campaign will be the last. The collectivist régime will destroy the conditions that breed antagonism, and so will get rid of the classes themselves. Let us note in passing that this prophecy is not without a strong tinge of that Utopian optimism which the Marxians considered such a weakness in the earlier French socialism.
(d) A final distinction of Marxism is its purely revolutionary or catastrophic character, which is again unmistakably indicated by its adoption of “class war” as its watchword. But we have only to remind ourselves that the adjective “revolutionary” is applied by the Marxians to ordinary middle-class action to realize that the term is employed in a somewhat unusual fashion.
The revolution will result in the subjection of the wealthier classes by the working men, but all this will be accomplished, not by having recourse to the guillotine or by resorting to street rioting, but in a perfectly peaceful fashion. The means may be political and the method even within the four corners of the law, for the working classes may easily acquire a majority in Parliament, seeing that they already form the majority of the electors, especially in those countries that have adopted universal suffrage. The method may be simply that of economic associations of working men taking all economic services into their own hands.[1006]
The final catastrophe may come in yet another guise, and most Marxians seem to centre their hopes upon this last possibility. This would take the form of an economic crisis resulting in the complete overthrow of the whole capitalist régime—a kind of economic felo de se. We have already noted the important place which crises hold in the Marxian doctrines.
But if Marxism does not necessarily involve resort to violence, violent methods are not excluded. Indeed, it considers that some measure of struggle is inevitable before the old social forms can be delivered of the new—before the butterfly can issue from the chrysalis. “Force is the birth-pangs of society.”[1007]
This is not the place for false sentimentalism. Evil and suffering seem to be the indispensable agents of evolution. Had anyone been able to suppress slavery or serfdom or to prevent the expropriation of the worker by the capitalist, it would have merely meant drying up the springs of progress and more evil than good would probably have resulted.[1008] Every step forward involves certain unpleasant conditions, which must be faced if the higher forms of existence are ever to become a reality. And for this reason the reform of the bourgeois philanthropist and the preaching of social peace would be found to be harmful if they ever proved at all successful. There is no progress where there is no struggle. This disdainful indifference to the unavoidable suffering involved in transition is inherited from the Classical economists, and provides one more point of resemblance between the two doctrines. Almost identical terms were employed by the Classical economists when speaking of competition, of machinery, or of the absorption of the small industry by a greater one. In the opinion of the Marxians no attempt at improving matters is worthy the name of reform unless it also speeds the coming revolution. “But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.”[1009]