A History of Economic Doctrines / from the time of the physiocrats to the present day

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

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]