WHAT SOCIALISM IS
Socialism is too vast a subject to be brought within the four corners of any one definition. It is as impossible for a definition to convey an idea of Socialism as for an empty theater to convey the comedies, the idylls, and the tragedies nightly enacted on its boards. A definition can at best barely give the mechanism of Socialism; it cannot furnish a picture of the effect of that mechanism in eliminating misery, in promoting progress, in making character. This must be painted on a canvas—and on a large canvas—and on many canvases—for, as has been already urged, Socialism is not a simple thing; it is a highly complex thing; and it is only when we have grasped all that Socialism will effect—when we have studied its economic results, its political results, its scientific results, and its ethical results—that we can appreciate this new Gospel of the Poor.
Socialism not only derives strength from each of these results, it unites the divergencies between economics and politics, and solves the conflict between science and religion. So that these four great departments of human thought, instead of being independent or actually in conflict with one another, find themselves in Socialism united in one great harmonious whole.
Just as Christianity derived its strength from the discontent of the oppressed, so Socialism has pushed its first roots in the misery of the proletariat. But we do not judge of a flower exclusively from its roots. So must we not judge Socialism exclusively from that part of it which at present flourishes in dark tenements and in the misery of the unemployed. It is our fault that the tenements are dark, that the unemployed suffer. It will be our fault if Socialism remains the Gospel of the Poor when we can make of it the final Gospel of the whole human race.
For humanity has nearly finished the first great phase of its existence; it has played the rôle of the worm long enough; already is it cribbed, cabined, and confined by silk threads of its own weaving that for a hundred years the cocoon has been accumulating about it, repressing here, regulating there, till it is stifling under limitations created by itself. But the very pressure of these limitations has been developing new functions in us—a conscience restive under false standards, a capacity for wider sympathies—the wings of the grub, destined to burst the chrysalis of worn-out prejudices, regulations, legislations, and despotisms; to spread out into new spaces where there shall be development and happiness.
Whether these hopes are well founded or not is the subject of our inquiry, beginning first with Economics—the roots of our flower; proceeding then to Politics—its stem; next to Science—its structure, and lastly to Morality and Religion—its blossom and its fruit. And if I group Morality and Religion, it is because these have both from the beginning of years and not always hand in hand, been groping after the same thing—Happiness.