Contemporary Socialism

by John Rae

This brings me to the next point I mentioned, the interesting problem of the true relations of socialism to democracy. Is socialism, as Stahl and others represent, an inevitable corollary of democracy? If so, our interest in it is very real and very immediate. For democracy is already here, and is at present engaged in every country of Europe in the very work of reorganizing the social system into harmony with democratic requirements. Its hammer may make little sound in some places, but the work proceeds none the less effectually for the silence, and it will proceed, slowly or more rapidly, until all the institutions of the country have been renovated by the democratic spirit. Will the social system, which will result from the process, be socialism? "The gradual development of the principle of equality," says De Tocqueville, "is a providential fact. It has all the characteristics of such a fact. It is universal; it is durable; it constantly eludes all human interference; and all events, as well as all men, contribute to its progress. Would it be wise to imagine that a social movement, the causes of which lie so far back, can be checked by the efforts of one generation? Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists? Will it stop now that it has grown so strong, and its adversaries so weak?" If, then, the natural tendency of democracy is to socialism, to socialism we must eventually go.

But the natural tendency of democracy is not to socialism. A single plain but remarkable fact suffices to establish that. Democracy has been in full bloom in America for more than a century, and there are no traces of socialism there except among some German immigrants of yesterday; for, of course, the communism of the eccentric religious sects of America proceeds from religious ideals, and has no bearing one way or other on the social tendency of democracy. The labouring class is politically everything in that country—everything, at least, that electoral power can make them in an elective republic; and they have never shown any desire to use their political power to become socially everything or to interfere with the freedom of property. Had this been in any way the necessary effect of democratic institutions, it must have by this time made its appearance in the United States. De Tocqueville, indeed, maintains that so far from there being any natural solidarity between democracy and socialism, they are absolutely contrary the one to the other. "Democracy," he said in a speech in the Republican Parliament of France in 1849, "extends the sphere of individual independence; socialism contracts it. Democracy gives every individual man his utmost possible value; socialism makes every man an agent, an instrument, a cipher. Democracy and socialism coincide only in the single word equality, but observe the difference: democracy desires equality in liberty; socialism seeks equality in compulsion and servitude."

That is so far substantially true, but it cannot be received altogether without qualification. We have had experience in modern times of two different forms of democracy, which may be called the American and the Continental. In America equality came as it were by nature, without strife and without so much as observation; the colonists started equal. But freedom was only won by sacrifice; the first pilgrims bought it by exile; the founders of the Republic bought it a second time by blood. Liberty therefore was their treasure, their ark, their passion; and having been long trained in habits of self-government, they acquired in the daily exercise of their liberty that strong sense of its practical value, and that subtle instinct of its just limits, which always constitute its surest bulwarks. With them the State was nothing more than an association for mutual protection—an association, like any other, having its own definite work to do and no more, and receiving from its members the precise powers needed for that work and no more; and they looked with a jealousy, warm from their history and life, on any extension of the State's functions or powers beyond those primary requirements of public safety or utility which they laid upon it. In the United States property is widely diffused; liberty has been long enjoyed by the people as a fact, as well as loved by them as an ideal; the central authority has ever been held in comparative check; and individual rights are so general a possession that any encroachment upon them in the name of the majority would always tread on interests numerous and strong enough to raise an effectual resistance. Democracy has in America, accordingly, a soil most favourable to its healthy growth; the history, the training, and the circumstances of the people all concur to support liberty.

But on the Continent democracy sprang from very different antecedents, and possesses a very different character. Equality was introduced into France by convulsion, and has engrossed an undue share of her attention since. Freedom, on the other hand, has been really less desired than power. The Revolution found the affairs of that country administered by a strong centralized organization, with its hand everywhere and on everything, and the Revolution left them so. Revolution has succeeded revolution; dynasties and constitutions have come and gone; almost every part of the political and social system has suffered change; the form of government has been republic, empire, monarchy, empire and republic again; but the authority of government, its sphere, its attributes, have remained throughout the same. Each party in succession has seized the power of the State, but none has sought to curb its range. On the contrary, their temptation lay the other way; they have been always so bent on using the authority and mechanism of government to impair or suppress the influence of their adversaries, whom they regarded as at the same time the adversaries of the State, that they could only wish that authority to be larger and that mechanism more perfect than they already were. Even the more popular parties are content to accept the existing over-government as the normal state of affairs, and always strive to gain the control of it rather than to restrain its action. And so it has come about that, while they sought liberty for themselves, they were afraid to grant it to their opponents, for fear their opponents should be able to get the authority of this too powerful administration into their hands and serve them in the same way. The struggle for freedom has thus been corrupted into a struggle for power. That is the secret of the pathetic story of modern France. That is why, with all her marvellous efforts for liberty, she has never fully possessed it, and that is why she seems condemned to instability.

A growing minority of the democratic party in France is indeed opposed to this unfortunate over-government, but the democratic party in general has always countenanced it, perhaps more than any other party, because to their minds government represents the will of the people, and the people cannot be supposed to have any reason to restrain its own will. Besides, they are still dominated by the doctrines of Rousseau and the other revolutionary writers who looked with the utmost contempt on the American idea of the State being a kind of joint-stock association organized for a circumscribed purpose and with limited powers, and who held the State, on the contrary, to be the organ of society in all its interests, desires, and needs, and to be invested with all the powers and rights of all the individuals that compose it. Under the social contract, by which they conceived the State to be constituted, individuals gave up all their rights and possessions to the community, and got them back immediately afterwards as mere State concessions, which there could be no injustice in withdrawing again next day for the greater good of the community. Instead of enjoying equal freedom as men, the great object was to make them enjoy equal completeness as citizens.

From historical conditions like these there has sprung up on the Continent—in Germany as well as France—a quite different type of democracy from the American, and this type of democracy, while it may not be the best, the truest, or the healthiest type of it, has a tendency only too natural towards socialism. It contains in its very build and temperament organic conditions that predispose it to socialism as to its peculiarly besetting disease. It evinced this tendency very early in the history of the Revolution. As Ledru-Rollin reminded De Tocqueville, in replying to his speech, the right to labour on the part of the strong and the right to assistance on the part of the weak were already acknowledged by the Convention of 1793. Claims like these constitute the very A B C of socialism, and they have always moved with more or less energy in the democratic tradition of the Continent. Democracy, guided by the spirit of freedom, will resist socialism; but authoritative democracy, such as finds favour abroad, leans strongly towards it. A democratic despotism is obviously more dangerous to property than any other, inasmuch as the despot is, in this case, more insatiable, and his rapacity is so easily hid and even sanctified under the general considerations of humanity that always mingle with it.

It is therefore manifest that the question whether political democracy must end in social, is one that cannot be answered out of hand by deduction from the idea. The development will differ in different countries, for it depends on historical conditions, of which the most important is that I have now touched on, whether the national character and circumstances are calculated to guide that development into the form of democratic liberty, or into the form of democratic tyranny. A second condition is scarcely less important, viz., whether the laws and economic situation of the country have conduced to a dispersion or to a concentration of property. For even in the freest democracy individual property can only be permanently sustained by diffusion, and, if existing conditions have isolated it into the hands of the few, the many will lie under a constant, and, in emergencies, an irresistible temptation to take freedom in their hand and force the distribution of property by law, or nationalize it entirely by a socialistic reconstruction. It used to be a maxim in former days that power must be distributed in some proportion to property, but with the advent of democracy the maxim must be converted, and the rule of health will now be found in having property distributed in some proportion to power. That is the natural price of stability under a democratic régime. A penniless omnipotence is an insupportable presence. When supreme power is vested in a majority of the people, property cannot sit securely till it becomes so general a possession that a majority of the people has a stake in its defence, and this point will not be reached until at least a large minority of them are actually owners, and the rest enjoy a reasonable prospect of becoming so by the exercise of care and diligence in their ordinary avocations.

The belief of Marx and modern socialists, that the large system of production, with its centralized capital and its aggregation of workpeople in large centres, must, by necessary historical evolution, end in the socialist State, is, as Professor A. Menger has pointed out, not justified by history. The latifundia and slavery of the decline of the Roman empire were not succeeded by any system of common property, but by the institutions of mediæval law which made the rights of private property more absolute and exclusive. And in our own time the tendency to concentration of property in the hands of a few great capitalists is being corrected by the newer tendency to joint stock management, i.e., to the union and multiplication of small capitalists; and this is of course a tendency back from, and not on towards, the social revolution Marx conceived to be imminent. But though the modern concentration of wealth may not for the moment be increasing, and if it were, may not on that account necessarily spell socialism, it certainly spells social peril; and the future, therefore, stands before us with a solemn choice: either property must contrive to get widely diffused peacefully, or it will be diffused by acts of popular confiscation, or perhaps be nationalized altogether; and the fate of free institutions hangs upon the dilemma. For in a democratic community the peril is always near. De Tocqueville may be right in saying that such communities, if left to themselves, naturally love liberty; but there are other things they love more, and this profound political philosopher has himself pointed out with what exceptional vigour they nourish two powerful passions, either of which, if it got the mastery, would prove fatal to freedom. One is the love of equality. "I think," says he, "that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves they will seek to cherish it, and view every privation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, insistent, invincible; they call for equality in freedom, and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, pauperism, but they will not endure aristocracy." The other is the unreined love of material gratification. By this De Tocqueville does not mean sensual corruption of manners, for he believes that sensuality will be more moderate in a democracy than in other forms of society. He means the passion for material comfort above all other things, which he describes as the peculiar passion of the middle classes; the complete absorption in the pursuit of material well-being and the means of material well-being, to the disparagement and disregard of every ideal consideration and interest, as if the chief end and whole dignity of man lay in gaining a conventional standard of comfort. When a passion like this spreads from the classes whose vanity it feeds to the classes whose envy it excites, social revolution is at the gates, and this is one of De Tocqueville's gravest apprehensions in contemplating the advance of democracy. For he says that the passion for material well-being has no check in a democratic community except religion, and if religion were to decline—and the pursuit of comfort undoubtedly impairs it—then liberty would perish. "For my part," he declares, "I doubt whether man can ever support at once complete religious independence and entire public freedom; and I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him he must serve, and if he be free he must believe." It is impossible, therefore, in an age when the democratic spirit has grown so strong and victorious, to avoid taking some reasonable concern for the future of liberty, more especially as at the same time the sphere and power of government are being everywhere continually extended, the devotion to material well-being, and what is called material civilization, is ever increasing, and religious faith, particularly among the educated and the working classes, is on the decline.

This is exactly the rock ahead of the modern State, of which we have been long warned by keen eyes aloft, and which seems now to stand out plainly enough to ordinary observers on the deck. Free institutions run continual risk of shipwreck when power is the possession of the many, but property—from whatever cause—the enjoyment of the few. With the advance of democracy a diffusion of wealth becomes almost a necessity of State. And the difficulty only begins when the necessity is perceived. For the State cannot accomplish any lasting or effective change in the matter without impairing or imperilling the freedom which its intervention is meant to protect—without, in short, becoming socialist, for fear of socialism; and when it has done its best, it finds that the solution is still subject to moral and economic conditions which it has no power to control. In trade and manufactures which occupy such vast and increasing proportions of the population of modern countries, the range of the State's beneficial or even possible action is very little; and in these branches the natural conditions at present strongly favour concentration or aggregation of capital. The small masters have simply been worsted in ordinary competition with the large producers, and so long as the large system of production continues the cheapest system of production, no other result can be expected. The social problem, therefore, so far as these branches are concerned, is to discover some form of co-operative arrangement which shall reconcile the large system of production with the interests of the labouring class, unless, indeed—what is far from impossible—the large system of production is itself to be superseded in the further advance of industrial development. The economic superiority of that system depends greatly on the circumstance that the power now in use—water or steam—necessitates the concentration of machinery at one spot. Mr. Babbage predicted fifty years ago that if a new power were to be discovered that could be generated in a central place in quantities sufficient for the requirements of a whole community, and then distributed, as gas is, wherever it was wanted, the age of domestic manufactures would return. Every little community might then find it cheaper, by saving carriage, and availing itself of cheaper local labour, to manufacture for itself many of the articles now made for it at the large mills; and the small factory or workshop, so suitable, among other advantages, for co-operative enterprise, would multiply everywhere. Now, have we such a power in electricity? If so, not the least important effect of the new agent will be its influence on the diffusion of wealth, and its aid towards the solution of the social problem of the nineteenth century.

With land and agriculture the situation is somewhat different. The distribution of landed property has always depended largely on legal conditions; and since these conditions have—in this country at least—wrought for two centuries in favour of the aggregation of estates, their relaxation may reasonably be expected to operate to some extent in the contrary direction. Too much must not be built on this expectation, however, for the natural conditions are at present, at least, as partial to the large property as the legal. The abolition of entail and primogeniture, by emancipating the living proprietor from the preposterous tyranny of the dead, and by bringing to the burdened the privilege of sale, must necessarily throw greater quantities of land into the market than reach it now, but the redistribution of that land will as necessarily conform to the existing social and economic circumstances of the country; and England will never cease to be characterized by the large property, so long as its social system lends exceptional consideration to the possession of land, and its commercial system is continually creating an exceptional number of large fortunes. The market for the large estate is among the wealthy, who buy land as an instrument of enjoyment, of power, of social ambition; and what with the wealth made at home and the wealth made in the colonies, the number of this class is ever on the increase; the natural market for the small estate, on the other hand, is among the farming class, to whom land is a commercial investment, and the farmers of England, unlike those of other countries, unlike those of our own country in former days, are as a rule positively indisposed to purchase land, finding it more profitable to rent it. This aversion, however, is much more influential with large farmers than with small ones. It is commonly argued as if a small farmer who has saved money will be certain to employ it in taking a more extensive holding, but that is not so. On the contrary, he more usually leaves it in the bank; in some parts of Scotland many small farmers have deposits of from £500 to £1000 lying there at interest; they studiously conceal the fact, lest their landlords should hear of it, and raise their rent, and they submit to much inconvenience rather than withdraw any portion of it, once it is deposited. Their ruling object is security and not aggrandisement, and consequently if land were in the market in lots to suit them, they would be almost certain to become purchasers of land. In forecasting the possibility of the rise of a peasant proprietary in this country, it is often forgotten that, whether land is a profitable investment for the farmer or not, the class of farmers from whom such a proprietary would be generated is less anxious for a profitable investment than for a safe one, and that to many of them, as of other classes, independence will always possess much more than a commercial value.