“You heard what I said about the two men in the train?”
“Yes,” was the reply.
“Did you understand what I meant by my story?”
“Oh, yes,” answered the girl. “You meant that if we hadn’t got something that we wanted, and somebody else has got it, we could go and take it from them.” And the lecturer, smiling his approval, passed on.
There are Socialists who will indignantly repudiate all such ideas; yet we have but to turn to some of the most respectable authorities on Socialism to find ample evidence that the gentleman who lectured before the children of Islington was scarcely more radical than many of the more eminent advocates of Marxism. Bax, for example, in his “Ethics of Socialism,” admits that “for him [the Socialist] it is indifferent whether social and political ends are realized by lawful or lawless means.”
If it be said that this is a principle which was applied by Bax to conditions in general, and had nothing to do with the conduct of individuals, what is to be said of the advice which he gives (“Outlooks from the New Standpoint”) to those who are searching for the “new” standard of personal integrity. “The cheapest way of obtaining goods is not to pay for them,” said Bax, “and if a buyer can avoid paying for the goods he obtains, he has quite as much right to do so as the seller has to receive double or treble their cost price and call it profit.”
Karl Kautsky, who is regarded by many as the official interpreter of Socialism, has also laid down laws for the guidance of Socialists in ethical matters. He advances the theory that the moral law prevails only when we have intercourse with members of our own class, or social organization. “One of the most important duties is that of truthfulness to comrades,” he says (Neue Zeit, October 3, 1903). “Towards enemies this duty was never considered binding.” As the Socialist, even from his Sunday school days is taught to regard every employer as his enemy, the natural effect of such a principle, if put into operation in every day affairs, is obvious.
At the time this statement was made by Kautsky, some resentment was expressed towards him because, as he himself relates (“Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History,” p. 157), his “statement was interpreted as if he had attempted to establish a special social democratic principle in opposition to the principle of the eternal moral law which commands unconditional truthfulness to all men.” “Whether this interpretation was right or wrong,” says Ming (“The Morality of Modern Socialism,” p. 136), “we may judge from the well-attested fact that in a Socialist meeting in Hamburg a motion made to disavow Kautsky’s proposition was lost.”
In view of all these facts, it is difficult to see what ground Socialists can have for denying that they expect to put the process of confiscation into effect. Of course, not all Socialists are so radical as Bax, who takes occasion repeatedly to declare his advocacy of this doctrine. “Now, justice being henceforth identified with confiscation and injustice with the rights of property, there remains only the question of ‘ways and means.’... The moral effect of sudden expropriation would be much greater than that of any gradual process.” To him there can be no middle-ground between “possession and confiscation.” Unless a man accepts the doctrine that private ownership is unjust and confiscation just, he cannot be a true Socialist (op. cit., pp. 75-76).
As we have seen, John, the principle of confiscation, once we have accepted the proposition that private property is theft, is perfectly logical and even the methods of compensation proposed by Socialists are nothing more or less than confiscation in disguise. Cecil Chesterton states this fact very clearly in The Church Socialist Quarterly (January, 1911), where he says: