The confusion thus introduced has had the effect of seriously complicating the study of Socialism from the historical point of view. Much that one finds bearing the name of Socialism in the literature of the middle of the nineteenth century, for example, is not at all related to Socialism as that term is understood to-day. Thus the Socialists of the present day, who do not advocate Communism, regard as a classic presentation of their views the famous pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. They have circulated it by millions of copies in practically all the languages of the civilized world. Yet throughout it speaks of "Socialists" with ill-concealed disdain, and always in favor of Communism and the Communist Party. The reason for this is clearly explained by Engels himself in the preface written by him for the English edition, but that has not prevented many an unscrupulous opponent of Socialism from quoting the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels against the Socialists of the Marx-Engels school.[7] In like manner, the utterances and ideas of many of those who formerly called themselves Socialists have been quoted against the Socialists of to-day, notwithstanding that it was precisely on account of their desire to repudiate all connection with, and responsibility for, such ideas that the founders of the modern Socialist movement took the name "Communists."
Nothing could be clearer than the language in which Engels explains why the name Communist was chosen, and the name Socialist discarded. He says: "Yet, when it (the Manifesto) was written, we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of these already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances; in both cases men outside of the working-class movement, and looking rather to the 'educated' classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolution and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough among the working class to produce the Utopian Communism, in France, of Cabet, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-class movement; Communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, 'respectable'; Communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that the 'emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the names we must take. Moreover, we have ever since been far from regretting it."[8]
There is still, unfortunately, much misuse of the word "Socialism," even by some accredited Socialist exponents. Writers like Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, and many others, are constantly referred to as Socialists, when, in fact, they are nothing of the sort. Still, the word is now pretty generally understood as defined by the Socialists—not the "Socialists" of sixty years ago, who were mostly Communists, but the Socialists of to-day, whose principles find classic expression in the Communist Manifesto, and to the attainment of which they have directed their political parties and programmes. In the words of Professor Thorstein Veblen: "The Socialism that inspires hopes and fears to-day is of the school of Marx. No one is seriously apprehensive of any other so-called Socialistic movement, and no one is seriously concerned to criticise or refute the doctrines set forth by any other school of 'Socialists.'"[9]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Republican National Platform, 1908.
[2] I quote the English translation from the London Clarion, December 18, 1905.
[3] William Morris.
[4] Isaiah ii. 4.
[5] See Socialism and Social Democracy, by John Spargo. The Comrade, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1903.
[6] In The International Socialist Review, Vol. VI, No. 1, July, 1905.