IX[ToC]
WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
(Continued)
And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fattling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the basilisk's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.—Isaiah.
But we are not going to attain Socialism at one bound. The transition is going on all the time, and the important thing for us, in this explanation, is not to paint a picture of the future—which in any case would be useless labor—but to forecast a practical programme for the intermediate period, to formulate and justify measures that shall be applicable at once, and that will serve as aids to the new Socialist birth.—W. Liebknecht.
At the head of this letter I have copied two passages to which I want you to give particular attention, Jonathan. The first consists of a part of a very beautiful word-picture, in which the splendid old Hebrew prophet described his vision of a perfect social state. In his Utopia it would no longer be true to speak of Nature as being red of tooth and claw. Even the lion would eat straw like the ox, so that there might not be suffering caused by one animal preying upon another. Whenever I read that chapter, Jonathan, I sit watching the smoke-wreaths curl out of my pipe and float away, and they seem to bear me with them to a land of seductive beauty. I should like to live in a land where there was never a cry of pain, where never drop of blood stained the ground.
There have been lots of Utopias besides that of the old Hebrew prophet. Plato, the great philosopher, wrote The Republic to give form to his dream of an ideal society. Sir Thomas More, the great English statesman and martyr, outlined his ideal of social relations in a book called Utopia. Mr. Bellamy, in our own day, has given us his picture of social perfection in Looking Backward. There have been many others who, not content with writing down their ideas of what society ought to be like, have tried to establish ideal conditions. They have established colonies, communities, sects and brotherhoods, all in the earnest hope of being able to attain the perfect social state.