Less honest Socialist orators as the result of long experience have therefore adopted the more effectual policy of appealing to the predatory instincts of the crowd. From Babeuf onwards, Socialism has only been able to make headway by borrowing the language of Anarchy in order to blast its way to power.
Socialism is thus essentially a system of deception devised by middle-class theorists and in no sense a popular creed. Had the revolutionary movement of the past 150 years really proceeded from the people, it would inevitably have followed the line laid down by one of the two sections of the proletariat indicated above, that is to say, it would either have taken the form of a continuous and increasing agitation for social reforms which would have enlisted the sympathy of all right-thinking men and must therefore in the end have proved irresistible, or it would have followed the line of Anarchy, organizing brigandage on a larger and yet larger scale, until, all owners of wealth having been exterminated and their expropriators in their turn exterminated by their fellows, the world would have been reduced to a depopulated desert.
But the world revolution has followed neither of these lines. Always the opponent of sane social reforms which Socialists deride as "melioration" or as futile attempts to shore up an obsolete system, it has consistently disassociated itself from such men as Lord Shaftesbury, who did more to better the conditions of the working classes than anyone who has ever lived. Anarchy, on the other hand, has been used by them merely as a means to an end; for genuine revolutionary sentiment they have no use at all. In Russia the Anarchists became the first objects of Soviet vengeance. The cynical attitude of Socialists towards the revolutionary proletariat was illustrated by Mr. Bernard Shaw, who in December 1919 openly boasted that he had helped to organize the railway strike,[732] and two years later wrote about the miners' strike in the following terms:
A Socialist State would not tolerate such an attack on the community as a strike for a moment. If a Trade Union attempted such a thing, the old Capitalist law against Trade Unions as conspiracies would be re-enacted within twenty-four hours and put ruthlessly into execution. Such a monstrosity as the recent coal strike, during which the coal-miners spent all their savings in damaging their neighbours and wrecking the national industries, would be impossible under Socialism. It was miserably defeated, as it deserved to be.[733]
Now, if this had been written by the Duke of Northumberland in the National Review instead of by Mr. Bernard Shaw in the Labour Monthly, one can imagine the outcry there would have been in the Socialist press. But the leaders of what is called democracy may always use what language they please in speaking of the people. "Our peasants," Maxim Gorky openly declared, "are brutal and debased, hardly human. I hate them."[734] It will be noticed that in descriptions of the French Revolution references to the savageries of the people are never resented by the Liberal or Socialist press; the persons of the leaders alone are sacred. It is clearly not the cause of democracy but of demagogy that these champions of "liberty" are out to defend.
The world-revolution is therefore not a popular movement but a conspiracy to impose on the people a system directly opposed to their real demands and aspirations, a system which, moreover, has proved disastrous every time an attempt has been made to put it into practice.
Russia has provided a further example of its futility. The fact that the more responsible leaders in this country do not advocate violence, does not affect the ultimate issue. Whilst Bolshevism sets out to destroy Capitalism at a blow, Socialism prefers a more gradual process. It is the difference between clubbing a man on the head and bleeding him to death--that is all.
The fact is that all Socialism leads to Communism in the long run[735] and therefore to disaster. The Bolshevist régime brought ruin and misery to Russia not because of the brutality of its methods, but because it was founded on the gigantic economic fallacy that industry can be carried on without private enterprise and personal initiative. The same theory applied by constitutional methods would produce precisely the same results. If the Socialists are ever allowed to carry out their full programme, England may be reduced to the state of Russia without the shedding of a drop of blood.
But how are we to explain the fact that in spite of the failure of Socialism in the past, in spite of the gigantic fiasco presented by Russia, in spite, moreover, of the declaration by the Bolsheviks themselves that Communism had failed and must be replaced by "a new economic policy," that is to say by a return to "Capitalism,"[736] there should still be a large and increasing body of people to proclaim the efficacy of Socialism as the remedy for all social ills? In any other field of human experiment, in medicine or mechanical invention, failure spells oblivion; the prophylactic that does not cure, the machine that cannot be made to work, is speedily relegated to the scrap-heap. What indeed should we say of the bacteriologist, who, after killing innumerable patients with a particular serum, were to advertise it as an unqualified success? Should we not brand such a man as an unscrupulous charlatan or at best as a dangerous visionary? If, moreover, we were to find that large bands of agents backed by unlimited funds, were engaged in pressing his remedy upon the public and carefully avoiding all reference to the fatalities it had caused, should we not further conclude that there was "something behind all this"--some powerful company "running" the concern with a view to advancing its own private interests?
Why should not the same reasoning be applied to Socialism? For not only has Socialism never been known to succeed, but all its past failures are carefully kept dark by its exponents. Who, then, stands to gain by advocating it? And further, who provides the vast sums spent on propaganda? If in reality Socialism is a rising of the "have-nots" against the "haves," how is it that most of the money seems to be on the side of the "have-nots"? For whilst organizations working for law and order are hampered at every turn for funds, no financial considerations ever seem to interfere with the activities of the so-called "Labour movement." Socialism, in fact, appears to be a thoroughly "paying concern," into which a young man enters as he might go into the City, with the reasonable expectation of "doing well." It is only necessary to glance at the history of the past hundred years to realize that "agitation" has provided a pleasant and remunerative career for hundreds of middle-class authors, journalists, speakers, organizers, and dilettantes of all kinds who would otherwise have been condemned to pass their lives on office-stools or at schoolmasters' desks. And when we read the accounts of the delightful treats provided for these "devoted workers" in the cause of the proletariat as given in the records of the First Internationale or the pages of Mrs. Snowden, we begin to understand the attractions of Socialism as a profession.[737]