Many of the young people of education, who have of late come into the socialist movement, have left—temporarily, at least—the Doll's House of conservatism; but they have brought with them many of the habits of thought, many of the conventions of their old doll's life. Some of them, doubtless, realizing that the Materialist Conception of History involves the Nihilism of Socialism, and thus calls on them to abandon their religious, metaphysical, and dualistic habits of thought, to cast aside their conventional class morality, to cease vaporing about that impossible monstrosity, "the Socialist State," attempt to cut the Gordian knot by denying the Materialist Conception of History, while clinging to their socialist ideal. They thus repeat in inverted form the curious feat in intellectual acrobatics performed by Professor Seligman, who believes in historical materialism, but rejects Socialism. "There is nothing in common," he asserts, "between the economic interpretation of history and the doctrine of socialism, except the accidental fact that the originator of both theories happened to be the same man." And a few pages further on he reiterates: "Socialism and 'historical materialism' are entirely independent-conceptions."[32]
To the educated socialists, who deny or mutilate the doctrine of historical materialism, the materialist socialist might well reply by asserting that these educated socialists are socialists only because of the artistic, intellectual, ethical, and spiritual changes they expect the economic revolution of socialism to produce. The fact that they, lovers of "the things of the spirit," are socialists proves that they believe, albeit unconsciously, in economic determinism.
But, although this personal argument might Well be deemed sufficient, it can readily be proven affirmatively that the whole theory of Modern Socialism rests upon the foundation of historical materialism. This clearly appears in the' admirable summary of the teachings of Marx that Gabriel Deville gives in the Preface to his epitome of Marx's "Capital."
"History, Marx has shown, is nothing but the history of class conflicts. The division of society into classes, which made its appearance with the social life of man, rests on economic relations—maintained by force—which enable some to succeed in shifting on to the shoulders of others the natural necessity of labor.
"Material interests have always been the inciting motives of the incessant struggles of the privileged classes, either with, each other, or against the inferior classes at whose expense they live. Man is dominated by the material conditions of life, and these conditions, and therefore the mode of production, have determined and will determine human customs, ethics, and institutions—social, economic, political, juridical, etc.
"As soon as one part of society has monopolized the means of production, the other part, upon whom the burden of labor falls, is obliged to add to the labor-time necessary for its own support, a certain surplus-labor-time, for which it receives no equivalent,—time that is devoted to supporting and enriching the possessors of the means of production. As an extractor of unpaid labor, which, by means of the increasing surplus-value whose source it is, accumulates every day, more and more, in the hands of the proprietary class the instruments of its dominion, the capitalist regime surpasses in power all the antecedent regimes founded on compulsory labor.
"But to-day, the economic conditions begotten by this regime, trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime, inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer contain them, and these destroying principles are the elements of the new society.
"The historic mission of the class at present exploited, the proletariat, which is being organized and disciplined by the very mechanism of capitalist production, is to complete the work of destruction begun by the development of social antagonisms. It must, first of all, definitively wrest from its class adversaries the political power—the command of the force devoted by them to preserving intact their economic monopolies and privileges.
"Once in control of the political power, it will be able, by proceeding to the socialization of the means of production through the expropriation of the usurpers of the fruits of others' toil, to suppress the present contradiction between collective production and private capitalist appropriation, and to realize the universalization of labor, and the abolition of classes."[33]
If the "educated and professional" socialists cannot break the chain of this logic, they find themselves, as Nora did, face to face with the necessity of making a choice. Behind them is the old doll's house life with its manifold conventions—once useful, but through economic evolution outgrown and thus become false and deadly—a life, easy enough mayhap, but wholly devoid of idealism; before them is the new life of freedom, of revolt against outworn beliefs and conventions—a life of great difficulty, mayhap, but a life cheered by a noble ideal—an ideal in whose realization the socialist materialists believe as fully, as passionately as the ancient Hebrews believed in the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies.
Theirs is a hard case. Without ideals they cannot, in any worthy sense, live. The only possible ideal, that even the keen eyes of so shrewd an observer as Mr. Street can perceive, is the ideal of Socialism. But they cannot accept this ideal without abandoning much, I do not say that is dear to them, but much that by habit and tradition has become part and parcel of their intellectual being.
If they decide to go forward into the New, the old world of dolls' houses must become a strange land to them. In the difficulties and trials of the new life, they cannot send back for aid to the old world, which will have become a world of strangers to them. Nora's woman's instinct did not fail her here; when Torvald asked if he could send help to her in case of need, her unhesitating reply was, "No, I say. I take nothing from strangers."
Far better is the case of the workingman attracted by the socialist ideal. The Nihilism of Socialism has no deterrent terrors for him, for, as Karl Marx said long ago, "he has nothing to lose but his chains, and a whole world to gain." He has long since lost all interest in religion; the factory by enlisting his wife and children as workers has already destroyed his home; and to him the State means nothing but the club of the policeman, the injunction of the judge, and the rifle of the militiaman.
But for the man of the "educated and professional classes" leaving the doll's house is indeed a difficult task. For its performance three things are requisite: a free and open mind, courage, and a vivid imagination. The Russian genius, Peshkoff (Maxim Gorky), did it, and did it with relative ease because he was a workingman before he became an educated man. For the same reason, though in a less degree, Jack London has also done it successfully, though here and there he still lapses into the doll's mode of thought. The sex-interest in the latter part of "The Sea Wolf" is obviously treated from the dolls' point of view; but it should be remembered that Mr. London necessarily expected the majority of the purchasers of "The Sea Wolf" to be dolls. But, in spite of this instance, we may be sure that Jack London brought but little with him when he left the Doll's House; and I am very sure he never sends back to have parcels forwarded to him.
When Mr. Upton Sinclair left the Doll's House, he evidently stuffed his mental pockets with a large assortment of intellectual lingerie and millinery from the doll wardrobes. In telling us what Life means to him in a recent magazine, he says that during a certain stress and storm period of his life he lived in close intimacy with three friends who "loved" him "very dearly." "Their names are Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley." Can any one imagine William Morris writing a sentiment so perfectly satisfying to a doll's sense of beauty? When I read these lines there rises before me a picture of the author tastefully robed in an exquisite dress—a doll's dress—of dotted swiss.[34]