CHAPTER X
CONCLUSION[ToC]
We have now concluded our survey of the political activities of Socialism in the four countries that present the most characteristic features of this movement of the working classes. It is peculiarly difficult to draw general conclusions from the study of a movement so protean. Democracy is young; Socialism is in its early infancy.
Is there a rational trend in Socialism? Or is it only a passing whim of the masses? Is it a crude theory, an earnest protest, a powerful propaganda? Or is it a current of human conviction so strong, so deep-flowing that it will be resistless?
It is futile to deny the power of the Socialist movement. The greatest proof of its virility is its ability to break away from Marxian dogma and from the fantasies of the utopists, and acknowledge mundane ways and means. In spite of this earthiness, it still has its fanciful abstractions. Some of its prophets are still glibly proclaiming a new order,—as if society were artificial, like a house, and could be torn down piecemeal or by dynamite, and then rebuilt to suit the vagaries of a new owner.
On the other hand, a portion of the Socialists are learning that society is a living thing that can be shaped only by training, like the mind of a child. Socialism, as a whole, is metamorphosing. Some of its vicious eccentricities, like the ravings against religion and the espousal of free love, have already vanished. It is learning that institutions are the product of ages, not of movements, and cannot be changed at the fancy of every new and disgruntled social prophet.
The best school for Socialism has been the school of parliamentary activity. Here the hot-blooded protesters become sober artisans of statecraft. We have seen how the early utopian ideas, with their edenesque theory of the guilelessness of man, were abruptly exchanged for the theory of violence, based on the materialistic conception of the universe and of man. Neither the soft humanities of the utopists nor the blood and thunder of revolution overturned the existing state. But when the workingmen appeared in parliaments, then things began to change.
In every country where the Socialists have entered parliament, they appeared suddenly, in considerable numbers. So in France, Germany, England, Belgium, Austria. And they always produced a flutter, often a scare, among the conservatives. They were an untried force. Their preachings of violence and their antagonism to property made them an unknown quantity, to be feared, and not to be lightly handled—a bomb of political dynamite that might explode any moment and scatter the product of ages into fragments!
But no explosion came. And one more example of the persistence of human nature was added to the long annals of history.
In every country the parliamentary experience has been the same: the liberal and radical element, attracted by the legislative demands of the labor party, coalesced, for specific issues, with the Socialists, and a new era of economic and social legislation was ushered in. Even in Germany, with its unmodern conditions in government, all the powers of feudal autocracy failed to crush the rising forces of the new political consciousness.