This great change which the Socialist has in mind means the substitution of co-operation for competition and the placing of productive property in the care of the state or of society, instead of letting it remain under the domination of individuals. To abolish private productive capital by making it public, to establish a communistic instead of a competitive society, that is the object.
In the Socialist's new order of society, where poverty will be unknown, there is to be a common bond. This bond is not possession, but work. With glowing exultation all the expositors and exhorters of the proletarian movement dwell upon the blessedness of toil. They glorify man, not through his inheritance of personality, certainly not through his possession of things, but through his achievements of toil.
When all members of society work at useful occupations, then all the necessary things can be done in a few hours. Six or four, or some even say two, hours a day will be sufficient to do all the drudgery and the essential things in a well-organized human beehive. There is to be nothing morose or despondent in this toil. It is all to be done to the melody of good cheer and willingness.
How is this great change to come about, and what is to be the exact organization of society under this regime of work and co-operation? Here unanimity ceases. As a criticism Socialism is unanimous, as a method it is divided, as a reconstructive process it is hopelessly at sea.
At first Socialists were utopians, then they became revolutionists. This was natural. Socialism was born in an air of revolution—the political revolutions of the bourgeois, and the infinitely greater industrial revolution. The tides of change and passion were rocking the foundations of state and industry. The evils in early industrialism were abhorrent. Small children and their mothers were forced into factories, pauperism was thriving, the ugly machine-fed towns were replacing the quaint and cheerful villages, rulers were forgetting their duties in their greed for gain, and the state was persecuting men for their political and economic opinions. Every face was turned against the preachers of the new order, and they naturally thought that the change could be brought about only by violence and revolution. Louis Blanc said "a social revolution ought to be tried:
"Firstly, because the present social system is too full of iniquity, misery, and turpitude to exist much longer.
"Secondly, because there is no one who is not interested, whatever his position, rank, and fortune, in the inauguration of a new social system.
"Thirdly, and lastly, because this revolution, so necessary, is possible, even easy to accomplish peacefully."[12]
These are the naïve words of a young man of thirty-seven, the youngest member of the ill-fated revolutionary government of France in 1848. Not every one thought that the revolution could be peacefully accomplished, and, it must be admitted, few seemed to care.
In their "Communist Manifesto," the most noted of all Socialist broadsides, Marx and Engels know of no peaceful revolution. They close with these virile words: "The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!"