A HISTORY OF SOCIALISM
INTRODUCTION
Though much has been said and written about socialism for many years, it still remains a questionable name which awakens in the mind of the reader doubt, perplexity, and contradiction.
But there can be no question that it is a growing power throughout the world. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the most intelligent and the best organised working-men of all civilised countries are passing over to it. The opinions which are being accepted by the foremost of the working-classes to-day will in all probability have the same attraction for their less advanced brethren to-morrow. It is a subject, however, which concerns all classes, and it is forcing to the front a wide group of problems which are every day becoming more urgent.
In view of this there is only one right and safe course; we should seek to know the truth about socialism. The discontent which tends to disturbance and revolution can be removed only by satisfying the legitimate needs and aspirations of those who suffer.
We all know that the propaganda of socialism has been attended with intemperate and violent language, with wild opinions which are often inconsistent with the first principles of social order, with revolutionary outbreaks leading to bloodshed, desolation and long-continued unrest and suspicion. These things are greatly to be deplored. But we shall be wise if we regard them as symptoms of wide-spread and deep-seated social disease. The best way to cure such disease is to study and remove the causes of it. No physician will have any success in combating a malady if he content himself with suppressing its symptoms.
For the study of socialism two things are essential on the part of the reader—good-will and the open mind. Socialism has at least a most powerful provisional claim on our good-will, that it professes to represent the cause of the sufferers in the world’s long agony, of the working-classes, of women, and of the down-trodden nations and races. If it can make any solid contribution in such a far-reaching cause it has the strongest right to be heard.
Need we say that no new movement like socialism can be understood or appreciated without some measure of the open mind? In the course of history it has been proved over and over again that established ideas and institutions are not always in the right in every respect, and that novel opinions, though presented in extravagant and intemperate language, are not always entirely wrong. Even the most prejudiced reader will do well to consider that a cause which now numbers millions of intelligent adherents, for which men have died and gladly suffered imprisonment and privation of every kind, may contain elements of truth and of well-justified hope for the future.
Above all things, it is essential to remember that socialism is not a stereotyped system of dogma. It is a movement which springs out of a vast and only partially shapen reality. It is therefore living and liable to change. It has a history on which we can look back; but it is above all things a force of the present and the future, and its influence in the future for good or evil will depend on how we the men of the present relate ourselves to it.
On the one hand, it would be a great wrong if we encouraged vain and delusive expectations; but it would be a wrong even greater, on the other hand, if from whim or prejudice or pessimism we did anything that might be an obstacle to truth and progress. In a subject so momentous the only right course is to eschew passion and prejudice, and to follow truth with goodwill and an open mind.