A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

This criticism of society is valuable, but its effect is mainly negative. We may go on to claim, however, that socialism, when purified from materialism, from the too revolutionary, absolute, and abstract elements with which it has been associated in history, can render a positive and substantial service to human improvement that would be vastly more valuable than any criticism. It may be maintained that in its main aim and tendency socialism is perfectly sound and right. For amidst much error and exaggeration it has brought out the type of social economic organisation which in the future should and will prevail.

In previous chapters it has been made abundantly clear that the characteristic feature of the present economic order lies in the fact that industry is carried on by private competing capitalists served by wage-labour. According to socialism the industry of the future should be carried on by free associated workers rationally utilising a united capital with a view to an equitable system of distribution. As we have already had occasion to say, no formal statement can rightly give expression to the meaning of a great historical movement. But in such language we believe the contrast between the old order and the new can be most simply and at the same time with due adequacy expressed.

The same type of industrial organisation has been well set forth by J. S. Mill in these words: “The form of association, however, which, if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief and workpeople without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.”[^[1]] Mill’s view of the subject, it may be remarked in passing, was derived from the study of French and English socialists. His good sense saved him from the utopian extravagance of these writers, and as he had little sympathy with the peculiarly German ways of thought, he shows no tendency to the abstractness of the specialists of the Fatherland. The result is a conception of socialism which is at once intrinsically more reasonable, more adapted to the English mind and to universality, than any other offered by prominent economists. And in this connection we need hardly add that by the English mind we mean the mind of the English-speaking people; also, notwithstanding all that may be said to the contrary, that the English type of society has the best claim to universality, because it has best succeeded in reconciling and realising the fundamental requirements of order and freedom.

The simple expression of the socialistic theory will, no doubt, in the course of propaganda and discussion, long continue to be overlaid and obscured by a mass of detail, sometimes utopian, sometimes all too abstract and systematic. It will be well, therefore, to keep the simplicity of the type in view, but a few explanations may be necessary more fully to elucidate it.

The true meaning of socialism, when rationally understood, is given in the dominating tendencies of social evolution. On the one hand, the effect of the industrial revolution has been to concentrate the means both of production and distribution in immense masses. Capital can now be moved and controlled only on a large scale. The day for the small capital, and the successful control of it by individuals, has passed away. It may continue under exceptional circumstances, but it can no longer expect to be the normal or prevalent form of industry. On the other hand, the body of the people, represented by the modern democracy, can legitimately claim that they shall no longer be excluded from the control of their own economic and social interests. It is a rational and equitable demand that the prevalent divorce of the workers from land and capital should cease. This divorce can be terminated, and the mass of the people can be restored to a participation in the ownership and control of land and capital, only through the principle of association. This is the basis of socialism as given in the normal and dominant forces of the social evolution of our time. As we said in the introduction, socialism is the child of two great revolutions—the industrial revolution, and the vast social and political change embodied in the modern democracy.

Socialism, rationally interpreted, is therefore simply a movement for uniting labour and capital through the principle of association. It seeks to combine labour and capital in the same industrial and social groups. In such a group the present distinction between labourers and capitalists would cease, and the workers become producers, equitably disposing of the entire produce.

Such an industrial association would be self-governing. Socialism is an attempt to establish a free self-governing type of industry, and would therefore seek to realise in the social-economic sphere the principles already recognised in the political. It is a free self-governing form of industry, corresponding in the economic sphere to the democratic system in politics; industry of the people, by the people, for the people. But while a rational socialism seeks to establish industrial freedom, it aims also at promoting and securing industrial peace by terminating the struggle between labour and capital, for, as we have seen, its aim is to unite them in the same group.

Under such a system the workers will have full control of their economic interests. They will have the sobering and steadying discipline of responsibility. They will no doubt make mistakes, as all bodies of men have done since the beginning of the world; but as they will suffer by them, so they will have the power of correcting them. It will be a self-reforming and self-developing system of industry.

And it is hardly necessary to state that these associations will subsist in organic relation to one another. The State is, in idea or principle, such an association on the wide scale, just as the municipality or commune is the local form of association; and their relations to each other may in various degrees and forms represent the principle of federalism or centralisation.

In the history and condition of the working people it is a pathetic fact that their sons, who have been gifted with exceptional capacity, generally go over to the richer classes. Their services are thus lost to the class from which they sprang. It must be the aim of the socialist movement also to terminate this incessant divorce between labour and intelligence, by providing within the groups of associated workers due scope for the best talent.