A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

During recent years we have seen in America a transformation which is without parallel in the history of the world. Till the middle of the nineteenth century the United States might be described as an agricultural country, which, apart from negro slavery, had no division of classes, no poverty, and no social question. It was a highly favoured region which to the most energetic and enterprising of the working classes of Europe had for generations been a Land of Promise. The early settlers had in the main brought from England all that was best and highest in respect of character, belief, and institutions. In particular, for the planting of New England the “finest of the wheat” was sifted from the most progressive counties of England; and as the area of emigration widened it embraced the best elements in the British Isles and in north-western Europe, the best endowed and the most progressive in the world. The country they came to live in had resources, and offered opportunities which were almost boundless. In the development of the country from the first settlement of Virginia, there was just enough of difficulty to stimulate and correct the energies of a free people.

A marvellous set of new conditions came into operation in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The industrial revolution ran its course with astonishing rapidity and thoroughness, and on a scale absolutely unprecedented. The Republic now has a gigantic machine industry and a vast railway and financial system organised in trusts which are controlled by a few men wealthy beyond example in history, and it has also got a large wage-earning class, the unemployed, poverty and slums. If the commonwealth has not already become a plutocracy, it appears to be on the downward way to it.

If the wage-earning class consisted of fully trained American citizens, the situation would be clearer. It is complicated by the fact that for many years the Republic has received an enormous number of immigrants from the less-advanced countries of eastern and southern Europe, and has the very difficult task of raising them to its own high standard of citizenship. The general result is that America is confronted with the vast problem, which socialism has undertaken to solve, in its most formidable form. Between a highly organised and gigantic capitalism and a continually increasing labour class which is largely composed of new immigrants, and is only partially organised, a wide gulf is fixed. A growing chasm threatens to divide the commonwealth in two. This rent is made manifest in the strikes, which degenerate into private war and even into civil war. Socialists maintain that they have been repressed with a severity and brutality known in Russia alone. As yet the organised socialism has made only moderate progress. In 1902, however, a resolution in favour of socialism obtained about half the votes at the congress of the American Federation of Labour, which numbered over 2,000,000 members. At the presidential election of 1904 the socialist candidate Eugène V. Debs received 408,000 votes, in 1908 he had 500,000 votes. It was widely recognised that the presidential election of 1908 turned on the vote of organised labour. The Republican and Democratic candidates both made special appeal to organised labour and made a special effort to gain its vote. It is obvious that the gigantic growth of the trust system in America has quickened inquiry into the most fundamental questions of industrial and social order. The programme of the Knights of Labour was for many years the nearest approach to socialism made by any great labour combination in America. But there can be no doubt now that America contains all the elements which favour the growth of socialism, and especially of the labour organisations which make for socialism.

The result of our brief review is, that in most countries of Europe the avowed and organised socialism has a formidable and rapidly increasing number of adherents. It is equally clear that socialistic theories have made a wide and deep impression on the opinion of most countries of the civilised world. Socialism has been a standing challenge to the economic theories so long prevalent: it is a protest against the existing social-economic order; and as such it has been discussed on every platform, in all journals, and we may venture to say in every private gathering, with some comprehension of its nature and aims. Whatever the issue may be, it is very improbable that reasonable men can ever again regard the competitive system of economics with the same satisfaction as formerly. The mere fact that we can survey and analyse great ideas and institutions with critical objectiveness is a proof that we are looking back upon them, and that we have already so far left them behind in the onward march of progress. In countries where the socialistic theory is accepted in its entirety only by a few, it has nevertheless effected a great change in opinion. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the orthodox political economy, if it exist anywhere, survives only in old books and in the minds of a diminishing band of doctrinaires. Friends of the existing order would now almost have us believe that the old competitive political economy never existed at all, which at least may be taken as a sufficient proof that its days are numbered. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that we do not at present possess a settled political economy.

We may best consider the growing influence of socialistic ideas on current opinion under the following heads:—

1. On the theory of the State’s relation to labour.—The attitude of most governments to the organised socialism is naturally unfriendly; but the accepted view of the relation of the State to the working and suffering classes has marvellously changed in recent years. Whereas not many years ago the policy and principles of government took little account of the masses of the people, it is now a recognised duty of the State to care for them. So complete has the transformation been, that it will soon require a considerable knowledge of history to realise it, for the times when the claims of the lower orders were ignored are already beginning to pass out of the memory of the younger and most active portion of the community.

2. The relation of political economy to socialism.—We have already referred to the influence of social problems on the classical political economy of this country. The development of J. S. Mill’s economic views from loyal adherence to Ricardo, to a reasonable socialism, cannot be regarded as representative, seeing that he has so entirely outstripped his scholars. In recent important works on economics we see indeed only a moderate recognition of the new influences, but they do not command the assent of the public as formerly, the result being that English Political Economy remains in a most unsettled problematical and unsatisfactory condition.

Here again Germany leads the way. The socialism of the chair is not to any large extent really socialistic. But it includes among its representatives eminent professors and other economists, who recognise the historical and ethical sides of political economy, who go far in giving labour problems their due place in the treatment of their subject, and who have made most important concessions to the socialistic criticism of the existing society and the prevalent political economy. One of the most notable of living German economists and sociologists, Albert Schäffle, is more than historical; his great work Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers is a construction of society from the evolution point of view. In the same work he has even expressed his conviction that ‘the future belongs to the purified socialism,’ though later utterances make his attitude somewhat doubtful. However that may be, he has brought to the study of social problems a combination of learning, of philosophic insight directed by the best light of his time, and of sympathy inspired by the cause of the poor man, which is not equalled by any living economist. No great living economist has been so powerfully influenced by socialist speculation.

3. The relation of the Christian Church to socialism.—It is a most serious mistake to suppose that there can be any real antagonism between the ethical and spiritual teaching of Christianity and the principles of socialism rightly understood. The difficulty is how to reconcile the prevalent competitive system with any reasonable conception of Christian ethics. We can now see that Christianity was a strong assertion of the moral and spiritual forces against the struggle for existence, which had assumed such a hard, cruel, and vicious form in ancient civilisation and in the Roman world. The Christian Church did much to soften and then to abolish slavery and serfdom, into which the peoples defeated in the struggle for existence had been forced. A right comprehension of the Christian life and of the spirit and tendency of Christian history should show that the Church should also use its influence against the continuance of the struggle for existence in the competitive system, and in favour of the less fortunate who in the course of that form of struggle have been driven to precarious wage-labour as their only means of livelihood.

Some of the prominent spokesmen of the Church have clearly seen that the competitive system is not consistent with Christian teaching. As we have already seen, Maurice and Kingsley denounced the Manchester school, started the Christian Socialist movement of 1848, and gave a very considerable impetus to co-operation.