For as Mr. Hyndman tells the world with damnable (but most veracious) iteration, we are “a growing party.” We recruit by driblets; but we do recruit; and those who come to us come, like all the new American newspapers, “to stay.” Our faith, our reason, our knowledge, tell us that the great evolutionary forces are with us; and every addition to our ranks causes us, in geometrical proportion, to be less and less tolerant of political prevarication. Directly we feel ourselves strong enough to have the slightest chance of winning off our own bat, we shall be compelled both by principle and inclination to send an eleven to the wickets. They will have to face the opposition, united or disunited, of both the orthodox parties, as did the defeated Socialist candidates at the School Board election in November, 1888. And whether our success be great or small, or even non-existent, we shall be denounced by the Radical wire-pullers and the now so complaisant and courteous Radical press. The alliance will be at an end.
There is yet another way in which we may win the ill-will of our temporary allies and, at present, very good friends. I have spoken above of certain reactionary items of a possible Radical programme, which, although they have a grotesque resemblance to Socialism, are worlds away from being the thing itself. These proposals we not only cannot support, but must and shall actively and fiercely oppose. At the first signs of such opposition to whoever may be the Liberal shepherd of the moment, the whole flock of party sheep will be in full cry upon our track. The ferocity of the mouton enragé is proverbial; and we shall be treated to the same rancour, spleen, and bile which is now so plenteously meted out to the Liberal Unionists.
The immediate result of this inevitable split will be the formation of a definitely Socialist party, i.e., a party pledged to the communalisation of all the means of production and exchange, and prepared to subordinate every other consideration to that one end. Then the House of Commons will begin dimly to reflect the real condition of the nation outside; and in it we shall see as in a glass, darkly, or smudgedly, something of that “well defined confrontation of rich and poor,” of which all who attend Socialist lectures hear so much, and to which ex hypothesi, the world, day by day, draws nearer. Then, also, will begin that process which, I submit, is more likely than either the absorption of the Socialist or the prolonged permeation of the Radical: namely, the absorption of the Radical himself into the definitely pro-private capital party on the one side, and the definitely anti-private capital party on the other.
A really homogeneous Socialist party once formed, the world political reflects the world economic, and there is no longer any room for the Radical, as we know the wonder. Each fresh Socialist victory, each outpost driven in, each entrenchment carried, will be followed by a warren-like scuttle of alarmed and well-to-do Radicals across the floor of the House of Commons, which will once more become a true frontier; and, finally, the political battle array will consist of a small opposition, fronting a great and powerful majority, made up of all those whose real or fancied interests would suffer from expropriation.
Thus far the outlook has been clear and focusable enough; and it has needed no extra-human illumination to see the details. All that has been wanted has been normal vision and a mind fairly free of the idols of the cave. But here the prospect becomes dim and uncertain; and little purpose would be served by trying to pierce the mist which enshrouds the distant future.
Much, very much, will depend upon the courage, the magnanimity, the steadfastness, the tact, the foresight, and above all upon the incorruptibility of those whose high mission it will be to frame the policy and direct the strategy of the Socialist party in those early days of its parliamentary life. It will have sore need of a leader as able as, and more conscientious than, any of the great parliamentary figures of the past. The eye expectant searches in vain for such a man now among the younger broods of the new democracy. He is probably at this moment in his cradle or equitably sharing out toys or lollipops to his comrades of the nursery. And this is well; for he must be a man quit of all recollections of these days of Sturm und Drang, of petty jealousies, constant errors, and failing faith. He must bring to his task a record free from failure and without suspicion of stain.
But whatever may be the difficulties in store for us who name the name of Socialism, of one thing at least they who have followed this course of lectures may make quite sure. That, however long and wearisome the struggle, each day brings us nearer victory. Those who resist Socialism fight against principalities and powers in economic places. Every new industrial development will add point to our arguments and soldiers to our ranks. The continuous perfecting of the organisation of labour will hourly quicken in the worker the consciousness that his is a collective, not an individual life. The proletariat is even now the only real class: its units are the only human beings who have nothing to hope for save from the levelling up of the aggregate of which they form a part. The intensifying of the struggle for existence, while it sets bourgeois at the throat of bourgeois, is forcing union and solidarity upon the workers. And the bourgeois ranks themselves are dwindling. The keenness of competition, making it every year more obviously impossible for those who are born without capital ever to achieve it, will deprive the capitalist class of the support it now receives from educated and cultivated but impecunious young men whose material interest must finally triumph over their class sympathies; and from that section of workmen whose sole aspiration is to struggle out of the crowd. The rising generation of wage workers, instead of as now being befogged and bedevilled by the dust and smoke of mere faction fight, will be able at a glance to distinguish the uniforms of friend and foe. Despair will take sides with Hope in doing battle for the Socialist cause.
These lectures have made it plain enough to those who have hearing ears and understanding brains that mere material self-interest alone will furnish a motive strong enough to shatter monopoly; and after monopoly comes Socialism or—chaos. But the interest of the smaller self is not the only force which aids us in the present, or will guide us in the future. The angels are on our side. The constant presence of a vast mass of human misery is generating in the educated classes a deep discontent, a spiritual unrest, which drives the lower types to pessimism, the higher to enquiry. Pessimism paralyses the arms and unnerves the hearts of those who would be against us. Enquiry proves that Socialism is founded upon a triple rock, historical, ethical, and economic. It gives, to those who make it, a great hope—a hope which, once it finds entrance into the heart of man, stays to soften life and sweeten death. By the light of the Socialist Ideal he sees the evil—yet sees it pass. Then and now he begins to live in the cleaner, braver, holier life of the future; and he marches forward, steeled and stimulated, with resolute step, with steadfast eye, with equal pulse.
It is just when the storm winds blow and the clouds lour and the horizon is at its blackest that the ideal of the Socialist shines with divinest radiance, bidding him trust the inspiration of the poet rather than heed the mutterings of the perplexed politician, bidding him believe that
“For a’ that, for a’ that,
Its coming yet for a’ that,
That man to man the world o’er
Shall brothers be for a’ that.”