Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century

by Werner Sombart

It would be strange if such a mighty revolution in economic and social matters as I have sketched for you should not have found its reflection in the minds of thinking men. It would be wonderful, I think, if with this overturning of social institutions a revolution of social thought, science, and faith should not follow. We find in fact that parallel with this revolution in life fundamental changes have taken place in the sphere of social thought. By the side of the old social literature a new set of writings arises. The former belongs to the end of the previous and the beginning of the present century; it is that which we are accustomed to call the classic political economy; it is that which, after a development of about one hundred and fifty to two hundred years, found the highest theoretical expression of the capitalistic economic system through the great political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. By the side of this literature, devoted to the capitalistic view of economics, now grows a new school of writings which has this general characteristic, that it is anti-capitalistic; that is, it places itself in conscious opposition to the capitalistic school of economics and considers the advocacy of this opposition as its peculiar task.

In accordance with the undeveloped condition of such economic thought it is, of course, a medley of explanations and claims as to what is and what should be, wherein the new literature expresses its opposition. All undeveloped literature begins in this tumultuous way, just as all unschooled minds at first slowly learn to distinguish between what is and what should be. And indeed in the immaturity of this new literature the practical element predominates greatly, as may readily be understood; there is a desire to justify theoretically the agitation, the new postulates, the new ideals.

For this reason, if we would see this literature in its full relations and distinguish its various nuances (delicate differences), it will be convenient to choose as distinguishing marks the differing uses of the new "Thou shalt." Thus we recognise in general two groups in this new literature, the reformatory and the revolutionary. The latter word is not used in its ordinary meaning, but in that which I shall immediately define. The reformatory and the revolutionary literature divide on this point, that the reformatory recognises in principle the existing economic system of capitalism, and attempts upon the basis of this economy to introduce changes and improvements, which are, however, subordinate, incidental, not essential; also and especially, that the fundamental features of social order are retained, but that man desires to see his fellow-man changed in thought and feeling. A new spirit obtains, repentance is proclaimed, the good qualities of human nature win the upper hand—brotherly love, charity, conciliation.

This reformatory agitation that recognises the injury and evil of social life, but that with essential adhesion to the dominant economic system desires to mitigate the injury and to overcome or minimise the evil, has different ways of expression. It is a Christian, or an ethical, or a philanthropic impulse which calls forth the new literature and controls the writings that make for social reform.

The Christian thought is that which, in application to the social world, creates that trend of literature which we are accustomed incorrectly to designate under the phrase "Christian socialism." Of this are the writings of Lamennais in France, Kingsley in England, which, filled with the spirit of the Bible, address to employer and employe alike the demand—Out with the spirit of mammon from your souls, fill your hearts with the spirit of the gospel, the "new spirit," as they constantly call it. And quite similarly sound the voices of those earlier "ethical" economists, Sismondi, Thomas Carlyle, who do not become tired of preaching, if not the "Christian," at least the "social" spirit. Change of heart is their watchword. The third drift of thought, which I call the philanthropic, directs itself rather towards the emotions than towards the sense of duty or the religious element in man. Pierre Leroux in France, Grün and Hess in Germany, are men who, filled with a great, overpowering love for mankind, desire to heal the wounds which their sympathetic hearts behold, who would overwhelm the misery which they see by this universal love of man. "Love one another as men, as brothers!" is the theme of their preaching. All these three streams of thought, merely the sources of which I have specified, continue influential to the present day; and all of them have this in common, that they hold fast in principle to the foundations of the existing social order—therefore I call them reformatory. Opposed to them appears another class of literature, the "revolutionary"; so called because its great principle is the doing away with the foundations of capitalistic economy, and the substituting something different. This it proposes to do in two different ways,—if I may express my meaning in two words,—backwards and forwards.

At the very time when economic contradictions develop themselves and new phases of anti-capitalistic literature come to the surface, we find a revolutionary anti-capitalistic literature strongly asserting itself, which demands a retrogression from the existing system of economics. Such are the writings of Adam Müller and Leopold von Haller in the first third of our century, men who would change the bases on which the modern capitalistic economy is founded by introducing the crumbled feudalistic guild system of the middle ages in place of the middle-class capitalistic system of to-day. These are indeed manifestations which have not as yet reached their end.

Besides these reactionary manifestations, there is another movement which does not want this regression to old forms, but in the same way demands an overthrow of the principles of the existing capitalistic system. But this change must be under the influence of those modern advanced ideas which, especially on the technical side, betoken that which we are accustomed to call "progress." Systems, that is, theories, they are which hold fast to an historic essence of capitalistic methods of production—that it is built upon the basis of modern production in the mass; but which, under the influence of advanced ideas, call for a new order of production and distribution in the interests of those classes of the people which under the capitalistic economy seem to come short—thus essentially in the interests of the great masses of the proletariat. The theorists who desire such a development of the capitalistic economy in the interests of the proletariat, while upholding methods of production on a large scale, are the ones whom we must call socialists in the true meaning of the word. And we have now to do with a strange species of these socialists, with those whom we are accustomed to call utopists or utopian socialists. The typical representatives of these utopian socialists are St. Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in England. Of these, the most conspicuous are the two Frenchmen; their systems are most frequently presented. Owen is less known. As I now attempt to make clear to you, through him, the essence of utopian socialism, it is because he is less known, but especially because in my opinion he is the most interesting of the three great utopists. It is he who on the one side most clearly shows to us the genesis of the modern proletarian ideal, and on the other side has been of greatest influence upon other socialistic theorists, especially upon Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Robert Owen was a manufacturer. We find him at the age of twenty years already the manager of a great cotton-mill. Soon after he established a mill at Lanark. Here he learned practical life by personal experience. We distinguish two periods in his life. In the first he is what we may call an educationalist, a man who interests himself especially in the education of youth and expects through it an essential reformation of human society. The chief work of this epoch is the book A New View of Society. In the second period he is a socialist; and his most important work is A Book of the New Moral World. Owen really interests us in this second period, as a socialist. What does he thus teach? And what is the essence of this first form of utopian socialism?

Robert Owen takes as the starting-point for his theorising the investigations which he made in his immediate surroundings. He pictures to us the state of affairs in connection with his own manufactories; how the workers, especially the women and children, degenerated, physically, intellectually and morally. He begins also with a recognition of the evils which distinguish the modern capitalistic system; his starting-point is proletarian. Upon these investigations of his own he now builds a social-philosophic system which is not unknown to one who has studied the social philosophy of the eighteenth century. Owen's social philosophy is essentially characterised by this, that he believes in man as good by nature, and in an order of communal life which would in like manner be naturally good if only these men were brought into proper relations with each other—faith in the so-called ordre naturel, in a natural order of things which has possibly existed somewhere, but which in any case would exist, were it not that artificial hindrances stand in the way, evils which make it impossible for man to live in this natural way with others. These evils, these forces, which stand in the way of the accomplishment of a natural communal life, Robert Owen sees of two kinds: one in the faulty education of men, the other in the defective environment in which modern man lives—the evils of a rich milieu. He infers logically, if we would again realise that natural and beautiful condition of harmonious communal life, that ordre naturel, both these evils must be driven out of the world. He demands, therefore, better education on the one side, a better environment upon the other. In these two postulates we find side by side the two periods of his development as we have heretofore seen them. In the first he lays stress rather upon education; in the second, rather upon change of environment. He recognises, further—and this is perhaps the particular service rendered by Owen to socialistic theory—that these evil conditions, on the overcoming of which all depends, have not been provided by nature, but have grown out of a definite system of social order, which he believes to be the capitalistic. In the capitalistic economy he sees nothing of that natural law which the representatives of the classical economies assert; but an order of society created by man. Even his opponents believed in the ordre naturel, only they thought that it was realised; Owen did not. Much more, Owen was compelled to demand the overthrow of this economic system in order that his goal might be reached, that man might be able to enjoy a better development and a better environment. For this reason he demanded that the artificial economic system should undergo essential changes, especially in two points, the main pillars upon which the economic system is built. Owen repudiated the competition of the individual and the profit-making of the master.

If this be allowed, the further practical arrangements which Owen demanded must in like manner be granted: in place of individualism, socialism must stand. In this way private operation will be replaced by communal production, and competition will be in fact overthrown; also, the profit of the employer will flow into the pockets of the producers, the members of the social organisation. These ideas of socialistic production grew, for Owen, spontaneously out of the capitalistic system in which he lived.