Britain For The British Part 15

Christ's teaching is often said to be socialistic. It is not socialistic; but it is communistic, and Communism is the most advanced form of the policy generally known as _Socialism_.

The charge of _Immorality_ is absurd. Socialists demand a higher morality than any now to be found. They demand perfect _honesty_.

Indeed, it is just the stern morality of _Socialism_ which causes ambitious and greedy men to hate _Socialism_ and resist it.

Another charge against Socialists is the charge of desiring _Free Love_.

Socialists, it has been said, want to destroy home life, to abolish marriage, to take the children from their parents, and to establish "Free _Love_."

"Free Love," I may say, means that all men and women shall be free to love as they please, and to live with whom they please. Therefore, that they shall be free to live as "man and wife" without marriage, to part when they please without divorce, and to take other partners as they please without shame or penalty.

Now, I say of this charge, as I have said of the others, that there may be some Socialists in favour of free love, just as there are some Socialists in favour of revolution, and some who are not Christians; but I say also that a big majority of Socialists are not in favour of free love, and that in any case free love is no more a part of _Socialism_ than it is a part of Toryism or of Liberalism.

It is not sense to say, because some Free-Lovers are Socialists, that all Socialists are Free-Lovers.

I believe there is not one English Socialist in a hundred who would vote for doing away with marriage, or for handing over the children to the State. I for one would see the State farther before I would part with a child of mine. And I think you will generally find that those who are really eager to have all children given up to the State are men and women who have no children of their own.

Now, I submit that a childless man is not the right man to make laws about children.

As for the questions of free love and legal marriage, they are very hard to deal with, and this is not the time to deal with them. But I shall say here that many of those who talk the loudest about free love do not even know what love _is_, or have not sense enough to see that just as love and l.u.s.t are two very different things, so are free love and free l.u.s.t very different things.

Again, you are not to fall into the error of supposing that the relations of the s.e.xes are all they should be at present. Free _love_, it is true, is not countenanced; but free _l.u.s.t_ is very common.

And although some Socialists may be in favour of free _love_, I never heard of a Socialist who had a word to say in favour of prost.i.tution. It may be a very wicked thing to enable a free woman to _give_ her love freely; but it is a much worse thing to allow, and even at times compel (for it amounts to that, by force of hunger) a free woman to _sell_ her love--no, not her _love_, poor creature; the vilest never sold that--but to sell her honour, her body, and her soul.

I would do a great deal for _Socialism_ if it were only to do that one good act of wiping out for ever the shameful sin of prost.i.tution. This thing, indeed, is so horrible that I never think of it without feeling tempted to apologise for calling myself a man in a country where it is so common as it is in moral Britain.

There are several other common charges against Socialists; as that they are poor and envious--what we may call Have-nots-on-the-Have; that they are ignorant and incapable men, who know nothing, and cannot think; that, in short, they are failures and wasters, fools and knaves.

These charges are as true and as false as the others. There may be some Socialists who are ignorant and stupid; there may be some who are poor _and_ envious; there may be some who are Socialists because they like cakes and ale better than work; and there may be some who are clever, but not too good--men who will feather their nests if they can find any geese for the plucking.

But I don't think that _all_ Tories and Liberals are wise, learned, pure, unselfish, and clever men, eager to devote their talents to the good of their fellows, and unwilling to be paid, or thanked, or praised, for what they do.

I think there are fools and knaves,--even in Parliament,--and that some of the "Bounders-on-the-Bounce" find it pays a great deal better to toady to the "Haves" than to sacrifice themselves to the "Have-nots."

And I think I may claim that Socialists are in the main honest and sensible men, who work for _Socialism_ because they believe in it, and not because it pays; for its advocacy seldom pays at all, and it never pays well; and I am sure that _Socialism_ makes quicker progress amongst the educated than amongst the ignorant, and amongst the intelligent than amongst the dull.

As for brains: I hope such men as William Morris, Karl Marx, and Liebknecht are as well endowed with brains as--well, let us be modest, and say as the average Tory or Liberal leader.

But most of the charges and arguments I have quoted are not aimed at _Socialism_ at all, but at Socialists.

Now, to prove that some of the men who espouse a cause are unworthy, is not the same thing as proving that the cause is bad.

Some parsons are foolish, some are insincere; but we do not therefore say that Christianity is unwise or untrue. Even if _most_ parsons were really bad men we should only despise and condemn the clergy, and not the religion they dishonoured and misrepresented.

The question is not whether all Socialists are as wise as Mr. Samuel Woods, M.P., or as honest as Jabez Balfour; _the_ question is whether _Socialism_ is a thing in itself just, and wise, and _possible_.

If you find a Socialist who is foolish, laugh at him; it you find one who is a rogue, don't trust him; if you find one "on the make," stop his making. But as for _Socialism_, if it be good, accept it; if it be bad, reject it.

Here allow me to quote a few lines from _Merrie England_--

Half our time as champions of Socialism is wasted in denials of false descriptions of Socialism; and to a large extent the anger, the ridicule, and the argument of the opponents of Socialism are hurled against a Socialism which has no existence except in their own heated minds.

Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor.

Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land where the apples will drop off the trees into our open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out ready-made suits of velvet with golden b.u.t.tons without the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither is it a dream of a nation of stained-gla.s.s angels, who never say d.a.m.n, who always love their neighbours better than themselves, and who never need to work unless they wish to.

And now, having told you what _Socialism is not_, it remains for me to tell you what _Socialism is_.

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT SOCIALISM IS

To those who are writing about such things as _Socialism_ or Political Economy, one of the stumbling-blocks is in the hard or uncommon words, and another in the tediousness--the "dryness"--of the arguments and explanations.

It is not easy to say what has to be said so that anybody may see quite clearly what is meant, and it is still harder to say it so as to hold the attention and arouse the interest of men and women who are not used to reading or thinking about matters outside the daily round of their work and their play. As I want this book to be plain to all kinds of workers, even to those who have no "book-learning" and to whom a "hard word" is a "boggart," and a "dry" description or a long argument a weariness of the flesh, I must beg those of you who are more used to bookish talk and scientific terms (or names) to bear with me when I stop to show the meaning of things that to you are quite clear.

If I can make my meaning plain to members of Parliament, bishops, editors, and other half-educated persons, and to labouring men and women who have had but little schooling, and have never been used to think or care about _Socialism_, or Economics, or Politics, or "any such dry rot"--as they would call them--if I can catch the ear of the heedless and the untaught, the rest of you cannot fail to follow.

The terms, or names, used in speaking of Socialism--that is to say, the names given to ideas, or "thoughts," or to kinds of ideas, or "schools"

of thought, are not easy to put into the plain words of common speech.

To an untaught labourer _Socialism_ is a hard word, so is _Co-operation_; and such a phrase, or name, as _Political Economy_ is enough to clear a taproom, or break up a meeting, or close a book.

So I want to steer clear of "hard words," and "dry talk," and long-windedness, and I want to tell my tale, if I can, in "tinker's English."

_What is Socialism?_

There is more than one kind of _Socialism_, for we hear of State _Socialism_, of Practical _Socialism_, of Communal _Socialism_; and these kinds differ from each other, though they are all _Socialism_.

So you have different kinds of Liberals. There are old-school Whigs, and advanced Whigs, and Liberals, and Radicals, and advanced Radicals; but they are all _Liberals_.

So you have horse soldiers, foot soldiers, riflemen, artillery, and engineers; but they are all _soldiers_.

Amongst the Liberals are men of many minds: there are Churchmen, Nonconformists, Atheists; there are teetotalers and there are drinkers; there are Trade Union leaders, and there are leaders of the Masters'

Federation. These men differ on many points, but they all agree upon _one_ point.

Amongst the Socialists are many men of many minds: there are parsons, atheists, labourers, employers, men of peace, and men of force. These men differ on many points, but they all agree upon _one_ point.

Now, this point on which men of different views agree is called a _principle_.

A principle is a main idea, or main thought. It is like the keelson of a ship or the backbone of a fish--it is the foundation on which the thing is built.

Thus, the _principle_ of Trade Unionism is "combination," the combining, or joining together, of a number of workers, for the general good of all.