British Socialism Part 45

[1034] Bebel, _Woman_, p. 178.

[1035] Engels, _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific_, pp. 76, 77.

[1036] Bebel, _Woman_, p. 212.

[1037] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 123

[1038] Mill, _Political Economy_, Book iii. ch. i. par. 2.

[1039] _Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy_, vol. i. p. 297.

[1040] Leatham, _Socialism and Character_, p. 89.

[1041] Menger, _L'etat Socialiste_, p. 35.

[1042] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 93.

[1043] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 94.

[1044] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 36.

[1045] _Ibid._ p. 9.

[1046] Morris, _Communism_, pp. 11, 12.

[1047] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 77.

[1048] Connell, _Socialism and the Survival of the Fittest_, p. 19.

[1049] Blatchford, _Real Socialism_, p. 5.

[1050] Ward, _Are All Men Brothers?_ p. 19.

[1051] Ward, _All Things in Common_, p. 5.

[1052] Acts v. 1, 2.

[1053] Acts v. 4.

[1054] Leatham, _Was Jesus a Socialist?_ p. 5.

[1055] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 159.

[1056] _Clarion Song Book_, p. 27.

[1057] Sorge, _Socialism and the Workers_, p. 8

[1058] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, pp. 20, 21.

[1059] See Simkhowitsch, _Die Feldgemeinschaft_, 1898; Haxthausen, _Studien_, &c.

[1060] Benson, _Socialism_, p. 4.

[1061] Ward, _All Things in Common_, p. 1.

[1062] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 17.

[1063] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, pp. 96, 97.

[1064] _Fabian Essays in Socialism_, p. 212.

[1065] _Ibid._ p. 4.

[1066] B. Shaw, _The Impossibilities of Anarchism_, p. 17.

[1067] Schaffle, _The Impossibility of Social Democracy_, p. 60.

[1068] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 89.

[1069] _Report on Fabian Policy and Resolutions_, p. 7.

[1070] See Fourier, _Oeuvres_; Pellarin, _Fourier_; Sargant, _Social Innovators_.

[1071] See Noyes, _History of American Socialism_; Nordhoff, _Communistic Societies of the United States_.

[1072] Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, p. 319.

CHAPTER x.x.x

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM

Socialism is, on the whole, hostile to the State. All Socialists hate the State as at present const.i.tuted, because it protects the property which they wish to seize. However, many Socialists hate not only the State in its present form. They have become doubtful whether private capital or the State is the greater evil. They long for liberty, and would not welcome the restraint of any State, and least of all that of the absolute, all-regulating, and constantly interfering Socialistic State. Hence many Socialists have become Anarchists. Socialists may be divided into two cla.s.ses--Communists and Anarchists--and Prince Kropotkin, the foremost Anarchist leader living, described the two Socialistic sections as follows: "A section of Socialists believes that it is impossible to attain Socialism without sacrificing personal liberty on the altar of the State. Another section, to which we belong, believes, on the contrary, that it is only by the abolition of the State, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by free agreement, a.s.sociation, and absolute free federation, that we can reach Communism."[1073] Many Socialists, seeing the enemy rather in the State than in private capital, express their pa.s.sionate hatred of the State: "The State at present is simply a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving the poor by brute force."[1074] "The Parliament ever cries for more money, more money for the service of the State. Just heavens! Of what service is the State? Of very little service to honest, industrious men,"[1075] The philosopher of British Socialism frankly confesses himself a revolutionary Anarchist: "As an international revolutionist I have always been strongly sympathetic with all movements for local autonomy as most directly tending to destroy the modern 'nation' or centralised bureaucratic State."[1076]

"It is quite true that Socialism will have to take over the accursed legacy of existing national frontiers from the bourgeois world-order; but Socialism will take it over merely with the view of killing it off and burying it at the earliest possible moment. The modern nation or centralised State is a hideous monstrosity, the offspring of capitalism in its various phases; in its present shape the outcome of the developed capitalism of the great industry. We quite admit that in form it may, and probably will, survive the earlier stage of Socialism, but its ultimate disappearance is none the less certain.

The sentiment of the national patriotism will then, let us hope, be reduced to its last expression--the holding of annual dinners, or some harmless festivity of this sort, such as is affected by the natives of certain English counties resident in the metropolis. The Nationalist movement, therefore, is an old Radical 'plank' which clearly no longer belongs to us as Socialists."[1077]

The Socialist-Anarchist hates State government in every form. To him a Social-Democratic State is quite as hateful as any other form of government: "The State is the evil, the inveterate foe of labour--be the Government Autocratic, Bureaucratic, or Social-Democratic. For what, after all, is our vaunted nose-counting, majority-ridden Democracy but an expansion of the old-time tyranny of monarch and oligarch, inasmuch as the Governmentalist, whatever his stripe, is doomed to act on the two root principles of statecraft--force and fraud? And, obviously, so long as that is so, his particular profession of political faith is almost a matter of indifference."[1078] "What was, what is the State, wherever it exists, but a community of human beings barbarically held together by a well-drilled gang of magistrates, soldiers, policemen, gaolers, and hangmen?"[1079] Mr.

Blatchford, who is apparently never quite sure in his mind whether he is a Socialist, a Communist, or an Anarchist, gives voice to his Anarchist sentiments in the words: "Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to G.o.dship, kingship, lordship, priestship. Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to imperialism, militarism, and conquest. Rightly or wrongly, I am for universal brotherhood and universal freedom."[1080]

Another influential Socialist writer exclaims: "What is freedom but the unfettered use of all the powers which G.o.d for use has given?"[1081]--a sentiment which is heartily endorsed by all Anarchists. However, the unfettered use of all powers means that the will of the individual, not the will of society, is the supreme law.

It means the denial of the supremacy of society, the State, government. Similar sentiments are expressed with greater energy and greater fulness by many Socialist writers. Mr. Davidson, for instance, says: "In the new order every man (woman, of course, included) will be his own legislator. In the state of ultimate and universal freedom to which we aspire, when the greatest of all tyrants, poverty, is slain and plenty sits on the throne which the lean monster has so long usurped--it may well be that there shall be no necessity for any law except that which the purified conscience of every individual man and woman will readily supply. Then will have come the true Golden Age, the millennium of Christian Anarchism."[1082]

The claims, programme, and aims of Socialism and Anarchism are curiously alike. Prince Kropotkin, the leading exponent of Anarchism, writes: "Anarchy appears as a const.i.tuent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact on so many points with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day. In fact, it is certain that in proportion as the human mind frees itself from ideas inculcated by minorities of priests, military chiefs, and judges, all striving to establish their domination, and of scientists paid to perpetuate it, a conception of society arises, in Which conception there is no longer room for those dominating minorities. A society entering into possession of the social capital acc.u.mulated by the labour of preceding generations, organises itself so as to make use of this capital in the interests of all, and const.i.tutes itself without reconst.i.tuting the power of the ruling minorities. Acknowledging as a fact the equal rights of all its members to the treasures acc.u.mulated in the past, it no longer recognises a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fict.i.tiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free a.s.sociation."[1083]

There is little difference between the Anarchism of Proudhon, Bakounin, and Kropotkin, and the Socialism of many British Socialists.

The economic doctrines of Socialism and Anarchism are practically identical. Socialism has taken the most important doctrines from Proudhon,[1084] and, owing to the similarity of their views and aims, Socialists and Anarchists are commingling and fraternising. Anarchists see in Socialists a wing of the great Anarchist army of destruction, and Socialists see in Anarchists a.s.sociates and friends and partners in the revolution and general pillage which both movements equally strongly desire to bring about. Therefore a leading Fabian Socialist tells us: "Kropotkin is really an advocate of free Democracy, and I venture to suggest that he describes himself as an Anarchist rather from the point of view of the Russian recoiling from a despotism compared to which Democracy seems to be no government at all, than from the point of view of the American or Englishman who is free enough already to begin grumbling over Democracy as 'the tyranny of the majority' and 'the coming slavery.'"[1085] If Kropotkin is a "Democrat," then Ravachol, Vaillant, Henry, Pallas, and Bresci were also merely Democrats.