British Socialism Part 52

Many Socialists think that different workers should get different wages: "The citizens shall be consciously public functionaries, and their labours shall be rewarded according to results."[1226]

"Socialism does not propose that everyone shall have an equal share of the product of collective labour."[1227] How, then, is the amount of the unequal wages to be calculated? Some Socialists, following Marx, propose to determine wages by means of labour-time. "Ascertain the time taken to produce two commodities and we know their relative exchange value. And this quality tallies with market valuations. So far as creating value is concerned, then, one man creates as much value as another, and on the basis of equal labour-time equal value, Socialists rest their argument of social equality."[1228] "The working time which the making of an article requires is the only scale by which its social value can be measured. Ten minutes of social work in one branch are exchangeable for ten minutes of social work in another.

It will be easy to calculate how much social working time each single product requires."[1229] A hunter hunts all day and shoots a deer. A fisher fishes all day and catches a sprat. Will the hunter exchange his deer for the sprat, on the principle of equal labour-time? Will highly skilled workers be satisfied to receive the same wages as the most unskilled labourers? Will equal labour-time pay for all not lead to universal dawdling, shrinkage in production, and consequent starvation? Would workers not strive to get the maximum pay for the minimum work? To prevent dawdling, could it be ascertained how long it should take to repair a machine, paint a picture, amputate a leg, plough an acre?

It is manifestly impossible to pay men of varying capacity and productive power equal labour-time wages. Therefore many Socialists, especially the Fabians, maintain: "The principle of inequality of payment must be recognised. It is a necessary consequence of inequality of ability."[1230] "Every man should receive from the Commonwealth a fair equivalent in payments or services for the payments or services which the Commonwealth receives from him. It is not possible to say exactly how much each citizen has contributed to the wealth of the State, and absolute economic justice is therefore impossible."[1231] The question now arises how is the "fair equivalent for services rendered" to be determined? Many Socialists teach the doctrine that "the labourer is ent.i.tled to the entire product of his labour."[1232] Should the labourer be given an equivalent to the product of his labour _minus_ various necessary expenditures? Could the value of the labour of an individual be calculated at all in the complicated processes of modern industry? What is the value produced by a day's labour of a ploughman, a railway porter, a postman, a book-keeper, a policeman, a machine-minder? Mr. Bax very sensibly argues: "What does each man produce of himself as an individual? Show me how much cotton any given factory operative has produced in the course of a year? I don't mean the amount of wages the capitalist has given him for the exploitation of his labour power during that period--but the actual product of his labour in the manufactured article. You could not do so, because his labour, like all modern labour, is a.s.sociated; and the work of the individual producer is completely and indissolubly merged in that of the group (factory, mill) to which he belongs, which is again inseparable from that of the machinery employed in the process and from that of other groups."[1233]

It is impossible to calculate the exact value of service to the community by work in a factory or a field as soon as the wages system based on demand and supply has ceased to exist. Besides, differential pay will be impossible, because none will be satisfied with the pay received, except those who receive the highest pay. Therefore the same Fabian Society which in other writings, such as those quoted in the foregoing, advocates unequal payment, concludes: "Inequality of pay would be odious; the impossibility of estimating the separate value of each man's labour with any really valid result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies which would be provoked, the inevitable discontent, favouritism, and jobbery that would prevail: all these things will drive the Communal Council into the right path--equal remuneration of all workers."[1234] The Fabians, like so many other Socialists, cannot apparently quite make up their mind whether to plunge into the Scylla of equal pay or into the Charybdis of unequal pay. Therefore they plunge alternately into the one or the other.

Many Socialists are in favour of equal pay: "The credits granted to the citizens will be equal in all cases, without reference to skill, intelligence, or the nature of the service performed."[1235] "The labours of the bus driver or the mangler will be appraised just as highly as those of the Prime Minister, with this difference perchance, that if it can be clearly shown by statistics that buscraft uses up the life energy of a man more rapidly than statecraft, four hours of busmanship shall count, say, as five of statesmanship."[1236] Equal wages should logically be followed by equal treatment for all. "An anti-Socialist will say, 'How will you sail a ship in a Socialist condition?' How? Why, with a captain and mates and sailing-master and engineer (if it be a steamer) and A.B.s and stokers, and so on, and so on. Only there will be no first and second and third cla.s.s among the pa.s.sengers, the sailors and stokers will be as well fed and lodged as the captain or pa.s.sengers, and the captain and the stoker will have the same pay."[1237]

So confused are the minds even of the leading Socialists with regard to the important question of the remuneration of labour that Mr.

William Morris, one of the founders of British Socialism, in a poem first recommends individualistic Socialism and pay according to results:

_For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed_, Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him that sowed no seed.

Two lines later in the same poem he recommends Communism and equal pay for all, regardless of the work done:

_Then all Mine and Thine shall be Ours_, and no more shall any man crave For riches that serve for nothing but to fetter a friend for a slave.[1238]

The above extracts show that confusion reigns in the Socialist camp regarding the settlement of the Wage Question.

Wage-earners are not philanthropists. Highly skilled men will not be content with wages equal to those of unskilled labour, not even in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In the absence of a free demand and supply, which automatically graduates wages in accordance with the social value of the work done, its attractiveness or unattractiveness, &c., it cannot scientifically, though it can perhaps autocratically, be determined how wages should be graduated. When it comes to the fixing of differential wages in the Socialist State of the future, quarrels will immediately arise, which will lead to strife and rebellion, for all workers will use arguments such as the following ones recently put forward by Mr. Smillie, President of the Lanarkshire Miners' County Union. In reply to the reproach that miners, by unduly high wages, increased the cost of coal to the poor, Mr. Smillie answered: "Miners are being blamed in some quarters for the high price of coal. Their wages at present range from _6s. 6d._ to _8s._ per day, or from _30s._ to _2l. 5s._ per week when broken time is taken into consideration. Will anyone grudge an income of this kind to a worker whose labour is of a most uncomfortable and exhausting nature, and who takes his life in his hand from the moment he steps into the cage until he reaches the surface again? The miner recognises that high-priced coal means pinching and suffering in the homes of the poor, and he has real sympathy for this cla.s.s, but he argues that the true value of coal must include a reasonable sustenance for those who risk their lives in its production."[1239] If miners claim higher wages than other workers because their work is uncomfortable and dangerous, railway workers, sailors, and many others will raise the same claims; fishers and butchers will claim higher wages because their work is disgusting; factory workers because their work is sedentary and monotonous; waiters because it is menial; postmen because they have to walk; drivers because they have to sit still; washerwomen because they have to stand; farm labourers because they have to work in the cold; bakers because they have to work in the heat, &c. All workers would of course demand the maximum pay, and who could adjudicate on all the rival claims? The Wages Question seems likely to prove insoluble.

HOW WILL LABOUR BE ORGANISED AND DIRECTED?

We are told: "Labour will be organised on principles of perfect freedom. Everyone decides for himself in which branch he desires to be employed. If a superfluity of workmen occur in one branch and a deficiency in another, it will be the duty of the executive to arrange matters and readjust the inequality."[1240] In accordance with the variations in demand and supply and the rise and decay of industries, the introduction of labour-saving machinery, &c., labour requires continual redistribution. That redistribution is at present automatically effected largely through the rise and fall of wages. A rise in the wages of industries which require more labour, and a decline in the wages of industries which require less labour, cause labour to turn from shrinking to growing industries. When wages are no longer fixed with reference to commercial demand and supply, how will the periodical and necessary redistribution of labour be effected?

Some Socialist leaders think: "As the workers, of course, will not be drafted into the different branches of production under military compulsion, irrespective of their wishes, it may well turn out that some will have a superfluity of labour, while others will suffer from scarcity. The necessary equilibrium could then be restored by reducing the wages in those industries where the applicants are too many and by raising them in those where the applicants are too few, till each branch has just the number of workers which it requires. It could be restored also by other means; for instance, by the shortening of the hours of labour in those industries that are short of workers. With all that, however, the general rate of wages throughout the working cla.s.s will be influenced no longer by supply and demand, but by the quant.i.ty of available products. A general fall of wages in consequence of over-production will be impossible."[1241] In other words, the beautiful schemes of remuneration independent of the laws of supply and demand discussed in the foregoing would immediately break down. In order to redistribute labour, workers would either have to be compelled by direct force to work in those trades which required additional labour, or their wages or hours of work would arbitrarily be altered in order to effect the necessary changes by economic pressure--that is, by reducing their food. In other words, commercial demand and supply would break down the Utopian regulations of the Socialist Commonwealth as soon as they had been framed.

While some Socialists wish to distribute and redistribute labour by arbitrarily changing wages and hours of labour, some of the more logical and scientific Socialist leaders are frankly in favour of compulsory labour: "We already see official salaries regulated, not according to the state of the labour market, but by consideration of the cost of living. This principle we seek to extend to the whole industrial world. Instead of converting every man into an independent producer, working when he likes and as he likes, we aim at enrolling every able-bodied person directly in the service of the community for such duties and under such kind of organisation, local or national, as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. If a man wants freedom to work or not to work, just as he likes, he had better emigrate to Robinson Crusoe's island or else become a millionaire. To suppose that the industrial affairs of a complicated industrial State can be run without strict subordination and discipline, without obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for maintenance, is to dream, not of Socialism but of Anarchism."[1242] "Everyone should have a legal right to an opportunity of earning his living in the society in which he has been born; but no one should or could have the right to ask that he shall be employed at the particular job which suits his peculiar taste and temperament. Each of us must be prepared to do the work which society wants doing, or take the consequences of refusal."[1243] And what consequences would refusal to do the allotted work at the allotted pay entail? Either dismissal, which would mean starvation--for the State, as the sole employer, would control all employment and all the food--or bodily chastis.e.m.e.nt, or imprisonment.

There could be no strike on the part of dissatisfied workers, for the State--that is, the officials--holding all the wealth, would be able to starve them out in a week.

Socialists admit: "Mankind is as lazy as it dares to be."[1244] "In the average man there is a strong tendency to mere idleness and aimlessness which, but for the compulsions and temptations of existing circ.u.mstances, might run to great lengths. The trouble is that, while the average man is willing to work occasionally where his choice is free, he considers his lot a hard one if necessity compels him to continue regularly at a given task. He is willing to work at almost anything save that at which he is asked to work. It is a common thing to hear even good workmen profess a dislike to their trade."[1245]

How will shirking and idling be prevented in the Socialist Commonwealth when men are no longer compelled by economic necessity and free compet.i.tion to do their best?

The leading American exponent of Socialism prophesies that workers will work no longer in order to live in comfort, but that they will henceforth see in work a semi-religious duty, which they perform owing to their strong sense of beneficence: "In the New Commonwealth the butcher will be conscious and satisfied that 'the essential thing is not that he shall have a living, but that meat shall be supplied.' The work of the citizen will be the willing performance of social office.

He will be a worker whose best efforts, best ardour, and highest aims will be drawn out by his sense of the beneficence of his work, even though it be such a coa.r.s.e routine of manual labour as machinery should soon remove altogether from human hands. He will be habituated to regard his wages, not as a _quid pro quo_, but as the provision made by society to enable him to carry out his labour."[1246] Will the "sense of beneficence" induce men who are not satisfied with the condition and remuneration of labour to transport milk and other provisions during the night so that the townspeople may have them early in the morning? Will men be induced by their sense of duty to clean the sewers? To ask these questions is to answer them. Bebel puts the question, "What becomes of the difference between the industrious and the idle, the intelligent and the stupid?" and answers, "There will be no such difference, because that which we a.s.sociate with these conceptions will have ceased to exist."[1247] "If there is one vice more certain than another to be unpopular in a Socialist community, it is laziness. The man who shirked would find his mates making his position intolerable even before he suffered the doom of expulsion."[1248] Arguments such as the above should really not be placed before grown-up people. They are only fit for the nursery.

The tendency towards lazing and idling, the desire to make money without exertion, is strongly developed in Great Britain. "The essence of gambling is the craving to obtain something from others without giving an equivalent."[1249] Perhaps in no country is betting and gambling in every form so much in evidence as it is in Great Britain.

Betting on the turf, missing-word compet.i.tions, limerick compet.i.tions, &c., draw every year many millions of pounds from the pockets of millions of British workers. How then can the natural tendency of men to loaf and idle and to live rather by their wits than by their work, which is strong in all men, be overcome in the Socialist State of the future? The fundamental book of the Fabian Society, the most scientific Socialist body in Great Britain, tells us: "A very small share of the profits arising from a.s.sociated labour acts as a tremendous stimulus to each individual producer,"[1250] and it suggests, as do many Socialist writers, that the workers will do their best because they know that the more they produce the greater will be their individual share in the general production. Great Britain has 12,000,000 workers. Therefore a worker will make as his own share an extra sovereign if by extra exertion he succeeds in producing an extra _12,000,000l._ worth of goods, a feat the accomplishment of which will require several thousand years. That is a "tremendous stimulus" to the individual producer! Can any argument be more foolish than the foregoing one?

An influential Socialist writer tells us: "The credits granted to the citizens will be equal in all cases, without reference to skill, intelligence, or the nature of the service performed; but no credits will be given to the able-bodied shirkers, who will thus be starved into doing their share of the world's work without other compulsion."[1251] Other Socialist writers have put forth similar views. This is a cheerful outlook for the free citizens of the free Socialist Commonwealth. The workers will become "wage-slaves" in the fullest sense of the term. They will have to submit to forced labour, arbitrary wages, and arbitrary hours of labour, and those who do not produce as much as the official overseers require--and they may have a private grudge against some unfortunate worker who does his best--will be starved until they work harder. The lot of savages ruled by the knout, the kourbash, and the sjambok will be preferable to the lot of men ruled by starvation in the free Socialist Commonwealth of the future. The former have at least some liberty, while the latter will be kept by officials, who will distribute food and force them to work by rewards of food alternated by starvation, like performing dogs and apes.

To carry on the business of the country the Socialist Government would have to drop the principle of perfect freedom and to rely on coercion, and it would be justified in doing so. If, as Mr. Blatchford has repeatedly told us, "man has no right to himself because he did not make himself," if man belongs not to himself and his family, but to "society," it logically follows that society may compel him to work, apportioning to him his task and his pay, without reference to his wishes. Society being represented by its officials, elected or appointed, these officials would absolutely dispose of the people.

Great Britain would be ruled like a gigantic convict prison.

The spirit in which even moderate Socialists already contemplate the freedom of the individual may be seen from an address on Sweated Labour which Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., delivered in Glasgow in autumn 1907. He said: "There was no use tinkering with the problem.

Personally, he was not in favour of home work at all. To eliminate it might seem a cold-blooded way of dealing with sweating, but it was the only way that would give definite and final results. He would, however, proceed carefully and scientifically. Home work had got extremes, but one section was much riper for treatment than the other, and he would begin with the worst. The first difficulty was to find out the sweated workers. It was certain that a great percentage escaped detection by sanitary inspectors. Now his proposal was that, instead of the sanitary inspectors hunting for the home worker, the home worker should hunt for the inspector; and this he sought to accomplish under the Bill introduced last session, by making it necessary for the home worker to take out a licence and by making it obligatory on the employer to keep an absolutely complete list of his workers. The factory inspector must have right of access, and a certificate must be obtained from him for a separate licence. The casual home-worker would be discouraged." In other words, factory inspectors should apparently be authorised to break without a search warrant into private houses. They should certainly be empowered to prosecute a working man if he defended the privacy of his house by refusing the inspector admittance. That measure would abolish the sanct.i.ty of the home. The "Right to Work," which the Socialists so loudly champion, would be taken from the home-worker, and one cannot help asking: Is that high-handed measure devised for the benefit of the sweated or for that of the highly paid workers, represented by Mr.

Macdonald, who wish to abolish the compet.i.tion of underpaid home-workers? Sweated labour can be abolished and must be abolished, and it can be abolished, as I may show in another book, without destroying the home. If Mr. Macdonald should have his way, the Socialist principle, "Property is robbery," will have to be supplemented with the principle "Liberty is tyranny."

The unchecked absolutism of a Socialist State will hardly be palatable to Socialist workers who have been told that Socialism means freedom, and these see the only solution in the establishment of Anarchism: "The d.a.m.nable idea of being marshalled and drilled or numbered and docketed like any other merchandise in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialist's ideal, but its ant.i.thesis, no matter what the capitalists and their protagonists, the pseudo-Socialists, choose to name it. We don't want to be driven to the gate of the munic.i.p.al or other factory to hustle and elbow our fellows out of the way so that we may catch the official's eye in the mad and sordid scramble for mere belly food, for a mere animal subsistence. With the advent of Socialism, the whole of the capitalist State and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its Brotherhoods of Man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug."[1252] "If the worker continues to be paid in wages, he necessarily will remain the slave or the subordinate of the one to whom he is forced to sell his labour force; be the buyer a private individual or the State--it would still be an odious tyranny."[1253] "Socialism will entail compulsory service on all able-bodied members of the community, or rather the State. For that is what we shall have; the State with its hosts of functionaries, its big pots and its little pots, and its never-ending officialism and petty tyrannies. Organisation must either be compulsory or free. If compulsory, you have the military spirit with all its attendant evils; if free, you have the Anarchist spirit with all the advantages that arise when the fetters that hinder individual initiative and development are removed."[1254]

The foregoing should suffice to show that the Socialist State could organise work only by relying on forced labour and by creating the most unbearable despotism which the world has seen, or by "organising"

the chaos of Anarchism, and it is difficult to say which of the two would be the more hideous solution.

HOW WILL THE SOCIALIST STATE BE GOVERNED?

Socialists tell us rather vaguely: "Socialism means the elevation of the struggle for existence from the material to the intellectual plane. Socialism will raise the struggle for existence into a sphere where compet.i.tion shall be emulation, where the treasures are boundless and eternal, and where the abundant wealth of one does not cause the poverty of another."[1255] "State employment, when the State itself is only an organised democracy and cla.s.s distinctions cease, means not slavery, but freedom."[1256] "Freedom and equality will then be no longer empty and cheap phrases, but will have a meaning; when all men are really free and equal, they will honour and advance one another."[1257] "In Socialistic administrations there are no employers, no superiors, no oppression; all are equals and enjoy equal rights."[1258] "Under Socialism all the work of the nation would be managed by the nation."[1259] "Under Socialism the State, as we have known the State in the past, will have disappeared; for under Socialism there will be no cla.s.ses, but all the people will form one cla.s.s, and the Government and organisation will be democratic, each individual having an equal voice in directing the affairs of the common life."[1260] "The State will no longer be the bureaucratic State of to-day, but a democratic State a.s.sisted directly by the whole people."[1261] "All adult members of the commune, without distinction of s.e.x, take part in the necessary elections, and determine to what persons the conduct of affairs shall be entrusted. There is no such thing as a hierarchical system."[1262] "Appointments will be made from below. In the Post Office Department, for example, the letter carriers will elect their immediate superiors; these, we will say, the post-masters; and these, in their turn, the Post-Master General."[1263]

In other and plainer words, the Socialist State would, according to the authorities quoted, be ruled by the same system by which it is ruled at present, although elections might be more numerous, and although the suffrage might be given a wider basis. Now if the system of government remains the same as it is at present, is there any reason for antic.i.p.ating better results than those obtained at present?

Will the elected administrators no longer place personal and party interests above national ones? And will not the infinitely greater range of administrative functions make it more difficult to exercise control and to allocate responsibilities, and thus make irresponsibility, favouritism, dishonesty, and the evasion of punishment more easy and more frequent? Is a larger number of voters likely to pick out abler administrators than a small one? Does not the elective system, according to the Socialists themselves, cause the sc.u.m to rise to the top, and result in the election of plausible windbags?[1264] Are the people's votes never won by any other means than the testimony of results? Will there no longer be the fascination of eloquence, the attraction of boundless promises, the glamour of prejudice, the tie of party, the pressure put by an a.s.sociation upon its members? If amateurs show now little ability in administering a few comparatively simple things, is it likely that results will be better when they have to administer everything? Will not amateur government prove an absolute failure?

Most thinking Socialists clearly foresee that the Socialist State of the future could not possibly be administered by amateurs; that it would have to be administered by experts, by permanent officials; that Socialism would mean the death-knell of elected governors, and therefore of democracy, as may be seen in Chapter XV. of this book.

The philosopher of British Socialism tells us: "Socialism aims at the supersession of democracy, as of every other form of government. The will of the majority of an ideal democracy, a social democracy, must, as regards its special expressions, be subordinate to the general moral canon of a Socialist Commonwealth. That in affairs of management, of tactics, of administration, or in decisions requiring special knowledge, authority, in its nature dictatorial, is necessary, all must admit. There must be a controlling, an authoritative voice in direction; so much must be clear, one would think, to all practical or reasonable persons when once stated. The real point to determine is the nature and limits of that amount of dictatorial power which, we must admit, is essential in any organised community of which we can at present conceive. _Social Democracy_, while it means all _for_ the people, does not mean the impossible absurdity that everything should be directly regulated _by_ the people, _i.e._ by a direct popular vote."[1265] These views seem irrefutable, and it follows that not only for economic reasons, but for political reasons as well, the establishment of the Socialist State will lead to the establishment of a "dictatorial authority."

If Socialism be introduced, the fall of democracy and the establishment of absolutism cannot possibly be avoided. Democratic States are ruled by public opinion. The voice of an individual does not carry very far. Therefore public opinion can be formed only by means of an independent Press. An independent Press is the strongest, one might almost say the only, guarantee of national liberty. As long as there are numerous independent papers owned by private people, papers which represent all shades of opinion, everyone who has something to say can always freely express his opinion in one set of papers or the other. A striking speech is read the next day by the whole nation; a striking injustice to a single individual, or a Government blunder, may be taken up by the whole nation. The disappearance of private property will necessarily mean the disappearance of the free Press, and therefore of public opinion. All newspapers would be owned, edited, and printed by the Government, and is any Government likely to a.s.sist a hostile opposition by printing its views, and to a.s.sist in bringing about a revolution, probably accompanied by bloodshed and its own destruction? Such a thing has never been. Such a thing will never be. People might be dissatisfied and be ill-treated by the Socialist Government; they might be starved to death or shot by the thousand; there might be risings and rebellions and civil war in some parts of the country; the fleet might be defeated and the colonies lost--yet not a word need appear in the Socialist Government Press.

Some Socialists are childish enough to argue: "Though the printing press will be a collective inst.i.tution, it will be available to all.

Anyone, whatever unpopular opinions he may entertain, however hostile to the administrators he may be, will be ent.i.tled to have anything decent printed, provided he is ready to pay for the work done, or to guarantee, or induce his friends to guarantee, that the cost will be defrayed."[1266] "It would always be open to individuals or to groups of individuals to publish anything they pleased on covering the cost of publication. With the comparative affluence which would be enjoyed by each member of the community, anyone who really cared to reach the public ear would be able to do so by diminishing his expenditure in other directions."[1267]

The Government would certainly neither print, nor circulate through its post-office and newsagents, matter which it would consider to be dangerous to its existence or seditious. The a.s.sertion that a private individual in the Socialist Commonwealth might at his own expense circulate his views throughout the country--there would be no more millionaires but only wage-earners--is like a.s.serting that a bricklayer might with his savings pay off the British National Debt.

Lacking an independent public opinion, elections could be managed by the officials through the official Press in their own interest; elections would become a sham, and would no doubt soon fall into disuse. The official cla.s.s would become a caste of hereditary rulers governing millions of serfs.

The foregoing makes it clear that in political as in economic matters the Socialist State must fall a prey to the most complete absolutism which the world has known, an absolutism which probably, through a series of revolutions and civil wars, would at last end in anarchy. At present a dissatisfied worker can change his employer, he can get justice in the Law Courts, and in extreme cases he can put his grievances before the nation. In the Socialist State there would be only one authority--the all-controlling and all-powerful State, or rather an all-controlling and all-powerful bureaucracy. The nation would be composed of two cla.s.ses: permanent officials possessing absolute power, and ordinary citizens possessing neither power nor right; overseers and workers; slave-drivers and slaves; and the only way of escaping the tyranny of the State--for absolute and unchecked power has always led, and will always lead, to tyranny--would be by committing suicide. As in Rome under the rule of Nero and Caligula, suicide would be the only way to liberty.

A leading Socialist wrote with unconscious humour: "The Utopist needs no knowledge of facts. Indeed such a knowledge is a hindrance. For him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a law unto himself; and his men are not the wayward, spasmodic, irregular organisms of daily life, but automata obeying the strings he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct. He makes alike his materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all to an ideal end. In describing a new Jerusalem the only limits to its perfection are the limits of the writer's imagination.... Humanity will rise to heights undreamed of now; and the most exquisite Utopias, as sung by the poet and idealist, shall to our children seem but dim and broken lights compared with their perfect day. All that we need are Courage, Prudence, and Faith. Faith above all."[1268] Every reader of this book will no doubt heartily agree with the latter remark. Socialists are wise to appeal rather to blind faith than to plain common-sense.

The philosopher of British Socialism tells us: "Socialism is the great modern protest against _un_reality, against the delusive shams which now masquerade as verities."[1269] Another Socialist leader a.s.serts: "Socialism is a scientific scheme of national government entirely wise, just, and practical."[1270] A third leader affirms: "Socialism is neither more nor less than the science of Sociology."[1271] The "Socialist Catechism" asks: "How may Socialists reply to the taunt that their scheme is impracticable? By quoting the opinion of John Stuart Mill that the difficulties of Socialism are greatly overrated; and they should declare that, so far from being an impracticable Utopian scheme, it is the necessary and inevitable result of the historical evolution of society."[1272]

Socialism stands condemned, not so much by the criticism of its opponents as by the doctrines and proposals of its leaders, and these are the men who aspire to rule the universe and who claim: "We mean the establishment of a political power in place of the present cla.s.s-State, which shall have for its conscious and definite aim the common ownership and control of the _whole_ of the world's industry, exchange, &c."[1273]

I think the readers of the foregoing pages will be inclined to believe that Socialism is methodised insanity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1203] Kautsky, _Social Revolution_, p. 41.

[1204] Socialism, _For and Against_, p. 7.

[1205] Clemenceau, in Jaures' _Practical Socialism_, p. 11.

[1206] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, p. 12.

[1207] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 42.

[1208] Blatchford, _Real Socialism_, p. 5.