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dustries; to attempt to regulate wages; to repress sweating; to limit the hours of work; to settle labour disputes; to encourage "collective contracts"; to prevent the intrusion of low-priced labour.

"The practical objects of the labour party are not so much socialist as social democratic. They look towards Collectivism, but recognise wages, profits, and the conditions of capitalist production as matters to be accepted in present legislation. . . . There is little social idealism among the rank and file of the working class. They are mostly seeking immediate and concrete results, and, so far as any directive purpose on their part is concerned, it is merely an accident that the policy thus determined tends towards socialism." "The farmers are steady partisans of freehold tenures and the sale of the State domain to settlers" (The Labour Movement in Australia (1907), Victor S. Clark, 118, 119, 283).

Some of the characteristics of the present socialistic movement may be summed up thus: proneness to exaggeration; one-sided discussion on the part of its friends and adversaries; refusal to believe that Individualism and Socialism can be complementary or that compromise between them is possible; a general assumption contrary to experience, that the future economic condition and organisation will be on the whole uniform, and can be predicted. Socialists are for the most part pessimists in their judgments as to the past and optimists in their expectations. Individualists are optimists as to the past, pessimists as to the future. The former dwell upon the evils which private property and other economic institutions, creations of the past, have left; the latter extol the wealth and civilisation which are the products of these institutions.

of Socialism, are annually published. set down the titles of only a few :

Here are

Léon Say, Les Solutions démocratiques de la Question des Impôts, 2 vols. 1886.-G. Ê. Bellamy, Looking Backirard, 1889.-Werner Sombart, Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung im 19ten Jahrhundert, 1889.-Wordsworth Donnisthorpe, Industrialism, 1889.-Eugène Eichthal, Socia lisme, 1889.-A. Menger, Das bürgerliche Recht und die besitzlosen Volksklassen, 1890.-Léon Say, Le Socialisme d'État, 1890.- John Rae, Contemporary Socialism, 2nd Ed. 1891.-W. H. Mallock, Labour and the Popular Welfare, 1893.-Thomas Kirkup, A History of Socialism, 1892.-T. de Wyzewa, Le Mouvement Socialiste en Europe, 1892.-E. B. Bax, Ethics of Socialism. 1893.-H. E. Ziegler, Die Naturwissenschaft und die socialdemokratische Theorie.-A. Wagner, Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie, 3rd ed. (particularly vol. ii.), 1894. - Robert Flint. Socialism, 1895.-E. C. K. Gonner, The Socialist State, 1895.-Lord Milner, Arnold Toynber: a Reminiscence. 1895. Léon Say, Contre le Socialisme, 1896; Le Socialisme, 1896.—R. Stammler, Wirtschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichts-Auffassung, 1896.-Dr. Ludwig Stein, Die sociale Frage im Lichte der Philo sophie, 1897.-Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of his System, translated by A. M. Macdonald, 1898.-Werner Sombart, Socialism in the 19th Century, translated by A. P. Attenbury, 1898.-W. Graham, Socialism, Old and New, 1890.-A. Menger, Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, with Introduction by Professor Foxwell, translated by M. E. Tanner, 1899.-André Liesse, Le Travail, 1899.-E. Bernstein, Zur Geschichte und Theorie des Socialismus, 1901.-Adolphe Landry, L'Utilité sociale de la Propriété Individuelle, 1901.-Albert Métin, Le Socialisme sans doctrines, 1901.-W. Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, 1902.— Gustave le Bon, La Psychologie du Socialisme 1902.-Eduard Bernstein, Dokumente des Sozialismus, Hefte für Geschichte, Urkunden und Bibliographie des Sozialismus (a useful collection of documents relative to Socialism), 1901.-H. G. Wells, Anticipations (3rd ed.), 1902.-E. R. A. Seligman, The Economic Interpretations of History, 1902.-Jean Jaurés, Études Socialistes, 1902.-Durkheim, De la Division du Travail Social, 1902.-"Wer ist heute Socialist!" Jahrbücher für National Oekonomie, 1902, p. 457.

Both are alike in this respect; with them both laws and environment count for almost everything; human nature, scarcely changed, it may be, by laws and environment, counts for little. In this they may both be wrong. I note one other characteristic: the movement is advanced and spread very much as religions have been; there are appeals to reason, but these are sometimes weakest where the convictions produced are strongest. The real impulse-Rev. Brook Foss Westcott, Christian Social comes from emotions, often unavowed, which Socialism arouses.

It may, and to-day does, mean very diverse things-an outbreak of mere predatory instincts; or an earnest, disinterested desire for a better social order; or a belief that the present economical conditions could by proper regulation be improved. It may originate in some of the best or worst impulses of human nature.

[Bibliography.—It would be totally impossible to give even a faint idea of the enormous literature of modern Socialism. Hundreds of books and pamphlets (to say nothing of articles in newspapers and magazines), dealing with all aspects

Union Addresses, 1903.-Paul Leroy - Beaulieu,
Le Collectivisme, 4th ed. 1903.-Anton Menger,
Neue Staatslehre, 1903.-Arthur N. Woodworth,
Maxime Leroy, Le Code Civil et le Droit Nouveau,
Ph.D., Christian Socialism in England, 1903.—
1904.-J. M. Gros, Le Mouvement Littéraire
Socialiste, 1904.-Maurice Bourguin, Les Systèmes
Socialistes et l'Évolution Économique, 1904.
R. C. K. Ensor, Modern Socialism, 1904.-Eurico
Ferri, Socialism and Positive Science, translated
by E. C. Harvey, 1905.-J. Ramsay MacDonald,
Socialism and Society, 1905.-J. Keir-Hardie,
M.P., From Serfdom to Socialism, 1907.-J. A.
Hobson, The Social Problem, 1903; The Evolution
of Modern Capitalism, 1906.-Rev. R. J.

SOCIALISM

Campbell, Christianity and the Social Order, 1907.-Albert Schatz, L'Individualisme Economique et Social, 1907.-Yves Guyot, La Démocratie Individualiste, 1907.-J. Ramsay Mac Donald, M.P., Socialism, 1907.-H. O. Arnold-Forster, M.P., English Socialism of To-day, 1908.-W. H. Mallock, A Critical Examination of Socialism, 1908. Houston S. Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, trans. from German, 1909.]

J. Ma. Since 1909 Socialism has advanced with democracy, but hardly at the same pace or in close keeping with industrial development. Its march has been often disturbed and perplexed by the concrete differences of nationality. It was powerless to arrest the combat

of 1914.

In

It is true that the international movement is not dead. But since Socialism places public ownership in the foreground, and there is not yet an international authority corresponding to the public force of separate States, the advance in this direction has not been at all comparable with the advance of Socialism in the separate States. At the end of the War there were thirteen non-monarchical democracies (republics) in Europe as against three at the beginning of it. In all of them a socialistic party existed, in varying degrees of political weight. some cases (especially in Germany and Austria) it became the ruling force, and, on the whole, a party of order striving for good government. Russia in 1917 adopted a communistic dictatorship (Bolshevism), with which on principle socialists had little sympathy. Socialism and communism have not come closer together, but have rather tended to draw farther apart. The essence of modern Socialism is not the mere recognition, withheld by the Anarchists, of the State in any form, and not the stress laid on the protection of the weak and the control of abuses of economic power, a policy common in theory to all parties, but the demand for the public ownership of the large capitals liable to be so abused. So far as Socialism goes beyond the supplanting of "capitalistic" industry, it approaches communism; so far as it stops short of public ownership, it is a form of liberalism. Where a Liberal or a Conservative would be content with stringent public control, a Socialist demands public ownership.

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The

but by currency. France has as yet been little affected, and is not in the same sense as the newer republics the scene of socialistic experiments. SYNDICALISM originated in France, but its greatest feats were in the United States. It has nothing in common with the saner forms of Socialism. In England and her dominions, both of them democratic without abjuring the monarchy, the War has swelled the numbers and strength of the Labour Party, who are frankly socialistic. The party embraces a majority of working men, a greater majority of trade unionists, and a large section of cooperators, though English co-operation was and is entirely an affair of " self-help." Besides this, they have many supporters among the bourgeoisie and upper classes. Though they had not a majority of the voters, or even of the elected members, they were called to power in England at the beginning of 1924 through the support of the Liberals. The Conservatives, outnumbering either rival separately, were outnumbered by the two combined. nine months' experiment (for it ended in November 1924) was really a great event in the history of Socialism. The peculiar policy could not be carried far; but the leaders learnt a little of the business of government and acquitted themselves with credit. Continuity was surprisingly well preserved, both in home and foreign policy. The experiment was not crucial; the want of an absolute majority placed Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's Government under tutelage. His work might have been done with little or no difference under Liberal colours, and the Budget of Mr. Snowden was Conservative in the best sense of the term. The capital levy was not attempted. The English Labour Government showed themselves (as was expected) not less but more capable of their task than the longer-tried Labour Governments of the Antipodes. Surrounded by older institutions and a more complex civilisation, their leaders began to realise the statesman's difficulties of detail. "Labour troubles" do not vanish under a Labour Government even where the workers are employed by Government departments (Mint workmen, August 1920). The rural population, again, resents the interference of London agitators (Times, January 16, 1925). Women voters are as yet an only partially understood factor in politics. For the first two of these difficulties provision is attempted by some socialists under a scheme of revived guilds. As the great mining industry might form one guild, the agriculturists might form another, and the country be governed by groups united in a guild congress, supplemented by a congress of consumers (called by some a parliament). But these guild socialists are as yet only a sect of the main party.

The machinery proposed for securing the socialist's end has differed in different countries, and the variation is of great interest to the student of politics. Thoughtful men in all countries have welcomed the experimental tests of Socialism resulting from the War, and carried out with little violence and political discontinuity. The Social Democrats in the lands of their origin have not been brilliantly successful in handling the helm of government. But the undoubted sufferings of the bour- The once more widely acclaimed State Socialgeoisie have been caused, not by persecutionism was realised during the War in the manifold

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SOCIALISM-SPENCER, HERBERT

commissions and departments made necessary then and (most of them) gladly abandoned now. Perhaps the most successful expedient with a Utopian tinge was the rationing of food; it secured equality. The 66 profiteering" attached to this war, as to all wars, made more converts to extreme measures than any propaganda of socialists or communists. Government action was not always unavailing in other directions. Just as in the Germany of last century the Bismarck Acts relieved the pressure of Socialism on the Imperial Government, so the grants made in England to the unemployed have prevented the scenes of 1887 and other years of depression. The measure has been continued by all Governments since the War. Being in part contributory, the relief is not pure and mere State aid, though it is a nearer approach than we have hitherto had on this field for a century. Whether the provision of houses for the poor will be met in a similar way is uncertain. As far as events have gone in the first six years of the peace, there is no actual dethronement of the system of employers and employed in any country except Russia, which is in this respect de facto Socialist and not Anarchist. Labour Governments, our own included, have proved de facto Liberal, while the nominal Liberals, especially in our own country, have but scanty representation in Parliament. The Conservative Government here, succeeding in November 1924, had an overwhelming majority of elected members behind it, with the Socialists, as His Majesty's Opposition, nearest in numbers.

The flood of publications on Socialism continues; and, as before, there is space for only the names of the chief of them.

Our own writers have shown more willingness to follow out the details which (as Bradlaugh told Hyndman in a debate of 1890) they had not before studied. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to be all-embracing is Mr. and Mrs. Webb's Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (1920). In their more recent Decay of Capitalist Civilisation (1923) there is a return to the familiar destructive criticism of existing society; and that is true of R. H. Tawney's Acquisitive Society (1922), and even of Ramsay MacDonald's Unrest: its Cause and Cure (1913). But MacDonald is firm against syndicalism and the "class war" (Syndicalism, 1912) and the guild socialists so far as identified therewith. G. D. H. Cole (Labour, Wages, Trade Unionism, three books, 1918; Self-Government, 1920) states the case for the guilds, and S. G. Hobson not only wrote for them (National Guilds, 1920) but headed a group at Manchester to build houses without profits on their principles. There is a good general account by Miss H. Reynard in Economic Journ., 1920, 321 seq. C. H. Douglas (with A. R. Orage) has brought forward a guild banking scheme (Credit Power and Democracy, 1920). The leading features of syndicalism are the practice of violence, declaration of the class war,

appeal to direct (as opposed to representative) action, and the general strike. The leading advocate is Georges Sorel (Reflections on Violence, tr. 1916). The name originally meant only a claim of the workers in a trade that their unions (syndicats) should own the means of production there. In the United States for some little time syndicalism was a formidable movement, without the restraints of a well-ordered Socialism. J. G. Brooks deals with it in his American Sundicalism and the Industrial Workers of the World (1913), as well as in the companion volume The Problem of Syndicalism (1913). The French case is stated by E. Pataud and E. Pouget in Syndicalism and the Co-operative Commonwealth (tr. 1913).

MARX, ENGELS, and LASSALLE retain their historical interest, attested by the unceasing flow of publications concerning them or their associates or supposed predecessors. Of the thirteen pages devoted to recent literature on such subjects by Dr. Mautner in his Bolschewismus (Berlin, Kohlhammer, 1920) a large portion records books or pamphlets of or about Marx and Engels. Lenin, the Bolshevist dictator, laboured to show that his own very undemocratic position was the true "Marxism" (State and Revolution, 1917). In the settling of this question, the Correspondence of Marx and Engels, 1844 to 1883 (published Stuttgart, 1913), and the Principles of Communism (by Engels, published Berlin, 1914), are of importance. In England, since the War, works on Marx have been written by Prof. J. S. Nicholson (1920), F. R. Salter (1921), H. W. B. Joseph (1923), J. M. Murray Macdonald (1922), Prof H. J. Laski (1922).

Among the pleaders for Socialism generally may be mentioned: Mr. J. A. Hobson, Democracy After the War (1918); Taxation in the New State (1919); Mr. T. Veblen, Vested Interests, 1925. Mr. Delisle Burns, Government and Industry (1921), and Sir Leo Chiozza Money, Triumph moderate of Nationalisation (1920), take a position. Mr. Hartley Withers presents the case for Capitalism (1920).

The best recent general account of ante-bellum Socialism is perhaps Prof. O. D. Skelton's Critical Analysis (Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1911).

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For German and Russian books, see Mautner, as quoted above. One of the most striking short articles is that of the late BöBM-BAWERK,Force or Economic Law' (Macht oder ökonomisches Gesetz) (Vienna, 1920, Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft). In Italian Prof. Achille Loria has dealt with Marx in a recent monograph (1921), as well as incidentally in his larger books, e.g. Laws of Production (Turin, 1922). He remarks in the latter that the old socialists complained of over-production, the new complain of underproduction (458). Prof. Cassel in his Theory

of Social Economy (Eng. tr., 1923) has shown (like the Austrians) the persistence of economic ideas under Socialism (e.g. 129, 294, 341).

J. B.

SPENCER, HERBERT (1820-1903), the son of a schoolmaster at Derby, from the age of thirteen to sixteen was taught by his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer (1796-1853), curate of

SPENCER, HERBERT

Hinton Charterhouse, a broad-minded man, the first Church of England clergyman who publicly engaged in the agitation for the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and a practical reformer in poor law matters. The classics did not attract young Spencer, but he made great progress in mathematics. After being occupied in desultory study and teaching at home he accepted an engagement on the engineering staff of the constructor of the London and Birmingham Railway. In 1840 he became the private secretary of Captain Moorsom, then laying the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, and superintended engine constructing and testing. He invented the velocimeter for gauging the speed of locomotives, and contributed to the Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal. It was in 1840 that the reading of Lyell's Principles of Geology led him to the first conception of the system of philosophy to which he devoted his life. In 1841 he returned to Derby, and spent two years in study and devising improvements in watchmaking and typefounding and in the glyptograph. He reported on the great flood at Derby in 1842, and contributed letters to the Nonconformist, "On the proper sphere of Government," which appeared as a pamphlet in 1843. One communication dealt with commercial restrictions. For a short time he was subeditor of the Pilot in 1844, and then returned to railway engineering, which he abandoned in 1846 and occupied himself with inventions. He wrote in the Westminster Review and the Philosophical Magazine, and in 1848 was appointed sub-editor of the Economist, an office he held for five years. In 1850 appeared the first edition of his Social Statics; or, the Conditions essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first of them developed. The primary inception of the general doctrine of evolution was in an article on "Progress; its Law and Cause," published in the Westminster Review in 1855, in which year was issued his Principles of Psychology. It was in 1857 that the ideas he afterwards elaborated first became crystallised, and in 1860 he circulated the programme carried out in his works on the Synthetic Philosophy (1862-1896), commencing with First Principles, followed by Principles of Biology, 2 vols., Psychology, 2 vols., Sociology, 3 vols., and Ethics, 2 vols. Spencer's writings on sociological subjects are those mentioned below and The Study of Sociology (1873). He also printed eight folio volumes of Descriptive Sociology (English, Ancient American, Lowest, African, Asiatic, and American races, Hebrews, and French), consisting of facts collected and abstracted by several assistants.

The last twenty years of Spencer's work were devoted to the completion and revision of the volumes of his Philosophy, with intervals of exciting controversy, chiefly anti-socialistic. At an early date he read Adam SMITH, with

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whose ethics he had many points of contact. "Justice and beneficence have a common root," sympathy (Social Statics, ch. v. § 5). “There exists in us a mental mechanism by which the essential prerequisite to greatest happiness is recognised and enforced," and that is the moral sense (ib. ch. v. § 8). Legislation cannot create moral force; the essential function of the State is to maintain the law of equal freedom, to maintain men's rights, and to prevent aggression. "Protected trades have afforded many proofs of the impolicy of injustice" (Introd. p. 61). Spencer points out the encroaching of government in the regulation of commerce, religious establishments, poor laws, national education, colonisation, sanitary supervision, currency, and postal arrangements. "The injunctions of the moral law as now interpreted coincide with and anticipate those of political economy. Political economy teaches that restrictions upon commerce are detrimental: the moral law denounces them as wrong" (ch. xxiii.).

Other instances of the coincidence of the moral law and the teaching of political economy are: the loss entailed by a forced trade with Colonies (ch. xxvii.); the condemnation of interference with food markets; the infringement of rights in making penalties upon usury; the law of equal freedom forbids all attempt to restrict the use of machinery as well as artificial regulation of wages and prices; direct taxation is the only kind of taxation against which the law of equal freedom does not protest; the harm of tampering with currency and of endeavouring to benefit one occupation at the expense of others; legislative interference with manufacturing processes, etc. "The laboured arguments of Adam Smith and his successors are forestalled, and for practical purposes made needless, by the simplest deductions of fundamental morality" (ch. xxxi. § 4). "The so| called moral law is in reality the law of complete life" (ib. § 6). This view is reproduced in Data of Ethics. "Not for the human race only, but for every race, there are laws of right living. . . . The leading traits of a code under which complete living through voluntary co-operation is secured, may be simply stated. The fundamental requirement is that the life-sustaining actions of each shall severally bring him the amounts and kinds of advantage naturally achieved by them; and this implies, firstly, that he shall suffer no direct aggressions on his person or property, and, secondly, that he shall suffer no indirect aggressions by breach of contract (pp. 132, 149). With the decline of militancy and the rise of industrialism there have gradually arisen "multitudinous voluntary associations among citizens for discharging numerous kinds of functions"; "one result is that there can now be achieved without governmental power various ends which in early days governmental power alone could achieve" (Principles of Ethics,

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§ 368). "All-embracing state-functions characterise a low social type; and progress to a higher type is marked by relinquishments of functions" (ib. § 369).

"It results that to recognise and enforce the rights of individuals is at the same time to recognise and enforce the conditions of a normal social life. There is one vital requirement for both" (Man versus the State, p. 102). "The function of liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of parliaments" (ib. p. 107). Free trade is advocated in chs. xv. and xvi., and direct taxation at the end of ch. xxiv. of Justice (Principles of Ethics, vol. ii.). "The histories of all nations are alike in exhibiting the enormous evils that have been produced by legislation guided merely by 'the merits of the case'" (ib. pp. 249-50). As to the land question, Spencer believes that "the aggregate of men forming the community are the supreme owners of the land," yet, fuller consideration of the matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject to State-suzerainty, should be maintained." As to State ownership, "the vices of officialism would inevitably entail immense evils" (ib. vol. ii. App. p. 444). "From the outset the growth of revenue has, like that growth of the political headship which it accompanies, been directly or indirectly a result of war" (Political Institutions, § 546). "With the repression of militant activities and decay, of militant organisations, will come amelioration of political institutions as of all other institutions" (§ 582).

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Spencer always opposed the compulsory introduction of the metric system, and directed in his will that his pamphlet Against the Metric System should be circulated among peers and members of parliament should a bill be introduced.

He distinguishes between militant and industrial co-operation and between voluntary and compulsory co-operation (Principles of Sociology, § 833, etc.). In dealing with socialism (§ 840, etc.) he points out that the chief question at issue concerns the mode of regulating labour. Most of Spencer's fundamental economic views are to be found in his early Essays (vol. iii.). In Railway Morals and Railway Policy (1854) he criticises railway finance and management, especially the practice of companies taking up illegitimate businesses (e.g. docks, hotels, steam packets), and the unnecessary increase of new lines; there should have been formed "running companies" separate from the companies owning the roads. In The Morals of Trade (1859) he points out that "men who deal in bales and tons differ but little in morality from men who deal in yards and pounds"; as to douceurs and bribes, the frauds of wholesale houses, manufacturers, banking delinquencies-"are these

evils growing worse?" He answers partly Yes and partly No. The morals of trade are so bad because of "the indiscriminate admiration of wealth." He forcibly drew attention to State Tamperings with Money and Banks (1858). "The progressive accumulation and depreciation of promises to pay and the commercial disasters" of 1814-15-16 66 were state-produced evils." The Bank Act of 1844 is "this remnant of protectionism." In Specialized Administration (1871) he says: "The evils that have arisen from the positively regulative action of the State on banks are too multitudinous to be here enumerated."

H. R. T.

SPOONER, LYSANDER (1808-1887) was born and died in Massachusetts. He studied law in Worcester, but found he could not get admission to the Bar because he was not a college graduate and had not pursued his legal reading for three years. He successfully set himself to remove the restriction from the statute book. In 1845, seeing the high rates of postage and believing the government had no constitutional right to monopoly of the mails, he set up an independent service between Boston and New York, charging five cents for letters, which was less than half the goverment rate. Forced by prosecution to withdraw from his growing business, he had yet shown that lower charges were possible, and these were instituted by Congress.

Spooner in 1861 proposed a paper currency based upon real estate values. At this time there were in the United States some 1600 banking institutions with note-issue privilege; there were upwards of 7000 kinds of notes in circulation. A small specie reserve, State bonds, or other security stood behind the best of this currency, but much was based upon very slender assets.

In the same year in which Spooner's scheme was published, the Secretary of the Treasury urged that Congress should regulate the banking business, and out of his suggestions grew, two years later, the national banking system, which led, in 1865, to the prohibitive tax upon issues of State banks.

Spooner's device was to make the currency represent an invested dollar instead of a specie dollar. The "productive stock" of one of Spooner's banks would consist of real estate mortgages, and would be entitled to dividends arising from interest on the mortgages and from the banking profits. "Circulating capital" would be issued to an amount exactly equivalent to the value of the "productive stock," and this would not bear interest. Circulating stock (paper currency) would be redeemable in productive stock, unless the bankers chose to redeem in specie. Those coming into possession of productive stock through redemption of bills (known as "secondary stockholders ") would be entitled to a fixed rate of interest, leaving primary stockholders as residuary claimants.

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