French and German Socialism in Modern Times. Richard T. Ely
under such circumstances inequalities would again arise within twenty-four hours. This is so perfectly obvious that no communist of note has ever proposed anything so childish and absurd. Yet it is a widely prevalent notion that this is what the communists have desired. One of the Rothschilds of Frankfort-on-the-Main once hearing a poor man complain of his lot, and express a desire for the equality of communism, is said immediately to have put his hand in his pocket, drawn out two or three shillings, and offered them to the poor man as his share of the wealth of a Rothschild, were it equally divided among all the inhabitants of Germany. This is often told as a business man’s concise and practical refutation of communism. It has, however, no significance at all either for or against that economic system. All communists without exception propose that the people as a whole, or some particular division of the people, as a village or commune, should own all the means of production—land, houses, factories, railroads, canals, etc.; that production should be carried on in common; and that officers, selected in one way or another, should distribute among the inhabitants the fruits of their labor. Under such circumstances inequalities could have no opportunity to spring up; nor do we find communistic experiments failing because it is impossible to maintain equality. Where it is really desired, it is not difficult to secure it. As a matter of fact, however, it is not desired by the great masses of any land of Christendom, nor would they for a moment consent to endure it.
But to return from this digression. Babœuf proposed to attain equality by degrees. He desired that a large national and common property should be at once formed out of the property of corporations and public institutions. The property of individuals was to be added to this upon their death, as inheritance was to be abolished. All property would thus become nationalized in the course of fifty years. Production was to be carried on in common under officers chosen by popular vote. These same officers, according to the scheme, decide upon the needs and requirements of the different individuals of the society, and divide the products of their common industry. The earth must belong to all, and its fruits must be common property. Officers receive no more than those under them, and a rapid rotation in office prevents the acquirements of habits and thoughts consequent on superior position. No one becomes accustomed to command; no one becomes accustomed to obey.
The country is divided into “regions,” and the “regions” into “departments.” There is a central and superior administration for the entire country, an intermediate one for each “region,” and a subordinate one for each “department.” Each administration has its own duties—the lowest coming into contact with individuals, the higher supervising the subordinate boards. Government is absolute, notwithstanding the adoption of the watchword “Liberté.” On its orders citizens are sent from commune to commune, as their services may be required; and the “superfluous” products of one region are transferred to another less fortunate one. The supreme administration must store up the surplus of years of plenty as provision for unfruitful years. It also conducts trade with foreign nations, for which purpose great magazines or store-houses are erected on the frontiers and the borders of the sea. No private individual is allowed to trade with foreign countries, and all merchandise used in such trade is confiscated for the benefit of the community. All intercourse with outside countries is carefully watched to prevent the importation of erroneous ideas and disastrous customs. Even within the country only such publications are allowed as teach the unqualified blessings of equality.
Article 3 of the “Organization of the Government of the Community” enumerates the kinds of labor which the law considers useful, and which alone entitle an individual to exercise any political right whatever. They are the following: agriculture, which is especially favored, as being most natural to man; the pastoral life; fishing; navigation; mechanic and manual arts; retail trade; transportation; war; teaching; and the sciences. However, teaching is only then considered useful when it is undertaken by one who has declared his adherence to the principles of the community, and bears a certificate of “civisme.” Literature and the fine arts are not included, being regarded with little favor.
The whole scheme is dreary and monotonous. All differences save those relating to age and sex being abolished, equality is even interpreted to mean uniformity. All must be dressed alike, save that distinctions are made for sex and age; all must eat the same quantity of the same kind of food, and all must be educated alike.[24] As the higher goods of life are lightly esteemed, education is restricted to the acquirement of elementary branches of knowledge, and of those practical in a material sense. Comfortable mediocrity in everything is the openly expressed ideal.
Children are removed from the family at an early age, and brought up together, to train them in principles of communism, and to prevent the growth of differences and inequalities.
All things are contrived to level down and not to level up; to bring the highest down to the plane of stupid, self-satisfied mediocrity, and not to elevate the less fortunate to higher thoughts, feelings, and enjoyments.
This most cheerless of all communistic schemes fitly took its origin among those sunk in the most degraded materialism of the French Revolution.
CHAPTER III.
CABET.
It is a relief to turn one’s attention to the plans of Étienne Cabet. They, at least, have the merit of not robbing life of all poetry, sentiment, and trust in something higher and better than food and drink. One might find life tolerable in one of Cabet’s communes; but every noble soul will acknowledge that if life’s ends and aims are all to centre in a full stomach and a warm cloak, then, indeed, life is not worth the living.
Cabet, son of a cooper, was born in 1788 in Dijon. He received a good education, became a lawyer, and practised first in his native city, then in Paris. He was appointed attorney-general of Corsica in 1830, but lost his place in the following year on account of his opposition to government. He was elected member of the Chamber of Deputies shortly after, and returned to Paris. He devoted the remainder of his life to literature, politics, and communism. One of his principal works was a “Popular History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1830.”[25] In a journal which he published at that time, Le Populaire, he advocated moderate communistic principles, or Icarian principles, as they were afterwards called. He was condemned to two years’ imprisonment for an article in this paper, in which he attacked the king personally, but he was fortunate enough to escape imprisonment by flight to London. It was here he became acquainted with Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia,” from which he drew a large part of his inspiration. He returned to France in 1839, and published his “Voyage to Icaria,”[26] which he himself called a philosophical and social romance—Roman philosophique et social. The title indicates his dreamy character. He describes in this work a previously unknown country, not quite so large as France or England, but as populous and a thousand times more blessed. Peace, wisdom, joy, pleasures, and happiness reign there. Crimes are unknown. It is Icaria; “a second Promised Land, an Eden, an Elysium, a new terrestrial Paradise.”[27]
The writer of the “Voyage to Icaria” represents that he met in London Lord William Carisdall, who found in Icaria the one truly happy people he had discovered in his travels. Lord William kept a journal, in which he described this wonder-land, and this, we are told, has been edited and revised for the public with his consent. The object is to show that communism is practicable and is the solution of all social problems. It contains an account of an ideal society, but one which Cabet thought he was able to establish. He made the attempt, choosing Texas as a place in which his ideals were to be realized. He secured the grant of a large tract of land on the Red River, and sent out several advance-guards of Icarians in 1848, who were, however, attacked by the yellow fever, and had disbanded before he arrived in New Orleans with a later detachment. He learned on his arrival that the Mormons had abandoned their settlement in Nauvoo, Ill., and set out for that place with his followers. While the Icarians were in Nauvoo they numbered, all told, at one time fifteen hundred. As Nordhoff, in his “Communistic Societies in the United States,” justly remarks, Cabet might have done something with such a large band, if he had had anything of a business head. But he lacked firmness and perseverance. They met with some success in cultivating