Socialism and Democracy in Europe. Samuel Peter Orth
economic factor based on class functions remains the essence of the social movement.[4]
What are the ideals of Socialism? They are not merely economic or social, they embrace all life. After one has taken the pains to read the more important mass of Socialist literature, books, pamphlets, and some current newspapers and magazines, and has listened to their orators and talked with their leaders, confusion still remains in the mind. The movement is so all-embracing that it has no clearly defined limits. The Socialists are feeling their way from protest into practice. Their heads are in the clouds; of this you are certain as you proceed through their books and listen to their speeches. But are their feet upon the earth?
For a literature of protest against "suffering, misery, and injustice," as Owen calls it, there is a wonderful buoyancy and hope in their words. It is one of the secrets of its power that Socialism is not the energy of despair. It is the demand for the right to live fully, joyfully, and in comfort. The Socialists demand ozone in their air, nutrition in their food, heartiness in their laughter, ease in their homes, and their days must have hours of relaxation.
The awakening aspirations of the proletarian were expressed by one of their own number, William Weitling, a tailor of Magdeburg. He afterwards migrated to America and became one of our first Socialist agitators. His book is called Garantieen der Harmonie und Freiheit (Guaranties of Harmony and Liberty). The book is illogical, full of contradictions, and all of the errors of a child's reasoning. But it remains the workingman's classic philippic, one of the most trenchant recitals of social wrongs, because it blends, with the illogical terminology of sentimentalism, the assurance of hope. "Property," he says, "is the root of all evil." Gold is the symbol of this world of wrongs. "We have become as accustomed to our coppers as the devil to his hell." When the rule of gold shall cease, then "the teardrops which are the tokens of true brotherliness will return to the dry eyes of the selfish, the soul of the evildoer will be filled with noble and virtuous sentiments such as he had never known before, and the impious ones who have hitherto denied God will sing His praise." The humble tailor is assured that the reign of property will be terminated and the age of humanity begin, and he calls to the workingman, "Forward, brethren; with the curse of Mammon on our lips, let us await the hour of our emancipation, when our tears will be transmuted into pearls of dew, our earth transformed into a paradise, and all of mankind united into one happy family."[5] Nor is the closing cry of his book without an element of prophecy. He addresses the "mighty ones of this earth," admonishing them that they may secure the fame of Alexander and Napoleon by the deeds of emancipation which lie in their power. "But if you compel us (the proletarians) to undertake the task alone with our raw material, then it will be accomplished only after weary toil and pain to us and to you."
Let us turn to Robert Owen, who was at an early age the most successful cotton spinner in England. He adapted an old philosophy to a new humanitarianism. He saw that a "gradual increase in the number of our paupers has accompanied our increasing wealth."[6] He began the series of experiments which made his name familiar in England and America and made him known in history as the greatest experimental communist. His experiments have failed. But his hopefulness persists. In his address delivered at the dedication of New Lanark, 1816, he said that he had found plenty of unhappiness and plenty of misery. "But from this day a change must take place; a new era must commence; the human intellect, through the whole extent of the earth, hitherto enveloped by the grossest ignorance and superstition, must begin to be released from its state of darkness; nor shall nourishment henceforth be given to the seeds of disunion and division among men. For the time has come when the means may be prepared to train all the nations of the world in that knowledge which shall impel them not only to love but to be actively kind to each other in the whole of their conduct, without a single exception."
Here is an all-inclusive hopefulness. Its significance is not diminished by the fact that it was spoken of his own peculiar remedy by education and environment.
This faith and hope runs through all their books like a golden song. Excepting Marx, he was the great gloomy one. Even those who condemn modern society with the most scathing adjectives link with their denunciations the most sanguine sentences of hope.
The Christian Socialism of Kingsley is filled with optimism. "Look up, my brother Christians, open your eyes, the hour of a new crusade has struck."[7]
The song of the new crusade was sung by Robert Morris:
"Come, shoulder to shoulder ere the world grows older!
Help lies in naught but thee and me;
Hope is before us, the long years that bore us,
Bore leaders more than men may be.
"Let dead hearts tarry and trade and marry,
And trembling nurse their dreams of mirth,
While we, the living, our lives are giving
To bring the bright new world to birth."
This song of hope is sung to-day by thousands of marching Socialists. Their bitter experiences in parliaments and in strikes, and all the warfare of politics and trade, have not blighted their rosy hope. They are still looking forward to "the bright new world," in which a new social order shall reign.
Linked with this optimism is a certain prophetic tone, an elevation of spirit that lifts some of their books out of the commonplace. The sincerity of these prophets of Socialism contributes this quality more than does their originality of mind.
In their search for happiness the Socialists see a great barrier in their way. The barrier is want, poverty. There are no greater contrasts, mental and temperamental, than between John Stuart Mill, the erudite economist and philosopher, and H.G. Wells, the romancer and sentimental critic of things as they are. Both begin their attacks upon the social order at the same point—the vulnerable spot, poverty. Mill places it first in his category of existing evils. He asks, "What proportion of the population in the most civilized countries of Europe enjoy, in their own person, anything worth naming of the benefits of property?" "Suffice it to say that the condition of numbers in civilized Europe, and even in England and France, is more wretched than that of most tribes of savages who are known to us."[8]
Wells bases his racy criticism in his popular book, New Worlds for Old, on the facts revealed in the reports of various charity organizations in Edinburgh, York, and London. To both the exacting economist and the popular expositor of Socialism, poverty is the glaring fault of our social system. To Wells poverty is an "atrocious failure in statesmanship."[9] To Mill it is "pro tanto a failure of the social arrangement."[10]
These examples are typical. Every school of Socialism finds in poverty the curse, in private property the cause, of human misery, and in a readjusted machinery of social production the hope of human betterment.
All Socialists, learned and unlearned, agree that poverty is the stumbling-block in the pathway to better social conditions. They all agree as to the causes of poverty: first, private capitalistic production; second, competition. It is private capitalistic production that enables the employer to pocket all the profits; it is competition that enables him to buy labor in an open market at the lowest possible price, a price regulated by the necessities of bare existence. To the Socialist, competition is anarchy, an anarchy that leaves "every man free to ruin himself so that he may ruin another."[11]
To do away with private capital and to abolish competition means bringing about a tremendous change in society. All Socialists unhesitatingly and with boldness are ready, even eager, to make such a change. The problem is not insuperable to them.