Contemporary Socialism Part 3

From Spain, socialism pa.s.sed into Portugal; but from the first it has worked very quietly there. Its adherents formed themselves into an a.s.sociation in 1872, and held congresses, published newspapers, started candidates, and actively promoted their views in every legitimate way.

Their programme was anarchism, like that of their Spanish allies; but, unlike anarchists elsewhere, they repudiated all resort to violence, for, as M. de Laveleye says, they are naturally "less violent than the Spaniards, the economic situation of the country is better, and liberty being very great, prevents the explosion of popular fury, which is worse when exasperated by repression." Portugal is an agricultural country in a good climate, where the people have few wants, and find it easy to satisfy them fairly well. In the absence of any manner of acute discontent, socialism could never have been much better than an abstract speculation; and Portuguese socialism, if we may trust the complaints made by the party elsewhere, seems now to have lost even the savour it had. In March, 1888, one of the socialist newspapers of London reported that the Portuguese working men's movement had, in the course of the preceding ten years, given up the straightforward socialist character it once had; that its leaders had entered into compromises with other political parties, and threw themselves too much into experiments in co-operation; that the party press was very lukewarm in its socialism, and inclined more to mere Radicalism; and that one or two attempts that had been made to start more extreme journals had completely failed; but it announced with satisfaction, that at last, in January, 1888, a frankly anarchist paper was published at Oporto--_A Revoluzao Social_.

About the same time the editor of a journal which had made some hostile remarks on anarchism was shot, and anarchists were blamed and arrested for the deed. There was a Socialist Congress at Lisbon in 1882, composed of twelve delegates representing eight societies, all in Lisbon or Oporto.

While the socialist cause has been thus rather retreating in the south of Europe, it has been making some advances in the north. Of the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark alone gave any early response to the socialist agitation; but there are now socialist organizations in Sweden and Norway, and the movement in Denmark has a.s.sumed considerable dimensions. Attempts were made to introduce socialism into Norway as far back as 1873 by Danish emissaries, and the International also founded a small society of thirty-seven members in Christiania; but the society seems to have died, and nothing more was heard of socialism there till the commotion in favour of a Republic in 1883. A Social Democratic Club was then established in Christiania, and a Social Democratic Congress was held at Arendal in 1887; but even yet Norwegian social democracy is of so mild a character that it would be counted conservatism by Social Democrats elsewhere, for this Congress issued a programme for a new labour party without a word of socialism in it, and merely asking for a normal working day, for factory legislation and reform of taxation. In Sweden there is more appearance of agitation, because there is one very active agitator in the country, Palm, a tailor, who keeps socialism _en evidence_ by making stump speeches, or getting up street processions with the usual red flags, and sometimes--such was the easy indifference of the Government to his work at first--with a military band in full uniform at the head of them. The Swedish socialists had four newspapers in 1888, but three of them were confiscated by the Government in December of that year, and their editors arrested for offences against religion and the throne. In May, 1890, they held their first Congress at Stockholm, when delegates appeared from twenty-nine unions; but the movement is very unimportant in Sweden and Norway, and the chief conditions of success seem wanting to it in those countries. There is no cla.s.s of labourers there without property; no town residuum, and no rural cottagers. There being few great manufacturers in the kingdom, only fifteen per cent. of the people altogether live in towns. The rest are spread spa.r.s.ely over the rural districts on farms belonging to themselves, and in the absence of roads are obliged to make at home many of the ordinary articles of consumption. What with the produce of their small properties and their own general handiness, they are unusually independent and comfortable. M. de Laveleye considers them the happiest people in Europe.

The circ.u.mstances of Denmark are different. The operatives of the town are badly off. Mr. Strachey tells us in his report to the Foreign Office in 1870 that every fourth inhabitant of Copenhagen was in receipt of parochial relief in 1867, and he says that while the Danish operatives are sober, and well educated, they fail in industry and thrift. "No fact in my report," he states, "is more certain than that the Dane has yet to learn the meaning of the word _work_; of entireness and thoroughness he has seldom any adequate notion. This is why the Swedish artisan can so often take the bread from his mouth." In the rural districts, too, the economic situation, though in some respects highly favourable, is attended by a shadow. The land is, indeed, widely diffused. There are in all 280,000 families in the rural districts of Denmark, and of these 170,000 occupy independent freeholds, 30,000 farm hired land, and only 26,000 are agricultural labourers pure and simple. Seven-eighths of the whole country is held by peasant proprietors, and as a rule no cla.s.s in Europe has improved more during the last half century than the Danish peasant or Bonde. Mr. Strachey says: "The Danish landlord was till recent times the scourge of the peasantry. Under his paternal care the Danish Bonde was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water; his lot was no better than that of the most miserable ryot of Bengal. The Bonde is now the freest, the most politically wise, the best educated of European yeomen." But there is another side to the picture. In Denmark, as in other places where the small property abounds, the property is often too small for the proprietor's necessities, and there thus arises a kind of proprietor-proletariat, unwilling to part with their land and unable to extract a living out of it. This cla.s.s, along with the rural labourers who have no property, const.i.tute a sort of fourth estate in the country, and there as elsewhere their condition is preparing a serious social question for the future. Then, among the influences favourable to the acceptance of socialism in Denmark, must be counted the fact that one of the two great political parties of the country is democratic. Curiously enough that party consists of the peasantry, and the Conservatives of Denmark are the commercial cla.s.ses of the towns, with the artisans in their wake, their Conservatism, however, being substantially identical with the Liberalism of the same cla.s.ses in other countries. This democratic party seeks to make everything in the State conduce to the interests of the peasantry, and keeps alive in the country the idea that the State exists by the will of the people, and for their good alone.

The International was introduced into this exclusively Protestant country by two militant Roman Catholics--Pio, a retired military officer, who came to Denmark as religious tutor to a baroness who had joined the Church of Rome, and Geleff, who wrote for an Ultramontane journal. They pursued their new mission with great zeal and success.

They opened branches of the a.s.sociation in most of the towns, started a party newspaper, held open-air meetings, were sent to imprisonment for sedition in 1873, and on their release in 1877 absconded to America with the whole of the party funds, and disputed bitterly there over the spoil. While they were in prison, the International was suppressed in Denmark; but the members merely reconst.i.tuted the organization under the name of the Socialist Labour Party, and the place of leader was taken for a time by an auth.o.r.ess, Jacquette Lilyenkrantz, for, as in other countries, women are in Denmark among the most active propagandists of socialism. They kept up communications with the socialist leaders in Germany, and the meeting of the German Socialist Congress at Copenhagen in 1883 gave the movement a new impetus. They were able to return two deputies, Holm and Hordun, to the Volkething in 1884, and they took part, 80,000 strong, in the Copenhagen procession of 1886, in commemoration of the fundamental law of the State. Their chief party organ, the _Social Demokraten_, has a circulation of 26,000 daily, one of the largest newspaper circulations in Denmark; and there are other four socialist journals in the kingdom.

They belong to the moderate wing of social democracy, being opposed to revolution and terrorism, and placing their confidence in const.i.tutional agitation. Their programme is substantially that of Gotha--the right of the labourers to the full product of labour, State management of all industry, free education, universal suffrage, normal working day, abolition of cla.s.s inequalities, single chamber in legislature, free justice, no standing army, State provision for sick and aged, religions to be a private affair. They turn their propaganda with most hope to the land proletariat; and a recent writer, P. Schmidt, in an interesting paper in the _Arbeiterfreund_ for 1889, says they are succeeding in their mission, and that socialism is spreading more and more every day among the rural labourers. At their last Congress, held at Copenhagen, in June, 1890, and attended by seventy-one delegates from fifty-four different branches, their attention was chiefly occupied with questions about the land; provision of more land for the people by compulsory acquisition of ecclesiastical property and uncultivated ground; State advances of capital to agricultural labourers; agricultural schools; better housing for farm servants, etc. In 1887 they held a socialist exhibition in Copenhagen--an international exhibition of socialist pamphlets, newspapers, books, magazines, and pictures; and in 1890 they returned two members to the Landthing--the first time they secured representatives in the Upper Chamber.

Belgium has many of the conditions of soil most favourable for socialism--a dense population, large towns, an advanced productive system, and an industrial cla.s.s at once very numerous, very ill paid, and very open, through their education, to new social ideas. For a time, accordingly, socialism spread remarkably in that country. The International had eight federations of branches in 1869, with 60,000 members and several newspapers. In the dispute between Marx and Bakunin, the Belgian Internationalists seem to have sided as a body with Bakunin; but they presently fell out among themselves, and, in spite of many repeated efforts at reconciliation, they have never since succeeded in composing their differences. The German socialist leaders tried to reorganize them in 1879 at a special Congress at Brussels, under the name of the Socialist Labour Party of Belgium, and with the Gotha programme; but they were rent again in 1881 by a division which had then entered into German socialism itself. The majority of the party adhered to Liebknecht and Bebel; but an active minority, composed chiefly of Walloons, followed the anarchist views of Most and Ha.s.selman, withdrew from the party, and founded another called the Revolutionary Union. The anarchists have one journal--_Ni Dieu, Ni Maitre_--violent, as the name indicates, but obscure and unimportant; but they believe most in the less intellectual propaganda of deed, and make themselves conspicuous from time to time by dynamite explosions and street fights with the police or the military, or their own socialist rivals. The Belgian socialists, on the other hand, look more to const.i.tutional and parliamentary action, and usually work with the Liberals at the elections; but the Belgian voting qualification is high, and they have never succeeded in returning a candidate of their own. In 1887 their candidate for Brussels got 1,000 votes, while his successful rival had 3,000. They took an active part in the Republican agitation which was raised by the School Law in 1884. They have capable leaders, and they publish two journals, which, however, for want of funds, appear only at distant and uncertain intervals. They have lately begun to hold many open-air meetings, which the authorities had long forbidden, and they held an International Socialist Exhibition at Ghent in 1887 like that held in the same year at Copenhagen.

On the whole socialism, after twenty years' work, is making no way in Belgium, notwithstanding the favourable character of the soil, because the labour movement is choosing other directions and forms of organization. Trade unions and co-operative societies have been multiplying much during these twenty years, and in 1885 a strong Belgian Labour Party was formed, with 120 branches and 100,000 members, which aims at promoting the practical wellbeing of the working cla.s.s by remedial legislation--by in some cases vicious State-socialistic legislation, it may be--but has no word of the right to the full product of labour, of the nationalization of all industry, or of the social revolution. One of the items of the programme is worded "collective property"; but whether it contemplates the universal State-property of collectivism or the corporate property of co-operation does not appear.

The other items are universal suffrage, direct legislation by the people (presumably the _referendum_), free undenominational education, abolition of standing army, abolition of budget of wors.h.i.+p, normal work day, normal wages, regulation of work of women and children, factory inspection, employers' liability, workmen's chambers, courts of conciliation, repeal of taxes on means of subsistence, increased income tax, international labour legislation. M. de Laveleye attributes the ill success of socialism in Belgium, and no doubt rightly, to the influence of discussion and free inst.i.tutions. Government has left it to stand or fall on its own merits before public opinion. The socialists enjoy full liberty of the platform and press; they can hold meetings and congresses and form clubs in any town they please, and the result is that though the movement, like all new movements, made a certain impression and advance for a time at first, it got checked under the influence of discussion and the application of solid practical judgment. Then, though the Belgian Legislature has not yet done what it can and ought for ameliorating the condition of the labourers, philanthropy has been very active and useful in a number of ways in that kingdom. The Catholic Church has always intervened to keep up a high ideal of employers'

responsibility--the old ideal of a patriarchal care; and there is a strong organization in Belgium of Catholic Working Men's Clubs, which were formed into one body in 1867, which were united with the Catholic Working Men's Clubs of Germany in 1869, and with those of France in 1870, and which now const.i.tute with these the International Catholic Working Men's a.s.sociation.

It ought perhaps to be mentioned that there is an old but small party of Land Nationalizers in Belgium, the Colinsian Socialists, whose principles have been warmly endorsed by Mr. Ruskin as "forming the most complete system of social and political reform yet put forward." They want the State to own all the soil, and let it out by auction; but they are opposed to nationalizing any of the other instruments of production.

In Holland, wealth is very unequally divided, wages are low, and taxation, being largely indirect, falls heavily on the working cla.s.s; but the people are phlegmatic, domestic, religious, and contrive on small means to maintain a general appearance of comfort and decency.

Above all, they enjoy free inst.i.tutions; and, under freedom, socialism has run the same course in Holland as in Belgium. The International made rapid advances in 1869, founded branches in all the towns, and carried on, after the Paris Commune, so active and successful an agitation that the _bourgeoisie_ took alarm, and Government imposed some restrictions on the disaffected press. But a general rise in wages happened about the time, a strong co-operative movement was promoted under the lead of the orthodox divines, a lively polemic against socialism broke out among the working men themselves, and all interest in the social revolution seemed to have died away, when, in 1878, it was revived again by D. Niewenhuis, a retired Protestant minister, a man of capacity and zeal, who has been unwearied in his advocacy of the cause ever since. He started in that year a journal, _Recht Voor Allen_, which is still, I believe, the only socialist organ in Holland, and appears now three times a week; and he founded the Social Democratic Union in 1884, which is strongest in the Hague and Amsterdam, but has branches in most of the other towns, and a members.h.i.+p by no means inconsiderable, though much below the old numbers of the Dutch International. After being imprisoned in 1887 for political reasons, Niewenhuis was returned to the Legislature in 1888--the first socialist who has sat there. The Dutch Socialists, to increase their numbers, enrol a cla.s.s of "secret" members, timid spirits who will only come to them "by night, for fear of the Jews." There is also a handful of anarchists in Holland, who have a newspaper in Amsterdam, and are said to live harmoniously with the socialists, and, according to the reports of the American consuls, n.o.body in the country thinks any harm of either.

Switzerland has swarmed for a century with conspirators of all hues and nations; but the Swiss--thanks again to free inst.i.tutions--have been steel against revolution. The "Young Germanys" and "Young Italys" whom she sheltered in the past sought only, it is true, to win for their own countries the political freedom which Switzerland already enjoyed; but the socialist and anarchist refugees of the last twenty years have had social principles to preach which were as new and as good for the Swiss as for their own countrymen; and, speaking as they did the languages of the Confederation, they have never ceased making active efforts for the conversion of the Swiss. The old Jura.s.sian Federation of the International, still continues to exist in French-speaking Switzerland, and to bear witness for the extremest kind of anarchist communism--no force or authority whatever, and a collective consumption of products as well as a collective production; but this body is not increasing, and though Guesde, the French socialist, made a lecturing tour through that division of Switzerland in 1885, he had quite as little success for his branch of the revolutionary cause. There are numbers of Social Democratic Clubs in the German-speaking cantons, but they consist mainly of German refugees, and contain few native Swiss members. After the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1879, the German socialists settled largely in Switzerland. They transferred to Zurich their party organ, the _Social Democrat_, and along with it, to use their own phrase, the entire Olympus of the party, the body of writers and managers who moved the shuttle of its operations. These propagandists naturally did not neglect the country of their adoption, but used every opportunity to forward their agitation by addresses and even by extended missionary journeys, and a separate Swiss Social Democratic party was actually founded, with a separate organ, the _Arbeiterstimme_; but it collapsed in 1884 from internal dissensions. No attempt was made to revive it till 1888, when the action of the Federal Council in May against the foreign socialists resident in the Confederation led to the organization of a Swiss socialist party in October. The Federal Government had already, in 1884 and 1885, taken measures against the political refugees, especially the anarchists, who were thought to have abused the hospitality they received by planning and preparing in Switzerland the series of crimes which shocked all Europe in 1884, and even by trying to explode the Federal Palace at Berne itself. The Government inst.i.tuted an inquiry, and finding the country absolutely riddled with anarchist clubs, determined to keep the eye of the police on them, and in the meantime expelled thirty or forty of their leading members from Switzerland altogether. These were almost without exception either Austrians or Germans, and included Neve, now a leading anarchist in London. The Russian anarchists were apparently not thought so dangerous, their great occupation being to invent new ways and means of smuggling newspapers into Russia; but they disliked the police supervision to which they were subjected, and very generally quitted Switzerland of their own accord for London or Paris. The anarchist organ, the _Revolte_, was removed at the same time to Paris, but its place in Geneva was taken by a new paper--_L'Egalitaire_. In 1888 the police were ordered to report all socialist meetings held in the country, and all arrivals or departures of "foreigners whose means of subsistence was unknown, and whose presence might, for other reasons, become dangerous to the safety of the country"; and as this further turn of the screw was believed to be made on the instigation of Germany, it provoked considerable opposition, one result of which was the formation of the new Swiss socialist party.

This party, however, is not an affair of any magnitude, and does not appear very likely to become so; for the working men of Switzerland have the public power in their own hands already, and they have their own organizations besides to look after their interests; and while they are by no means averse to the use of the powers of the State, they are disposed to move with inquiry and caution, and to see every step of their way before running into speculative schemes of foreign origin.

Their political position satisfies them, because they know they are too strong for Government to neglect their wishes, because some labour laws have already been pa.s.sed for their protection, and because the authorities always show themselves ready to entertain any new proposals for the same object, as, for example, they did in May, 1890, by summoning an International Congress at Berne to discuss the length of the working day and other conditions of labour.

Their economic position, moreover, is also comparatively satisfactory for various reasons, among which Mr. Bonar, in his report to the Foreign Office in 1870, gives a chief place to the general working of democratic inst.i.tutions and the prevalence of benevolent and charitable a.s.sociations. "In enumerating," he says, "the favourable circ.u.mstances in which the Swiss working man is placed, prominence must be given to the immense extension of the principle of democracy, which, whatever, may be its defects and dangers from a political point of view when pushed to extremes, serves in Switzerland in its economical effects to advance the cause of the operative by removing the barriers dividing cla.s.s from cla.s.s, and to establish among all grades the bonds of mutual sympathy and goodwill, further strengthened by a widely-spread network of a.s.sociations organized with the object of securing the common interests and welfare of the people." Masters and workmen are socially more equal than in most European countries; they sit side by side at the board of the Communal Council, they belong to the same choral societies, they refresh themselves at the same _cafes_. In most cantons, too, operatives are either owners of, or hold from the communes, small pieces of land which they cultivate in their leisure hours, and which thus serve them when work gets slack or fails altogether. The favourable rural economy of the country is well known; its peasant proprietors rival those of France. The Swiss societies of beneficence are remarkable, and almost suggest the hope that the voluntary socialism of a more enlarged and widely organized system of charity may be found to furnish a substantial solution of the social question. Every canton of Switzerland has its society of public utility, whose aims take an extensive range; it gives the start to projects of improvement of every description, infant schools, schools of design, savings banks, schemes for the poor, the sick, the dumb, singing cla.s.ses, halls for Sunday recreation, popular lectures, workmen's houses, protection of animals, even industrial undertakings which promise to be ultimately beneficial, though they may not pay at first. The society of Basle has 900 members and a capital of 6,000, and the Swiss Society of Public Utility is an organization for the whole Republic, which holds an annual congress at Zurich, and general meetings in the different cantons by turns. These meetings pa.s.s off with every mark of enthusiasm, and gather together men of all religious and political opinions in a common concern for the progress and prosperity of the ma.s.ses. One of the inst.i.tutions which these societies have largely promoted is what they call a hall of industry, or a bazaar, where loans may be received by workmen on the security of their wages, or of goods they may deposit. A labourer who has made any article which he cannot get immediately sold, may deposit it at one of these bazaars, and obtain an advance equal to a fixed proportion of its value, and if the article is sold at the bazaar, the proceeds are accounted for to the depositor, less the sum advanced and a small charge for expenses. These inst.i.tutions, Mr. Bonar says, have had excellent effects, though he admits that the facilities of borrowing have led the working men in some places into debt; but they are at any rate a vast improvement on the p.a.w.nbroking system in vogue elsewhere.

The condition of Switzerland shows us clearly enough that democracy under a _regime_ of freedom lends no ear to socialism, but sets its face in entirely different directions.

The United States of America have done more for experimental socialism than any other country. Owenites, Fourierists, Icarians have all established communities there, but these communities have failed long ago, except one of the Icarian, and the only other socialist experiments now existing in America are seventy or eighty religious communities, Shakers and Rappists, whose success has been due to their religious discipline and their celibacy, and whose members amount to no more than 5,000 souls all told. There is indeed a Russian Commune in California, but it remains a solitary Russian Commune still, the "new formula of civilization," as Russian reformers used to call it, showing no sign of further adoption. Nor has the new or political socialism found any better success in the States. There are various indigenous forms of it--such as the agrarian socialism of Mr. Henry George, and the nationalism of Mr. E. Bellamy--but in point of following they are of little importance, and the socialism of the American socialist and revolutionary parties is a mere German import, with as yet a purely German consumption. It has been pushed vigorously in the American market for twenty years, but taken singularly little hold of the American taste. There is one revolutionary socialist body composed chiefly of English-speaking members, the International Workmen's a.s.sociation, which was founded in 1881 in one of the western states; but Mr. Ely says its members.h.i.+p would be generously estimated at 15,000, and it considers the great work of the present should be popular education, so as to prepare the people for the revolution when it comes.

The Boston Anarchists, perhaps, ought not, strictly speaking, to be included in any account of socialism, for, unlike most contemporary anarchists, they are not socialist, but extremely individualist; but historically, it is worth noting, Boston Anarchism is the doctrine of a disenchanted socialist, Josiah Warren, who had lived with Robert Owen at New Harmony, and came to the conclusion that that experiment failed because the individual had been too much sunk in the community, and no room was left for the play of individual interests, individual rights, and individual responsibilities. From Owen's communism, Warren ran to the opposite extreme, and thought it impossible to individualize things too much. He would abolish the State, and have the work of police and defence done by private enterprise, like any other service. He issued some books, tried to carry out his views by practical experiment, and, though they failed, he has still a small band of believing disciples at Boston, who publish a newspaper called _Liberty_, but have no organization and no importance.

Henry George and his followers, too, perhaps ought not in strictness to be cla.s.sified among socialists. He would certainly repudiate such a cla.s.sification himself, and the United Labour Party, which he founded in 1886 to promote his views by political action, expelled the socialists from members.h.i.+p in 1887. His actual practical proposal is nothing more than a narrow and illusory plan of taxation; but he puts it forward so expressly as the keystone of a new social system, as the remedy prescribed by economic science itself for the complete regeneration of society and the simultaneous removal of all existing social evils, that he is not improperly placed among Utopian socialists. Does he not promise us a new heaven and a new earth? And if he believes the State can call the new heaven and the new earth into being by a mere turn in the incidence of taxation, while most other contemporary socialists think the State must first pull down all that now is and reconstruct the whole on a new plan, is he, on account of this greater credulity of his, to be considered a more, and not rather a less, sober and rational speculator than they? He wants to abolish landlordism, while they want to abolish landlordism and all other capitalism besides; and his views may fairly be called partial or agrarian socialism. The United Labour Party was founded mainly to promote Mr. George's panacea of the single tax on such land values as arise from the growth of society apart from individual exertion; but it includes other articles in its programme--the munic.i.p.alization of the supply of water, light, and heat; the nationalization of all money, note issue, post, telegraphs, railways, and savings banks; reduction of the hours of labour, prohibition of child labour, suppression of the compet.i.tion of prison labour with honest labour; sanitary inspection of houses, factories, and mines; simplification of legal procedure; secret ballot; payment of election expenses. The United Labour Party is not strong. When Mr.

George stood for the Mayoralty of New York, he had 68,000 votes to his opponent's 90,000; but he had on that occasion the a.s.sistance of the Socialistic Labour Party, who are said by Mr. Ely to number about 25,000 in New York, and who certainly const.i.tuted a very considerable element in the United Labour Party, for they were expelled at the Party Convention only by a vote of 94 to 54. On the other hand, Mr. Ely's estimate of the strength of the socialists is possibly too high, for they ran a candidate for the Mayoralty of New York themselves in 1888, a leading man of the party, one Jones, and he only secured 2,000 votes.

However that may be, the United Labour Party was certainly much weakened by the loss of the socialists, and they were disabled entirely in the following year by a division on the question of Free Trade and the secession of Father McGlynn and the Protectionist members.

Nationalism is the name of a new movement, the fruit of the remarkable and very popular novel of Mr. Edward Bellamy, "Looking Backward," which may be said to be the latest description of Utopia as it now stands with all the most modern improvements. Mr. Bellamy would have all industry organized and conducted by the nation on the basis of a common obligation of work and a general guarantee of livelihood, all men to get exactly the same wages, and to do exactly the same quant.i.ty of work, due allowance being made for differences in severity, and the State to enlarge indefinitely its free public provision of the means of common enjoyment and culture. Mr. Bellamy's charming pictures of the new country naturally engendered a general wish to be there, and many little societies have been established to hasten the hour; but as the movement has not been more than a year in being, little account can yet be given of its success. The Nationalists have quite recently issued an organ, _The New Nation_, which announces its programme to be (1) the nationalization of post, telegraphs, telephone, railways and coal mines; (2) munic.i.p.alization of gas and water supply, and the like; and (3) the equalization of educational opportunities as between rich and poor, and the promotion of all reforms tending towards humaner, more fraternal, and more equal conditions. Nationalism out of Utopia, therefore, means merely a little State-socialism.

The strongest socialist organizations in the United States are the Socialistic Labour Party, corresponding to the Social Democrats of Europe, and the International Working People's a.s.sociation, corresponding to the anarchists; but both are composed almost exclusively of Germans. There are more Germans in the North American Republic than in any State of Germany except Prussia; and as many of them have fled from their own country for political reasons--to escape the conscription, or to escape prosecution for sedition--they bear no goodwill to the old system of government, and harbour revolutionary ideas almost from the nature of things. A socialist propaganda began among them so far back as 1848, when Weitling, of whom more will be said presently, published a socialist newspaper; and a Socialist Gymnastic Union was established in New York in 1850, which succeeded in forming a kind of federal alliance, apparently for socialistic purposes, with a number of other local German gymnastic societies throughout the States; but though these societies still exist, they seem to have dropped their socialism. It was taken up again, however, in 1869, by the International, which transferred its General Council to New York in 1872, held congresses from time to time in the country, and eventually, at the Newark Convention of 1877, adopted the name of the Socialistic Labour Party, with a programme formed after the Gotha lines. The numbers of the party were strengthened in the years immediately following by the arrival of German refugees, expelled from their own land by the Socialist Laws; but the new members brought with them elements of dissension which speedily came to a head after the arrival of the incendiary spirit, John Most, in 1882, and led, in 1883, to the entire separation of the Anarchists from the Social Democrats. The latter held a separate Congress at Baltimore in the latter year, attended by 16 delegates, representing 23 branches and 10,000 members, and it reported that altogether 38 branches adhered to them. The anarchists held a Congress at Pittsburg, and formed themselves into the International Working People's a.s.sociation, with the following principles:--

"What we would achieve is therefore plainly and simply--

"1st. Destruction of the existing cla.s.s rule by all means; _i.e._, by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and international action.

"2nd. Establishment of a free society based upon co-operative organization of production.

"3rd. Free exchange of equivalent products by and between the productive organizations without commerce and profit-mongery.

"4th. Organization of education on a secular, scientific, and equal basis for both s.e.xes.

"5th. Equal rights for all without distinction of s.e.x or race.

"6th. Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between the autonomous (independent) communes and a.s.sociations resting on a federalistic basis." (Ely's "Labour Movement in America," p. 231.)

They differ from the Socialistic Labour Party, as this programme shows, in their exclusive devotion to revolution, and their opposition to all central government.

The Socialistic Labour Party has several newspapers, the princ.i.p.al being the _Sozialist_ and the _Neu Yorker Volkszeitung_ of New York, and the _Tageblatt_ of Philadelphia; and the anarchists have more, the best known being Most's notorious _Freiheit_. Mr. Ely mentions sixteen socialist newspapers and ten sympathizing with socialism, and says that the majority of these support the anarchist side. The anarchists, moreover, have one journal in English--the _Alarm_; the Socialistic Labour Party started one in 1883, but it died. With that exception the press of both parties is entirely German, and neither party seems to have done almost anything in the way of an English propaganda from the platform. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling state that before they made their lecturing tour on the subject through the States in 1886, the American public had never heard socialism preached to them in their own tongue; yet books like Mr. Gronlund's "Co-operative Commonwealth," giving a very effective exposition of socialism, had already appeared from the American press. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling say, moreover, they met with more hostility to their mission from the anarchists than from any other source in America. The American people, while firmly stamping out the dynamite policy of the anarchists, have naturally nothing to say against an academic propaganda of any system of doctrine.

The trend of the labour movement in America seems away from socialism.

That movement is in many respects more powerful there than in any European country. There are some five hundred labour newspapers in the United States, and an immense number of trade organizations of all kinds. Political power, moreover, both in the States and in the Union, is in the hands of the working cla.s.s; and that cla.s.s has now very nearly the same grievances there as it has in Europe, and the same aspirations after a better order of things. But their tendencies are not nearer socialism, but further from it. They simply cannot understand people who tell them they have no power to work out their own salvation under the system that is, and that nothing can be done, as Marx a.s.sures them, until every capital in Europe is ready for a simultaneous revolution with New York and Chicago. The trade unions accordingly ignore socialism. The Knights of Labour expressly repudiate it, and in the course of a very long programme they hardly make a demand which has a taint even of State-socialism. This "n.o.ble Order of the Knights of Labour" is a general a.s.sociation of working men to promote the cause of labour, partly by their own efforts and partly through the Government.

By their own efforts they are to promote co-operation till, if possible, it supersedes the present wages system entirely; equality of wages for men and women for equal work; a general eight hours day through a general strike; and a system of arbitration in trade quarrels. From the Union Legislature they want merely a few general reforms, none bearing directly on the situation of labour, except the abolition of foreign contract labour. The others are, reform of the currency, nationalization of telegraphs and railways, and the inst.i.tution of banking facilities of various kinds in connection with the Post Office. From the State Legislatures they ask the reservation of public lands to actual settlers, the simplification of the administration of justice, factory legislation, graduated income tax, and the following provisions for labour: weekly payment of wages in money, mechanic's lien on the product of his labour for his wages, compulsory arbitration in trade disputes, prohibition of labour of children under fifteen. In 1886 they were 702,884 strong, but they have declined sorely since then. Their great weapon was to be an extension of strikes and boycotting beyond what was possible to single trades; but it was found that this policy was double-edged, and caused more hurt to some sections of the working cla.s.s than any good it could do to others; and people lost faith in the principle of such huge miscellaneous organizations. Dr. Aveling contends that the Knights of Labour, in spite of Mr. Powderly's disclaimer, are really, though it may be unconsciously, socialists, because they want to supersede the wages system, if they can, by establis.h.i.+ng co-operative inst.i.tutions without State aid; and this, he holds, "is pure and unadulterated socialism." Indeed! then where is the man who is not a pure and unadulterated socialist? and what need for any mission to the States to preach the socialist message to the Americans for the first time in their own tongue?

England was the country last reached by the present wave of revolutionary socialism, although the system has been largely conceived upon a study of English circ.u.mstances, and is claimed to be peculiarly adapted to them. England is alternately the hope and the despair of Continental socialists. Every requisite of revolution is there, and yet the people will not rise. The yeomanry are gone. The land has come into the hands of a few. Industry is carried on by great centralized capital.

The large system of production has almost finished its work. The ma.s.s of the people is a proletariat; they are thronged in large towns; every tenth person is a pauper; and the great mansions of the rich cast an evil shadow into the crowded dens of the wretched. "The English," says Eugene Dupont, a leading member of the old International, "possess all the materials necessary for the social revolution; but they lack the generalizing spirit and the revolutionary pa.s.sion." Any proletariat movement in which the English proletariat takes no part, said Karl Marx, is "no better than a storm in a gla.s.s of water"; yet, though Marx himself resided in England for most of his life, no organized attempt was made to gain over the English proletariat to socialism till 1883--the year he died. There was before that, indeed, a small English section in a foreign socialist club in Soho; and, after the fall of the Paris Commune, hopes were for a time entertained of starting a serious socialist movement in our larger towns; but these hopes proved so delusive that Karl Marx said more than once to Mr. Hyndman, as we are told by the latter, that he despaired "of any great movement in England, unless in response to some violent impetus from without." But in 1883 a socialist movement seemed to break out spontaneously in England, the air hummed for a season with a multifarious social agitation, and we soon had a fairly complete equipment of socialist organizations--social democratic, anarchist, dilettante--which have ever since kept up a busy movement with newspapers, lectures, debates, speeches, and demonstrations in the streets.

In 1883 the Democratic Federation, which had been established two years before to promote measures of Radical reform, including, among other things, the nationalization of the land, adopted the socialistic principles of Karl Marx, and changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation. Its programme is long, and includes, besides the nationalization of land and all means of production, direct legislation by the people, direct election of all functionaries by adult suffrage, gratuitous justice, gratuitous, compulsory, and equal education, abolition of standing armies, Home Rule for Ireland, an eight hours day, State erection of workmen's dwellings, to be let at bare cost, progressive income tax, proportional representation, abolition of House of Lords, separation of Church and State, etc. Its princ.i.p.al founders were Mr. William Morris, an artist, a great poet, and a manufacturer exceptionally excellent in his arrangements with his workpeople; Mr. H.

M. Hyndman, a journalist of standing and ability; Mr. J. Stuart Glennie, and Mr. Belfort Bax, both authors of repute; Dr. Aveling, a popular lecturer on science, and son-in-law of Karl Marx; Miss Helen Taylor, step-daughter of John Stuart Mill; and the Rev. Stewart Headlam. In January, 1884, they started a weekly newspaper, _Justice_, and a monthly magazine, _To-Day_, both of which still appear, and began the active work of lecturing and founding branches. But before the year was out, the old enemy of socialists, the spirit of division, entered among them, and Mr. Morris, with Dr. Aveling and Mr. Bax, seceded and set up an independent organization called the Socialist League, with a separate weekly organ, _The Commonweal_. The difference seems to have arisen out of the common socialist trouble about the propriety of mixing in current politics. The same disruptive tendency has persisted in the two parts, and in the end of 1890, Mr. William Morris seceded from the Socialist League with his local following at Hammersmith.

Neither of these revolutionary bodies has a complete organization like those of continental countries. They have never held a Congress, either national or provincial. They consist of a central committee in London, and detached local groups in the provinces, and their members.h.i.+p is not accurately known, but it is not extensive. It is in both cases declining, and it has always been variable, young men joining for a year or two, and then leaving. Their chief success has been among the miners of the North of England, and they have returned three members to the School Board of Newcastle. There is one socialist member in Parliament, Mr. Cunningham Graham, but he has not been returned on socialist principles or by a socialist vote; and hitherto the party has failed to obtain any serious support at the elections. At the election of 1885, Mr. John Burns, socialist candidate for Nottingham, had only 598 votes out of a total poll of 11,064, and Mr. J. Williams, the socialist candidate for Hampstead, had only 27 out of a total of 4,722. Mr. Burns, however, has since been returned to the London County Council, and will not improbably succeed in being returned to Parliament at next election.

He is a working engineer, but is much the strongest leader English socialism has produced, an orator of great power, an excellent organizer, and the head and representative of a new labour movement which is likely to play a considerable part in the immediate future, and which is certainly fermented with a good measure of socialistic leaven.

The New Unionism, as this movement is sometimes called, represents mainly the opinion of the new trade unions of unskilled labour--dockers and others--which have sprung into existence recently, and it was strong enough at the Trade Union Congress in 1890 to carry the day against the old unionism of the skilled trades by a considerable majority in favour of the compulsory and universal eight hours day. But, as Mr. T. Burt, M.P., the miners' parliamentary representative, said in his speech to the Eighty Club two months afterwards, the New Unionism is, after all, only the young and inexperienced unionism, and must needs run now through the same kind of errors which the older trade unions have gone through before, but will, like the older unions, learn, by discussion and experiment, to keep within the lines of practicable and beneficial action. However that may be, for the moment, at any rate, the fortunes of English socialism seem to lie with Mr. John Burns and his labour movement, and not with the two socialist organizations which appear to have already reached their height, and to be now on the decline.

A well-informed German writer lately warned us that anarchism had brought its headquarters to London, that it was coming into relations with the English population through its clubs and newspapers, and he ventured to prophesy that we should certainly have soon an anarchist fire to extinguish on our own hearth much more serious than Germany or Austria has had to encounter. So far, however, there is little to support such a prophecy. There are four small anarchist clubs in London--three of them German clubs, which live at strife with one another, and the fourth a Russian or Polish club, whose members have few or no dealings with the Germans. The German anarchists publish two weekly newspapers in German, which it is their great business to smuggle into the Fatherland, and the Russian or Polish anarchists publish one in Yedish--the German-Hebrew _patois_ of the Polish Jews--which is printed for the entertainment of the Polish tailors of the East End. Some of the princ.i.p.al anarchist leaders, it is true, live amongst us--for example, Prince Krapotkin and Victor Dave--and under their influence a group of English anarchists has grown up during the last few years; but this group has already, after the manner of modern revolutionists, split on a point of doctrine into two opposite camps, which,--if we may judge from their respective organs, _The Anarchist_ and _Freedom_--expend a considerable share of their destructive energies upon one another. The English anarchists have no permanent organization of any kind, and the one group are for socialist anarchism, and the other for individualist anarchism. On the whole the conversion of the English by the anarchist refugees is not an idea worthy of serious consideration; a better and more likely result would be that they would themselves, like Alexander Herzen, the leading anarchist of the past generation, be converted in England to more rational ideas of politics. Our safety lies, however, not so much in the practical character of our people, as in their habits of free and open discussion. What is called practicality is no safeguard against delusive ideas outside one's own immediate field of activity, and there is perhaps no country, except the still more practical country of America, where more favour is shown than here to fanaticism of any kind, if there seems to be heart in it. Besides, when we hear it said, We have indeed an enormous proletariat, but they are too practical to think of insurrection, we ought to reflect that, to the miserable, the practical test of a scheme will not be, Shall we be any the better for the change? but Shall we be any the worse for it? But under free inst.i.tutions grievances always come to be ventilated; ventilation leads to more or less remedial measures, and discontent is removed altogether, or, at any rate, appeased for the time; and although under free inst.i.tutions ill-considered schemes which inflate that discontent with delusive hopes may raise for a season a boom of earnest discussion, the discussion eventually kills them. So it seems to be with the fortunes of revolutionary socialism in England to-day. It has been much discussed for six years, but the height of the tide has been reached already, and the movement is now apparently on the ebb.

Besides these manifestations of revolutionary socialism, we have various societies representing an amateur and appreciative interest in socialism. There is the Christian Socialist Society, a small body of less than 150 adherents, including many clergymen and other members of the learned professions. They must not be confounded with the Christian Socialists of forty years ago, Maurice, Kingsley, and their allies, for the survivors of this earlier movement, such as Judge Thomas Hughes, Mr.

Vansittart Neale, and Mr. J. M. Ludlow, do not belong to the present Christian Socialist Society, and would repudiate its principles. They wanted to promote co-operation without State interference, and they take a leading part in the co-operative movement still; but the Christian Socialist Society of the present day is all for State interference, and the articles of its organ, the _Christian Socialist_, strongly support the doctrines of Karl Marx, and declare that "the command, 'Thou shalt not steal,' if impartially applied, must absolutely prohibit the capitalist, as such, from deriving any revenue whatever from the labourer's toil." But with all their will to believe with the Marxists, the latter are not sure of them, and the socialist organs, _Justice_ and _To-Day_, twit them one day for not being Christians, and the next for not being socialists. They are not men of the same mark as the earlier body of English Christian socialists, Canon Shuttleworth and Mr. Stewart Headlam being the two best known of them. The Guild of St. Matthew, which is composed to some extent of the same _personnel_ as the Christian Socialist Society, has published a compendium of Christian socialism, and strives, among other branches of its activity, to cultivate good relations between socialists and the Church.

The Fabian Society, again, is a debating club of mixed socialism. It contains socialists of all feathers--revolutionary socialists and philosophical socialists, Christian socialists and un-Christian socialists--who meet together under its auspices and exchange their views, without having any recognised end beyond the discussion. They intervened lately, however, in the eight hours day controversy, and drafted a bill for a compulsory measure on the subject which attracted some public attention. Among the princ.i.p.al members are Mr. Sidney Webb, a well-known writer and lecturer on economic subjects, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, journalist, Mrs. Besant, and Mr. W. Clarke. They have published a volume of Fabian Essays, which has had a large sale.

No account of English socialism would be complete that made no mention of the writings of Mr. Ruskin, which have probably done more than any other single influence to imbue English minds with sentiments and principles of a socialistic character. But they have produced nothing in the nature of a school or party more than perhaps some detached local group; such, for example, as the Sheffield Socialists, a small body formed under Ruskinian inspiration, and the leaders.h.i.+p of Mr. E.

Carpenter.

The outburst of socialist agitation in England in 1883 and 1884 was immediately preceded by a revival of popular interest in an old and favourite subject of English speculation, the nationalization of the land. Mr. Henry George had published his "Progress and Poverty" in 1881, and in the same year the Democratic Federation was established in London with land nationalization for one of its principles, and Mr. A. R.

Wallace, the eminent naturalist, founded the Land Nationalization Society. In 1882, Mr. Wallace contributed still further to awaken discussion of the question by publis.h.i.+ng his work on "Land Nationalization," and the discussion was spread everywhere in 1883 by the appearance of a sixpenny edition of Mr. George's remarkable work.

Land nationalization in the hands of Mr. Wallace has little in common with any form of contemporary socialism. He does not contemplate any interference with the present system of agricultural production; that is still to be conducted by capitalists and hired labourers, as it is now.

He merely proposes to abolish what is called landlordism by the compulsory conversion of the present tenant farmers into a body of yeomanry or occupying owners, and his scheme differs from the more ordinary proposals for the creation of peasant proprietors merely in two points: 1st--which is a very good proposal--that he would leave part of the price of the property to be paid in the form of a permanent annual quitrent to the State; and 2nd--which is a more doubtful proposal--that this part should represent, as nearly as it is possible now to calculate it, the original value of the soil apart from improvements of any kind--or, in other words, the unearned part of the present value of the property--and that it should be subject to periodical revision, with a view to recovering from the holder any further unearned increments of value that may accrue to his holding from time to time. Mr. Wallace, like Mr. George, has very utopian expectations from his scheme; but he would honestly buy up the rights of the existing landlords, while Mr.

George would merely confiscate them by exceptional taxation. This difference broke up the Land Nationalization Society in 1883, and the partisans of Mr. George's view seceded and formed themselves into the English Land Restoration League, which has established branches in most of the larger towns, and has now probably a more numerous members.h.i.+p than the original society. It is especially strong in Scotland, and ran three candidates for Glasgow at the last general election; but the three only got 2,222 votes between them, out of a total of 23,800 polled in the three divisions they contested. The ideas of the League have a certain vogue among the Highland crofters, where they blend very readily with the universal peasant doctrines that the earth is the Lord's, and that all other lords should be abolished.

In Scotland there are a good many branches of the two regular socialist organizations. The Scottish Emanc.i.p.ation League joined the Social Democratic Federation, and the Scottish Land and Labour League joined the Socialist League; but it is remarkable that there is no socialism in Ireland, except in a small branch of the Socialist League in Dublin, called the Dublin Socialist Club, although it seems a miracle for a country seething for centuries with political and economic discontent to escape such a visitation. Probably, as with the Poles, the minds of the discontented are already too much pre-occupied with other political and social solutions. The land nationalization views of Mr. George are, of course, spread widely through the influence of Mr. Michael Davitt in the agrarian movement of Ireland.

But while the recent wave of socialism has pa.s.sed over discontented Ireland, and left it, like Gideon's fleece, quite dry, much more susceptibility has been shown by those parts of the Empire where the lot of labour is, perhaps in all the world, the happiest--the Australian colonies. Here, too, the susceptibility has been created to some extent by the land questions of the country. Mr. George, in his recent lecturing tour through these colonies, met with a warm welcome in almost all the towns he visited, made many converts to his ideas, and gave rise to a considerable agitation. In South Australia three of his disciples were returned to the Legislature in 1887, and their views are supported by several newspapers in Adelaide. In a new colony the argument for keeping the land in the hands of the State has in some respects more point and force than in an old. Mr. George's disciples in Sydney publish a paper called the _Land Nationalizer_, and his views are advocated by one of the most influential papers in the colony, the _Bulletin_ of Sydney. In New Zealand a bill has actually been brought in for the purpose of nationalizing the land. But apart from Mr. George altogether, there is a flouris.h.i.+ng Australian Socialist League in Sydney, established in 1887, and with a members.h.i.+p of 7,000 in 1888. It has a journal called the _Radical_, and keeps up a busy agitation with lectures and discussions. As a method of temporary policy it promotes a.s.sociations of labourers for the purpose of undertaking Government and munic.i.p.al contracts. In Melbourne, again, people are more advanced. They have no socialist organization, but they have an anarchist club, established in 1886 for the purpose of aiding social reform on the lines of liberty, equality, and fraternity. It circulates the works of Proudhon, Tucker, the Boston anarchist, Bakunin, and Mr. Auberon Herbert; and it publishes a newspaper called _Honesty_, which appeared at first once a month, and latterly once in two months. The ideas of the party are not easy to ascertain exactly from the pages of their journal.

The State is, of course, the enemy, and land monopoly is one of the State's worst creations; but some of the writers advocate land nationalization, while others propound a scheme of what they call "constructive anarchy," under which every man is to own the land he occupies. They have started a new form of co-operative store, a kind of mutual production society, whose members bind themselves to produce for one another, and exchange their products for the bare cost of production; and they have started a co-operative home, in which the members get better and cheaper accommodation through their combination.

Melbourne anarchism, however, has no harm in it: it is a mere spark of eccentric speculation. The working cla.s.s of Melbourne is probably the most powerful and the best organized working cla.s.s in the world. In their Trades Hall they have had for thirty years a workmen's chamber of their own creating like what German socialists are vainly asking from the State, and much more effective, because more independent. They have secured the eight hours day to fifty-two different trades without receiving a finger's help from the law, and without losing a s.h.i.+lling of wages. They have, moreover, the voting power in their own hands. In fact, they are, as nearly as any working cla.s.s can be, in the precise condition socialists require for revolutionary action. They are entirely dependent on a handful of capitalists for their employment, and they have the whole power of the State substantially under their own control; so that they might, if they chose, march to the Parliament House with a red flag, and instal the socialist State to-morrow. But they do not choose. They propose no change in the present industrial system, and make surprisingly few demands of any sort upon the State. The world goes very well with them as it is, and they will not risk the comforts they really enjoy to try any sweeping and problematical solutions. While the socialist movement, in the countries where it is most advanced and powerful, seems settling into a practical labour movement, the labour movement, in the countries where it is most advanced and powerful, is steering furthest and clearest from socialism.