Article I. Various Notions of Present-Day Socialism

173. What force underlies the word. Socialism, from the force of the name,¹ is contrary to individualism. Hence, as regards the matter:

¹ If D. Pioger (Revue Socialiste, 1896) is to be believed, the author of the name is Pierre Leroux, who published several writings in France in which he attacks the present regime of property and wills that men become more equal among themselves. He died in Paris in the year 1871, while La Commune was raging.

a) It can be applied to every doctrine which attacks economic liberalism, by which, with the positive protection of law denied, each person was left to his own judgment, abilities, or weakness. In this manner there can also be question of Catholic socialism.² Indeed, sometimes the word socialism has been extended more broadly to every system which intends to change for the better the present association of men.³ Recently, de Laveleye⁴ constituted the generic rationale of socialism by these two notes: the pursuit of greater equality and the invocation of the protection of law or of the State.

² Cf., for example, Isaac Moore, S.J., Series of Lectures on Catholic Socialism.

³ Thus, in 1848, Proudhon, when questioned by the judges, said in court: “Socialism is every aspiration toward the improvement of society”; and E. de Girardin wrote no differently, but more briefly: “Socialism is civilization.” Indeed, in the third part of their very well-known decree, the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels distinguish from their own tenets a socialism which contends that the path must be retraced (reactionary socialism), and a socialism which wills that the present state be preserved (conservative and bourgeois socialism).

⁴ Le Socialisme contemporain [Contemporary Socialism], p. XII.

b) Yet Socialism properly so called, through its economic tenets, belongs to the genus of positive Communism; and it aims that whatever is employed for producing or exchanging things be possessed in common by the society of men; and that industries and businesses be administered in common.⁵⁶

⁵ “Collective appropriation of all the means of production and circulation.” Schaeffle, with Vandervelde approving, op. cit., p. 259. “Socialization of the productive forces.” B. Malon, Précis de Socialisme [Summary of Socialism], chap. 20, at the end.

⁶ “Socialization, not only of the means of production, but of production itself.” Vandervelde, op. cit., p. 297.

It is useful to set forth this description precisely in its parts, so that the rationale and intention of socialism may at the same time become better known.

a) Socialism does not contain itself within the bounds of the economic order; and, if you except the agrarian collectivists, I do not know whether anyone besides Dr. Schaeffle professes a merely economic socialism; rather, all who bear a name among true socialists pursue a general renovation of the world. Yet the economic part is a matter of more urgent care to them, because, as we suspect, it is more attractive, and because they profess it to be the more urgent and principal part, which the other religious, political, and domestic reforms must necessarily follow. It was therefore necessary to warn that, in the definition of socialism, we regard only this part, which is sometimes distinguished from socialism,⁷ as a part from the whole, by the special appellation of Collectivism. Hence we said: through its economic tenets.

⁷ Reformist collectivism, integral socialism.

b) Moreover, this is the generic rationale of positive communism: that it wills that either all or many goods which have customarily been possessed by private persons be perpetually assigned to the community; whereas negative communism thinks that among men there still prevails by right that negative community by which things in the beginning belonged to no one and could be converted by anyone to his own good: it would then be lawful to invade another’s crops. Therefore, rather than denying dominion over things, positive communism changes the subject of dominion.

Both negative communism and positive communism of an absolute or perfect rationale are now rejected by all, such as was commended, for example, by Plato in his Republic; so that a disputation concerning ancient communism can safely be omitted.

c) Collectivists do not agree as to what that society of men by which things would be possessed in common would be: for some designate municipalities, others the whole nation, or even some more universal society, but one of a poorly defined rationale.

d) Whatever is employed for producing or exchanging things. Think of fields, raw materials (matière première), factories, machines, and whatever bears fruit or has a profitable use, yet with the powers and labor proper to the person excepted.

For this division of things, received by economists, is sufficiently well known: some things are consumed by man himself (objects of consumption), such as the garment which he wears, the house which he inhabits, a possession for pleasure; others are reserved for producing new fruits or bringing forth new riches (instruments of production), such as pastures, houses which are rented, money itself given at interest, or money by which one enters into a share of the profit expected from a business; finally, there are others (if this species is to be distinguished from the one just described) which serve transportation, commerce, and mercantile dealings, such as railways, canals, carriages with horses, banks, etc. (instruments of transport and exchange).

Come now, socialists concede private property only over things of the first genus. All the others will belong to the social patrimony.

But what of money itself, which is employed especially in exchanges?

They hope that money will someday be removed from the midst. For it would be sufficient if signs of the labor undertaken by them (labor vouchers) were handed to individual citizens, by which they could request useful or pleasant things and take them for themselves from the great publicly ordered depositories.

e) For not only the things themselves, but the administration of things and every business would be taken away from private persons. There would now be no place for markets, for the leasing and hiring of things, or for private businesses.⁸

⁸ Schaeffle, La Quintessence du socialisme [The Quintessence of Socialism], chap. 4.

For individual industries and individual kinds of business there would be appointed individual administrations, which, with all competition abolished, would alone manage the business entrusted to them throughout the whole society to which the instruments and supports of the industries and mercantile dealings belonged, so that each administration would enjoy an absolute monopoly of conducting its affair. Although these administrations would in some manner be subject to the public power, they are nevertheless proclaimed by socialists to be sufficiently autonomous that the abominable tyranny of the State would no longer have to be feared.⁹

⁹ Schaeffle, op. cit., chap. 3; Destrée and Vandervelde, Le Socialisme en Belgique [Socialism in Belgium], p. 262. Yet the State itself, if the socialists are to be believed, would cease to govern persons, so that it might devote itself solely to administering things. “Transformation of the State into an administration of things.” Déclaration de principes du parti ouvrier belge [Declaration of Principles of the Belgian Workers’ Party], art. 1.

The things produced in this manner would be brought into publicly constructed stores, from which the citizens would have to obtain them by means of the vouchers (labor vouchers) mentioned shortly before.

An exact computation would be made of the things with which, according to the necessity or will of the citizens, the public stores would have to be furnished, so that the supply of the things which were produced in each kind of industry would be exacted according to a just measure.

From the things produced, the public power would take for itself those portions which would suffice for replenishing the businesses, remunerating the magistrates, and the common utility, so that, besides this form of a tax in kind, no other tax would be imposed.¹⁰

¹⁰ Schaeffle, op. cit., chap. 8; Destrée and Vandervelde, op. cit., p. 301.

To the citizens, moreover, on account of the work furnished, there would return, in the manner of a minimum wage, that by which they could make provision for their necessities. Indeed, they judge this norm of dividing the collected fruits to be preferable in itself: that each person labor according to his powers, but receive according to his necessities. This norm is defended absolutely by those who go by the name of Communists. Socialists, however, acknowledge that it cannot be introduced unless social culture is first perfected and “altruism” is more greatly developed. In the meantime, excepting the minimum wage, they do not refuse to accommodate the fruit to the merit of the work.

And in this manner they hope that they can, no less than today, obtain without coercion that workers not be lacking for any kind of labor.¹¹

¹¹ Destrée and Vandervelde, op. cit., pp. 300–304.

You will perhaps ask for what end that greater wage of more excellent work can be employed by citizens.

They would certainly be prohibited from making a profit from those things which remained to them. Yet it does not appear opposed to the tenets of Socialism that they bestow them upon others by gratuitous liberality, by giving or bequeathing; or reserve them for themselves or their family for a future time. Let us only remember that these riches do not consist in money, but are represented by vouchers devoid of every intrinsic value.

N.B. Two things remain to be observed. a) This image of future society, which the doctors of socialism themselves deny that they can delineate accurately, will become clearer from the very arguments which we shall oppose to socialism.

b) Socialists indeed do not will suddenly to suppress private businesses, but we have described this ordering toward which they acknowledge that they are striving gradually. Yet cf. below, no. 193.

Therefore, this genuine rationale of socialism differs sufficiently from the common understanding of the doctrine. In vain do the leaders of socialism deny it: most of the proletarians who follow their party envy the goods of the wealthy; the common exercise of industries concerns them little or not at all; but they hope that an equal distribution of all goods will be made among all citizens.

174. Concerning mixed or agrarian socialism. Although, as we shall show, that moderated form of socialism which is called agrarian and which confers upon the treasury dominion only over fields or immovable goods logically calls for a certain absolute communism, these nevertheless appear to us to differ plainly from each other. For they rest upon different rationales; and those who profess agrarian socialism neither will that any industries be exercised in common, nor think of wholly overturning present customs or culture.

But, to reduce these tenets to a brief compass, they judge that there is a special cause why either fields alone, as H. George contends, or even buildings and houses, as others will, cannot be in the just dominion of private persons. These goods, therefore, are to be assigned to the treasury, which could nevertheless permit private persons a sufficiently stable possession, provided that it exacted for itself the rent properly so called (la rente), apart from some portion of it to be left to the private persons who would continue to expend care upon goods of this kind. From this the state would further obtain this advantage: that, enriched by this rent, it would abolish every other exaction of tax, which, moreover, they accuse of injustice. Cf. the things which we give more fully below, no. 181, B.

175. Concerning the socialism which is called socialism of the State or of the chair.¹² Although this name, Socialism of the State, can be applied to designate those socialists who confer upon the commonwealth possession of things which have a profitable use, it is nevertheless generally reserved for those who expect the economic reformation of society almost solely from the public power, so that they concede an excessively broad authority to laws. Hence this name is also customarily hurled, as a kind of reproach, against all who are accused, rightly or undeservedly, of assigning too great a role to the State in ordering affairs.

¹² State Socialism or Socialism of the Chair.

Since several among these were university professors, especially in Germany, they began to be called socialists of the chair (Katheder Socialisten). Thus Roscher,¹³ Conrad, and Schmoller. Some of them now do not greatly shrink from the economic dogmas of socialism. This applies especially to Schaeffle.

¹³ He established an annual convention of men who favor these opinions; this was the origin of the celebrated society Verein für Sozialpolitik [Association for Social Policy]. Cf. de Laveleye, Le Socialisme contemporain [Contemporary Socialism], p. 324.

176. The scientific rationales of socialism properly so called.

a) For socialism properly so called, to which we confine our discourse in this place, this brief rationale can be supposed: that the evils and vices under which present-day society labors must be met by equality of conditions. For socialists make the greatest progress by accusing the poverty of many and censuring corruptions and “abuses.” At the same time, they rage with an insane pursuit of absolute equality among citizens. It is not enough for them that right under the law be equal for all; rather, they judge every disparity of conditions to be opposed to the equal nature in which men participate. Therefore, since they know that almost every inequality of classes today proceeds from a diversity of fortunes, they will that this be suppressed by taking away from private persons the sources of riches—that is, the occasions of gain and profit.

b) Yet K. Marx¹⁴ especially undertook the scientific demonstration of socialism, and his system,¹⁵ as regards its sum, is approved even today by almost all collectivist writers. Hence we shall give, in a few words, its principal heads, noting the controversies where necessary. They are these:

¹⁴ Yet he himself did not first discover the elements of the demonstration. Cf., for example, the things which B. Malon, op. cit., chap. 15, and D. Van Overbergh, op. cit., hand down. Besides, Rev. Fr. Capart, La Propriété individuelle et le Collectivisme [Individual Property and Collectivism], part 2, chap. 1, shows that most of the arguments of the socialists are repetitions of those things which, in a preceding age, philosophers, whether pagan or Catholic, had already taught, either seriously or by imagining some commonwealth.

¹⁵ If indeed it is to be called his. Cf. the things which A. Menger has, op. cit., preface to the first edition, where he also teaches that the things written by Marx or Rodbertus are held in a far too high estimation: “I do not hesitate to declare that Marx and Rodbertus, whom people would so willingly set up as the founders of scientific socialism, were greatly inferior to their predecessors in depth and penetration.”

α) The dialectical process of Hegelian philosophy, which, however, K. Marx says is to be understood in an inverted manner. For Hegel had posited a logical process by which the evolution of the being thought would correspond to thought, or to the evolution of the thinking mind. Marx, by contrast, introduced an ontological process by which ideal evolution would be accommodated to real evolution.¹⁶ But that process or motion is constituted by three moments contrary to each other, so that through a twofold contrariety one arrives at a certain composition or concord. Thus, the thesis, or affirmation, which is first, is followed by the antithesis, or negation; this in turn, by negating itself, arrives at the synthesis. From this Marx was able to foretell future destinies and the necessary advent of collectivism. For in the beginning there was the community of all things as the thesis. The private property of all things followed as the antithesis. The synthesis will be the community of things which are destined for profit and the private property of sterile things. Or, if you prefer: in the beginning the artisan exercised his craft privately and gathered its fruit (thesis). Now, in great factories, the production of things is done in common, but not the distribution of the fruits (antithesis).¹⁷ It remains that the appropriation of the fruits should, in the synthesis, assume a social rationale.

¹⁶ By which, as Engels used to say, the Hegelian dialectic was again “set upon its feet from its head.”

¹⁷ “The opposition between ... the private character of the manner of appropriation and the social character of the manner of production.” Bernstein, op. cit., p. 14.

β) Historical materialism.¹⁸ From the time things began to be possessed privately, the whole connection and series of history is explained and contained by a perpetual law which wills that all other things be subject to the economic constitution of society: religion, morals, right, and convictions are, as it were, “epiphenomena” upon the economic phenomenon,¹⁹ superconstructed by those who hold primacy in society.²⁰ Thus the doctrine can be set forth; from it this follows: that, once the economic ordering is changed, neither religion nor former morals could persist.

¹⁸ With reason, Bernstein, op. cit., p. 13, would prefer the expression Oekonomische Geschichtsauffassung [Economic Conception of History].

¹⁹ An expression of Enrico Ferri.

²⁰ The dominant class.

γ) The struggle of classes among themselves:²¹ this produces the economic changes themselves.

²¹ Class struggle.

δ) The theory of value,²² which places the whole cause of value in labor. This furnishes the rationale why the various classes necessarily conflict with each other in war. And indeed, if labor alone produces value, those who possess the instruments for producing or exchanging things grow rich only from the labor of another, insofar as they take for themselves a part of the value which of itself belongs to the workers. But this is within their power because, on the one hand, on account of the monopoly of their possessions, they can exact from the workers whatever morally remains beyond the necessary sustenance of these workers (of their own person and family); and, on the other hand, a few hours suffice for the worker’s labor to produce a value congruent with daily sustenance. Therefore, whatever he produces throughout the remainder of the day is taken from him by those who possess the instruments of industry (capitalists). And the more the productivity of labor is increased by new inventions, the more this rationale of spoliation becomes oppressive. The industries which are exercised in such a way that those who possess the instruments are devourers of another’s labor also increase in number daily. From this it occurs that ever more frequent spoliations excite greater envy and sharpen the furies of a war which cannot be quieted until, with collectivism introduced, the very distinction of classes has been removed from the midst.

²² Even in describing this theory, K. Marx appears to have imitated the socialists of England, whom, however, he omitted to mention. Thus Menger, op. cit., in the preface and chap. 9: “The whole theory of surplus value is borrowed in substance from the works of Thompson.... Marx himself, like Rodbertus, passed over the sources of his theories in silence, although he is often sufficiently prodigal with citations.”

N.B. 1. With this doctrine there coheres a new signification of certain words among socialists. For today they judge that the classes of citizens are to be distinguished chiefly from the possessed instruments and supports of industry or mercantile activity.

They call those who have nothing proletarians;²³ those with money (bourgeois capitalists) who, by leasing those instruments, make a profit from the labor of others; those of the middle class, who apply their own instruments to their own industry; and capital whatever bears fruit by the labor of others.²⁴ By the French words révolution and révolutionnaire they sometimes designate a violent overturning of affairs, and sometimes a new order of society even when it appears that it will be introduced peacefully.²⁵

²³ If you press this rationale, as Leroy-Beaulieu rightly observes, you will also have among the proletarians those who, for example, on account of the management of a business, have very ample annual salaries.

²⁴ “Capital, that is, property which exploits wage labor.” Manifesto of the Communist Party, II, p. 18.

²⁵ Cf. Musée Social, 1900, pp. 16, 21, 29.

2. While K. Marx sees only one outcome of affairs, B. Malon and others judge that the same affairs can end in various ways, and they ascribe a greater authority to reason and mind in historical destinies. Hence, certainly in some manner, they are, and profess themselves to be, adversaries of historical materialism.²⁶

²⁶ Cf. B. Malon, Précis de Socialisme [Summary of Socialism], chap. 15.

They also dissent from K. Marx in this other matter: he judges that the human race is now at the point that, once the stage has been traversed, it can remain perpetually in the happiness of collectivism, while others promise no rest to the traveler.²⁷

²⁷ B. Malon, op. cit., chap. 23, p. 225; Bernstein, op. cit., p. 5.

177. The remaining tenets of the socialists. Having set forth the economic rationale of socialism, it is useful to indicate briefly which things, in other genera, commonly please all who lead the ranks of the socialists.

a) They profess atheism, and in place of divine worship they substitute some sort of religion of humanity.²⁸

²⁸ “For the religious sense properly so called, it [socialism] substitutes the social sense; for the worship of an abstract entity, the worship of humanity.” B. Malon, Précis de Socialisme [Summary of Socialism], chap. 19.

b) They say that men by their nature are so inclined to good that all evils are to be attributed to the fault of institutions.

“There are no supreme saviors: neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.” Thus in the song L’Internationale, with which they brought to an end the Parisian congress held on December 3–8, 1899, to reconcile among themselves the various parties of socialism in France.

c) They deny a spiritual soul and free will, and subject society to a fatal evolution.

d) They repudiate indissoluble marriage; and they commend a union which rests upon love alone. For they obstinately deny that the conjugal contract is more sacred than other contracts.

e) They reduce the essential functions of public authority to the economic administration of things. In a socialist regime, as they boast, persons will no longer be governed.

178. Species of socialists. From the things said above, it becomes sufficiently manifest in what various manner a distinction can be made among socialists.

a) From the genus of socialism, some profess pure socialism, others mixed or agrarian socialism, which can be called Anglo-American from the regions where, on account of evil practices exercised in acquiring or administering lands or in expelling tenants, it began especially to gain strength.

b) From the subject of collective dominion, the communist-anarchists of France attribute possessions to municipalities which would enjoy perfect autonomy; others assign things to the State; others to a more universal society of men circumscribed by no boundaries.

c) From the means which they choose, some, scorning legal and political methods, will to prevail by force alone and are practical anarchists; others rather hope that they will attain supremacy by means of popular suffrage. And these more properly retain the name of socialists,²⁹ although, when an occasion is given, they would not refuse to act even by force; and they are averse to individual homicides or crimes rather than to mobs.³⁰ Among these latter, some, as though impatient of delay, oppose remedies which might alleviate the evils of the people, since from the bitterness of sufferings they expect the more proximate triumph of the cause; or, if they repudiate these enormities, they at least regard those remedies and alleviations and various reforms as secondary and incidental matters. Thus the pure Marxists. Others, by contrast, do not disdain benefits, and cooperate with laws and decrees which change the condition of the people for the better. Of this position are the “possibilists,” who are wholly occupied with obtaining those reforms which are actually available; and through slow advances they tend toward a new order. Thus many in France; in Germany, for example, Messrs. Vollmar and Bernstein; and not a few in Belgium.

²⁹ From this it is understood why, already from the London congress onward, in order to separate their cause from the anarchists, they place the use of political means among the essential principles of socialism. Recently, those who convened the Parisian assembly of 1899 also rendered the same principles in these words: “International agreement and action of the workers; political and economic organization of the proletariat into a class party for the conquest of power and the socialization of the means of production and exchange.”

³⁰ “Let us know how to be revolutionaries when circumstances require it, but let us always be reformists.” B. Malon, Précis de Socialisme [Summary of Socialism], chap. 18.

179. Historical notions. We would certainly stray too far from our argument if we wished to pursue accurately the historical fortunes of socialism; yet it will help not a little to keep before our eyes: 1) what were the seeds and genesis of the doctrine itself; 2) what were the beginnings of the present-day party; 3) what attempts were made to introduce socialism in practice.

A. The doctrine of present-day socialism was prefigured:

a) By certain works of the ancient philosophers. Mention must be made first of Plato’s dialogues De Republica [On the Republic] and Critias, where, in the perfect state which is imagined, with slaves and the common people devoted to vulgar arts omitted, the nobles, who govern the state by prudence and defend it by arms, have goods, women, and children in common.

b) By works of fiction which depict a delightful image of a perfectly common life. Here there must be mentioned: in the sixteenth century, the work De nova insula Utopia [On the New Island of Utopia], written by Blessed Thomas More,³¹ which served as an example for several writings and furnished socialists with not a few rationales for attacking private possessions; in the seventeenth century, Civitas solis vel de Reipublicae idea dialogus politicus [The City of the Sun, or a Political Dialogue on the Idea of a Commonwealth], composed by Campanella, an ex-Dominican; in the eighteenth century, La Basiliade, a poem by the French pedagogue named Morelly; and, in England, Spensonia, a work of fiction by an English teacher named Spence, who was especially opposed to the property of lands; in the nineteenth century, Le Voyage en Icarie [The Voyage to Icaria], which Cabet composed. Recently, in 1890, a similar work of fiction, Looking Backward, whose author is Bellamy, also appeared in America.

³¹ He had it in mind to mingle useful counsels with fictions.

c) By works of philosophers of the eighteenth century, who, like Rousseau,³² attacked private dominion; or, like Diderot,³³ celebrated the delights of free love; or, like Morelly,³⁴ derived all the vices of man from present-day culture and delineated a new order constituted in communism, whence more recent communists borrowed many things. Montesquieu himself, the very well-known writer of the work L’Esprit des lois [The Spirit of the Laws], does not appear to be one who should be omitted. The philosophy of the rationalists of Germany, and especially Neo-Hegelian philosophy, prepared the way for the scientific exposition of socialism.

³² Cf. Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité [Discourse on the Origin of Inequality], part 2; Sur l’économie politique [On Political Economy], etc.

³³ Supplément au voyage de Bougainville [Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville].

³⁴ Code de la nature [Code of Nature].

d) Indeed, rightly and deservedly, there can be placed among the parents of socialism several pseudo-reformers of the sixteenth century and all who afterward fought against the Church of Christ and the moral and civil institutions to which it had given origin.³⁵

³⁵ Cf. the encyclical Quod Apostolici, December 28, 1878, at the beginning.

The dogmas of socialism were also adumbrated:

e) By the writings of several men who in this century were in various manners opposed to private property and Christian morals, so that they might praise communism, collectivism, or anarchism. The chief ones are de Saint-Simon and his disciples; R. Owen, L. Blanc, Proudhon, P. Leroux, and de Colins.

f) By books of liberal economists. Thus the system of H. George rests upon the doctrine of Ricardo; and before Marx employed this foundation, Adam Smith, Bastiat, and several others judged that the source of value was placed in labor alone.

B. The principal doctors of present-day socialism are numbered as K. Marx and F. Engels, who, when asked by the London congress of 1847, published in 1848 the pamphlet Manifeste du Parti communiste [Manifesto of the Communist Party], which socialists still use today as a kind of authentic decree, although, long neglected, it began to have celebrity only after the year 1871. Yet K. Marx occupies the first place.³⁶ In his book Das Kapital [Capital], he expressed the proper form of scientific socialism. To him add Bebel, who sketched what the commonwealth of the socialists would be like in the depraved work Die Frau [Woman]; Liebknecht, who writes the newspaper Vorwärts [Forward]. In France, the works of B. Malon are especially known: Précis de Socialisme [Summary of Socialism], Le Socialisme intégral [Integral Socialism]. He founded La Revue Socialiste [The Socialist Review].

³⁶ Yet by what right, cf. above, p. 193, note 3.

In Germany, socialism had Lasalle as its principal apostle, who was celebrated as though another Messiah. He, whose counsels appear to have been peaceful, placed very great hope in associations of proletarians which, with the commonwealth assisting, would exercise industries and break the power of the moneyed; moreover, he founded groups of socialists which were proper to Germany, while K. Marx, from whom proceeded the sect called L’Internationale [The International], had rather striven to unite the proletarians of various nations by friendship and compact. Nor did the two agree entirely concerning principles. Thus, for example, the famous invention of Lasalle, the iron law of wages, was by no means consonant with the tenets of K. Marx. But at the Gotha congress in 1875, the German socialists commonly adhered to the doctrine of Marx, so that the origin of the German party can be traced from that point. Besides the pure Marxists and the Younger Socialists, who, with Werner, Auerbach, etc. as leaders, are more impatient of delay and object to excessive “parliamentarism” among the Marxists, there are others who incline in soul toward the more moderate parties. In this number are von Vollmar and Bernstein, whom Kautsky opposes.

The French party was founded in 1880 and constituted D. I. Guesde as its first head. Thereafter it was divided into several parties, which, at the Parisian congress held from December 3 to 8, 1899,³⁷ agreed upon concord among themselves.

³⁷ Cf. Musée Social, January 1900.

In Belgium, the beginning of the party was a convention of workers which was held at Brussels on April 5, 1885. There, with Volders as author, they took the name of the workers’ party (Parti ouvrier)³⁸ rather than that of the socialists.

³⁸ Vandervelde and Destrée, Le Socialisme en Belgique [Socialism in Belgium], p. 11.

The principal conventions. Omitting those which are proper to a particular nation, the principal councils, after the society whose name was the International was dissolved (1877), were those of Ghent, 1877; Paris, 1889; London, 1896.

3. EXPERIMENTS OF A REGIME COMMON IN SOME MANNER. Since socialists themselves not rarely dare to appeal to certain experiments in communism which either formerly were attempted with a design wholly different from their own, or more recently were attempted even by certain supporters of collectivism, it appears worthwhile that we should explain briefly what is to be thought concerning this matter.

Come now, those experiments can be reduced to three forms.

The first, which is little certain and defined,³⁹ pertains to certain ancient states, namely, those of the Cretans and Laconians, where, with the multitude of slaves or of those who were devoted to the lower arts disregarded, the citizens properly so called—or that principal order which at its own judgment conducted all things at home and in war—was led by similar pursuits, a certain love of country, and the very necessity of defending it, to live in sufficiently close union and to enter upon a certain community of sustenance.⁴⁰

³⁹ Cf. Pöhlmann, op. cit., p. 6.

⁴⁰ Pöhlmann, who, op. cit., is especially to be consulted concerning these matters, assigns a military and political cause to the common meals, syssitia (συσσιτίοις). See p. 65.

The second form rests upon a religious foundation, manifests a great severity of life, and wholly trusts in the authority of a few.

Thus not a few faithful of the Church of Jerusalem, devoted to voluntary poverty, began to bring their fortunes into a common stock. Thus also the sects of the Albigensians and the Anabaptists, which were hostile to private possessions, gave origin in 1527 to the Moravian Brethren (Frères Moraves), who for some time had goods in common, until, after six or seven years, their affairs began to fall apart when dissensions arose.⁴¹ The colonists to whom, from the region which they occupy, the name Herrnhuters was given have persisted longer in a sufficiently perfect equality. They arose from the Bohemian Brethren, who are an offshoot of the Hussites. They profess strict dependence upon the authority of the elders; and although they do not exclude private possessions, by the strict manner of life and the religious foundation upon which they rest, they rather imitate the religious institutes of the Catholic Church.⁴²

⁴¹ Cf. Thonissen, Le Socialisme dans le passé [Socialism in the Past], chap. 6, §3.

⁴² Cf. ibid., chap. 3, §3.

The Paraguayan barbarians passed happy years under the Missionaries of the Society of Jesus. Yet they professed no communism strictly so called, nor could institutions of this kind be consonant with cultivated peoples.⁴³

⁴³ Cf. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach [Voices from Maria Laach], XXV, 445.

Everyone sees how little these two rationales agree with the dreams of the socialists, from whom every humility and abnegation are absent.

Finally, the third form flows from an intention which is more temporal and economic.

Here there must be mentioned the “cooperative” colonies attempted in vain by R. Owen in this century: first in Scotland,⁴⁴ where affairs proceeded very prosperously for some time, then in America and England; and, in France, the National Workshops of L. Blanc, which ended most miserably.⁴⁵ The communistic societies of Australia which have recently been celebrated (communist villages) are rather a genus of “cooperation” and furnish arguments against communism.⁴⁶ But the decrees by which they willed to flatter the workers’ party (Labour Party) came to this: that, although the land is most generous, the undertaking of great businesses ceased, and not a few of the workers were already compelled by poverty to leave that region and go to another where the impediments of the laws were less.⁴⁷

⁴⁴ Cf. Thonissen, Le Socialisme et ses promesses [Socialism and Its Promises], chap. 3, §1.

⁴⁵ Concerning these, consult Pierre de la Gorce, Histoire de la 2de République [History of the Second Republic], vol. 1, bk. 6.

⁴⁶ Cf. Musée Social, March 1900, pp. 75, 77, 79, 85, 91.

⁴⁷ Cf. the Daily Mail, September 19, 1903, and the Pall Mall Gazette, September 23.

The several attempts made in America proceeded no more happily, so that Rev. Fr. Cathrein could write that, among perhaps a hundred communistic experiments which can be enumerated in this century, there was none which had a desirable outcome. Cf., besides, Stimmen aus Maria-Laach [Voices from Maria Laach], vol. 49, p. 284 ff.; vol. 52, p. 347; vol. 53, p. 338.