Socialism and Collectivism

45. (A) It is scarcely possible to define socialism accurately: for it embraces so many and such diverse systems that a definition which fits one system by no means belongs to the others. - Nevertheless it can be described as the complex of systems which tend toward this, that they subvert the present order of Society, and substitute for it another order, in which the right of dominion is exercised principally, if not exclusively, by the State or Commonwealth itself.

¹ E. de Laveleye, Le Socialisme contemporain, 10th ed. Paris; J. Bourdeau, L'Evolution du Socialisme, Paris, 1901; Winterer, Le Socialisme contemporain, 4th ed. Paris, 1904; Leon de Seilhac, Le Monde socialiste, Paris, 1904; L. Garriguet, Introduction a l'Etude de la Sociologie, t. II, Paris, 1901; R. T. Ely, French and German Socialism in Modern Times, New York, 1883; Rae, Contemporary Socialism, 2nd ed., London, New York, 1898; E. Jager, Der moderne Socialismus, 1873; Cathrein, Der Socialismus, ed. 7, 1898; E. d'Eichthal, Socialisme, Communisme et Collectivisme, 2nd ed. Paris, 1901; V. Pareto, Les Systemes socialistes, Paris, 1902; M. Bourguin, Les systemes socialistes et l'evolution economique, Paris, Colin, 1906.

There are three forms of socialism: (a) communism, which wishes all goods, even those destined for consumption, to be common; (b) collectivism, which distinguishes two kinds of goods: some, which are reserved for producing new things (e.g., lands, instruments of labor, etc.), are to be retained by the State or Commonwealth; others, which are destined for consumption, remain under the dominion of private persons; (c) State socialism, which, while it retains private dominion with regard also to many means of production, advocates the universal and continuous intervention of the State in all affairs, and too greatly restricts the activity and rights of private persons.

Anarchism differs from socialism, for it intends the overthrow of the whole of society.

46. (B) Among the Pagans, certain traces of communism are found: practically among the Spartans in the time of Lycurgus; theoretically in Plato, who, in the treatise On the Republic and On the Laws, proposes communism as a means for establishing concord among citizens.

In the first centuries of the Church, certain Gnostics, and also Apostolics, and afterward in the Middle Age the Waldenses and Albigenses, advocated a certain community of goods, relying on the examples of the primitive community of Jerusalem; which errors the Anabaptists and a few sects of Protestants renewed.

The system of Plato was again proposed by Thomas More in his Utopia, yet polishing it and cleansing it from many vices, especially from the community of wives.

But various systems of this kind had scarcely any moment in minds; and modern socialism took its origin only in the middle of the eighteenth century.¹

¹ A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siecle, Paris, 1895.

47. A threefold cause of this system can especially be assigned: namely an industrial, philosophico-political, and religious revolution.

² Leo XIII treats of these things briefly, but profoundly, in the proemium of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, May 16, 1891.

(A) The industrial revolution, which began around the middle of the eighteenth century, must be ascribed to the invention of more perfect instruments in manufactured things. For since only the rich are able to acquire these new inventions, by that very fact there are found two classes of men plainly distinct: capitalists, or owners, who possess the instruments of labor; and proletarians, or workers, who labor not for themselves, but for others. Once this is posited: (a) workers depend entirely on the owners for whom they labor; formerly, after some years, they could acquire for themselves the instruments of labor and so become independent; but today for the most part through their whole life they must work in the workshops of others, and can be dismissed at the nod of the owners.

Moreover, by the aid of machines, not rarely more goods are produced than can be sold: from this it happens that workers are dismissed, at least for a time, and suffer want. From this they burn with anger and indignation against the owners.

48. (b) From this it also follows that relations between owners and proletarians have been changed: for he who is over many thousands of workers cannot care for each one in the same familiar and paternal manner as he who is over only a few; therefore if difficulties and dissensions arise, they cannot so easily be settled, but rather are increased, especially since among the workers there are some who not rarely impel their companions to rebellion.

(c) From this also the condition of capitalists is separated more and more from the lot of workers: for the latter, generally receiving a scant wage, can scarcely support themselves and their own; while the former, hiring a great number of workers, and receiving some profit from each of them, become very rich and often indulge in luxury; hence envies, desires, and dissensions are born.

49. (d) Moreover, the ancient guilds of artisans having now been destroyed, proletarians have been handed over, solitary and defenseless, to the inhumanity of owners; new associations have indeed been established, but by no means tempered by religion, which attempt to render the condition of workers better by the overthrow of the social order and by the diffusion of socialism.

50. (e) Finally, domestic life, which formerly was wont to furnish consolation to workers, is today much disturbed; for since the husband, wife, and children are often compelled to labor in various workshops, they can live together only for a few hours; the wife can hardly attend to the domestic matter and to the education of the little ones; the husband, finding a cold and filthy house, and badly cooked foods, gradually deserts his own hearth and frequents taverns.¹ Thus the family is overthrown, and workers, enjoying no domestic happiness, dream of destroying the whole social order.

¹ Concerning the miserable condition of workers, among others, the following have written: Villermé, Tableau physique et moral des ouvriers employes dans les manufactures, Paris, 1840; J. Simon, L'ouvriere, 1861; Comte d'Haussonville, Salaires et miseres de femmes, Paris, 1900.

51. (B) The philosophical and political revolution, which, under the leadership of J. J. Rousseau, pervaded all Europe. For he taught (a) that man is by nature essentially good, and that he was made evil only by the present social order of things: take away private dominion, take away mine and yours, and immediately man will betake himself to a better course; (b) that all men are by nature equal and enjoy the same rights; from which it is logically inferred that the right of property must be abolished, as necessarily favoring excessive inequality among men.

52. The French Revolution partly made these ideas its own, by proclaiming the rights of man and keeping silent about his duties, by establishing the political equality of all citizens, and by patronizing unbridled liberty; from this certain men, with Babeuf,¹ deduced the community of goods; for equality is vain, and liberty vain, unless all things are common.

¹ In order to obtain perfect equality, Babeuf wished all goods to be possessed by the State, all citizens to be compelled to labor, and the fruits of labor to be distributed according to the necessities of each one. Cf. Espinas, La Philosophie sociale du XVIIIe siecle et la Revolution, Paris, 1898.

53. (C) Finally, the religious change which took place in many owners and workers; for unbelief, which in the eighteenth century had invaded the minds of many, began to increase more and more. Now, once faith in the other life had been taken away, or at least greatly diminished, each one desired to obtain an earthly paradise in this life, by indulging in pleasure.

(a) Not a few owners, whose desires are no longer restrained by the bridle of religion, not rarely regard workers as slaves, or instruments of production; they use and abuse them in order to acquire riches more quickly, imposing more work than their strength can bear, and giving a wage which scarcely suffices for food.

(b) On the opposite side many workers, who no longer expect an eternal reward, often indulge in drunkenness and lust; and, since the wage furnished to them is unequal to acquiring the pleasures which they desire, they rebuke capitalists as guilty of injustice, and long to divide their spoils among themselves.

54. It is permitted to distinguish three principal phases in the evolution of socialism: the first, formative and utopian (1820-1850); the second, more scientific (1850-1873); and the third, more political.

55. (A) In the first period, more or less utopian theories were devised, and certain experiments of communism were attempted, but without a happy outcome.

(a) In France, Saint-Simon¹ (1760-1825) wished to establish a new form of society, in which industry organized by science would completely prevail; he taught that the whole value of things flowed from labor as from its proper and sole font, and therefore that workers were to be held in the highest esteem, and that industry, as the most excellent work of religion, was to be fostered and established under the paternal rule of a certain priestly hierarchy. Wherefore his disciples, Bazard, Enfantin, and others, judged that the right of inheritance was to be abrogated, and that goods were to be distributed according to the measure of merit; from this, gradually, private dominion and the family would vanish; but the fruits of labor would be divided according to the works and merits of each one; in place of marriage, free union of the sexes was to be permitted.

¹ Hubbard, Saint-Simon: sa vie et ses travaux, 1857; Weill, Saint-Simon et son oeuvre, Paris, 1894; Charlety, Histoire du Saint-Simonisme, Paris, 1896; P. Janet, Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme.

56. (b) A little later, Charles Fourier² (1772-1837) advocated a certain form of organized communism: families were to coalesce into economic societies, called phalanxes, which would not exceed two thousand persons, and would live together in a spacious building, namely a phalanstery; any resources possessed by families would form a common fund. In each phalanx, agriculture, various crafts, and also liberal arts would be exercised, according to the talent and faculties of individuals, under the leadership of some overseer: all, even the lazy, would receive the necessities of life; but the industrious would obtain something besides, according to each one's merit. Several phalanxes would form some series, and the series multiplied throughout the world, under the rule of a supreme president (omniarch), would tend toward the common good of the whole human race; and thus universal harmony would reign throughout the earth. - An experiment of this system was made in the village of Conde-sur-Vesgre, but it had an unhappy outcome.

² Ch. Fourier, Traite de l'association domestique-agricole, 1822; Le nouveau monde industriel; Theorie des Quatre mouvements; Ch. Gide, Oeuvres choisies de Fourier, preceded by a Notice, Paris, 1890.

57. (c) E. Cabet proposed a more radical communism in the work entitled Voyage en Icarie;¹ according to him, all goods would be placed under the dominion of the Republic, individual citizens, led by brotherly love, would labor with equal spirit, and the fruits of works would be divided equally among the members of the community. He himself indeed wished to preserve the family and marriage; but his disciples soon preached free union. They attempted to bring his system into practice in the region of Texas, in the United States of America; but after some months the matter had an unhappy outcome.

¹ Cf. Ely, Socialism in France, p. 39-52; Malon, Histoire du Socialisme, p. 163.

58. (d) Louis Blanc proposed a mitigated form of communism; he contended that there is inborn in every man a right to labor, and therefore that national workshops were to be established, in which work would be divided according to the strength of each one, but the fruits according to the necessities of each one; wherefore private dominions would gradually have to be abolished, and the State would become the sole owner of all things.

59. (e) Proudhon² (1809-1865) defended a system not unlike anarchism, declaring that property is nothing else than theft, that the State must be abolished, and that every authority must be removed from the midst. Nevertheless he retains property under the name of possession: namely, citizens will be able to possess and transmit to heirs all those things which they are able to use personally; the rest must be left to others. But the fruits of labor will be divided according to the time consumed in working.

² Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la Propriete? Paris, 1840; Creation de l'ordre dans l'humanite, ou Principe d'organisation politique, 1843; La Justice dans la Revolution et dans l'Eglise; Interet et Principal, 1849; Bourgin, Proudhon, Biblioth. socialiste, 1901.

(f) In England, Robert Owen,³ a supporter of mitigated communism, attempted certain experiments of communistic association; in Scotland he established a cooperative society of workers with sufficient success, but the properly communistic societies which he founded in England and America soon collapsed.

³ Cf. The Life of Robert Owen, written by Himself, London, 1857; J. Rey, Lettres sur le systeme de cooperation d'apres le plan d'Owen, Paris, 1828.

60. (B) The second phase of socialism was more scientific, and flourished especially in Germany.

(a) Charles Rodbertus⁴ (1805-1875) is regarded as the master of this school; he taught that all economic goods are the fruit of labor, and that they are not to be esteemed at a greater value than the labor by which they were, as it were, created; and therefore that society must gradually be transformed, so that no dominion exist except that which arises from labor itself.

⁴ Andler, Origines du socialisme d'Etat en Allemagne, Paris, 1897.

61. (b) Charles Marx¹ (1818-1883) succeeded him; he is regarded as the principal teacher of the school, and in the work Das Kapital reduced socialist principles to a true system. According to him, capital (i.e., whatever is reserved for the new production of goods) is nothing else than the fruit of labor unjustly taken away from workers. To demonstrate this, he distinguishes a double value of things: one of use (valeur en usage), which consists in the utility of the thing; the other exchange value (valeur en echange), which consists in the price which can be obtained for those things.² Now he asserts that the sole font of exchange value is the labor expended in producing the thing.

¹ K. Marx, Das Kapital, a work translated into various languages; Deville, Le Capital de K. Marx resume, 1883; V. Pareto, Karl Marx, extracts by P. Lafargue, and critique by Pareto; Rae, op. cit., p. 128-177.

² The value of use is that which is determined solely by the needs and desires of an individual at a given moment. Exchange value is the price which one can obtain by selling an object, what is called the current price, or the quotation.

62. This being posited, he argues thus: the capitalist, by hiring workers, buys their faculty of laboring for a determined price; but this price in fact is equivalent to the daily expenses which are required for the support of the workers, not however to the value of the things produced. For they produce more than that which is necessary for their own support, but part of the things produced is retained by the capitalists; thus capital is born and grows by theft. But by the natural law of evolution, capital and industries increase daily, and are converted into monopolies, destructive of all liberty. But the extreme evil carries its remedy with it; for when very few capitalists have appropriated to themselves all the instruments of labor and all riches, then the expropriation of those despoilers will become necessary, and all the means of production will be possessed collectively.

63. In order to break the empire of Capitalists more quickly and efficaciously, C. Marx established the international society of workers (L'Internationale), which celebrated international congresses at Geneva, in the year 1866; Lausanne, 1867; Brussels, 1868; The Hague, 1872; but afterward, in 1873, it was broken up because of internal dissensions which arose between C. Marx and Bakounine, the promoter of anarchy.

64. (c) Lassalle³ defended nearly the same system, and further expounded what they call the iron law (la loi d'airain). According to him, namely, in the present economic order, by an invincible necessity of things and as if by an iron law, it happens that wages never long exceed that which is necessary for one's own support and for the propagation of the human species: for if wages are increased, a greater number of children is procreated, and therefore there is a greater influx of workers, and soon, by the ineluctable force of competition, less price is paid to workers; for the more numerous the workers are, the less each one receives; and thus they live in a miserable state, having nothing except what is necessary for life.

³ Rae, op. cit., p. 92-127; R. Ely, op. cit., p. 189-203.

Engels, Bebel, Liebknecht, Singer, and others propagated the doctrine of Marx; Bernstein softened it a little, but K. Kautsky¹ defends it integrally, whose theories the Congress of Socialists held in Germany in the year 1903 approved.

¹ Bernstein, Socialisme theorique et Social-democratie pratique, trans. by Al. Cohen; K. Kautsky, Le Marxisme et son critique Bernstein, trans. by M. Martin-Leray, Paris, 1900. - Cf. P. Vialles, La Scission du Marxisme, Montpellier, 1900; Winterer, Le Socialisme allemand et ses dernieres evolutions, Paris, 1903.

65. (C) The third phase, which began around the year 1873 and endures even to the present days, is more political and practical. (a) Many socialists, namely those called Reformists, understanding that a total change of the economic matter cannot be obtained immediately, prepare the way for the social revolution through successive and progressive evolution. And so they attempt gradually to seize political power, and they propose laws which tend toward this, that they render the lot of workers better, but the condition of capitalists worse, by imposing new burdens and taxes upon them, especially those taxes which they call progressive. They advocate social democracy and State socialism, demanding, for example, that all railways, mines, etc., be possessed and administered by the Government. In order to pursue their ends more efficaciously, they establish associations, both national and international, by which they can resist the federation of capitalists, and spread their theories among workers, indeed also among farmers. (b) Others, however, think that only by violent revolution can the condition of workers truly be made better, by utterly abolishing every distinction between owners and workers; and they strive to prepare it.

66. But today, after the war had ended, which brought so many disturbances into the world, Socialism has grown in many regions:² in Great Britain, the guilds of workers which formerly pursued a better condition for workers now tend toward collectivism; in Germany, if one excepts independent socialists and a few communists, most workers favor State socialism; in France, the fight grows hot between seditious and moderate Syndicalism, and daily Christian Syndicalism increases, which promotes the doctrine of Leo XIII concerning the social matter; in Italy seditious syndicalism stirred up not a few disturbances, which Christian syndicalism tries to calm, and to which the nationalists (fascisti) oppose force; in the United States of America, moderate syndicalism still flourishes, notwithstanding a few anarchists who, arisen from Russia, attempted to overthrow public order. In one word, the world is restless, and it will not find peace and concord unless it returns to Catholic principles, as Benedict XV rightly declared many times.¹

² L. Garriguet, Question sociale et Ecoles sociales, 1922, ch. VIII.

¹ To the bishop of Bergamo, March 11, 1920, concerning the prescriptions of the Apostolic See in the social matter not to be neglected, indeed to be followed most religiously (A.A.S., XII, 109); to the bishops of Venice, Umbria (A.A.S., XII, 290, 292).

67. It must also be noted that many Socialists, especially communists, collectivists, and anarchists, favor atheism and positivism, and reject every cult as superstition, except the cult of humanity.² - Likewise they overthrow the foundations of the family, advocating free love and marriages dissoluble at will, and moreover entrusting the education of children exclusively to the State.

² In France almost all socialists, except the Reformists, show themselves most bitter enemies of religion, as is clear from their open declarations in the periodical Le Mouvement socialiste (Nov. 1902-April 1903). In the other regions they indeed assert that religion is a private matter, which is left to the decision and conscience of each one; but at the same time they contend that by socialism rightly understood religion must be put to flight, just as darkness is dispelled by light. Cf. Mouv. socialiste, 1902, pp. 1936, 1943, 1946, 2043, 2045 sq.

68. (A) State Socialism,³ which does not wish utterly to remove private property from the midst, but strives to restrict it by handing over to the State the principal means of production, such as mines, railways, the greatest industrial factories, etc., whose revenues the Government will receive and distribute equably among the citizens. Thus many politicians, such as, in Germany, where this system was born and flourishes, Ad. Wagner, Ebert, and those who adhere to democratic Socialism; in France, those who are called radical-socialists.

³ Cl. Jannet, Le Socialisme d'Etat, Paris, 1890, and Bechaux, L'Ecole individualiste, le socialisme d'Etat, Paris, Alcan, 1907, set forth and refute this form of socialism; L. Garriguet, Question sociale et Ecoles sociales, 1922, ch. X.

69. (B) Agrarian socialism, which H. Spencer first advocated, but afterward rejected,¹ had H. George² as its principal patron. He taught that not all means of production must be possessed by the State, but only landed estates, because land, like the sea and air, is not capable of private dominion, but ought to be common to all. But lest public order be taken away, possessors of fields will not be despoiled, but will only pay a tax which corresponds to the price of leasing; and since it is foreseen that this tax will be equal to all public expenses to be paid, the other taxes will be removed from the midst, and therefore there will remain a single tax upon lands (single tax). But this system, which at first pleased a few in Ireland and the United States, is today rejected as unequal to solving the social question.

¹ H. Spencer, Social Statics, 1851, ch. IX; Justice, 1891, Appendix B.

² H. George, Progress and Poverty, New York, 1883, a work translated into various languages; The Land Question, New York, 1898; The Condition of Labor, New York, 1891; cf. L. Garriguet, op. cit., ch. XI.

70. (C) Collectivism, or Marxism (above, n. 62), whose doctrine is contracted thus: (a) the State or Municipality ought to retain as its own all the means of production, i.e., lands, mechanical instruments, money, etc.; (b) the use and administration of these means will be in the hands of public power, and the production of things will be so ordered that nothing useless is made, but provision is made for all the necessities of citizens; (c) by public authority the fruits of labor will be distributed among citizens: according to some, according to perfect equality; according to others, according to each one's labor and merit; according to others, according to each one's necessities. The part of the goods which is received by any citizen becomes private property, as acquired by labor; but it must be consumed, and not employed for producing new things, lest capital be established again under another form.³

³ Schaeffle briefly and clearly set forth collectivism in the little work translated into French, La Quintessence du Socialisme, Brussels, 1895, and Paris, 1903; cf. G. Renard, Le regime socialiste, 2nd ed., Paris, 1898; E. Vandervelde, Le Collectivisme et l'Evolution industrielle, Paris, 1921; L. Deslinieres, Projet de code socialiste, Paris, Giard et Briere, 1908. Cf. L. Garriguet, op. cit., ch. XII.

71. But concerning the mode of bringing this system into practice the Collectivists do not agree, but are divided into three schools: (a) some, called Possibilists or Reformists,¹ reject violent means, and wish gradually to attain the end by legal means, by handing over the principal industries to the State under the form of monopoly, by determining by law the price of work to be paid to workers, by promoting universal and obligatory insurances, etc.; and thus they differ little from State Socialism, except insofar as they propose to themselves as the ultimate end the expropriation of private persons. - Allied with these are the Evolutionists, who think that by necessary evolution this social change will come to pass.

¹ A. Millerand, Le Socialisme reformiste francais, Paris, 1903.

72. (b) But others contend that a change of this kind can be brought about only by revolution, and therefore by all means they try to obtain public authority, so that they may be able to reduce all the means of production into the power of the Government, and authoritatively receive and divide the fruits.² (c) Anarchists, proceeding still further, strive to overthrow the political power of the State, and wish to hand over all the means of production to Municipalities, which will be joined among themselves by an international federation. In order that civil authority may be torn up more quickly, it is expedient to use violent means, sword, fire, and all modern inventions. Thus Bakounine, P. Kropotkine, E. Reclus, S. Faure, A. Cipriani, and the Bolshevists, who first committed authority to popular assemblies, and afterward exercised a true tyranny.³

² Thus, among others, J. Guesde, Collectivisme et Revolution.

³ The Bolshevists, after the Russian empire had been destroyed, established a tyrannical authority, and in practice rejected anarchy as unequal to ruling the people. Cf. Max Hoschiller, Le mirage du sovietisme, Paris, 1921.

73. (D) Seditious Syndicalism,⁴ judging that the tyranny of the State and Municipalities is no less to be feared than that of owners, wishes all the means of production to be handed over to the guilds themselves of workers. To attain this end, first provision must be made for the education of workers, indeed the help of experts must be obtained, so that, once the owners have been ejected, the new ordering of industry may at once succeed the former. Meanwhile by all means, even violent means, but especially by cessation from work, both particular and general, the way is to be prepared for a general revolution by which the property of all goods may be transferred to the guilds of workers. When this has been accomplished, the State and Municipalities will be utterly removed from the midst, and the management of public and industrial matters alike will be in the hands of the various municipal, national, and international associations of workers. Then we shall have an earthly paradise, since the rightly ordered production of all things will be able abundantly to provide for the necessities of all. - Even among seditious syndicalists there are divisions, some promoting the bloody means of the Bolshevists, but others proposing less violent means; yet all think that some revolution is necessary.¹

⁴ Syndicalism which strives by violent means to overthrow modern society can be designated thus, and so is distinguished from moderate syndicalism, which strives by legitimate means to render the condition of workers better. Concerning each we shall treat a little more fully in the French language at the end of the work.

¹ G. Sorel, L'Avenir socialiste des Syndicats; H. Lagardelle, Syndicalisme et Socialisme; E. Pouget, La Confederation generale du Travail; Griffueilhes, Les Objectifs de nos luttes de classes, especially set forth the system of Syndicalism. Cf. L. Garriguet, op. cit., ch. XIII, and L'Evolution actuelle du Socialisme en France.

In the statutes which are proposed to the guilds of workers, these things are read, which clearly declare the end of the association and the principal means:

"Considering that, by reason of the effects of modern industry and of the logical support which power provides to the holders of property and of the means of production, there is a permanent antagonism between Capital and Labor;

"That, by this fact, two very distinct and irreconcilable classes are present: on one side, those who hold Capital; on the other, those who are the creators of all riches, since Capital is constituted only by a levy effected to the detriment of Labor;

"For these reasons, the Proletarians must therefore make it a duty to put into application the axiom of the International: 'The emancipation of the workers can be the work only of the workers themselves';

"Considering that, to attain this end, of all forms of groupings the Syndicate is the best, since it is a grouping of interests coalescing the exploited against the common enemy, the capitalist; that by that very fact it rallies within its bosom all producers, whatever opinion or philosophical, political, or religious conception they claim for themselves;

"Considering likewise that, if the Syndicate confined itself in a regrettable isolation, it would fatally commit - all proportions preserved - the same error as the isolated worker, and that it would thus fail in the practice of solidarity; there is therefore a necessity that all producers first unite in the Syndicate, and, this first act realized, complete the syndical work by causing their Syndicate to adhere to their local Federation or Labor Exchange, and through the channel of their national union to the General Confederation of Labor."

99. 1. Historically they contend, with E. de Laveleye,¹ that everywhere and among all Nations the original possession of estates and fields was collective; that it became individual late and gradually, when, because of the multitude of men, the cultivation of fields had to be more intensive; and that private dominion was introduced only by Roman law, and prevailed among the Nations of Europe. - From this they infer that private property in fields, introduced not by natural instinct and ordering, but by positive law, can be abrogated by the free decision of men.²

¹ E. de Laveleye, De la Propriete et de ses formes primitives, 5th ed., Paris, 1901; cf. P. Lafargue, La Propriete, origine et evolution; - Refutation by Yves Guyot, Paris, 1895.

² Yet de Laveleye himself does not advocate collectivism, but rather a certain State socialism, op. cit., ch. 36, p. 542-560.

To solve this difficulty, we observe two things:

100. (A) Laveleye by no means proves the historical fact which he asserts. He indeed alleges facts from which it is clear that among the Ruthenians, Germans, Javanese, Swiss, and certain other peoples certain goods were possessed collectively by a tribe or municipality; and from this he infers that these are traces of collectivism which always and everywhere flourished. Now there is no one who does not see that the conclusion extends more widely than the premises.

101. In fact, if the historical facts which have recently been investigated are attended to,³ three stages, as it were, can be distinguished in the mode of possessing fields: (a) as long as men lead a pastoral life, pastures are possessed collectively by the tribe itself, so that invasions of neighboring tribes may be repelled better and more efficaciously; for since pastures are not cultivated, individuals care little about the exclusive possession of this or that estate, provided the grass growing spontaneously in the pastures suffices to nourish their flocks. But cattle, tents, and other movable things are possessed exclusively. (b) Once men and flocks have multiplied, it now becomes necessary to cultivate the earth for a while, so that it may produce more abundant fruits; but as long as this cultivation is not very intensive, men indeed possess the fields cultivated by themselves exclusively, but not permanently, but only during the time which passes between sowing and harvesting; for then it is expedient to cultivate new fields every year; hence among certain tribes or Nations fields are divided yearly among the inhabitants of a place. (c) But soon the time comes when, men having multiplied, more intensive cultivation of fields is now necessary for feeding the citizens; then a more permanent, and soon perpetual, possession of estates begins. For since strenuous labors are required for this cultivation, and by these assiduous labors fields are rendered much more fruitful, those who have sweated in this work do not wish to be expelled from the fields cultivated by themselves, and public authority itself understands that no one can be compelled to leave the fields which he has cultivated with so much labor without just compensation; and thus exclusive and permanent possession of fields becomes necessary among cultivated Nations. - This indeed is confirmed by history; for among the Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Chinese, and other most ancient peoples, it is certainly proved by the most ancient documents that private possession of fields was protected by laws.¹

³ Cf. P. Bureau, La Propriete Fonciere, in the periodical La Science Sociale, XXIV, Oct. 1902, p. 335-353; P. Lacombe, L'appropriation du sol, in the periodical Revue de synthese historique, Paris, 1903, t. VII, p. 29-39 and 291-301; S. T. Lapsey, The origin of property in land, in American historical Review, New York, 1903, t. VIII, p. 426-448.

¹ With regard to the Egyptians, cf. Lenormant, Hist. anc. de l'Orient, continued by E. Babelon, 9th ed., t. 3, Paris, 1883, pp. 16-18; Maspero, Histoire anc. des peuples de l'Orient, t. 1, Paris, 1895, p. 76-78. From the documents published there it is clear that among the Egyptians the right of private dominion flourished in nearly the same manner as in Europe during the Middle Age: namely, Pharaoh was considered to possess all the earth, but he divided it among priests and soldiers, who handed it over to farmers to be cultivated; but estates were so proper to their owners that they were transmitted to others by inheritance or purchase. Cf. Birch, Ancient History from the Monuments, London, pp. 31, 45, and elsewhere throughout.

With regard to the Assyrians, many contracts of purchase-sale have been found and published, and indeed most ancient ones, from which it is clear that fields, under certain civil and at the same time religious forms, were transmitted to other citizens; and that those who move the boundaries of estates are worthy of every execration. Cf. Sayce, Records of the Past, I, 139; VII, 111; Lenormant, op. cit., t. 5, p. 77-81; Maspero, op. cit., p. 760-764. - But especially let the Code of laws be read which Hammurabi promulgated, who was king of Babylonia 2000 years before Christ, in Scheil, O.P., Textes Elamites-Semitiques, Paris, 1902, where laws are handed down concerning the private dominions of houses and estates, p. 33-47.

Among the Chinese, already from ancient times there prevailed a system of dominion which can be equated with the feudal system. Cf. Eug. Simon, La cite Chinoise, Paris, 1884.

But the communities which flourish among the Ruthenians (mir russe), Javanese (dessa javanaise), ancient Germans (marke germanique), Swiss, and other peoples (biens communaux), exist together with the right of private dominion, and by no means exclude it; but they only show that a certain collective property can flourish in determined places and times, where cultivation is imperfect; or also, because of the kind of labor to be performed on estates (e.g., where canals of irrigation are desired), that it can sometimes be more useful than private property.¹

¹ Concerning these communities see P. Leroy-Beaulieu, Collectivisme, l. I, ch. 6. - It must likewise be noted that, even among the Ruthenians, fields which formerly were divided every year among the inhabitants of the same village are now distributed only every third, or fifth, or even fifteenth year, because it is rightly understood that, for intensive cultivation, a longer possession of the same estate is required: for who would make great expenses to render a field more fertile, which would soon pass to strangers?

102. (B) But from this it is by no means clear in a general way that collective dominion is useful or necessary; for since history shows that such a system gradually decreases and gives way to private dominion as the number of men increases and as the necessity of cultivating fields in a more perfect manner increases, it is rightly inferred that this evolution is consonant with reason, indeed necessary for cultivated Nations, so that to return to collectivism would truly be regression and not progress. To illustrate the matter by an example, at the time when a certain community of fields flourished among the Germans, the land could not nourish a twentieth part of the inhabitants dwelling there today; and so with the other regions.

103. 2. The arguments drawn from the ethical order are these: (A) According to Karl Marx (above, n. 62), the profit of capitalists arises from theft, inasmuch as they retain for themselves part of the wages owed to workers.

Resp. He indeed asserts this gratuitously, but by no means proves it; indeed the contrary is gathered from the facts.² - If the matter stood thus, all honest and capable capitalists would have prosperous affairs; but experience shows that from ten capitalists scarcely three or four make enormous profits, while the others gain little or nothing. - But the reason why some greatly increase their resources can be assigned as threefold: (a) very great expenses were made to build the workshop and furnish it with machines; hence capitalists ought to receive some increase from the money expended in all these things; (b) the risk of fortune is great, and under this title there is a right to proportionate profit; (c) intellectual labor, very arduous, is required in the ordering and direction of workshops, and also in fruitfully selling the fruits of production; and this is the principal reason why, among capitalists, only a few greatly increase their resources, namely because few apply themselves to this arduous and diligent labor. Thus it is explained how, without theft, capitalists gain much more than workers. And indeed the hope of profit is not only useful, but necessary, in order to impel the rich to devote themselves to industrial matters: if this is removed, most would quietly enjoy their goods, and would not think of constructing workshops, and thus many workers would be able neither to labor nor to make gain.

² Leroy-Beaulieu demonstrates this by many arguments, Collectivisme, p. 242-250.

104. (B) According to the same man, it is historically clear that the riches which capitalists possess were acquired in an unjust manner, namely by invading fields already cultivated by other Nations, ecclesiastical goods, etc.

Resp. - (a) We do not deny that certain goods were acquired unjustly; and if today there are any owners who by force or fraud invaded the resources of others, they are rightly to be compelled to restitution. But certainly there are many present-day capitalists who, by their own labor or that of their parents, have justly acquired riches; and these cannot be despoiled of their goods without injustice.

(b) Even when from the beginning the invasion of estates was unjust, after a long time it can become legitimate by prescription: not indeed in the sense that an unjust acquisition becomes just by the mere lapse of time; but because the social good demands that those who for a very long time have possessed estates and cultivated them cannot be disturbed in their possession; all the more because often the value of an estate has been increased a hundredfold by cultivation. Concerning this more fully where we speak of prescription.

105. (C) According to H. George, we can possess only those things which we acquire by labor: for by exercising our own faculties, we produce something which is truly ours; therefore fields cannot legitimately be possessed, because they are not the fruits of labor.

Resp. We indeed admit that labor is one of the legitimate modes of acquiring things as one's own, but we deny that it is the only legitimate mode. H. George indeed admits that a fisherman and hunter legitimately acquire the fish and animals which they occupy, when these belong to no one; nevertheless these are not the fruits of labor, but goods given indiscriminately to all, which legitimately become the property of the first occupant. Why can the same not be said of fields? "For a field," says Leo XIII,¹ "subdued by the hand and skill of the cultivator changes its condition greatly: from wild it becomes fruitful, from barren fertile. But those things by which it has been made better so inhere in the soil and are thoroughly mingled with it that for the greater part they are separable from the soil by no compact. But whether justice would allow anyone to seize and enjoy that in which another has sweated?" Since, therefore, the principal value of fields depends upon labor, it is equitable that they remain in the hands of those who have sweated in cultivating them.² The common good also demands this: for who would cultivate fields by strenuous labor which he foresaw would soon be occupied by strangers?

¹ Encyclical Rerum Novarum.

² H. Spencer felt the force of this argument; for at first he judged that owners of fields, after equitable compensation had been paid for their expenses, were to be expropriated; but, after the matter had been weighed more maturely, he understood that the expenses made by owners or their predecessors greatly surpass the sale value of the fields, so that it is by no means expedient that owners be expropriated.

106. (D) The same George proceeds: There inheres in all an equal right of living; but such a right is vain unless the goods which nature brings forth for all are common, especially estates; just as air and sea ought to remain common, so likewise fields.

Resp. - We indeed concede that the right of living inheres in all, and therefore that in a case of extreme necessity those goods can be occupied which are necessary for sustaining life. But from this it by no means follows that fields must be possessed collectively; for those who do not have estates labor on the estates of others, or exercise gainful arts, whence they acquire food and clothing for themselves. - Nor should it be said that workers are thus partly deprived of the fruit of their labor, since another part is retained by the owner of the field; for this is equitable, since both the labor of the worker and the natural powers legitimately acquired by the owner concur in the production of fruits. Moreover the possessors of fields, by paying taxes from which workers are immune, often render to society more than the primitive value of the soil occupied. - But the comparison brought forward has no force; air and sea are of inexhaustible use, nor can they be efficaciously occupied by private persons; while estates are easily exhausted, and do not bring forth fruits unless they are cultivated; moreover they are capable of occupation. Hence the public good requires that air and sea remain common, and that estates be occupied privately, so that they may be cultivated better.

107. H. George insists: the value of estates grows daily not so much from the industry of man as from the progress itself of society; namely, in cities, or in their vicinity, or near railways, the price of some property is increased tenfold or twentyfold in a few years, because a greater number of citizens is gathered there. Now such an increase (which in English he calls unearned increment) is by no means owed to the private owner of this property, but to citizens collectively taken, or to the State.

Resp. - A fact of this kind is not always, nor everywhere, verified, but only in certain places, in which many inhabitants are gathered together; but in other places the value of properties either remains the same, or sometimes decreases. Therefore it is not a universal fact, from which one ought to conclude that the mode of possessing fields must be changed universally, which moreover is very useful, indeed necessary, from the things said above. - Besides, there is question here of a matter of chance, which before every event can benefit or harm certain private persons, since no one knows with certainty whether the value of this or that property will be greater or less; nor is it unjust that those who probably foresaw such an increase enjoy it. - For the rest, nothing prevents the State in this case from imposing greater taxes on owners, by which at least a part of this increase will profit all. But from this it by no means follows that the right of private persons in properties must be removed from the midst.¹

¹ For a fuller refutation of H. George, consult Rae, op. cit., p. 440-500; Mallock, Property and Progress; Hollaind, Le socialisme americain, translated from English into French, under the care of Buton, Brussels, 1900.

108. 3. Arguments from the economic order we have already anticipated above (n. 94-96). Socialists indeed wonderfully describe and extol the advantages which they expect will come from collectivism; but thus far all experiments attempted in various places have turned out empty.

(A) Yet they argue from those anonymous companies and monopolies (trusts) which today succeed prosperously, and from this infer that greater utility is to be hoped for from a universal monopoly to be established under the authority of the State.

Resp. That comparison limps altogether; for societies of this kind prosperously succeed because their administrators expect greater profit for themselves from the greater production of goods which arises from it; indeed they establish monopolies only to increase their own resources more efficaciously; and they constitute them according to the method of capitalists, not that of collectivists. Now if the State makes all profits its own, and divides them equally, then the efficacious stimulus to arduous labor ceases.² - Moreover experience already shows that certain ones of these monopolies, precisely because they were too universal, underwent an unhappy outcome.

² P. Leroy-Beaulieu shows this lucidly, Collectivisme, p. 344-358; Repartition des Richesses, p. 315-349; and Schaeffle, otherwise favoring socialism, admits it, op. cit., p. 64: "It is not yet enough, in a community of production composed of millions of men, that producer A know to say to himself: my income from social labor depends on my other 999,999 co-operators being as diligent as I. This does not yet awaken the necessary control, does not stifle the inclination to laziness and dishonesty, does not prevent the diversion of labor to the prejudice of the community, does not destroy egoism and cunning which manifest themselves through the exaggerated and unjust taxation of isolated works."

109. (b) Some draw an argument from the community of goods which flourishes in religious orders. - We indeed admit that this community is greatly useful in small groups of men who strive for perfection, and, on account of the love of God and of souls, deny their own will and their own advantages, so that they may more freely and efficaciously serve the utility of others; but perfection belongs to few, nor can collectivism be advocated unless men first learn to despise their own things, and to love brothers or fellow-citizens more than themselves. Now sad experience shows that charity, or altruism, as they say, thus far does not flourish among most men.

Aristotle, Politicorum liber secundus [Book Two of the Politics]; St. Thomas, Commentaria in libros Politicorum [Commentaries on the Books of the Politics]; Pöhlmann, Geschichte des antiken Communismus und Socialismus [History of Ancient Communism and Socialism]; Thonissen, Le Socialisme dans le passé [Socialism in the Past], Le Socialisme et ses promesses [Socialism and Its Promises]; P. Janet, Les origines du Socialisme contemporain [The Origins of Contemporary Socialism]; Cathrein, Der Socialismus [Socialism], Das Privatgrundeigenthum und seine Gegner [Private Landownership and Its Opponents];¹ P. Leroy-Beaulieu, Le Collectivisme, examen critique du nouveau Socialisme [Collectivism: A Critical Examination of the New Socialism]; Pachtler, Die Ziele der Socialdemokratie und die liberalen Ideen [The Aims of Social Democracy and the Liberal Ideas];² Castelein, Le Socialisme et le Droit de Propriété [Socialism and the Right of Property]; Capart, La Propriété individuelle et le Collectivisme [Individual Property and Collectivism]; Antoine, Cours d’économie sociale [Course of Social Economy], chaps. IX and XVI; H. Pesch, Liberalismus, Socialismus und Christliche Gesellschaftsordnung [Liberalism, Socialism, and the Christian Social Order]; Biederlack, Die sociale Frage [The Social Question], chap. 3; Kerby, Le Socialisme aux États-Unis [Socialism in the United States]; P. Verhaegen, Socialistes anglais [English Socialists]; Holaind, Le Socialisme américain [American Socialism];³ Maisonabe, La Doctrine Socialiste [The Socialist Doctrine]; E. de Laveleye, Le Socialisme contemporain [Contemporary Socialism]; Van Overbergh, Les caractères généraux du Socialisme scientifique d’après le manifeste communiste [The General Characteristics of Scientific Socialism According to the Communist Manifesto]; Schaeffle, Quintessenz des Socialismus [The Quintessence of Socialism];⁴ Anton Menger, Le droit au produit intégral du travail, étude historique [The Right to the Entire Product of Labor: A Historical Study];⁵ G. d’Eichthal, Socialisme, Communisme et Collectivisme [Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism]; (Anonymous), Réfutation du socialisme, published by the Union Nivelloise [Refutation of Socialism, published by the Nivelles Union].

¹ From the pamphlets concerning the social question published by writers for the periodical Stimmen aus Maria-Laach [Voices from Maria Laach]. They were rendered into French by D. Fritsch.

² From the same series of pamphlets.

³ We shall cite the French edition, prepared by D. Buron.

⁴ That pamphlet was taken from the larger work Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers [Structure and Life of the Social Body], and was rendered into French by the socialist B. Malon.

⁵ That celebrated work of the Viennese professor was rendered into French by A. Bonnet. We shall cite the French edition, which has a preface prepared by Ch. André.

Professor Schaeffle’s work already greatly favors the economic tenets of collectivism. Among the very doctors of present-day socialism may be mentioned: K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifeste du Parti Communiste [Manifesto of the Communist Party];⁶ K. Marx, Das Kapital [Capital];⁷ Lasalle, Kapital und Arbeit [Capital and Labor];⁸ B. Malon, Précis de Socialisme [Summary of Socialism], Le Socialisme intégral [Integral Socialism]; Destrée and Vandervelde, Le Socialisme en Belgique [Socialism in Belgium]; Bernstein (among the supporters of moderated Socialism), Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie [The Preconditions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy]; H. George (the author of agrarian socialism), Progress and Poverty, La condition des ouvriers, lettre au Pape Léon XIII [The Condition of the Workers: A Letter to Pope Leo XIII];⁹ Jean Jaurès, Études socialistes [Socialist Studies]. In addition, the pamphlets which relate the deliberations customarily held among socialists must be consulted. Several books by Rev. D. Winterer can be referred to this class, for example, Le Socialisme international [International Socialism].

⁶ It first appeared in German.

⁷ There exists a French translation of the first volume of this work, which surpasses the German edition in clarity, or rather in a lesser obscurity of style.

⁸ B. Malon also rendered this work into French.

⁹ We shall use the French edition.

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.

Pests of this kind are frequently reproved, and in most grave formulas of words, in the encyclical letter Qui pluribus, November 9, 1846; in the Alloc. Quibus quantisque, April 20, 1849; in the encyclical letter Noscitis et Nobiscum, December 8, 1849; in the Alloc. Singulari quadam, December 9, 1854; in the encyclical letter Quanto conficiamur maerore, August 10, 1863.

IX. What concerning Socialism? - Similar principles hold for socialism, for socialists also admit the theory of liberalism, at least political liberalism, concerning the separation of religion and the State: liberals often are such in the merely political matter, but socialists in the economic matter. Moreover:

1. Socialism which is called scientific adheres to atheism and materialism, so that on this side it is heretical.

2. Economic but perturbative socialism, which admits collectivism or communism and violent means (a fortiori anarchism), was also openly condemned by the Church; hence good faith will be rare. (Cf. what was said n. IV.)

3. Merely reformative socialism of itself is not necessarily hostile to the Church, yet in fact in our regions it is a party which is opposed to the Church; hence concerning it those things hold which we said concerning political liberalism (n. V and VI).

4. Formal cooperation toward socialism, by which someone thinks socialistically, is gravely evil; merely material cooperation and even material aggregation to works, not only political but also economic, of itself is illicit, but by grave and urgent necessity it can be lawful, provided that there is no proximate danger of perversion in faith (n. VII).

Hence: a) Let pastors and preachers not fail in the office of admonishing concerning the fleeing of bad societies and the avoiding of evil companions and papers.

b) Those who are imbued with the principles of scientific socialism profess materialism and atheism, and therefore are to be held as sinning directly against faith.

c) Those following the political party of socialists from conviction commit, of itself, grave sin: namely, good faith will rarely be present, unless perhaps in regions altogether dechristianized.

d) Those enrolled in socialist syndicates are easily guilty because of cooperation, scandal, and the grave danger to which they expose themselves. Nevertheless accidentally it can be lawful for a time, if scandal is lacking, the danger of perversion is only remote, and there is an urgent necessity from which they could not free themselves, such as if a worker otherwise would have to bid farewell to the labor of his profession and therefore to his daily sustenance. Thus, unless the bishops of some region should judge otherwise and universally prohibit any aggregation whatever to the works of socialists. Then, namely, they would have to be obeyed, as judging authoritatively concerning the necessities and dangers of religion.⁷

⁷ Cf. Tessens in Vie diocesaine, Dec. 1921.

e) Those workers who from good faith do not perceive the gravity of the offense of cooperation are of themselves to be admonished; nevertheless accidentally they may be left in good faith for a time, in a case in which the admonition is foreseen as not going to profit and scandal is lacking. Then nevertheless a general admonition should be made concerning avoiding the proximate occasion of sin and concerning suitable remedies by which they may be morally removed, such as conversation and association with good men truly Christian and the reading of good newspapers.

Conditions and possibilities in this matter are not everywhere the same, but most diverse. Nevertheless, as far as they can, let the bishops wish to declare that in this matter insistence is to be placed rather upon rigor than upon benignity, and that indulgence is not to be given easily. Experience shows that from that great benignity it happens that always less and less can be obtained and exacted from the faithful, and finally the indifference or defection of many follows. Here also the axiom holds: Resist beginnings! Nevertheless there are sometimes circumstances in which benignity alone, at least for a time, can be fitting.

X. Admonition. - The pastor and priests generally must abstain from frequent visitation of those liberals and socialists who are confirmed in error. But if some intercourse is necessary, let them not begin to speak about religious and political questions or to dispute about them; but if they are asked about these things, not indeed maliciously but sincerely, let them speak boldly, yet not too much or at greater length, but briefly, clearly, and solidly.

392. Socialism is opposed to individualism, and therefore etymologically designates every regime which favors association and intends the improvement of social conditions. Yet in a more restricted sense it is now customarily taken, and thus it is the complex of systems which intend to overturn the present order of society and to substitute for it another new order, in which dominion over temporal goods is exercised by all in common or by society itself, principally if not exclusively: thus by making a step from individual dominion to social dominion, namely toward a general renewal of the world, and not toward a merely economic one.

There is a threefold principal form of this: 1) communism, in which all temporal goods, even those destined for consumption, are common and to be distributed equally among citizens; - 2) collectivism, which distinguishes two genera of goods: some, which are called means of production or exchange, as lands, instruments of labor, railways, etc., and are to be retained by the community or State, whence industries and commerce are to be administered commonly;² others are means of consumption and remain under private dominion; - 3) State socialism, which while it retains private dominion even as regards means of production, introduces universal and continuous intervention of the State in all business, and thus too greatly restricts the activity and rights of private persons.

² Hence Schaeffle wrote: the alpha and omega of Socialism is the suppression of private capital and the substitution of one collective capital.

From these anarchism differs essentially, which pursues the overthrow of the whole of society, not its transformation.

For since man is good by nature, and has been made evil only by the institution of society and authority, hence all authority must be abolished and society overthrown. Men can indeed enter into free and private associations; but civil society itself is to be destroyed by all means, even violent ones.³

³ Thus among others Bakounine, Kropotkine, E. Reclus, Cipriani, Malato, Seb. Faure.

Already in antiquity traces of communism are found: in the practical order, at Sparta in the time of Lycurgus; in the speculative order, in Plato, who in the work on the ideal Republic and on the Laws has communism as the best means of establishing concord in the city.

But among Christians, in the first centuries, certain Gnostics and Apostolics; in the Middle Ages, Albigenses and Waldenses introduced community of goods after the example of the primitive Jerusalem community; which the Anabaptists and certain other few among Protestants renewed.

But in the sixteenth century Thomas More (1478-1535) again proposed the system of Plato in the book De nova Insula Utopia (1516), yet by expunging it from many vices, such as from the community of wives; likewise in the seventeenth century Campanella in his work Civitas solis.

Yet these systems scarcely had moment in the history of the human race. But now from the nineteenth century Socialism has been propagated widely and has obtained innumerable followers.

393. The causes of present-day socialism are reduced to an evolution and profound change in the industrial matter, in the philosophico-political matter, and in the religious matter.

I. The evolution in the industrial matter, which Leo XIII describes briefly thus, in the encyclical Rerum novarum, 15 May 1891: "the new increases of industry and the arts going by new paths; - the changed mutual relations of masters and wage-earners; - the abundance of riches among a small number, poverty among the multitude; - the greater confidence of workers in themselves, and also a closer connection among themselves; - moreover morals turned for the worse, have brought it about that conflict broke out." The evolution began about the middle of the eighteenth century:

1. By the invention of more perfect instruments in manufactured things; from which a) greater industries were born and the separation of capital and labor arose; for since only the rich were able to acquire the new inventions, society was soon divided into two very distant orders: capitalists and masters who possess the instruments of labor; and proletarians or workers who labor not for themselves but for others. b) Moreover there followed a more intense production of things, or overproduction, no longer measured by the necessities of men, but ordered to a more abundant making, more than could be sold, of goods and riches. From these things it came about that workers depended more on masters, so that for the whole of life they would for the most part have to work in the workshops of others, could be driven away from labor at the nod of the masters, and, on account of unlimited production, would be dismissed for a time and reduced to poverty.

2. Hence the relations between masters and workers were fundamentally changed. Masters who preside over many hundreds or thousands of workers cannot care for each of them and their families and deal paternally with each; consequently difficulties and disputes that have arisen are not so easily composed, all the more because, on account of stricter dependence upon masters and the worse condition of poverty, workers have become readier for rebellion.

3. The distance between the conditions of capitalists and workers also has been much increased: the latter, often receiving a scanty wage, scarcely were able to support themselves and their own; the former, hiring the labor of many workers, became very rich and indulged in luxury. Hence, says Leo XIII, "the abundance of riches among a small number, poverty among the multitude..., the greatest part of men of lowest lot... are unworthily situated in miserable and calamitous fortune..." Which "has divided cities into two classes of citizens, an immense difference having been interposed between each: on one side a faction very powerful because very rich,... on the other a needy and weak multitude."

4. Hence the workers came together into one for their own defense. "The old guilds of artisans having been destroyed in the previous century, and no protection having been substituted in their place,... gradually it happened that the time handed over the workers, solitary and defenseless, to the inhumanity of masters and to the unbridled greed of competitors. Voracious usury increased the evil, which, although more than once condemned by the judgment of the Church, nevertheless is exercised under another appearance by greedy and profit-seeking men in the same way (and is now tolerated by civil law). To this are added both the hiring of works and the commerce of all things reduced almost into the power of a few, so that a very few wealthy and very rich men have placed an almost servile yoke upon the infinite multitude of proletarians." Understanding this now, the workers entered new associations, deprived of the Christian spirit, by which they try to improve their condition through the radical transformation of the social order and the diffusion of socialism. Whence the workers' greater confidence in themselves, a closer connection among themselves, and a more intimate solidarity.

5. From all these things, morals were turned for the worse. The life of workers has been much changed: on one side, on account of the perfection of industrial machines and the division of labor restricted to one kind, they exercise their own talent much less; whence in many this has been blunted, whose intellectual life has suffered a certain atrophy; - on the other side the life of the family has been weakened: for since the husband, wife, and children often are forced to labor in various workshops, they can cohabit only for a few hours; the wife can scarcely attend to the domestic matter and the education of the children, the husband finds a sordid home and a domestic economy unhappily managed, and thus family life is overturned. Whence workers, lacking intellectual life and finding no happiness at home, have deserted the household hearths, have frequented taverns, and think of overturning the social order.

II. The evolution in the philosophico-political matter has pervaded the whole of Europe. With J. J. Rousseau especially as guide, a) they hold man to be by nature essentially good, but made evil by the present social order of things; b) all men to be equal by nature and endowed with the same rights; which the French upheaval reduced to the practical order, proclaiming the rights of man, with duties passed over in silence, and establishing the political equality of all citizens; c) from which the princes of the liberal economic school concluded that, as regards the manner of producing and pursuing riches, unlimited liberty must be left to the natural tendencies of men, from which necessarily and of itself there arises a social economic state, than which none better here and now is possible.⁴

⁴ The liberals say: 1) In man there is a natural inclination to pursue without limit his own good and advantage and proper utility. But it is good to follow the inclination of nature, which is essentially good. Response: In man there is a natural inclination to pursue his last end, which befits rational nature, and the means necessary and useful for this end; but not to pursue without limit material and temporal goods, which cannot constitute the end of rational nature. And it is right to follow the inclination of nature as rational; but not of animal and sensible nature, except insofar as it is subordinated to rational nature and its end. 2) Happy is he who follows his inclinations. Response: if he is considered in the abstract and according as he is an individual, let it pass: for not all inclinations are good; if he is considered in the concrete, according as he is a social being, I deny it: for thus he ought to tend toward the social good, but this does not always agree with the good of man insofar as he is an individual. 3) Proper utility is the sole motive of acting for all. Response: Experience establishes that there are other motives, namely passions, the rational good and the good of virtue, indeed abnegation of self for a noble cause. 4) Unlimited economic liberty is the best means to the economic end: the production of riches. Response: Experience shows the multiple defects and evils which have arisen from unlimited liberty: these are among the causes of socialism, as has been said. Nor is the end of economy the sole unlimited production of riches, but their adaptation to the necessities of men and equitable distribution.

From this it is logically inferred that the right of property is to be abolished, as necessarily leading to the inequality of men; for equality is vain, and liberty is vain, unless all things are common. And indeed they concluded thus the more easily because, after Hobbes, they held civil law alone as the origin of the right of private property, or even with Kant, as the origin of every right.

Thus already Babeuf (1762-1797) wished all goods to be possessed by the State, - all citizens to be compelled to labor, - and fruits to be distributed according to the necessities of each one; thus many socialists after him. Whence socialism has arisen from liberalism, not by a certain reaction, but by logical evolution. For

a) in the speculative order of ideas, liberalism

1. falsified the notion of the last end, which it placed in earthly and material happiness;

2. falsified the notion of civil society and authority, since it derives all power from the people and founds right in external force;

3. falsely taught that economic value arises solely from labor, which alone can be the source of property: thus, among others, A. Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat;

b) in the practical order of facts,

4. it destroyed the old guilds of workers and established economic individualism, by which solitary workers would be left to the greed of masters;

5. by political institutions, founded on full liberty, equality, and suffrage, it established an efficacious means of socialistic organization.

III. An evolution in the religious matter likewise had place among many masters and workers. Unbelief from the eighteenth century invaded the minds of many, and faith in another life having been removed or diminished, they desire an earthly paradise in this life and an Eden of pleasures; from which harmful consequences have arisen:

1. "Not a few masters, whose desires are no longer moderated by the bridle of religion, not rarely regard workers as slaves, or instruments of production, use them and abuse them for acquiring riches more quickly, imposing more work than their strength can bear, and giving a wage which scarcely suffices for sustenance.

2. On the opposite side, many workers, who no longer expect an eternal reward, often indulge drunkenness and lust; and, since the wage furnished to them is unequal to procuring the pleasures which they desire, they denounce capitalists as guilty of injustice, and desire to divide their spoils among themselves."⁵

⁵ Tanquerey, Th. M. III, De Virtute Iustitiae, n. 53.

394. The evolution of present-day socialism consists in three stages: the romantic phase preceded, the more scientific followed, finally the political and practical arrived.

I. The romantic epoch is of utopian imagining and of solitary and local action. It began in France.

1° Saint-Simon (1760-1825), father of modern socialism, not having gone beyond the sphere of speculation, taught that value flows from labor as from its proper and single source, that the first place in society ought to be occupied by workers, and that a common organization of industry under a paternal regime should be instituted. His disciples said that the right of inheritance, private dominion, and marriage were to be abolished, whence it would follow that there would be a free union of man and woman and the fruits of labor common, to be divided according to the works and merits of each one.

2° Charles Fourier (1772-1837) held the principle: that inclination to pleasure is natural and therefore good. But for common happiness and universal harmony he devised a certain form of communism, in which families would coalesce into economic societies, called phalanxes, which would not exceed 2,000 persons and would live together in a spacious common building, namely, a phalanstery; several phalanxes would form series, and the series multiplied throughout the world, under the regime of the supreme president, the omniarch, would procure the common good of humanity. In any phalanx, goods would be possessed in common, agriculture and the arts would be exercised, and all, even the lazy, would receive necessities, but the industrious would obtain more according to the merit of each one. But an experiment of the system made in the village of Conde-sur-Vesgre had an unhappy outcome.

3° E. Cabet (1786-1856) proposed a more radical Communism in the work Voyage en Icarie; according to which all goods would be constituted under the dominion of the republic; individual citizens, led by fraternal love, would labor with equal spirit; the fruits of works would be divided equally among the members of the community. An attempt to reduce the system to practice in the region of Texas, after some months, had an unhappy outcome.

4° Louis Blanc (1811-1882) followed a mitigated form of communism. Since to each man there is connatural a right to labor,⁶ national workshops are to be instituted, in which work would be divided according to the powers of each one, fruits according to the necessities of each one: thus private dominions are gradually to be abolished and the State will be lord of all things.

⁶ From the fact that man has a right to life, there is also a right to labor and the faculty of seeking labor and a right that he not be impeded in it; - but not a right of demanding labor from this or that master. And although this master can sometimes be held from charity, nevertheless not from justice.

5° Proudhon (1809-1865) on the contrary defended a system not unlike anarchism. [Original misprint: 1365.] He declared that the dominion of property is theft, that the State is to be abolished, that every authority is to be taken out of the midst. Citizens nevertheless can retain and transmit to heirs all those things which they are able to use personally, all other things being abandoned; but the fruits of labor are to be divided according to the time consumed in working.

6° Robert Owen (1791-1858), who proclaimed man's irresponsibility, in England was a supporter of mitigated communism, of which he tried certain experiments: he instituted a certain cooperative society in Scotland rather happily, but communist associations founded in England and America soon collapsed.

7° More recently E. Bellamy, in America, vividly depicted collective organization and happiness in two works: Looking Backward and Equality.

II. The epoch of scientific synthesis and international action had its origin in Germany. From the works of economists and predecessors they built a scientific system to which they gave as foundation historical materialism, according to which every human evolution, even intellectual and religious, is fatal and depends upon economic and material evolution.⁷ Hence in fact they are atheists and have the sole religion of humanity, although the economic system does not depend essentially on this theory and can be conceived without this basis and is conceived by some.

⁷ The materialistic conception of history is not proper to this socialism, but is found among others, as in de Molinari, who is of the liberal economic school. - The refutation of historical materialism can be seen in Vermeersch, Quaestiones de Iustitia, n. 181. Cf. also V. Falon, Principes d'Economie sociale.

The master of the school is held to be Jagetzow (1805-1875), who under the pseudonym Charles Rodbertus taught that all economic goods are the fruit of labor, and are not to be esteemed at more than the labor by which they have been produced and, as it were, created; and therefore that society must be transformed in such a way that no dominion now exists except that which has arisen from labor itself.

Marx and Engels perfected and propagated the system; in the year 1848 they published the program (manifesto) of the communist party.

The means of redress held out to him by the oratory, poetry, journalism, and organizing power of a very active propaganda, is a plan called “Socialism.” It is one of those inconvenient names that mean different things to different people. Socialism carried to an extreme, involves a transfer, sudden and probably violent, of all capital to the State, and that apparently without compensation to the sufferers by the change. There is nothing to prevent a good Catholic, or any reasonable man, if he sees his way to it, advocating that the State should pacifically and with due consideration of vested rights, take up now this form of capital, now that, and make it a government or communal monopoly ; and it is difficult to see where the absorption should stop ; only let it be done gradually and justly. But there must be some limit. I am about to argue that Socialism in its extremest form, implying the extinction of private capital and private commercial enterprise altogether, would be a huge and intolerable evil, abhorrent alike to the pious Catholic and to every other rational human being.

Whenever I speak of Socialism, I mean Socialism full-blown, unmitigated and extreme. It may take many forms. But as it is impossible here to discuss infinite possible amendments, I must beg leave to confine my remarks to one original proposal. That proposal at least is thoroughly Socialistic ; and we want to inquire what thorough-going Socialism would involve.

Socialism thus carried out means a posture of affairs in which a government of sheer democracy, just such as was proposed by Jean Jacques Rousseau, keeps in its own hands the whole of the capital, or producer’s wealth, of the country. The government is purely democratic. The people, having manhood suffrage, make their own laws by their own direct vote, without Parliament or Senate, and hold the sovereign power in their own hands in such a way that all government officials are their nominees and bailiffs, removable at their will any day they choose. The people collectively is sole proprietor, not of all the wealth of the country, but of all the wealth that may lawfully be employed for producing other wealth by means of buying and selling, or other contracts. A man thus may own the house he lives in, the coat upon his back, the wine in his cellar, even the garden that grows cabbages for his table; but he may not hire hands to cultivate the garden, and then sell the produce; he may not build houses and rent them ; he may not import wine for the market. The State will be sole landlord, sole manufacturer, sole owner of shipping and railroads and all branches of the carrying trade, sole exploiter of mines, sole practitioner of medicine (taking fees), sole educator, sole keeper of wine and spirit vaults, sole merchant, and sole retail dealer—in a word, sole capitalist. The only way to wealth for the individual will be his own personal labour ; he will get nothing but the wages of his work. The utmost vigilance will be exerted to prevent his capitalizing his wages ; they are given him to consume, not to produce with. He may produce for himself if he can, but not for the market. It will be seen that there is no compulsion put on any man to work ; but he must either work himself, or have worked, or beg, borrow, or steal from some one who has worked, if he means to live.

Under this system mental labour will be rewarded as well as bodily. The work that feeds the imagination and ministers to the æsthetic taste will command a price no less than the labour which supplies the necessaries of life. Every one will receive pay who does work useful to the community, and no one else will receive anything. Skilled labour will be paid better than unskilled, not in proportion to the excellence of the work, but in proportion to the time that the workman, manual or intellectual, may be supposed to have taken in acquiring his skill ; the apprenticeship will be counted into the value of the labour. Thus the value of labour will always be reckoned by time, the unit of value being the day of a labourer of average skill and diligence.

It is difficult to formulate proposals which crumble away in the act of putting them into definite shape and detail ; proposals the authors of which prefer to leave them vague and general ; or if any one has come forward with a scheme more detailed than the rest, the others are sure to protest that they are not answerable for the absurd details of his addition. No working-drawing, so to speak, of Socialism has yet been made by its architects. And yet some of them are bold enough to cry out for the demolition, sudden, violent, and total, of the present edifice of civilization. Before a man consents to have his house tumbled about his ears, he may well insist upon inspecting precise and accurate plans of the new palace into which he is invited to migrate.

There are two kinds of labour, storable and unstorable, or productive and ministrative. The former is such labour as making a coat, or writing a book ; book and coat can be stored up till there is a demand for them.

Ministrative labour is illustrated by a surgeon lancing an abscess, or an usher teaching a class. Whatever the labour be, some Socialists propose that the doers of it form a gild, and that gild have the monopoly in its own sphere—thus a joiners’ gild, a tailors’ gild, a shoemakers’, a masons’, a physicians’, a schoolmasters’. The maker of a coat, then, will take his article to the gild stores, and receive his pay thence, if he be one of the fraternity ; otherwise he will not be authorized to make coats, except, if he chooses, for his own back. The gild will sell the coat. The writer of a book will take it to his literary gild, and they will pay him according to the number of days which they think it would have taken an ordinary man amongst their number to have written that work. But the surgeon and the schoolmaster have no work to take to their gild : who then shall remunerate them ? If they pocket their fee according to approved modern practice, they will not be members of the Co-operative Commonwealth, they will be working on their own account. It appears, therefore, that the patient or the pupil must carry his fee to the gild of physicians or the gild of preceptors, and the gild will pay their man for doing so many days’ work.

Every gild will manage its own affairs, subject to the central control of the State—that is, of the whole people in meeting assembled. The State will fix, from time to time, a prescribed limit of production for the productive gilds ; how many tons of coal shall be raised, how much wheat grown, how much cloth woven, and the rest. This the State will be able to do by employing a school of statisticians, whose forecast will be received with deference by the people. Sometimes it will be necessary to order a large transference of workers from one gild to another. In this system it will be observed that whoever buys anything, buys it of the State, that is, of some gild over which the State has plenary dominion and control. The State, in like manner, buys all the marketable labour of the individual. The State, having full power over the individual, will always have an escape from bankruptcy by demanding his labour at a lower figure.

For the whole people to form one sovereign legislative assembly, the State cannot be very large. Nations will be resolved into myriads of sovereign cities or communes. These cities may federate together for mutual protection. Some Socialists, however, are opposed to the idea of federation, as infringing the liberty of the several component States. Some indeed go so far as to wish to get rid of the State itself, as barring the free action of the individual. But these are madmen.

Socialism, to be successful, would need to embrace the civilized world. Otherwise the threatened capitalists would hasten to transfer their wealth to countries where private capital was still allowed. It might even be worth while for some State to stand aloof from the Socialist movement, thus to grow rich at her neighbours’ expense.

Still, man fell from Paradise, and might fall from Socialism. And it yet remains to see whether the Socialist State would be a paradise or a pandemonium, a heaven or a hell on earth. That will depend largely—chiefly, perhaps—on the spirit in which it is worked. But we must consider whether the institutions are such as, taking man as he is, are likely to be worked in a good spirit. The first advances of State Socialism were made more than two thousand years ago. They were confronted by one of the keenest practical intellects that ever lived, with this emphatic condemnation : “ This style of legislation wears a good face and an air of philanthropy. No sooner is it heard than it is eagerly embraced, under the expectation of a marvellous love to grow out from it between man and man, especially if the proposer goes on to inveigh against the evils of existing institutions, setting all down to the want of a community of goods. These evils, however, are due, not to the want of a community of property, but to the depravity of human nature. For experience teaches that disputes are far more likely to occur among people who possess property in common and live as partners, than among those who hold their estates in separate tenure. The life proposed appears to be altogether impossible.”¹

¹ Aristotle, Politics, 2, 5.

There are a great many minds who are unable to withstand a brilliant picture set before their imagination. Their intellect is fascinated, their reason dazzled : they take what is set before them without argument, and hold it in spite of argument ; it is so airy, so romantic, it must be true. Socialism has made way under this advantage : it is a charming Utopia on paper.

The first difficulty about the scheme is a political one. Pure unmitigated democracy is to Socialism the very breath of its nostrils : for if the State owned all capital, and privileged classes ruled the State, where would the workman be? But pure democracy is a very hard government to work. There is no instance in history of its working over a large area and for a long period of time. But the area of government duties in the Socialist State would be very large indeed. Not only would it include all the functions of government proper, as at present carried on, but likewise the supreme management of business throughout the country. To be sure, those functions would be simplified by the absence of competition, but even in their simplest form the administrative duties would be enormous. The State might have armies of clerks to work for it : moreover, the several gilds, as proposed above, might each conduct their own affairs; but there would always remain the appeal to the general assembly, an appeal that would be made continually. The assembly, unless it were willing that the government should pass into bureaucracy and oligarchy, would exercise an active and meddlesome supervision over the gilds and their officers. It would be a body huge and unwieldy, established on the principle of a vote for every man, and every man one vote. Obstruction would flourish there rank and impassable, like the growth of an Indian jungle. The labour of legislation would supplant the labour of production. The people would be voting supplies when they should be working for them. To “ run,” as the Americans phrase it, the Social Democracy, there ought to be, as there was at Athens and at Rome, one set of men to work as slaves, and another set to legislate and adjudicate as citizens.¹ Thus only would there be shoulders broad enough to bear the immense burden of sovereign and proprietary right combined, which Socialists wish to devolve upon the sovereign people.

¹ Rousseau was shrewd enough to see this. He says of the Greeks: “Des esclaves faisaient ses travaux : sa grande affaire était sa liberté. . . . Quoi ! la liberté ne se maintient qu’à l’appui de la servitude ! Peut-être. Les deux excès se touchent” (Du Contrat Social, iii. 15.).

We are told in reply that the General Assembly, in Socialist times to come, will consist of people so highly educated, so wise to discern their own best good in the good of the commonwealth, so very unlike all people within our experience, the British House of Commons included, that there need be no fear of obstruction, over-legislation, partisanship, or any other of the infirmities that have beset popular assemblies in the past. In other words, we are requested to discard all the lessons of history in judging of Socialist proposals. By what other canon is it possible to judge them except the experience of the past ? “ What is it that hath been ? The same thing that shall be.”

Peoples have their favourites as well as kings. The favourite of a Social Democracy would be a very formidable personage. The lives, liberties, and property of all would be in his hands. It is the way of the multitude in politics to overlook principles which they cannot understand or see the application of, and stand by persons who excite their enthusiasm and sympathy. To these persons they blindly commit the management of concerns, as our large-tongued James committed himself and his kingdom to “ Doggie Steenie.” But this devotion to what our forefathers in Cromwell’s time called “ The Single Person ” looks ominous for popular liberty. If ever in the Socialist State a Fighting Gild—in other words, a standing army—shall rise up by the side of the other gilds, the people may find some day that they and all their capital have passed into the ownership of a military despot.

So much for political difficulties. They have been the difficulties of democracies in past times, and Socialism will not be exempt from them. Rather, as being the most democratic of democracies, it will experience them in an aggravated form. There remains a social difficulty peculiarly incident to the constitution we are now considering. The only source of private wealth here will be wages. That is to say, wages will be the only lawful source : but it is not to be expected that the greed of having, and the dislike of working, will be extinguished in the heart of man. On the contrary, when wealth by the force of law and public opinion is made a mere thing to squander and enjoy, men will first scrape together a little wage, then quit work altogether and spend their earnings wildly; then come back with less inclination than before to work, agitate for higher wages, abuse their foremen, rant and cabal in the Assembly, steal the wages of a more industrious neighbour, embezzle the gild-money ; or they will borrow at usury, as gamblers contract their debts in disregard of legal sanction, from some canny workman who will let them have part of his wages for a consideration. Saving money for commercial gain is certainly not the noblest motive that a man can have for suppressing his spendthrift and riotous appetites : yet it is a motive, and one which poor humanity can ill afford to lose. That motive is flung aside and lost by Socialism.

There is an ugly foreign word, unknown to our fathers, that Socialists now use as a watchword, the Proletariate. It means the people who have nothing but their labour to live by, and who give birth to children as poor as themselves. Socialism promises to be the enfranchisement, aye, the enthronement, of the Proletariate. But Socialism once established would witness the speedy development of a Proletariate within the Proletariate thus ennobled and crowned. In the days when the workmen are to have all, and all are to be workmen, there will grow up in the vitals of this new society a class of drones, of workmen who have gone to the bad ; degraded, debauched, and dissolute creatures, whom no gild will employ, and who have no mind to belong anywhere where work is to be done. People like these—“ stinging drones ” Plato calls them—are, in countries like England and France at present, systematically coerced and kept under by force, the doing, Socialists say, of the bourgeoisie. But in the new republic to come they will be emancipated, on the principle that one man is as good as another : so they will sway from side to side like unsecured cargo in the hold of the political vessel. Their votes in the Assembly will be bidden for by the political adventurer, the Clodius of the future : one day they will shout for a Clodius, another for a Caesar. This is the revolution that is preparing in the womb of the Revolution itself.

It may be said that Socialism will disfranchise these drones, every man that will not work, and treat them as criminals. But that would be to make labour obligatory, an intention which at least some modern Socialists disclaim. Besides, once disfranchisement sets in, many may be found to deserve it.

The right and left arm of Socialism in argument are Karl Marx’s Theory of Value and Lassalle’s Iron Law of Wages. We will deal with the Iron Law first. There is a certain level of wages, the lowest that is sufficient to enable a workman to live and work, and leave children behind him to go on working when he is dead. If wages sink below this level, numbers of workmen die : and the scarcity of labour in the market brings wages up again to their normal level. If that level is exceeded, more children are born to working people, and more live : thus in time the labour-market is glutted and wages sink. The conclusion is that, as things are, the lot of the labouring classes can never be permanently improved : they and their children have nothing to hope for but a bare subsistence : they are iron-bound in toil and penury. Whence the further conclusion is drawn, that the labouring classes must break up the established order and the distinction between labourer and capitalist.

The Iron Law professes to state things as they must be. The first verification of such a statement is by comparison with things as they are. Now, looking at things as they are, we find that the Iron Law has been broken, is being broken, cancelled and removed, by the action of the Trades Unions. Socialists themselves explain that what they call bare subsistence must be taken with a certain latitude. It includes more in Queen Victoria’s reign than it did in Queen Anne’s. It means more for an Englishman than for a coolie. So the term may be stretched until it comes to signify quite a comfortable existence ; and when that limit is reached, the workman need no longer complain of the Iron Law. It depends in some measure on the workmen themselves to keep wages up towards this limit. This has been the object of the Trades Unions, an object not unsuccessfully pursued.

There are always two limits to wages, a superior and an inferior. The superior limit is the utmost that masters can afford to give ; the inferior is the least that workmen can afford to take. If the superior limit is past, the master closes his business : if the inferior limit is not attained, the workman dies of slow starvation. Where labour is very unproductive, the superior limit falls down upon the inferior: where the productiveness of labour generally is very great, the superior limit rises high above the other. That is the workman’s opportunity. Then let him combine with his fellows to ask a high price : the master can afford it. Then he may live and flourish, and snap his fingers at the Iron Law.

The workman who does fall a victim to the Iron Law is the unfortunate person who, for one cause or another, cannot belong to any Union, and is glad to eke out a livelihood at any sacrifice. He comes under the operation of the “ sweating system,” and the worst of it is that he (or she, for it is too frequently a woman) is glad to be “ sweated,” the alternative being starvation. At this price of human misery we are supplied with cheap goods. But we need not raise the demon of Socialism to be rid of the sweating system. A more innocuous and more effectual remedy would be to relinquish the cheap goods, and pay honest prices for our luxuries to provide fair wages.

But the right arm of Socialism, as I have said, is Karl Marx’s Theory of Value. He presupposes the distinction between worth, or value in use, and value in exchange, or market-value. The worth of a thing is the esteem which its possessor has of its utility to him. Thus the convenience of being ferried across a river, thereby saving a seven miles’ walk when I am short of time, has a worth in my eyes equal perhaps to £1. The market-value of that same passage, the ferry being a public one, is 1d. Value in exchange is measured by the commercial price of any article, or of a service rendered. Karl Marx, then, reasoned thus. The exchange value of a commodity, he said, is the amount of human labour that has been put into it. Take, for instance, a regimental coat. There was, to start with, a sheep, a work of nature ; but the shepherd laboured to rear and feed it, and to shear it : there was the carriage of the wool, the dyeing it, the manufacture of it into cloth, the tailoring. There has been large use of machinery in these processes, but the machines were made by man. The value of the coat is all this labour added together, all the human labour that such a coat involves. Moreover, Marx goes on, labour is estimated by the time that it takes a man to do it. Thus the value of the coat is the amount of man’s time that has been spent in making it. It is obvious to object that at that rate the slower the workman, the more valuable the work. Marx replies that by time we must understand the time which an average workman would take over the task.

I waive for the present another objection with Marx’s reply to it, and proceed to show how this theory is pursued to the destruction of capital. Suppose we have before us a consignment of five thousand regimental coats, fresh from the premises of Messrs. X. Y. Z., military tailors and outfitters. The coats are of considerable value : that is, they represent not a little of man’s time spent in making them. Who created that value ? The man, it is answered, whose time and labour has been spent, and is contained as it were jellified in those coats. But who are those men ? X. Y. Z. ? Not a bit of it. Y. and Z. are away perhaps boating on Lake Lucerne; and X. has not been on the premises more than two hours a day, and has never laid a finger on the coats in any stage of their manufacture. The men who created that value are other workmen going before, and finally the workmen or “ hands ” of Messrs. X. Y. Z. But now who will pocket the price, the equivalent of that value? Messrs. X. Y. Z. will take it, and divide into three portions. With one they will pay for the raw material and machinery : one will be paid to their workmen as wages : the third portion, it is said, they will put into their own pockets, and on it live in luxury, doing no work, creating no value, but consuming the lives and devouring the labours of other men. Messrs. X. Y. Z. are capitalists. That third portion which they take to themselves, is termed “ surplus value.” Karl Marx proposes to abolish Messrs. X. Y. Z., and distribute that surplus value among the hands that created it, the workmen.

It is time to go back upon the objection that we waived just now. A carver in wood spends his time in turning out wooden imitations of cakes of Brown Windsor Soap. In ten days, working eight hours a day, he has turned out two hundred of these wooden tablets. No ordinary carver could have done the job in less. The man goes about to sell his products and can find none to buy them. In vain he relates how long he took to make them, and babbles of labour-jelly and Karl Marx : the public will not have them. They are no use. This brings Marx down to saying that by labour he means socially useful labour, or what society esteems such. Here is a vast alteration of the theory. Value, which had been all reduced to labour and time, is found to contain a totally different element, social utility. So the value of labour itself is not the mere labour and toil of it, not the mere time that it took, or would have taken an average man ; but the issue or outcome of the labour to society is an important factor in its value.

It further appears that there are various orders of labour, some more useful to society than others, and therefore more valuable, time for time. In other words, we must consider the quality of labour, not merely the quantity. The attempt to reduce labour of high quality, or the best skilled labour, to quantity by referring it to the time spent in education or apprenticeship, is futile and absurd. Lord Wellington drove the French out of the Peninsula in something like five years : how long would it have taken an ordinary soldier, with Arthur Wellesley’s education, to do the like? How long would the Duke of York, of Walcheren celebrity, have taken to do it ? As in war, so in medicine, literature, engineering, politics, business management, art, there are men whose labour is quite incommensurable with the labour of their fellows. There are born aristocrats, a nobility of nature’s own creation. And there is every grade of quality between one man’s labour and his neighbour’s, the difference arising partly from natural endowment, partly from advantages of position. Thus the little finger of Caesar or Crassus is thicker than the loins of Drom : half an hour of Caesar’s thought does what Dromo could not do in weeks, perhaps not in centuries. So blind, so misleading, so outrageously neglectful of the facts, is this conceit of reducing all value to labour, and all labour to time.

To return to Messrs. X. Y. Z., their “hands,” and the regimental coats. These coats are valuable, not merely as representing a certain amount of labour, but as being tolerably well adapted to meet a public need. But who thought of adapting them ? Who foresaw the need and was forward to meet it? Who set up the machinery, improved and perfected it, bought up the raw material, got together the workmen, inspected and controlled them? All this is the doing of capitalists, not of the hands. It is not hand-labour, but it is labour of the highest social utility. Unless this be done, all the labour of the workmen is of no use at all, and has no value. So I have seen four horses dragging a load of timber up the slope of a hill, straining and bending to the weight, and by their side at his ease walked a man urging the animals with low cries : the horses carted the timber, but the man carted it too, the former as physical causes, the latter in the way of mental and moral causation ; and as the man would have been helpless to move the timber without the horses, so the horses without the man could never have carried it to any good end. But it will be urged, the capitalist is a man and the workmen are men too : the workmen then may replace the capitalist. Not if they continue to be workmen, that is, hand-labourers. You cannot have every one working with his hands. There must, as Socialists allow, be directors, statisticians, managers, whose work is mental, not manual; there must be men set aside for mental labour, as others are made over exclusively, this to one, this to another narrow province of manual labour. The labour and use of capitalists, and the value they create, are proved by the vast bureaucracy which Socialists are compelled to think of instituting in order to replace them. It is no more fair to deny the capitalist his profit, and call it unjust gain, because one has imagined a contrivance to work in his stead, than it would be fair of a capitalist to defraud his labourers of their wages, in view of a dreamy vision of machinery to come whereby he shall no longer need them. The present actual creator of social utilities is to have his reward in the present ; the coming man may look for his at the justice of future generations.

It is only fair to X. Y. Z. to observe that they do not spend all the so-called surplus value in living riotously : that is what Socialists advise workmen to do with the said surplus, when it comes to be distributed amongst them. But X. Y. Z. capitalize great part of it, and provide for work and production to come. Their investments are not always judicious, it is true ; but it is generally better to invest than to squander. More production means of itself higher wages ; and less production, lower wages.

Pressed by arguments like these, Socialists sometimes change their key, and tell us that at any rate Messrs X. Y. Z. are wonderfully well paid for their personal contribution to the value of their goods. As one puts it, “ half the cake is a pretty dear price for overseeing its baking.” But how many capitalists get half the cake, or a net profit equal to the sum of wages and other working expenses put together? Perhaps there ought to be higher wages ; certainly the capitalist has other duties to his workmen besides paying them their wages ; but it is a law of nature, from which even the Socialist Commonwealth will not be exempt, that the superintendent be better paid than the journeyman baker.

Under the direction of intelligence, labour has vastly increased the wealth of the world, an increase which Socialists are never weary of enlarging upon, while they forget that it is due, not to common labour merely, but also to the intelligence of the capitalist setting common labour to work under advantageous conditions.

Beaten out of their first position, Socialists take up this second and stronger ground. “ Granted that some capitalists can rightly claim a reward as productive causes, for example, a gentleman farmer, or the managing partner in a factory, or the lessee of a coal-pit, what shall we say of the young nobleman who owns this pit and half a dozen others, and who is lounging about Pall Mall or Rotten Row, with less knowledge of coal than a housemaid, and with less brains than four-fifths of the miners ? ”

Personally, of course, he is not a productive cause, though his money is. But what good comes to society of his having that money and that exemption from all personal labour of production ? Why this, that such sinecures are the prizes of the intellectual labour that is thrown into the work of production. The managing partner, and the coal-pit lessee aforesaid, toils and moils in the hope that, before the evening of life, he shall have reached an opulence which shall enable him to spend the rest of his days exempt from the labour of producing, and moreover to hand over his store, undiminished by his period of rest, to his children. His ambition is to found a family in wealth. He works that his posterity may not have to work as he does. An ignoble desire, you say : but a potent moral cause of production. This second and further good comes from the existence of a class of unproductive capitalists, that society has available an array, as it were, of pensioners, who can, and who as a class do, undertake and perform a mass of ministrative duties. Of this class are our Cabinet Ministers, and our higher Public Service generally, our clergy, authors, scientific investigators, musicians, artists, poets, the men who refine our taste and brighten our lives. Society exists not for consumption alone, nor for consumption chiefly, and quite as little for production alone. Socialists, who are fond of the fable of the Belly and the Members, may remember that some organs in the body minister to higher purposes than those of nutrition and reproduction.

The class, then, of unproductive capitalists is valuable to society. The drones, who are found in this class as in every other class, and well-nigh in every family, high and low, should be induced to such labour as they are capable of by public opinion. There is no harm trying to render their position uncomfortable, even by law, if that can be done without destroying greater store of goods than they at present idly consume. For example, they may be taxed in proportion to their laziness and their luxury, if need be : but they are not a reason for overturning the whole Social Beehive, in the hope of building up the comb afresh on unnatural lines of Socialism.

Communism has a wider signification than socialism. By communism in its wider sense we understand that system of economics which advocates the abolition of private property and the introduction of community of goods, at least as far as capital, or means of production, is concerned. Communism in this broad sense admits of various forms, the chief of which are the following:

1. Negative communism is restricted to the negation of private property. According to this form of communism all goods should equally be put at the disposal of all. This species of communism found a zealous apostle in the person of MOSES Hess, who flourished in the forties of the past century. Unrestricted right of enjoyment for every individual, no obligation of working, but active co-operation of all for the sake of the common interest, these were the fundamental dogmas of his gospel. This preposterous form of communism is no longer advocated by any one, at least not to our knowledge; for it is evident that a system which does not exclude others from the use of those things which individuals have appropriated to themselves would ruin all industry and bring about a state of universal misery and utter disorder. For who would till a field, if others were permitted to come at will and to reap the harvest?

2. Positive communism demands the total or partial transfer of all property to the community, which is to be owner, administrator, and distributor of all the products. This communism may be of two or rather three different kinds:

(a) Extreme positive communism advocates the transfer of all goods without exception to one great common administration. All production and the use of all goods should be common—common meals, common dormitories, common hospitals, etc. This system was advocated by some of the earlier communists, and by some religious sects.

(b) Moderate positive communism advocates only the abolition of private property as far as capital, or the materials of labor, or productive goods in contradistinction to non-productive goods, is concerned. By productive goods are meant real estate, all kinds of raw material, factories, machines, tools, means of transportation, in fine, everything not intended for immediate consumption. These goods should be handed over to and be administrated by some sort of commonwealth. This moderate form of positive communism is at present the only one having adherents. They are divided into two large groups bitterly hostile to each other: anarchism and socialism.

(a) Anarchism (anarchist communism) demands the transfer of productive property to independent groups of workingmen (communities). In these groups, united to each other by mere federation, each individual is to receive the entire product of his work. Moreover, all governmental functions are to cease. For, anarchists desire to realize absolute liberty and equality to their full extent. Nevertheless anarchism does not imply anarchy or disorder. If you ask, how can order be maintained without civil functionaries, without legislation, courts of justice, police administration, etc., anarchists will refer you to that highly modern theory of evolution, according to which mankind is supposed to ascend to higher and higher stages of perfection; after class differences and the domination of the rich are abolished, order will spring of its own accord from the lively sense of solidarity, which will then animate every human being. Every one will jealously safeguard the right of each one to do as he pleases as long as he does not inflict unwarranted injury on others. According to this doctrine free contracts are the only social bond, the compulsive power of the state being absolutely excluded.¹

¹ Cf. Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie (1896), p. 137. There are also anarchists who demand the abolition of government, but wish to maintain private property.

Unlike socialists, these anarchists eschew the use of so-called political means for obtaining their purpose; thus they disdain to take part in elections, parliamentary discussions, and the like. They appeal principally to violence and explosives, their aim being the quickest possible destruction of existing society. Their principles were formulated in great part already by PROUDHON († 1865),² and again by MAX STIRNER (alias Karl Schmidt, † 1857);¹ but the real founder of anarchism is to be sought in the Russian BAKUNIN († 1876). For the rest, the details of the anarchist theory have never been fully developed, and the views of different anarchists are widely divergent. Other anarchists of note besides those already mentioned are the Russian prince KRAPOTKIN, the geographer ÉLISÉE RECLUS, the former socialist JOHN Most, and JOHN Mackay.

² Concerning Proudhon cf. Menger, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (1891), p. 73 sqq.

¹ Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844); published anew by Reclam.

In May, 1901, the German anarchists assembled in convention at Bietigheim near Stuttgart issued a manifesto, which contains the first official programme of their party.

“The present order of society [they maintain] is based on the system of oppression and exploitation and will never make any concessions to the working classes; social-reform laws are made merely for the purpose of cajoling workingmen into peace and contentment, but their effect is mostly hurtful. Therefore anarchists reject all participation in parliaments or other legislative bodies. The revolutionary workingmen advocate the transfer to the community of all real estate, of the means of production, and of the public utilities of modern civilization. Their ideal is the free socialistic community, whose every member is at liberty to live and to act according to his own inclinations. In spite of persecutions on the part of the state and of capital, the revolutionary workingmen will pursue their goal undaunted. The ‘Federation of Revolutionaries’ promotes this purpose by enlightenment and culture, by revolutionary thought and sentiment, by supporting the anarchist press and literature, by establishing debating clubs, etc. Workingmen must be trained for the economic struggle, they must organize, found co-operative societies in order to obtain control of production and consumption and to hasten the socialization of the state. ‘These are our doctrines, our goal, our methods. For this we combat with the conviction of final victory. This victory will be tantamount to liberty and prosperity for the entire nation.’”²

² Cf. Germania (1901), No. 101, Supplement.

Besides these theoretical anarchists there are also practical anarchists who are perfectly unconcerned about speculative disquisitions. They aim at a radical destruction of civil organization and of all authority (Ni Dieu, ni maître); what is to happen thereafter they reck not. Such views are but the “phantoms of a heat-oppresséd brain.”

Anarchists are not to be confounded with the French communists, who aimed at the political independence of the single communes without demanding a general abolition of private property.

By communards, on the other hand, are meant the supporters of the Paris Commune in 1871.

Nihilism is a peculiarly Russian phase of anarchism. Among its adherents are found a number of anarchists, but in itself it is a purely practical political party of revolutionary tendencies aiming at the destruction of the Czar’s autocratic powers.

(8) Socialistic communism, or simply socialism, advocates the transformation of all capital, or means of production, into the common property of society, or of the state, and the administration of the produce and the distribution of the proceeds by the state. Since modern socialists, and chiefly the followers of Karl Marx, intend to realize this scheme entirely upon a democratic basis, they call themselves social democrats, and their system social democracy. Social democracy may be defined as that system of political economy which advocates the inalienable ownership on the part of the state of all capital, or materials of labor, as also the public administration of all economic goods and the distribution of all produce by the democratic state.¹

¹ Many socialists protest against the expression “socialistic state;” whether they are right in doing so we shall see later on.

We call socialism a system of political economy, not as if it did not also lead to many political and social changes, but because the gist of socialism consists in the nationalization of property and in the public administration and distribution of all goods. Socialism, at least as it is conceived by its modern defenders, is in the first instance an economical system, and only secondarily and subordinately a political system affecting society, the state, the family, etc.

Socialism has been defined as the political economy of the suffering classes,¹ that is, “a philosophy which in its nature and in the sentiments of contemporaries is actually the economic philosophy of the suffering classes.” This explanatory clause is, to say the least, superfluous; to our mind it is incorrect. It makes the nature of socialism dependent on an external factor, namely, the actual subjective conception of men. Even though all the socialists of to-day could be convinced of the impracticability of their system and made to abandon it, yet socialism would still remain the same system, though it no longer existed in the consciousness of contemporaries. On the other hand, the ideal state imagined by Plato is in truth socialistic, although his contemporaries looked upon his theory as an idle dream. Moreover, if such a definition were correct, the moderate economic system which is advocated by the German Centre party and other conservative politicians for the relief of the laborer and artisan would be socialistic, which we cannot grant to be the case.

¹ Schönberg, Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie, vol. I. p. 107 (2d ed.).

The definition given by E. DE LAVELEYE² is equally vague and incorrect. By socialism he understands “every doctrine which aims first at greater equality of social conditions, and secondly endeavors to obtain this reform by means of the state or legislation.” No wonder, therefore, that he speaks of conservative, Catholic, evangelical, and international socialism. It is perfectly evident that such loose notions and comprehensive definitions cannot possibly form the basis for a clear and thorough discussion of the nature of socialism.

² Le socialisme contemporain, 6th ed., p. xii.

EDWARD BERNSTEIN defines socialism as “the movement toward, or the actual existence of, the co-operative organization of society.”¹

¹ Die Voraussetzungen des Socialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (1899), p. 84.

From our own definition it is evident that every socialist is a communist in the broader sense of the term; but not every communist is a socialist. Positive communism is related to socialism as the genus to the species. Every system advocating common property or common ownership may be called communistic. But only that system can be termed socialistic which intends to organize the production and distribution of goods by means of the entire society. Of course, this organization presupposes the common ownership of the means of production.

Karl Marx, the chief founder of modern socialism, often spoke of himself as a communist; and rightly so, since the general notion of communism is always contained in the specific notion of socialism. Every horse is an animal, but not every animal is a horse. Thus every socialist is a communist, but not vice versa. It is also manifest that neither in communism generally nor in its special form called socialism is there any question of a distribution of property either taking place once for all or else recurring at stated periods. For the basic principle of communism is the absolute negation of private ownership in the means of production.

Moreover, it also follows that the so-called agrarian socialists, who deny only the right of private property in land, cannot simply be called socialists, although they defend many principles which would logically lead to the total abolition of private property.¹ Nor can those politicians and theorists who in principle admit the right of private property, but in their economical systems put the administration of private property almost entirely into the hands of the state, be confounded with true socialists.²

¹ Concerning agrarian socialists cf. our work: The Champions of Agrarian Socialism (Buffalo, N. Y., Peter Paul & Bro.) and Moralphilosophie 4th ed., vol. II. p. 247 sqq.

² Cf. our Moralphilosophie, vol. II. p. 597. Wagner, Grundlegung der polit. Oekonomie, 3d ed., pt. I. § 18 sqq.

In the meaning which we have assigned to it the term socialism is current not only in German and English, but also in French, Italian, and Spanish, especially so in works of a scientific character. Also Pope Leo XIII. in his Encyclicals on the social question (Quod Apostolici, Dec. 28, 1878, and Rerum Novarum, May 15, 1891) employs the word socialism exactly as we do. Therefore we perfectly agree with Cardinal Manning in maintaining that to speak of Christian or Catholic socialism is a proof of vagueness of thought or at least of expression. It is our urgent desire that this term should retain its accustomed signification. Why breed confusion and obscurity by the ambiguous use of terms in discussions which stand most in need of clearness and of a well-defined terminology? However, we call attention to the fact that there is a great difference between socialistic and social. Socialistic or socialist is applied to everything referring to socialism, whilst social refers to life in human society. Every one may and should be an advocate of social reform, whilst combating strenuously all socialistic tendencies.

Wherever socialism exists at present it is also democratic, aiming at the introduction of the greatest possible equality; therefore the terms socialism and social democracy may be regarded as synonymous. In French and English socialism is also often spoken of as collectivism.

From the most ancient times we meet with certain partially communistic systems and institutions. On the island of Crete we find a certain kind of communism introduced as early as 1300 B.C., which in later times Lycurgus took as his model for the constitution of Sparta. This constitution seems to have been Plato’s ideal when he composed his work entitled “The Republic,” as also, though in a more moderate form, in the work on “Laws;” for in these works he commends community of goods, community of education, and even community of meals. Aristotle,¹ who accurately describes these economic systems, has also clearly demonstrated their untenableness. While the communistic attempts of antiquity suppose a large portion of the population to be in the condition of slavery, there arose in the first Christian community in Jerusalem a higher kind of communism, based upon true charity and equality. Among the early Christians those who chose could retain their possessions; but most of them, of their own accord, sold all they possessed and gave the proceeds to the apostles for the common support of all.² In voluntary poverty the first Christians wished to devote themselves wholly to the service of God and of their neighbor. Such a condition, however, in its very nature, considering men as they generally are, could not be obligatory, universal, permanent—a circumstance which was overlooked by the Apostolics, Albigenses, Anabaptists, and other sects which in the course of centuries fell off from the Church and clung to the principle of the unlawfulness of private property. Apart from these heresies and from some communistic political works of fiction based, as it seems, chiefly on the “Utopia” of Blessed Thomas More,¹ we may say that communism and socialism are essentially the growth of modern times. The reductions of Paraguay, which are frequently set up as models of communism, were not strictly communistic, and were destined only to be institutions of a transitory character.²

¹ Polit. ii. 3.

² Acts v.

¹ On account of his Utopia Bl. Thomas More has often been numbered among socialists, but wrongly so; for, a distinction must be made between his criticism of the social conditions of his time and his descriptions of the Utopian state. The latter were intended merely to serve as a background for bringing the criticisms into brighter relief. At the close of the book he himself points out the absurdity of many Utopian institutions.

² Cf. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, vol. xxv. p. 455.

1. Modern socialism differs essentially from its precursors by the fact that it is a permanent phenomenon, to be met with in all civilized countries, wherever industry is highly developed. This latter circumstance by itself proves to evidence that there is question here not of a merely external appearance produced artificially by popular agitators and demagogues, but that we are confronted by a phenomenon rooted in, and nourished by, the soil of modern social conditions.

The roots of modern socialism are to be found first of all in the great development of industry and the consequent modification of social conditions dating from the latter part of the eighteenth century. Since the French Revolution the unhampered development of industrial forces in unrestricted competition has undoubtedly brought about astounding results in the field of technical discoveries and their application to industry and commerce. But one of these results was also the great division of society into two hostile ; Classes—a small number of wealthy capitalists, and an immense multitude of laborers—which classes are usually designated respectively as capital and labor. But above all, the proletariat, that homeless, floating population of our great cities which has already assumed gigantic proportions, is the almost inevitable result of modern industry, in as far as by its machinery it practically precludes the existence of independent tradesmen and promotes the concentration of great masses of factory laborers.

Side by side with this increasing proletariat the disruption of family life, drunkenness, and dissolute morals have been growing apace. Moreover, by the baneful influence of the higher classes gross materialism and an insatiable craving for enjoyment have penetrated the masses of the people, whilst numerous upstarts with their quickly amassed wealth openly revel in senseless luxury. Thus the smouldering fire of discontent needed but a breeze to fan the flames into a fierce conflagration.

The French Revolution of 1789 marked indeed a new epoch in the world’s history. The third estate, the so-called bourgeoisie, raising the banner of liberty, equality, and fraternity, had come to power and influence. In opposition to them there was soon formed the fourth estate, consisting of penniless proletarians. From the very beginning of the revolution “fraternity” was no more than an ornamental catch-word. Liberty and equality were indeed granted in political matters, but for a numerous class of the population they meant no more than the privilege of being free and equal in misery. It was then that unrestricted competition was let loose upon the world to strangle the unprotected artisans in its clutches. These victims are marshalled into line by modern socialism; they are to be emancipated by destroying the monopoly of capital in the hands of a few. No wonder, therefore, that already at the cradle of socialism was heard the cry: “La propriété, c’est le vol”—Property is theft”¹—the cry repeated later on by Proudhon and Lassalle, and hurled as a firebrand among an excitable populace.

¹ Brissot de Warville, Sur la propriété et le vol (1780).

2. The first to raise the standard of modern socialism was FRANCIS NOËL BABEUF, or, as he was pleased to style himself in revolutionary times, Gracchus Babeuf. The starting-point of his theory is the idea of equality. At the head of the Constitution of 1793 were displayed the words: “All men are equal by nature and by law;” and again: “The purpose of society is universal happiness.” But for most people this declaration of equality and happiness remained mere waste paper, and the reason for this failure was imagined to be private ownership. To realize equality also on the field of economics Babeuf formulated the following demands: Every one is obliged to work; the time of work is to be determined by law; production is to be regulated by a supreme committee elected by the people; necessary work is to be allotted to the citizens; disagreeable jobs are performed in turn by every citizen; each citizen has a right to all commodities, which are to be distributed to each according to his needs.

At bottom Babeuf’s demands are identical with those formulated by Bebel and other modern socialists. Foreshadowing, as it were also, the tactics of modern socialism, Babeuf promised his adherents a tremendous increase in production to follow from the adoption of his plans. To promote the execution of his ideas he founded a secret society, which was discovered by the police and brought him to the guillotine, May 27, 1797.

3. Whilst Babeuf took the idea of equality as the basis of his reforms Count HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON (1760–1825) built his plans on the foundation of labor. He was the first who endeavored to place modern socialism upon a systematic scientific basis, and at the same time he called into existence a school of scientific socialists. From him dates “scientific socialism” in the present acceptation of the term.

Liberal political economists had established the principle that labor alone is the foundation and source of all value, and, consequently, of all wealth. Socialism seized upon this principle and made it the basis of its operations against the modern conditions of property, Saint-Simon drew from this principle the conclusion that labor—industry in its wider sense— must be the standard of all social institutions; in other words, that the laborers should not as heretofore take the last but the first place in society; it was, therefore, the business of social science to restore the laborers to the position due to them.

Saint-Simon was only a theorist. He made no practical attempts to give effect to his views; nay, he did not even venture directly to question the right of private property. From the principle that labor alone is the source of value his disciple ENFANTIN drew the conclusion that the unearned increment obtained without working by landowners and capitalists is unjust and therefore to be abolished. His conclusion is thereafter to be met with in socialistic literature in endless variations. BAZARD, another disciple of Saint-Simon, intending to remove the inequality and seeming injustice of the existing conditions of property, demanded a complete modification of the rights of inheritance. In place of kindred he would make merit the base of inheritance; or rather, the state alone was to be the heir of all its children and distribute the property of the deceased among the most worthy of the living.

4. Almost contemporaneously with Saint-Simon, CHARLES FOURIER (1772–1837) proposed his system of socialism. Fourier proceeds from the supposition that what is ordinarily called the will of God is nothing else than the laws of universal attraction, which uphold the universe and manifest themselves in the instincts and tendencies of all things. Also in man these instincts are revelations of the divine will. Therefore it is unlawful to suppress them; they should be gratified; from their gratification arises human happiness; but the means to this gratification is the organization of labor. For, as he claims, every man is entitled to his share of labor, viz., he has the right to demand remunerative labor from the state, if he cannot obtain it elsewhere. As it seems, Fourier was the first to enunciate this right in the sense in which it is accepted by socialists nowadays.¹

¹ Especially in his books: Théorie des quatre mouvements (1808) and Traité de l’association domestique-agricole (1822). Fourier’s disciple CONSIDÉRANT developed his master’s idea more fully and gained for it many adherents. Cf. Menger, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag, p. 16.

This organization of labor is to be brought about in this wise. Proprietors, without losing the right of property, should contribute all their wealth to the common industry, in order that each individual in continued succession may be able to apply himself to that occupation to which his momentary instinct may incline him. Such labor would be a delight. Fourier, moreover, makes the following propositions. On every square mile should dwell two thousand persons (a phalanx) in one large building (phalanstère) under the control of an overseer (unarque). The phalanxes, again, should be divided into series, the series into groups. Thus each one might at pleasure change his labor. From the proceeds of the labor four-twelfths goes to the capital as interest; three-twelfths is given to genius, and the rest, five-twelfths, is given to labor. Yet neither Saint- Simon nor Fourier ventured to suggest the abolition of private property. For the rest, there is an intrinsic contradiction in the very fact that Fourier allows private property to exist and wishes to compel the proprietor to give all his capital for common use.

5. ROBERT OWEN (born 1771 at Newtown in Wales, died 1858) exercised a far-reaching influence upon the modern labor movement by being the first to introduce social reforms in his own spinning-factory at Lanark. By his benevolent institutions and his numerous writings he called the attention of the public to the wretched condition of factory hands.

His leading principle was: Man is but a chemical combination, the result of circumstances; every man may be trained to any kind of disposition and sentiments if he is but put into suitable surroundings. By careful organization the productiveness of labor might be raised to an incredible height, furnishing ample provision for everybody. Owen tried to put his ideas into practice by establishing a number of communistic colonies, the first and most important of which was at New Harmony in Indiana. An atheist himself, he decided to exclude God and religion from his communistic establishments. But before long all his experiments were doomed to dismal failure.

6. The example of Owen induced also ETIENNE CABET (born 1788 at Dijon, died 1856) to draw up a communistic programme. His plan was to change France into a republic consisting of communist municipalities. His ideas he developed in the celebrated novel, “Voyage en Icarie” (1840), which caused a great stir among the laboring population of France.

In 1848 he founded his communist colony Icaria, at first in Texas, and, after this attempt had failed, in the abandoned Mormon city Nauvoo, Illinois.¹ Slowly but steadily the colony began to prosper, and at one time contained up to 500 colonists. They succeeded in making their quarters comfortable, and their cottages bore the stamp of neatness and cleanliness. Assiduous work was required of all Icarians, but they were not wanting in entertainments and enjoyments. A select library was free to all; music, theatricals, and dances agreeably diversified the monotony of the daily routine. Newspapers in several languages were issued at Icaria both for the instruction and amusement of the colonists and for advertising and money-making purposes, Cabet insisted on retaining family life; education, however, was to belong to the community. The instruction imparted was very thorough and calculated to instil communist principles. Public worship was unknown; each one could choose his belief as he pleased. Financially the colony was at first a marked success. But, as prosperity increased, discord and petty quarrels became rife, resulting finally in the expulsion of Cabet and his partisans from Icaria, August 3, 1856. His few faithful followers founded a new colony at Cheltenham near St. Louis; but notwithstanding the financial support obtained from France, internal strife caused its disruption within a few years. Icaria, on the other hand, now established in southern Iowa, began to prosper anew; toward 1875 it numbered about 70 members living in frugal contentment. But here also discord and disputes were unavoidable. The Icarian youth nurtured in communistic principles soon became unmanageable, fond of novelty, despising the experience of their elders. The year 1878 witnessed the complete rupture between the older and younger generation. The faction of the juniors remained at the old homestead, forming the so-called Icarian Community which in 1884 moved to California, where it was soon dissolved.¹

¹ Cf. Hillquit, History of Socialism in the U. S. (1903), p. 129 sqq.

¹ Cf. Hillquit, loc. cit., p. 137.

The “old party” were assigned the eastern part of their former domain and were incorporated as the New Icarian Community. With no accession from the outside they struggled on till their final dissolution.

This philosophy is a product of the private study and not of the market-place. It flatters the pride of the highly cultivated professor, who is naturally pleased at being told that his thought is evolving deity, and it furnishes very ingenious and far-fetched explanations of all things in heaven and on earth, but it is too remote from ordinary experience ever to become popular or generally accepted. Common sense absolutely refuses to admit that our every thought, word, and deed, are the thought, word, and deed of the all holy God. We know too much about the jobbery, injustice, violence, and selfish aims of States and politicians, ever to be able to believe that in the State we have “the very essence of reason,” the embodiment of freedom, and the highest incarnation of infinite Mind. The wonder is that stuff of this sort has exercised, and still does exercise, so powerful an influence on minds otherwise acute and well-balanced. For that it does so cannot be denied. Especially is this true of the leaders of what is called scientific socialism. As Mr. Kirkup, in his History of Socialism, says: “Marx and Lassalle were both trained in the school of Hegel, and naturally applied to the problems of society the Hegelian theory of development.”⁴⁰ In Hegelianism we see the explanation of Marx’s constant and contemptuous allusions to the bourgeois political economy, and to bourgeois society. Mr. Belfort Bax, one of the most thorough-going and intelligent of English socialists, draws much of his inspiration from the same source. Part of Hegel’s influence is doubtless due to the fact that his doctrine of development fits in with, and serves to

⁴⁰ Op. cit., p. 294.

complete, the doctrines of evolution. In many recent writers on sociology, belonging both to the mechanical and to the idealist school, we see a tendency to fuse the two philosophies into one in spite of their radical opposition to each other. Thus, while Mr. Bosanquet thinks it important to observe that the mechanical theory of society has not been productive hitherto of much success in the science of sociology, yet he praises its effort after harmony and precision, while he affirms that the general conception of a “continuity between human relations and the laws of the cosmic order is thoroughly in the spirit of Plato and betokens a scientific enthusiasm worthy to be the parent of great things.” 41 From the other side we see in the pages of such writers as Mr. Giddings and Mr. Lester F. Ward a disposition to stress the importance of mind in sociological explanations. In the meanwhile practical socialists make use of the doctrines of both schools of sociology for their own purposes. Sometimes, indeed, sociologists make the application desired by socialists themselves. Thus Mr. Lester F. Ward writes in his book Applied Sociology: “From this subjective side the whole upward movement of society has been in the direction of acquiring freedom. If we look over the history of this movement, we shall see that it exhibits three somewhat distinct stages, which may be called in their historical order national freedom, political freedom, and social freedom. The first and prime requisite during the early efforts at nation forming, as set forth in the tenth chapter of 41 The Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 20.

Pure Sociology, following upon conquest and subjugation, was the consolidation of the amalgamating group into a national unit capable of withstanding the encroachments and attacks of other outside groups. ... The salient features of such an organization are extreme inequality, caste, slavery, and stern military domination. . . . But individual liberty is at its minimum. The conquered race, which always far outnumbers all the other elements, is chiefly in bondage, and the struggle for political freedom begins. Ultimately, as the history of the world shows, this is in large measure attained. . . . So all-important did this issue seem that throughout the eighteenth century and down to near our own time it was confidently believed that, with the overthrow of political oppression and the attainment of political freedom, the world would enter upon the great millennium of universal prosperity, well-being, and happiness. But this was far from being the case. As sages predicted, events have proved that there remains another step to be taken. Another stage must be reached before any considerable degree of the hopes that were entertained can be realized. This stage is that of social freedom. The world is to-day in the throes of this third struggle. Military and royal oppression have been overthrown. Slavery, serfdom, feudalism, have disappeared. The power of the nobility and the priesthood has been broken. The civilized world is democratic, no matter by what name its governments are called. The people rule themselves by their sovereign votes. And yet, never in the history of the world was there manifested greater unrest or greater dissatisfaction with the state of things. National freedom and political freedom have been achieved. Social freedom remains to be achieved. ... The forces that prevent social freedom are hidden and universally diffused through the social fabric. They are largely economic forces; they give rise to questions so recondite and obscure that the clearest thinkers differ as to their solution. ... The only science that can deal with them is sociology. Their study and solution belong to applied sociology.”⁴²

⁴² Applied Sociology, pp. 26-28 (1906).

Philosophical doctrines of evolution and development form the ground of the conviction which is frequently expressed by socialists, with almost religious fervor, that the present order of society is bound to give place to a higher and better. The following is a sober expression of the conviction by Marx: “The working classes know that in order to work out their own emancipation—and with it that higher form of life which the present form of society irresistibly makes for by its own economic development— they, the working classes, have to pass through long struggles, a whole series of historical processes, by means of which men and circumstances will be completely transformed. They have no ideals to realize, they have only to set at liberty the elements of the new society which have already been developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society.” 43 Professor Karl Pearson writes: “Socialism arises from the recognition (1) that the sole aim of mankind is happiness in this life, and (2) that the course of evolution, and the struggle of group against group, has produced a strong social instinct in mankind, so that, directly and indirectly, the pleasure of the individual lies in forwarding the prosperity of the society of which he is a member. Corporate Society — the State, not the personified Humanity of Positivism — becomes the center of the Socialist’s faith. The polity of the Socialist is thus his morality, and his reasoned morality may, in the old sense of the word, be termed his religion. It is this identity which places Socialism on a different footing to the other political and social movements of to-day. ... Yes! sympathy with the Past we must have, but war, ceaseless war, with the Past which seeks with its idols to crush the growth of the Present! The right to re-shape itself is the one birthright of humanity, and the ‘ vested interests’ of priest or of class, the sanctity of tradition and of law, will be of less avail in checking human progress than the gossamer in the path of the king of the forest.”⁴⁴

⁴⁴ Ethic of Freethought, pp. 319-320.

48 Quoted in E. Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism, p. 204.

The doctrines themselves of evolution and development afford no foundation for this simple faith. Whatever be the aim of the cosmical process, it is admitted that on evolutionist principles we cannot flatter ourselves that it is concerned with man’s welfare and happiness. The latest interpreters of the process tell us that it apparently makes for greater efficiency, and for the sake of efficiency the welfare and happiness of the individual must be sacrificed. For Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, the individual citizen is but “a humble organ in society, seeking peace in service and wealth in sharing.” “In fact,’ he proceeds to say, “ disguise it from ourselves as we may, in our so-called practical moments, every conception of what morality is—except neurotic and erotic whims like those of Nietzsche, or antiquated pre-scientific notions like those of the Charity Organization Society — assumes that the individual is imbedded organically in his social medium, and that, therefore, the individual end can be gained only by promoting the social end; that the individual is primarily a cell in the organism of his Society; that he is not an absolute being, but one who develops best in relation to other beings, and who discovers the true meaning of his Ego only when he has discovered the oneness of Society.”⁴⁵

⁴⁵ Socialism and Society, p.

All the indications point to the coming slavery. The deification of the State by the idealists, the reduction of the individual to the condition of a mere cell in the gigantic organism of modern society, show us what kind of régime we are to expect if the new social order is established. The prophecy with which H. Spencer concludes his articles on The Man versus The State may prove to be one of the wisest things he ever said: “The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of Parliaments.”

If Spencer had studied history more closely than he did, he would have discovered that socialism and the coming slavery are but the logical outcome of the Liberalism which he professed. The motto of the dominant Liberalism of fifty years ago was — Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. It was professed with the fervor of religious conviction by thousands of the most influential politicians and writers of the day. One of the first English Liberals who saw clearly whither the Liberal doctrines were tending was J. Fitzjames Stephen, subsequently made a Judge of the High Court. Long meditation, his experience as legal member of council in India, and his sound common sense enabled him to see the fallacies of the Liberalism in which he had been bred. He clearly exposed them in his book Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, partly written on his way back to England from India in 1872. The publication of the book in the year following was one of the first signs that the old Liberalism was dead, and that new ideals were coming into view. A passage from that book will show clearly the connection between Liberalism and Socialism. Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen writes: “The only manner in which the famous Republican device can be rendered at once fully intelligible and quite consistent is by explaining Liberty to mean Democracy. The establishment of a Democratic government which proposes to recognize the universal brotherhood of mankind by an equal distribution of property, is as definite a scheme as it is possible to imagine, and when the motto is used in real earnest and not as a piece of meretricious brag, this is what it does mean. When so used the words ‘or death’ should be added to the motto to give it perfect

Socialism is no longer a merely academic question in England; it is already with us, and those who are wise in the signs of the times tell us that it has come to stay. In accents of triumph or of apprehension, according as their sympathies are with it or against it, they assure us that in the near future Socialism will exert a powerful, if not a dominant, influence on the government of England. Under these circumstances it behoves us all to study this new factor in English life, and to settle what our own relation to it should be. It is being discussed, defended, and criticized in a thousand halls and on a thousand platforms. Its economic and political bearings are being made clear. But it has an ethical and religious side as well, and especially from this point of view it merits the careful attention of Catholics. We differ without prejudice to our faith on political and economic questions, but we wish to be at one on matters touching Catholic faith and practice.

Nor can the question of English Socialism be settled summarily and offhand. No one who knows anything of the condition of the poor in our large cities can refrain from sympathizing with the noble object of raising the condition of the poor which English Socialists profess. Some of the means which they propose for this object are above reproach. Some of their accredited writers speak with appreciation and gratitude of what the Catholic Church has done for the poor in the past. They fully acknowledge the noble part she played in the abolition of slavery, in preaching the essential equality and brotherhood of all men, and in gradually raising the condition of the serf. They confess that history shows that the Middle Ages, when the Church was all-powerful, were the golden era of the workingman; and that individualism and capitalistic exploitation of the poor came in with the Protestant reformation. English Socialists for the most part seem anxious to dissociate themselves from their forerunners. They have no sympathy with the Communistic Utopias of the early Socialists, nor with the violent remedies of those who lived a generation ago. Not without reason was Socialism in the past largely identified in men’s minds with anarchism and atheism, but modern English Socialists seem generally anxious to persuade the public that their system is something quite different. Thus Mr. Blatchford says: ‘ Another charge against Socialists is that they are Atheists, whose aim is to destroy all religion and all morality. This is not true. It is true that some Socialists are Agnostics and some are Atheists. But Atheism is no more a part of Socialism than it is a part of Toryism, or of Radicalism, or of Liberalism. Many prominent Socialists are Christians, not a few are clergymen. . . . Socialism does not touch religion at any point. It deals with laws, and with industrial and

political government.” Another Socialist writer says: “The grossest misconceptions of Socialism amongst large masses of the people still prevail. To the minds of many, even in these supposed enlightened days, the Socialist is a robber, an idle vagabond, who is seeking to steal from the thrifty their hard-earned store, or to take from the rich their rightly inherited wealth. To some others Socialism is the negation of God and of religion. It would destroy the sacred ties of marriage, institute free love, give license to immorality, pillage the churches, and put to flight the anointed servants of the Most High. Another misconception of Socialism is that which associates it with anarchy. Use the word Socialism in the hearing of these people and visions of bombs and dynamite, cruel assassinations and horrid explosions, maimed and mangled limbs and tortured bodies appear before their terrified eyes. Equally uninformed are those individuals who think that Socialism means an equal division amongst its inhabitants of the world’s wealth; or that it involves the destruction of private property. Socialism means none of these things. Not one of these is a part of the Socialist program.”²

² The Woman Socialist, by E. Snowden, p.

Individual Socialists may, indeed, have fads of their own, but the root principle of Socialism in which they all agree is, says Mr. Blatchford, this: “That the country, and all the machinery of production in the country, shall belong to the whole people (the nation), and shall be used by the people and for the people.”³ The reign of Collectivism, then, to be brought about gradually, without violence, and without injustice, is the aim of English Socialism. Mr. Belfort Bax, however, admits that “the attempt to limit the term Socialism within the four walls of an economic definition is, in the long run, futile,” although he maintains that the formula of Collectivism contains all that is “of faith” in Socialism. It is notorious that Mr. Blatchford, who was quoted above as saying that Socialism does not touch religion at any point, nevertheless found that Christianity stood in his way, and so he attacked Christianity. Other Socialists, too, generally find themselves compelled to consider the relation of Socialism to Christianity. They are aware that the official attitude of the chief Christian bodies is against them, but they stoutly maintain that the doctrine of Christ Himself and of the Primitive Church was not only not antagonistic, but was positively favorable, to Socialism.

³ Britain for the British, p. 84.

1 Britain for the British, p.

77 (1902).

2 (1907).

For example, Mr. Blatchford says: “ Christ’s teaching is often said to be Socialistic. It is not Socialistic but it is Communistic, and Communism is the most advanced form of the policy generally known as Socialism.”⁴ Mr. H. G. Wells says: “There is first the assertion, which effectually bars a great number of people from further inquiry into Socialist teaching, that Socialism is contrary to Christianity. I would urge that this is the absolute inversion of the truth. Christianity involves, I am convinced, a practical Socialism if it is honestly carried out. This is not only my conviction, but the reader, if he is a Nonconformist, can find it set out at length by Dr. Clifford in a Fabian tract, ‘Socialism and the Teaching of Christ’; and, if a Churchman, by the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam in another, ‘Christian Socialism.’ It is said that a good Catholic of the Roman communion cannot also be a Socialist. Even this very general opinion may not be correct. I believe the papal prohibition was aimed entirely at a specific form of Socialism, the Socialism of Marx, Engels, and Bebel, which is, I must admit, unfortunately strongly anti-Christian in tone, as is the Socialism of the British Social Democratic Federation to this day.”⁵

⁴ Britain for the British, p. 78.

⁵ The Grand Magazine, December, 1907, p. 701.

The Rev. S. D. Headlam writes: “There is no excuse for the Socialists and Social Reformers if, on account of the iniquities of the bishops and the follies of the patron-appointed clergy, they refuse to capture the Church, whose principles are all for Socialism; there is no excuse on the other hand, for the bishops and clergy if they allow the patrons and the plutocrats to make them false to the ideals which they were ordained and consecrated to maintain; above all, there is no excuse for Churchmen and Socialists if they refuse to co-operate with all men of good will, whether they call themselves Churchmen or Socialists, or whether they are merely members of the great Common People, in bringing about such Socialist legislation as is possible during the next seven years. The message of the Church to all these is: ‘Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another?’”⁶ Mr. Keir Hardie asserts: “It would be an easy task to show that Communism, the final goal of Socialism, is a form of social economy very closely akin to the principles set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. ... For seven hundred years, says one authority, almost all the Fathers of the Church considered Communism the most perfect and most Christian form of social organization, and it was only after Christianity, from being the despised and persecuted creed of the poor, had become the official religion of the State, that opinion on this point began to undergo a change. Even then it was not until the thirteenth century that the Church came out into the open as a defender of property. . . . When the old civilizations were putrefying, the still small voice of Jesus the Communist stole over the earth like a soft refreshing breeze carrying healing wherever it went.”⁷

⁶ The Socialist’s Church, p.

⁷ From Serfdom to Socialism (1907).

Obviously there is a question here which needs an answer, an obscurity which needs clearing up. May a Christian and a Catholic, who values his religion and wishes to preserve it, be also a Socialist? And what attitude should he adopt towards this new form of Socialism which is predominant in England and which has strongly influenced the Socialist movement throughout the world?

Most English Socialists seem anxious to persuade us that their system is not anti-religious. Before studying what Catholic doctrine or the teaching of the Catholic Church may have to say on this point, it will be of advantage to know on what grounds it is maintained that this form of Socialism is not hostile to religion or Christianity. On the motion of Mr. J. R. MacDonald, M.P., the Hull Conference, 1908, declared: “That the attempt that has been made to make the labor movement appear to be antagonistic to religion is a deliberate perversion of the truth, and made for mean partizan purposes. It welcomes men and women of all religious beliefs, as it is a political movement dealing with state affairs, not religious beliefs.” This sounds very reassuring, but before concluding from such a declaration that we may remain loyal Catholics and yet give our support to the English Labor Party, which on the same occasion declared in favor of Socialism, we should do well to inquire what Mr. Macdonald understands by religion. When explaining his motion to the Conference he said that “religion was the conscious relationship between the finite and the infinite,” and of this Socialism took no cognizance whatever. To the Catholic, however, religion means much more than the conscious relationship between the finite and the infinite. The Catholic religion has much to say about our duties to God, but it also teaches that we have duties towards our neighbor as well, duties of justice, charity, and many other virtues. It has much to tell us about the rights and obligations of property, and, because it is deeply interested in the religious education of the people, it takes up a determined attitude on the question of the secularization of the schools. With his restricted view as to what religion implies, Mr. Macdonald could boldly propose his motion, but

84 (1907).

a sincere Catholic, who knows what Catholicism is, would hardly be convinced by Mr. Macdonald’s argument. ;

A declaration signed by a hundred ministers of various religious denominations was published in the papers at the beginning of 1908. These Christian ministers went further than Mr. Macdonald. They asserted that “the central teaching of Socialism is a matter of economics, and may therefore be advocated by all men, whether they be Christians or unbelievers; yet (they said) we feel as ministers of the Christian faith that this economic doctrine is in perfect harmony with our faith, and we believe that its advocacy is sanctioned and indeed required of us by the implications of our religion.” Before we allow this solemn declaration to have much weight with us, it will be well to consider the views of the signatories as to what Christianity is. One of them, Mr. Campbell, of the City Temple, and a prominent advocate of the New Theology, says in a recent publication of his: “We cannot too strongly insist that the work of Christianity is to realize the kingdom of God on earth and nothing else. Christianity has not, and never has had, any other divine commission.”

The Catholic holds on the contrary that the kingdom of God can never be realized in earth, and that the Christian Church received the divine commission to prepare her children for the life to come in heaven. A Catholic, therefore, will not be greatly influenced by Mr. Campbell’s opinion that Christianity is compatible with Socialism. Their views as to what Christianity is and what is its mission in the world are too divergent.

Nor is the instructed Catholic likely to be much influenced by the Rev. Dr. J. Clifford, who has written a very unconvincing tract for the Fabian Society on “Socialism and the Teaching of Christ.”

Another signatory, the Rev. S. D. Headlam, is an Anglican clergyman who succeeds in combining Socialism with Christianity, but only at the expense of much that has hitherto been deemed essential to it by both Anglicans and Catholics. As a specimen of what Mr. Headlam has thrown overboard we will quote what he says about the Bible. He writes: “If the return to religion is to mean a great return to the Church, then the common people must be plainly and frankly told that the Bible is not the infallible Word of God; that the religion and morality which that interesting literature records were tentative and relative; that many horrible and foolish things are recorded in it with approval which it would be un-Christian for us to approve.”⁸

⁸ The Socialist’s Church, p. 31.

Plainly the Catholic’s idea of what is Christian and what un-Christian will differ much from Mr. Headlam’s.

Mr. Keir Hardie has written a chapter on Socialism and Christianity in his recent book entitled From Serfdom to Socialism. The late chairman of the Independent Labor Party is not indeed a theologian, but as he merely professes to use what he has found in Socialist authorities on the subject, it will be worth while to quote what he says. ‘“ Christ’s denunciations of wealth,” he writes, “are only equaled by the fierceness of the diatribes which he leveled against the Pharisees. . . . Almost without exception the early Christian Fathers proclaimed that inasmuch as nature had provided all things in common, it was sinful robbery for one man to own more than another, especially if that other was in want. The man who gathered much whilst others had not enough, was a murderer. The poor had a right to their share of everything there was, which is different from the charity so common nowadays. If a man inherited wealth he was, if not a robber himself, but the recipient of stolen goods, since no accumulation of wealth could be come by honestly. To those who said that the idleness of the poor was the cause of their poverty, St. Chrysostom replied that the rich too were idlers living on their plunder. . . . My purpose in writing this chapter will have been served if I have succeeded in showing that the Socialist who denounces rent and interest as robbery, and who seeks the abolition of the system which legalizes such, is in the true line of apostolic succession with the pre-Christian era prophets, with the divine Founder of Christianity, and with those who for the first seven hundred years of the Christian faith maintained even to the death the unsullied right of their religious faith to be regarded as the Gospel of the poor.” It is unutterably sad to think of the bad passions and hatred of the Church which writing of this sort is likely to kindle among the poor and ignorant. There is an element of truth in it, but it is mixed with an intolerable amount of misrepresentation.

Unfortunately such writing is becoming very common. Christ, of course, never condemned riches or rich men as such, though he did teach that it is difficult but not impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. St. John Chrysostom and some other Fathers of the fourth century said some strong things in their sermons about the rich of their day, but they did not deny the right of private property nor does their teaching countenance Socialism. Mr. Keir Hardie’s claim to be in the apostolic succession on account of his doctrine would have earned him a place among the heretics about whom the early Fathers write. St. Augustine, the greatest of all the Latin Fathers, in his work On Heresies mentions among others the “ Apostolici”’ who, he says, ‘“‘ most arrogantly call themselves by this name because they do not receive into their communion those who live in marriage and possess property. But,” adds the holy Doctor, not without a touch of humor, “these people are heretics because they separate themselves from the Church and assert that there is no hope of salvation for such as have what they themselves have not.” ;

We have seen that Socialists quite commonly assert that Our Lord was a Communist if He was not a Socialist of the English type, and that the Fathers of the Christian Church preached Socialism. Mr. Keir Hardie quotes authority for saying that all the Fathers of the Church considered Communism the most perfect form of social organization, and that it was only when Christianity ceased to be the despised religion of the poor and the persecuted in order to become the official religion of the State that opinion on this point began to undergo a change. He asserts, indeed, that the Church did not become the avowed defender of property before the thirteenth century. And all this, he says, “incidentally shows how little modern churchgoers know of the history of their own religion when they charge Socialism with being anti-Christian.”⁹ Is this a true account of the matter or is it a mere travesty of historical fact? It is, of course, obvious to any one who reads the Gospels that the sympathies of Our Lord were with the poor. He chose for Himself a life of poverty, He sought His apostles and disciples among the poor, He indicated the fact that the Gospel was being preached to the poor as a sign of His Messiasship, He taught that it was very difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God, He invited chosen souls to embrace poverty voluntarily as a counsel of perfection, but He did not condemn riches in themselves as the Socialists assert that He did.

⁹ From Serfdom to Socialism, p. 42.

The most cursory reading of the context of those passages in the Gospels which are quoted to prove that Jesus Christ condemned riches, shows that he did nothing of the kind. He said indeed: “Woe to you that are rich: for you have your consolation. Woe to you that are filled: for you shall hunger. Woe to you that now laugh: for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when men shall bless you: for according to these things did their fathers to the false prophets.” But if Our Lord condemned riches in this passage, he equally condemned the taking of a good meal and laughter. It is obvious that not riches in themselves are here condemned, but those rich people who put their trust, happiness, and consolation in their wealth, and neglect the Kingdom of God. Still less does the story of the rich young man favor Socialism. “ What good shall I do,” he asked, “ that I may have life everlasting?” “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments,” answered Jesus. “ All these I have kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me?” again asked the other. Then Jesus looked upon him, and loved him and said: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow Me.” It is obvious from this that the actual renouncing of wealth was not considered by Our Lord as one of the commandments the keeping of which is necessary for eternal life. He invited a chosen soul to leave his wealth and follow Him more closely with a view to obtaining the perfection of charity. In other words, as the Church has always taught, the voluntary renunciation of wealth in order to imitate Jesus Christ more closely, is one of the counsels of perfection to which those who are called may aspire, but it is not necessary for salvation. The Communism, which for a short time was practised in the early Church, was voluntary, as is clear from St. Peter’s words to Ananias. In all ages there have always been, as there are to-day, many thousands of men and women who follow the counsel of Our Lord and practise voluntary poverty in the Catholic Church.

Nor did the Fathers of the Church to whom Mr.

Keir Hardie alludes teach anything different from this. They laid great stress indeed on the duty of almsgiving, they declared that the poor had a right to alms, but by this they meant a right arising from the title of charity. They sometimes accused the rich of defrauding the poor, and of injustice; sins that many rich men in all ages and countries have been guilty of, but not necessarily infecting riches as such. It is possible to get rich without committing injustice, though it be true that injustice is the cause of many men being rich. St. John Chrysostom and those half-dozen Fathers of the fourth century whose strong language is quoted by Socialists in this connection did not condemn riches in themselves or deny the right of private property. This is clear from what St. John Chrysostom says, for example, in his second Homily to the people of Antioch. We there read: “It is worth while to inquire why the Apostle writing to Timothy did not say: Charge the rich of this world not to be rich, charge them to become poor, charge them to give up their possessions; but he said to them: Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded. He knew that pride is the root and prop of riches: and if a man know how to live with moderation such a one has no great affection for them. . . . Besides he knew that riches are not forbidden if their owner uses them for his necessities. For, as I said, wine is not an evil thing but drunkenness is; so wealth is not a bad thing but avarice is. A miser is one thing, a wealthy man another. . . . Besides, Paul was not accustomed to command all things to all men, but he accommodated himself to the weakness of his hearers as did Christ Himself. For to the rich man who came up to Him and asked about life eternal Christ did not say at once: Go, sell all that thou hast; but omitting this, He instructed him concerning the other commandments. Then after the rich man had given Him an opening by saying: “What is yet wanting to me? not even then did He simply tell him to sell all that he had, but He said: If thou wilt be perfect sell what thou hast: I leave this to your free will, you may choose it or not, I impose on you no strict obligation.¹⁰

¹⁰ Migne 49, col. 39, n. 5.

Similar passages could be quoted from St. Basil, St. Ambrose, and from the other Fathers of the early Church whose isolated oratorical utterances the Socialists so grossly misrepresent. The constant teaching of the Catholic Church with regard to wealth is explained at length by Clement of Alexandria, one of the most learned of the Fathers who lived at the end of the second century. He wrote a treatise on the question Who that is rich may be saved. With a view to explaining the Christian doctrine about riches, he quotes and annotates at length the Gospel story about the rich young man. He gives the passage from the Gospels in full, and then among other comments has the following: “Jesus does not blame him for not fulfilling all the commandments of the law, nay, rather, He loves and cherishes him in that he had strenuously put in practice what he had been taught; but for all that He declares him imperfect with reference to life eternal, in that he had not done what belongs to perfection . . . ‘sell what thou hast.’

What does this mean? He certainly does not bid him throw away his wealth and give up his money as some understand it in the obvious sense; but He bids him remove from his heart the vain esteem for wealth, the unbridled lust and greed of it, the anxious cares and tribulations of the world, which choke the seed of life... . For it is a necessary consequence that he who is in want of the necessaries of life is broken in spirit and distracted with anxiety while he strives to procure a livelihood anyhow and anywhere. How much better is it that he should possess moderate wealth so as not to be in want himself and so as to be able to help others in necessity. For if nobody has anything what mutual help can there be among men? Would not that be in open contradiction with many beautiful points of Our Lord’s teaching? Make friends of the mammon of iniquity, etc. ... Lay up treasure in heaven. . . . How could one feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, take the stranger in (which he must do to avoid hell fire, and the exterior darkness), if he is himself without means. Christ Himself was hospitably received by Zacchaeus and by Matthew, who were rich publicans. And He does not bid them give up their wealth, but says: ‘This day is salvation come to this house in that he, too, is a son of Abraham.’ He so praises the use of money that He commands almsdeeds, the giving of drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, the clothing of the naked, and hospitality to the stranger. But then since these duties cannot be fulfilled without money, if He bade us renounce it, Our Lord would command us at the same time to give and not to give, than which nothing can be more foolish. So that wealth which contributes to our neighbor’s assistance is not to be given up.... Wealth is a means; if you use it rightly it is an aid to virtue; if you use it wrongly it is an occasion of sin. Since, then, wealth is neither good nor bad in itself, and may be possessed without fault, it must not be condemned. . . . Let no one then destroy riches and wealth, but rather let him root out the affections and cares which prevent them being used virtuously; so that becoming good and honest he may also use wealth honestly and well. When, therefore, we are bidden to renounce wealth and to sell what we possess, this is to be understood of renouncing the inordinate affections and cares concerning earthly possessions. ... So that we must not understand what is said about the rich entering with difficulty the kingdom of heaven in a wrong, bald, and carnal sense; but more spiritually. For though what be said, still salvation does not consist in externals, whether they be abundant or not, great or little, of high repute or obscure, esteemed or otherwise; but salvation consists in the virtues of the soul, in faith, hope, charity, brotherly love, wisdom, meekness, modesty, truth; of these virtues salvation is the reward.” 24

We must then conclude that the doctrine of Christ and of the Christian Church lends no support to Socialism even of the mild English type, and that Catholicism and Socialism are incompatible with one another. The more keen-sighted of the Socialists see this quite plainly, and while some of them ignore the fact or strive to conceal it for strategical reasons, others are quite plain-spoken on the point. Among the latter is Mr. Belfort Bax, who writes thus: “In face of the active campaign of the Roman Catholic Church among peasants and workmen in many parts of the Continent of Europe, as well as in some of the States of North America, the notion of maintaining that religion is a purely private matter, and that Socialism has no concern with it, if it be a pretense, is a dishonest farce, and if it be no pretense, must mean treachery to the party. It were surely a much better policy, while always insisting on the avoidance of barren, theological controversies or the unnecessary irritation of smoldering religious sentiment, to candidly admit that Socialism, like every other system of society, has its own Weltanschauung, or conception of the universe, and that, rash as it would undoubtedly be at present to attempt to confine it within the four corners of any formula or set of formulæ — it is, nevertheless, if nothing else, incompatible with the supernaturalism and with much of the ethics of the old religious systems. It is, of course, perfectly true that a man may favor any particular ‘ plank’ of the immediate party program and vote for them while remaining a strict Catholic or Calvinist or Jew or Moslem; and the present writer would be the last in the world to choke off such extraneous aid — aid which is not merely desirable or advantageous, but, in the present position of affairs at least, is in most countries absolutely essential to the formation of a Parliamentary Socialist party. All that is sought

11 Quis dives salvetur, cc. 9-18.

to be urged here merely points to a distinction between such ‘proselytes of the gate’ and those who are definitely recognized as members of the Socialist party. The profession of dogmatic theological beliefs by the latter can but mean one of two things — either deliberate deception, or such a hopeless nebulosity of mind as to suggest that the persons in question are extremely undesirable members of an organization where sincerity, outspokenness of conviction, and clearness of intention, are of the first importance.” #

May we hope that all Catholics will bear in mind the verse in the Book of Proverbs:

“A net is spread in vain before the eyes of them that have wings.”

12 Essays in Socialism, p.

IN every question much depends on the point of view adopted by the inquirer. It is a trite saying that the Catholic Church and her teaching look very different to the Catholic who regards them from the inside of the Church, and to the non-Catholic who regards them from the outside. The Catholic is satisfied that the Gospel preached to him by the Church is the Gospel preached by Jesus Christ. He knows by experience that it is a practical and workable system, and, believing what he does about Jesus Christ, he is sure that it would be rank blasphemy to believe that Jesus Christ preached anything that was not practical and workable.

On the other hand, many outside the Church, and Socialists especially, affect to regard Jesus Christ as a dreamer. His Gospel was above all a revolution in economic theory. He was, they say, a Communist who condemned private property and strove not only to subjugate wealth but to annihilate it. He taught that all attachment to wealth was sinful, and that poverty, actual poverty, was a necessary condition of admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven. He condemned riches in themselves. In all this He was followed by His Apostles and by the Fathers of the early Church. The first Christian Churches were societies of communists. It was only when Christianity became the fashionable religion of the Roman Empire that the Church accommodated her doctrine to the requirements of the altered circumstances. This had already been done for the great trading centre of Egypt by Clement of Alexandria. This Father, who lived at the end of the second century, wrote a little book on " Who that is rich shall be saved?" With Alexandrine subtlety he succeeded in accommodating the Gospel of Christ concerning wealth to the needs of a rich trading community of Christians. His doctrine was adopted by the mediaeval and modern Christian Church. So, in effect, said Signor Nitti some years ago, and the view has been substantially adopted by Mr. Butterworth in his dainty little book on Clement of Alexandria, recently issued. The charge that the Catholic Church has changed the Gospel of Christ has, of course, frequently been made before. After years of study Cardinal Newman satisfied himself that she had not changed but only developed it. That is true of other doctrines and of the doctrine on poverty and wealth. One great obstacle which prevents non-Catholics from seeing the truth is their rejection of counsels in the Gospel. The Protestant theory of Gospel morality is that all good is of precept, none is merely recommended and of counsel only. This theory prevents them and those who follow them from seeing the point in the incident between Christ and the rich young man. The text is classical as bearing on the question at issue. The writers with whom I am dealing see in it a clear proof that Christ taught that the renunciation of wealth is a necessary condition for admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven, and that a rich man cannot be saved. Clement of Alexandria, and Catholic exegetes generally, show that it proves nothing of the sort.

The rich young man asked what he had to do to have everlasting life. " If thou wouldst have everlasting life, keep the Commandments," was the answer. " Which Commandments?" again asked the young man. " The Ten Commandments of the Decalogue," answered the Master. "All those I have kept from my youth. What is yet wanting to me?" said the young man. Jesus looked upon him with a look of approbation and love, and then He said: " If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast and give it to the poor." He did not absolutely command him to sell what he had; He only bade him do it if he desired to do something more than what was commanded and strictly necessary to gain everlasting life. Moreover, it should be noted that Jesus did not command him to put the proceeds of the sale into the common fund. He told him to give them to the poor. Our Lord was no Communist. But, it is argued, the Gospel narrative goes on to say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Here the Socialist stops, but we should go on to the end of the narrative.

The disciples wondered very much, we are told, at hearing this proverb, which seemed to make salvation impossible for the rich, and they asked Him: "Who, then, can be saved?" "With men," said Our Lord, "this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Even the rich man may be saved by the grace of God. The same conclusion follows from the story of the rich Zaccheus, and it is not contradicted by the parable of Dives and Lazarus if no part of the Gospel narrative is omitted, as is done by Signor Nitti. St. Paul instructed his disciple Timothy how to deal with the rich, but he did not tell him to compel them to renounce their wealth. The communism of the Church of Jerusalem was local and not obligatory, as is shown by what St. Peter said to Ananias and Sapphira. What Socialists assert about the early Church Fathers is refuted by examining their whole teaching about wealth. Dr. J. Ryan's little book, " Alleged Socialism of the Church Fathers," will enable the English reader to do this at small trouble and expense to himself. L. Garriguet's little book on " The Social Value of the Gospel" is also well worth reading.

ALL who are interested in Socialism—and who is not interested in that very practical question? —should pay great attention to what is happening in Russia. During the last few years Russia has been the theatre of a gigantic experiment in that form of scientific Socialism which was advocated by Karl Marx. A well-organized party, consisting now of about 200,000 people, seized the reins of government and imposed its will on 120,000,000 Russians. Private ownership of property was abolished, and in the name of the People’s Revolution, of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, all productive property and all capital were vested in the Commonwealth. At the head of the Communist party are about six individuals who exercise despotic sway in the name of the People.

All the circumstances were exceedingly favourable for a huge experiment in Marxism.

The people were docile, accustomed to obey, and illiterate. At first they could not distinguish between high-sounding phrases and realities. Bitter experience was soon to teach them. In Marxian theory all were to work, and whatever portion of the product was not required for the personal support of the producer was handed over to the State. In return the agriculturist, for example, received what he required of other goods produced by other citizens of the State. In practice it was soon found that the agriculturist was loth to part with his surplus of corn. He kept some for seed for the crop of next year. He did not want any manufactured goods, and he was loth to part with what his own labour had brought him. On Marxian principles he should have checked these capitalistic propensities, but Marxism offers inadequate motives for self-denial, and, in spite of political revolutions, human nature still remains very selfish.

The Government seized the seed-corn when it could find it, and thus caused the great Russian famine. Production was also diminished by unwillingness to work. Laziness is another of the propensities of poor human nature, and the glory of working for others makes small appeal to many people.

Hence, as Trotsky, one of the six, explained to the Third All-Russian Trade Union Congress of 1920, it was necessary to introduce military discipline into the field of labour. Those who had served as officers in the Red Army must be employed to conscribe and militarize labour. The way to Socialism lay through the highest and most intensive development of the State. Workers must go where they are commanded to go, and work at what they are commanded to work at. They must allow themselves to be moved like pieces of machinery. To disobey, to strike, was treason against the People’s Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Even the docile people of Russia were not ready for such measures as these, and Marxian Communism broke down almost at once. At the present time there is no system at work, but muddle and confusion reign everywhere. Necessity has compelled a return to some extent to the system of wages. Unemployment in Petrograd and Moscow is as acute as in England, and wages are much lower. No one is permitted by law to receive more than about five shillings a week. Industry and trade are diminishing. Discontent is general among the working class as well as among the better educated.

At the cost of murders without number and wholesale robbery individual capitalism has been suppressed in Russia, but State Capitalism has been introduced in its stead. State Capitalism has all the evils of the old system and has many others besides. “Graft,” or official corruption, prevails everywhere. Meanwhile, the condition of the people is worse than ever.

A Special Correspondent of The Times has described how Communism in Russia has affected the home in large cities like Moscow. Immediately after the Revolution all the house property of Moscow became Government property.

It is administered by a House Bureau for the Government, and the House Bureau has appointed a director to act in its name, who calls himself Comrade London. The houses are generally large, imposing buildings, leased in flats and apartments. The tenants of these flats and apartments now pay less rent to the Government, it is true, than they used to pay to the landlord, but they do not get the same value for their money. Each tenant has a ridiculously small cubic space allotted to him, but this space was twice reduced during the seven months which the Special Correspondent spent in Moscow. Comrade London seems to take delight in breaking up all family privacy, and uses his power to quarter undesirable strangers on families and individuals.

A man sometimes finds that a person of the other sex has been installed in his room, and he is under the necessity of sharing it with her. Communists recognize no class distinctions, and the same house is inhabited by professors, engineers, students, clerks, chauffeurs, blacksmiths, tailors, and carpenters. The affairs of the house are entrusted to a committee or soviet of its inhabitants. A volume containing the housing laws in force is issued once a month. Some of the most voluble and self-asserting of the inhabitants made it their duty to make themselves acquainted with this ever-changing code of legislation. They post up notices in the house urging the workers to attend the meetings of the house soviet, held several times a week, and to defend their rights.

Perhaps the lift or the heating apparatus of the house needs repairing. The house soviet discusses the question and decides by a majority of votes that the professors and engineers should undertake the expense of repairs, inasmuch as they are presumed to have more money than the rest. Such articles as cutlery, firewood, and cooking utensils have to be kept in one’s own room or they are stolen. Door-knobs, electric fittings, locks, hooks, water-cocks, marble mantelpieces, water-closets, window glass, and nails are wrenched away and sold in the public market. To get a wash at the common tap, one must wait one’s turn in the long queue, while similar queues are waiting their turn for other domestic requirements. Some of the more objectionable inhabitants at night introduce others more objectionable than themselves and disturb the whole house with their uproar.

Bath-rooms and other places intended for the use of all in the house are indescribably filthy. Slops are thrown out of the window, and thus the walls of once fashionable houses become caked with filth. Pipes intended to carry off water from the roof are appropriated for stoves in private rooms. Hundreds of houses in Moscow have been ruined by such treatment and are no longer fit for human habitation.

I have purposely dwelt on these details of home life. They are not small matters in the aggregate. Such details affect the comfort and endurability of ordinary existence.

At first the Communist Revolutionaries of Russia proclaimed complete liberty of religious profession and worship. However, they confiscated Church property, and when the leaders of the Church resisted, and refused to surrender it, the conflict began. Church property was not the only cause of quarrel. It was the duty of the Church to condemn and denounce the wholesale murders and robberies of which the Communists were guilty, and it performed that duty and anathematized the leaders of the Revolution. The Special Correspondent of The Times gives a third reason for the Communist attack on Christianity. The Revolution did not bring with it universal prosperity, contentment, and happiness. On the contrary, the condition of the people became worse, and its support of Communism became luke-warm. Christianity was attacked in order to rekindle and keep alive Revolutionary fervour.

The terrible spy system which has been one of the chief instruments of government in Russia since the outbreak of the Revolution was employed against the Church. Orthodox bishops and priests offered their services to the Government for the purpose of enslaving the Russian Church. In every ecclesiastical institution and centre of influence these men, with Government help, placed a “cell,” that is, two or three of their own party. It was the duty of this “cell” to observe, worm out secrets, steal documents, and inform the Government of all that went on. They profess to speak in the name of the Church, and they bless the Communist Revolution in the name of Christianity itself. Communists set many of the ordinary rules of morality at defiance, but in Russia they have not succeeded in getting their own rules observed. It has been stated already that official corruption is general, and, although the sale of vodka has been prohibited, large quantities are brewed privately or smuggled into the country, and drunkenness is more prevalent than in the time of the Tsars.

One of the worst features of Communist Russia is the systematic corruption of children in the State schools. They are herded together like sheep and taught to hate the religion of Jesus Christ. Incalculable harm has been done already, and there is no hope of a speedy remedy. As the Special Correspondent of The Times says: ‘No change in the form of government can alter, for a long time, the main facts of the Russian situation, which are: poverty, wholesale demoralization, decreased production, ruined industries, economic chaos, damaged railways, State bankruptcy, and general collapse.”

I will add a sentence taken from The Socialist Movement, published by Dr. Shadwell in 1925: “Surely the irony of history presents no such spectacle of promises, pretensions, and expectations realized in the opposite sense as Bolshevism. Instead of peace, civil war; instead of plenty, starvation; instead of political liberty, despotism upheld by the Terror; instead of industrial liberty, a rigid, iron discipline; instead of liberty of conscience, religious persecution; instead of free speech, suppression. These things have waxed and waned at different times, but they are the standing marks of Bolshevism, which was to introduce the millennium.”—Op. cit., ii 50.

THE Socialist bodies are as yet in a minority in this country, but they are organized, and they are determined to do all they can to convert their minority into a majority in the near future. One of the means which they are using are Sunday schools. Two kinds of Socialist Sunday schools, the Socialist and the Proletarian, are mentioned. The first kind professes neutrality towards religion; the second is anti-religious, or at least anti-christian. A pamphlet was recently published on Socialist and Other Sunday Schools. Besides these two kinds of schools, the writer says that a third kind has found its way into England within the last three years, the Communist Sunday school. The Young Communist for December, 1921, proclaimed the birth of the new school movement and indicated its object in the following terms:

“We, the Young Communist League of Great Britain, are now a part of the Young Communist International, and, as such, with the Red working youth and Revolutionary children’s groups of almost every country in the world, are embarking on an intensive campaign to teach the Communist ideology to, and inspire the Communist rebel spirit in, the young people of our class. We require everyone to help. See to it that you do your share, and help to realize our slogan—‘ All power to the workers.’ ”

One of the saddest features of the Bolshevist revolution in Russia was the deliberate and systematic corruption of children which it introduced into the public schools of the country. A blatant materialism was substituted for the spiritualism which hitherto had been the foundation of Russian elementary education. According to Lenin, religion is the opium of the people, it tends to make them contented, and he wanted them to be discontented in order to make them the instruments of revolution. Christianity taught them to love all men as brothers; Lenin wanted them to love only those of their class as comrades and to hate others as capitalists. Christianity proclaims peace to men of good will; Lenin proclaimed the class war. The ideology of Lenin is the ideology of the Communist International of Moscow, and the Communist Sunday schools have been established in England and on the Continent in order to spread Russian Communism throughout the world.

In an interview given to the Moscow Atheist in 1923, Mr. A. MacManus, President of the Communist Party of Great Britain, is reported to have said:

“The growth of Socialist Sunday schools in England is of tremendous importance in the development of anti-religious propaganda among the British masses. ... Thus we are undermining one of the bulwarks of English capitalism, its religious organizations, which is beginning to shake. We must keep on shaking it as energetically as we can, and driving blows at it, so that soon there should remain nothing but bitter memories of the Church in England.”

The Communist Sunday schools encourage the children brought under their influence to write letters to their own paper and say frankly what they think. No better indication of the effect of the teaching which the children receive in the Communist Sunday schools could be desired. I will transcribe two of these children’s letters printed in the pamphlet mentioned above.

Last January, little R. Tait, aged seven, wrote as follows: “Comrades, what are we taught at the Council schools? We are taught about King Alfred who burnt the cakes, and Queen Elizabeth with her love for dresses, whereas at the Communist Children’s Section we are taught workers’ history. In Council schools we are also taught ‘ Rule, Britannia,’ and ‘Ye Mariners of England,’ and other such rot. We sing the ‘ Red Flag,’ ‘Red Army March,’ and the ‘ International,’ songs with real meaning in them, at the Communist Section. If we believe what they tell us in day schools about Russia, we would think that the Russians were very wicked, but we comrades know that Russia is now the finest country in the world, having overthrown the capitalist system, and put in its place a Workers’ Soviet Republic.’ Evidently a rising Pitt.

In December last Miss Rena Stebbins, aged ten, wrote what she thought of the Communist Section. She said: “I think the Communist Section is very good, especially for children, as when they grow up they will know about Communism. I also think it is very good to learn and to understand the Communist meaning, for it shows us how hard it is for the working class to live, how hard our parents have to fight to make ends meet, and for what use? Only to make the bosses richer with our parents’ labour. So we must be given to understand how to learn to fight against the bosses, and to make this world just as nice for us as it is for the rich. We have the same feeling as them, and we work for, and the bosses don’t, so let us learn how to end it all, and to learn to fight together to get our aim.”

Poor little Rena! The eloquence of Cicero could not make the matter plainer.

As she grows older Rena will realize that it is not wise to jump from the frying-pan into the fire.