S47 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. JOSEPH RICKABY, SJ. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION, REVISED 
 
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 S 3 Lists of Books for Catholic Social Students. 
 
 S 4 Boys' Clubs. By James Britten, K.S.G. 
 
 S 5 My Catholic Socialist. By the Rev. R. P. Garrold, S.J. 
 
 S 6 My Catholic Socialist Again. By the same. 
 
 S 7 Catholic Social Action in France. By Irene Hernaman. 
 
 S 8 A Catholic Social Catechism. 
 
 S 9 The Catholic Church and Socialism. By Hilaire Belloc. 
 
 S 10 Catholic Social Work. By Mrs. Philip Gibbs. 
 
 S 11 Catholics and Social Study. By the Rev. C. Plater, S.J. 
 
 S 14 The Meaning and Aim of Christian Democracy. By C. S. 
 
 Devas, M.A. 
 
 S 17 The Church and Social Reformers. By the Bishop of Northamp- 
 ton. 
 
 S 23 Practical Social Reform. By the Rev. T. Wright and George 
 Milligan. 
 
 S 25 Leo XIII on Labour. By Cardinal Manning. 
 S 26 Christian Aspects of the Labour Question. By Abbot Snow, 
 O.S.B. 
 
 S 30 English Economics and Catholic Ethics. By the Rev. M. 
 Maher, S.J. 
 
 S 36 The Catholic Doctrine of Property. By the Rev. J. B. 
 
 McLaughlin, O.S.B. 
 S 40 Settlement Work. By Lady Edmund Talbot. 
 S 41 Pope Pius X on Social Reform. 
 
 S 42 Catholic Principles of Social Reform. By A. P. Mooney, M.D. 
 S 43 The Social Sense : its Decay and ReYival. By the same. 
 S 45 Social Work after Leaving School. By the Rev. C. Plater, S.J. 
 S 46 Socialism. By C. S. Devas, M.A. 
 
 S 48 Socialism and Religion. By the Rev. John Ashton, S.J. 
 S 49 A Dialogue on Socialism. By the Rev. J. B. McLaughlin. 
 S 50 An Examination of Socialism. By Hilaire Belloc. 
 S 51 Plain Words on Socialism. By C. S. Devas, M.A. 
 S 52 Some Economic Criticisms of Socialism. By A. P. Mooney, M.D. 
 S 53 Some Ethical Criticisms of Socialism. By the same. 
 S 54 Three Socialist Fallacies. By the Rev. Joseph Rickaby, S.j. 
 S 55 The Socialist Movement. By Arthur J. O'Connor. 
 S 61 The Condition of the Working Classes. By Pope Leo XIII. 
 S 62 The Working Man's Apostolate. By F ather Cuthbert. 
 S 64 Some Problems of Temperance Reform. By the Rev. J. 
 Keating, S.J. 
 
 S 65 Modern Problems and Catholic Principles. By the same. 
 
 Catholic Truth Society, 69 Southwark Bridge Road, London, S.E. 
 
SOCIALISM 
 
 By the rev. JOSEPH RICKABY, SJ. 
 
 I. The Sores of Lazarus. 
 
 The sacred rights of property — ^yes, but there is some- 
 thing even more sacred than property, the lives and 
 happiness of mankind. It is an often proved thesis that 
 property is an institution natural and necessary ; a com- 
 forting doctrine to persons in easy circumstances. But 
 these arguments for property are not the want of the 
 times. Dives does not need them, and Lazarus will not 
 heed them, not at least unless they be accompanied with 
 a recognition of his grievances and a discourse of reme- 
 dies for the same. The sacred duties of property, that 
 is the theme to take up at present, even in the worldly 
 interest of the propertied classes themselves. To parody 
 a famous saying, property now is on its trial. If the 
 existence of Dives is a benefit to Lazarus according to 
 the order of nature, then well and good. Dives may 
 be converted, and maintained in his estate; but if his 
 existence is a benefit to no one but himself, so much the 
 worse for Dives in the time that is coming on the earth. 
 
 Lazarus can read ; he has had some education : he 
 can think ; and he does think the division of this world^s 
 goods between himself and Dives desperately unfair : and 
 in his weakness he growls to his comrades in misery, 
 "We will right this injustice some day." 
 
 2. What is Socialism ? 
 
 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 
 
Socialism 
 
 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 pro- 
 posed 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 con- 
 tracts. 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 
 
Socialism 
 
 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 carry- 
 ing 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 compul- 
 sion 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 aesthetic 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 
 
4 
 
 Socialism 
 
 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 shoe- 
 makers*, 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 Slate will be able to do by employing a school 
 of statisticians, whose forecast will be received with defer- 
 ence 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 who- 
 ever buys anything, buys it of the State, that is, of some 
 
Socialism 
 
 5 
 
 gild over which the State has plenary dominion and con- 
 trol. 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 com- 
 ponent 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. 
 
 3. Socialism a Romance. 
 
 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 con- 
 fronted 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 
 
6 
 
 Socialism 
 
 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 im- 
 possible." * 
 
 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. 
 
 4. Political Difficulties of Socialism. 
 
 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 manage- 
 ment 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 adminis- 
 trative 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 prin- 
 ciple of a vote for every man, and every man one vote. 
 Obstruction v/ould flourish there rank and impassable, 
 
 ' Aristotle, Politics^ 2, 5. 
 
Socialism 
 
 7 
 
 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 adjudi- 
 cate as citizens.^ 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. 
 
 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 for- 
 midable 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 him- 
 self and his kingdom to " Doggie Steenie." But this 
 devotion to what our forefathers in CromwelFs time 
 called " The Single Person " looks ominous for popular 
 liberty. If ever in the Socialist State a Fighting Gild — 
 
 * Rousseau was shrewd enough to see this. He says ot the 
 Greeks: **Des esclaves faisaient ses travaux : sa grande affaire 
 etait sa liberte. . . Quoi ! la liberte ne se maintient qu'a I'appui de 
 la servitude ! Peut-etre. Les deux exces se touchent " {Du Contrai 
 Social f iii. 15.). 
 
8 
 
 Socialism 
 
 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 mihtary despot. 
 
 5. The Proletariate. 
 
 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 SociaHsm once established would 
 witness the speedy development of a Proletariate within 
 
Socialism 
 
 9 
 
 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, systemati- 
 cally coerced and kept under by force, the doing, 
 Socialists say, of the bourgeoisie. But in the new re- 
 public to come they will be emancipated, on the prin- 
 ciple 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 pre- 
 paring 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 dis- 
 claim. Besides, once disfranchisement sets in, many may 
 be found to deserve it. 
 
 6. The Iron Law. 
 
 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 im- 
 proved : they and their children have nothing to hope 
 fpr but 4 b^re subsistence : they are iron-bound in toil and 
 
lO 
 
 Socialism 
 
 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 com- 
 parison 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 Victorians 
 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 
 
Socialism 
 
 II 
 
 innocuous and more effectual remedy would be to 
 relinquish the cheap goods, and pay honest prices for our 
 luxuries to provide fair wages. 
 
 7. Karl Marx's Theory of Value. 
 
 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 The market- 
 
 value of that same passage, the ferry being a public one, 
 is id. Value in exchange is measured by the com- 
 mercial 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 regi- 
 mental 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 pro- 
 cesses, 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 work- 
 man, 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 pur- 
 sued to the destruction of capital. Suppose we have be- 
 fore 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 
 
12 
 
 Socialism 
 
 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 con- 
 suming 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 thaC we 
 waived just now. A carver in wood spends his time in 
 turning out wooden imitations of cakes of Brown Wind- 
 sor 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 dift'erent 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. 
 
Socialism 
 
 13 
 
 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 w ords, 
 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, litera- 
 ture, 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 
 
Socialism 
 
 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 o.^ 
 itself higher wages ; and less production, lower wages. 
 
 Pressed by arguments like these, Socialists sometime? 
 change their key, and tell us that at any rate Messrs 
 X. Y. Z. are wonderfully well paid for their persona) 
 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 tht 
 cake, or a net profit equal to the sum of wa^es and 
 
Socialism 
 
 15 
 
 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. 
 
 8. The Unproductive Rich. 
 
 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 man- 
 aging 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. 
 
 Thi3 s^cpnd and further good coiri^s frpria the ^T^i^t- 
 
i6 
 
 Socialism 
 
 ence 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. 
 
 9. The Healing of Lazarus. 
 
 There is no lack of remedies proposed. Temperance, 
 Thrift, Emigration, National Insurance, Co-operation, 
 Profit-sharing, all have their advocates, all are good in 
 their way, none of them is all in all by itself. I have yet 
 another remedy to add. It is not Charity, as that word 
 is commonly understood in England. The science and 
 art of almsgiving must be studied and practised by 
 charitable societies for the relief of the sick and 
 wounded in the battle of life, who cannot help them- 
 selves : but we do not want all the working classes on 
 the bick list. 
 
 We must contrive to have fewer sick and wounded, by 
 giving the workman a better chance of doing a stroke 
 for himself. He has higher claims than thos^ of charity 
 
Socialism 
 
 17 
 
 on his employer. There is a virtue which the old school- 
 men called piety : we might English it family-feeling. 
 It imports the habitual love and care which the mem- 
 bers of a family ought to have one for another. Family 
 is from the Latin fatnilia, by which the Romans under- 
 stood all who were under the patetfamilias^ namely, the 
 wife, the children, (called liberie or free subjects), and 
 ihe bondsmen {servi or famuli^ literally the doers, or 
 workers, whence the name familia, from facio, I do). 
 We need to have the principle recognized, that workmen 
 are part of the family of their employer, understanding 
 family in this wide Roman sense : that he is \heix pater- 
 familias : that between him and them there exists a per- 
 sonal relationship, the observance of which is matter of 
 the virtue of piety. Now piety is a virtue that binds with 
 a closer tie than justice. It is justice to give to another 
 his own. Justice supposes two terms, the giver and the 
 receiver, mutually distinct. Therefore no man can be 
 just to himself, strictly speaking. Nor does hard, fast 
 justice run betw^een those who are in some sense identi- 
 fied as one moral person, as betw^een father and son, 
 husband and wife, master and servant. This is the 
 teaching of Aristotle. If the father harms the son, or 
 the master the servant, he harms himself, a more wicked 
 piece of mischief than is injustice done to a stranger. 
 This was the personal relationship, the family connection 
 between master and man, recognized in theory at least 
 in the ancient w^orld, where there were slaves ; recognized 
 in the Middle Ages as the relationship of lord and vassal; 
 and most cruelly discarded in modern times by the sub 
 stitution of the conception that finds expression in the 
 terms employer and hands. 
 
 The bond of family must be strengthened, and the 
 sphere of duty of the paterfamilias enlarged. It is the 
 depreciation of family ties that leads up to the rankest 
 State Socialism. To that goal our large Companies, with 
 their agents and "hands," are unconsciously tending. 
 But the tendency may be arrested, and even Companies 
 become paternal, by washing it, and by delegating to 
 their various agents in command of their workpeople 
 the office of a father, not without support of course from 
 the Company's purse. Thus a station-master might be 
 
i8 
 
 Socialism 
 
 responsible for the Company's servants employed under 
 him, not merely as touches the Company's interest, but 
 for their individual well-being, short of fussy interference, 
 for there is excess in all things.^ 
 
 It will be said that this taking of workmen within the 
 family circle will mean their employer spending money 
 on them over and above the wages that he pays them. A 
 frightful supposition truly ! Horrible to think of obstacles 
 being thrown in the way of the amassing of wealth ! 
 Perhaps the selfishness of the master may find comfort 
 in the Aristotelian leaching, that he who spends on his 
 workpeople, that is, on his family, spends on himself 
 Perhaps he may reflect that his men will work to greater 
 production by being better fed, better housed, less brutal, 
 less immoral, and more loyal to his person. After all, 
 there is something beyond mere breath in the " For, he's 
 a jolly good fellow." I fear, however, that the employer 
 who starts this objection has but a poor idea of the end 
 and purpose of money-making. Either he regards it as 
 a means to enjoyment and ostentation, or as an end in 
 itself. In either case he is a selfish man, a plague and 
 embossed carbuncle in the flesh of society. Capitalists 
 of this mind — sober, respectable men as they are reputed 
 to be — are to blame for the present and past misery of 
 our labouring population. If no capitalist is possible 
 except money-grubbers like these, it is waste of words 
 to argue against Socialism : the Socialists are right, and 
 Capital stands condemned. The true end of money- 
 making is for the good of the man's own family, whereof 
 his workmen count for part, for the good of his native 
 city or district, and for the good of his country. Who- 
 ever does not appreciate the motto, iVon sihi sed patrice^ 
 is unworthy of a high position amongst mankind. 
 
 But, in these present evil days at least, it will be 
 
 ' " It is a good investment in a money point of view, but far 
 more in other ways, for a railway company to provide houses for 
 its station-masters, porters, platelayers, and signalmen. A com- 
 pany in good credit ought to be able to build houses more cheaply 
 than other people, and can afford to let them to its servants at 
 a lower rent than people who build houses merely for profit ; and 
 it is much to the advantage of the company to keep their men 
 together, giving them an interest in the company both while at 
 work and when off dnXy.''— Railway Appliances, by Barry (Text- 
 books of Science), pp. 190-1. 
 
Socialism 
 
 19 
 
 urged, it is all that the masters can do to keep out of 
 the bankruptcy court : if they spend any more on their 
 workmen, they will be clean ruined. One thinks of 
 Macduff's keen inquiry, " Dost thou say all ? " All 
 these cotton-spinners who rent the parks of decaying 
 noblemen, all these provision-dealers who dress their 
 wives in diamonds, all employers of labour who find 
 money to fling away in the extravagances of the London 
 season, who yacht in the Mediterranean, and fish in 
 Norway, and buy up art-treasures in Italy — all will be 
 ruined by an increase of attention and expenditure 
 bestowed on the poor who are the props of their for 
 tunes ! There certainly are capitalists whose backs 
 another straw would break, and who are not now in a 
 position to treat their workmen handsomely : these petty 
 potentates in due course of nature must perish from the 
 ranks of Capital. It is much more certain that they will 
 perish than that their wealthier brethren will awake to 
 a sense of their duty. The times are unfavourable to 
 small undertakings. Too many moneyed men have 
 taken up the position of employer, attracted by the 
 profits, and not thinking of the responsibilities; now 
 the profits are gone, and they must go. The burden of 
 employership must rest on broader shoulders. 
 
 10. Co-operation. 
 
 Hobbes, in the frontispiece of one of his works, ex 
 hibits the bust of a human figure, whose head, breast, 
 ind shoulders are made up of men packed together 
 We may take this for a figure of a Co-operative Society. 
 Co-operation may open a great future at once to the 
 small capitalists and to the working man. It has certain 
 drawbacks, notably the diflficulty of getting good mana- 
 gers ; still the cause looks hopeful. Even more hopeful 
 still is Profit-sharing, which gives workmen a direct 
 interest in the profits which their labour helps to produce. 
 The effect hence anticipated is to make "industrial 
 divisions vertical, not horizontal," the workman's interests 
 being " bound up with those of his employer, and pitted 
 in fuir competition against those of other workmen and 
 employers " (Jevons). 
 
20 
 
 Socialism 
 
 II. Honour to Masters. 
 
 Flattery of the lower orders is as base and mischievous 
 as the flattering of kings. It is plain truth to tell, and 
 vv'holesome to hear, that the great multitude of the poor, 
 who are always with us, have a choice to make, an 
 alternative dictated by nature, between misery joined to 
 independence on the one hand, and comfort along with 
 dependence on the other. In the present deplorable 
 state of society a third alternative widely obtains, to wit, 
 abject misery and dependence conjoined. But if ever 
 the good time comes when employers as a body shall 
 take up an attitude of fatherly piety toward their men ; 
 shall abstain from gains, the outcome of paying a starva- 
 tion wage ; shall see to the housing of their people, shall 
 visit them, know them, and be proud of their bright, 
 happy faces, as of the young olive-plants about their own 
 table : if ever this shall come to pass, it can only be by 
 the workman assuming a reciprocal attitude towards his 
 employer, an attitude of respect, love, and loyalty, and 
 a readiness to consider his master's opinions — in fact, 
 obedience without servility and deference short of blind 
 worship. The employer cannot be a father, where the 
 employed will not behave like a son. A grown-up son, 
 if you like, and emancipated from paternal dominion, 
 but a son for all that, mindful of the Commandment, 
 " Honour thy father." The old song must no more be 
 heard, I care for nobody," with its doleful addition, 
 " and nobody cares for me." The workman must put 
 away at once the pride of independence and the grief of 
 the castaway.' 
 
 12. Augury of the Future. 
 
 It is presumptuous to prophesy, but one may hazard a 
 guess as to distribution of wealth in the future. First, 
 
 ^ In time, however, the dismissal of a workman may become so 
 heavy a ban as to require a court of arbitration to pronounce it. 
 In time too we may revert to the old Saxon rule, no man without 
 a h/aford {lord.) ; no labourer at a loose end, destitute of land 
 and capital, and not belonging to any employer, or gild ox gang ot 
 working men. Sudden spurts of work may then be met by con- 
 tracting with the foremen of these gangs or gilds, or with othei 
 masters for the loan of their staff. 
 
Soctaiism 
 
 21 
 
 then, there will be large private capitalists, with or 
 without profit-sharing. These will be incorporated fre- 
 quently in wealthy companies. Small capitalists stand- 
 ing by themselves will grow fewer and fewer. Hesiod 
 of old sang : 
 
 Small craft praise and admire, but stow thou thy wares in a large 
 ship. 
 
 So it is, that trade is entering into waters where nothing 
 will float but either large argosies or large flotillas. 
 Secondly, there will be individuals of small means, half 
 capitalist and half workman, banded together in common 
 enterprises of Co-operation and Profit-sharing. Thirdly, 
 most wonderful event of all, there will be large municipal 
 or communal property, mills, mines, stores, land, and 
 particularly workmen's dwelling-houses. Local govern- 
 ment in those days will be vastly developed, and great 
 part of the total taxation will be under municipal control. 
 In that day, the working man will have the shrewdness 
 to perceive, that it is much more his interest to have a 
 potent voice in the management of municipal aflairs than 
 in the government of the empire. Municipal capital, 
 therefore, will be fairly controlled by the workers : it will 
 not be mere matter of bourgeoisie jobbery. The men 
 employed in the corporation works will live in the corpor- 
 ation dwelling-houses. The liberal treatment they receive, 
 so to speak, at their own hands, will compel all private 
 employers and companies, if they mean to find men to 
 work for them, to treat their workpeople well, and especi- 
 ally to see them, well lodged. But this is Socialism! 
 No, it is not. Socialism allows of no private capital 
 whatever. I look forward in ages to come to see private 
 capital and communal capital working side by side in 
 amicable and advantageous competition, the presence of 
 either operating as a corrective to the peculiar abuses to 
 which its rival is liable. 
 
 13. Need of Motive Power from Above. 
 
 In considering this or any other sketch of arrange- 
 ments contemplated, we must stand on our guard against 
 what is perhaps the master delusion of Socialism : I 
 mean the idea that any imaginable constitution of society 
 
21 
 
 Socialism 
 
 whatever has virtue enough in itself to render oppression 
 impossible. Happiness and good order do not spring 
 from mere environment. Perhaps it is their habitual 
 conversation in mills and workshops that helps Socialists 
 to imagine that human well-being might be manufactured 
 like any other product, could we only erect the requisite 
 machinery. Give a man, they say, an interest in the 
 interest of his fellows ; let him find himself benefited in 
 the common good ; and he will remain indeed selfish as 
 before, but his selfishness will work no harm, it will all 
 turn to the good of the community. In being selfish he 
 will be public-spirited. He will commit no crime against 
 society, simply because he will be beyond the reach of 
 temptation. How can a man steal, who abounds in 
 bread ? or commit adultery, where there is every facility 
 for divorce ? or be idle, when by wages he must live ? or 
 perjure himself, when he believes in no God ? or commit 
 murder, when every man he meets is his partner and 
 help-mate? How indeed? Shrewd old Aristotle has 
 an answer to the point, which I think worth quoting 
 with some adaptation here : 
 
 "It is not only for the necessaries of life that men 
 commit crime, for which Socialists think to find a remedy 
 in the confiscation of capital, so that people may not 
 turn highwaymen for cold or hunger ; a further tempta- 
 tion is the longing to get gratification and appease 
 desire. For if people have a desire of something beyond 
 the necessaries of life, they will commit crimes to satisfy 
 that craving. Nay, they will form to themselves artificial 
 desires, that they may have gratification without paying 
 for it by previous uneasiness. ... As a matter of fact, 
 it is the superfluities rather than the bare necessaries of 
 life, which are the motives of the most heinous crimes. 
 Men do not usurp a kingdom to get out of the cold. . . . 
 It is solely as a preventive of petty crimes that the prin- 
 ciple of the Socialist polity is efficacious. . . . No doubt 
 there is a certain advantage in Democratic Socialism as 
 a safeguard against the rivalry of classes, but it is nothing 
 to boast of. For in the first place the men of light and 
 leading, the possessors of ability and ingenuity, will take 
 umbrage at not being set above the rest, as they deserve, 
 and will turn to attacking the Constitution and sowing 
 
Socialism 
 
 23 
 
 sedition. And secondly, there is no satisfying the greed 
 of human kind.^ People are content at first with an 
 allowance of two shillings, but no sooner is this the 
 constitutional sum than they claim a larger one, and so 
 on ad infinitum. For it is of the nature of desire to 
 extend indefinitely, and the mass of mankind live for 
 the gratification of desire."* 
 
 Aristotle mentions philosophy as a remedy. Under a 
 purely natural dispensation philosophy would have been 
 the guide of life. But in the present order of Providence, 
 not philosophy but the faith of Christ is appointed to 
 lead man to his goal. That goal is beyond this world, 
 that we may so pass through the good things of life 
 as to arrive at eternal joys. As things stand, there 
 is no way to those joys except by faith in Christ 
 Christian "godliness is profitable to all things, hav- 
 ing promise of the life that now is, and of that 
 which is to come." 3 It is a mistake to look upon 
 Christianity as a necessary institution indeed for bringing 
 up men for heaven, but a drawback and disadvantage 
 to their temporal estate. Mankind cannot prosper as a 
 race unless they live for heaven ; and living for heaven 
 in the actual order of things means Christianity. There 
 is no other name under heaven given to men but the 
 name of Jesus, whereby we must be either saved 
 eternally or rescued from present social miseries. There 
 is no other love but the love of Jesus Christ, that 
 can take the selfishness out of a man. Demagogues, 
 philanthropists, are all selfish — they want to advertise 
 themselves, unless the love of the Crucified has taught 
 them the art of self-suppression. There is nothing but 
 the vision and hope of good things beyond this world, 
 that can thoroughly loosen a man's heart from honour 
 and money and what money can buy.s But we need 
 
 ' The Professor of Greek in the Socialist Commonwealth will 
 often have these words on his lips. 
 
 ' Aristotle, Politics y ii. 7, with slight adaptation. 
 3 I Tim. iv. 8. 
 
 * Pius IX. in the Syllabus, n. 40, condemned the proposition that 
 " The doctrine of the Catholic Church is adverse to the interests 
 and well-being of human society." 
 
 s " No conviction that unselfishness pays, has ever made any man 
 permanently and persistently unselfish " (Balfour) 
 
Socialism 
 
 unselfishness and detachment — poverty of spirit, in fact 
 — that human society as a whole may thrive and 
 prosper. If a man looks upon intoxicating drink as 
 the supreme good of humanity, that very persuasion 
 disqualifies him for taking his drink wisely. Part of 
 the reformation of a drunkard, or of any sensualist, is 
 the creation in him of higher tastes. But whoever 
 takes the supreme good to be money, whether in the 
 shape of capital or wages, it matters not — whoever has 
 set his whole heart on money and its incidents, is as 
 incapable of using his money well as the drunkard his 
 wine. Whatever we take to be the supreme good, we want 
 to have as much as possible of it for ourselves — the 
 drunkard a-ll the liquor he can carry ; the worshipper of 
 wealth and wages, all the money and luxuries he can 
 lay his hands on. Both men are thoroughly selfish : 
 they are unfit co-operators in any social scheme : they 
 will wrangle and squander, peculate and revolutionize. 
 I speak of what will occur in the world generally. Man's 
 nature needs to be spiritualized that we may deal with 
 temporal goods unselfishly. Never was there greater 
 infatuation than the Socialist proposal, to set all mankind 
 a-hungering after material goods alone, and then to 
 make men up into fraternities and co-partnerships, in the 
 fond expectation that they will not rend and prey upon 
 one another. The survival of the fittest— in popular 
 language, the weakest to the wall — is a stem law of 
 nature. It works itself out too little checked in the 
 present capitalist system. It will work itself out under 
 any system than can be proposed, Co-operation, Profit- 
 sharing, Socialism — except it be counteracted by the 
 further law of faith, hope, and charity, causing the 
 stronger to hold their hand. But Socialism rejects faith, 
 hope, and charity. It levies war alike on Capital and 
 on Christianity. It has yet to learn that Christianity is 
 the stronger institution of the two. 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON. 
 
 U—Feb. 1898. 
 
Price 2s. 6d., Cloth. 
 
 THE SOCIAL VALUE OF 
 THE GOSPEL 
 
 Edited by the Right Rev. Mgr. PARKINSON, D.D. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. The Object of this Study. 
 
 II. Opinions of Different Schools. 
 
 III. Catholics and the Social Aspect of the Gospel. 
 
 IV. What is not found in the Social Teaching of the Gospel. 
 
 V. Proof of the Social Value of the Gospel. 
 
 VI. The Gospel and the Goods of this World. 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Biographical Notes. 
 
 " In its subject-matter this work stands alone in English Catholic litera- 
 ture, for we have no book or pamphlet which covers the same ground . . . 
 various common misapprehensions of the Church's teaching concerning 
 wealth and poverty are discussed and corrected." — Catholic Book Notes. 
 
 Price 6d. net, wrapper; Is. net, cloth. 
 
 The Catholic Social Year Book 
 for 1912 
 
 THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL YEAR BOOK will be found 
 of much utility and interest to all (whether in this country or 
 not) who desire to know something of the progress of Catholicity 
 in England and to study the increased social activity amongst us 
 which, in accordance with the exhortation of Pope Leo XIII, strives 
 to impress upon the public conscience the Catholic principles of 
 civic life. 
 
 The Year Book for 1912 contains a number of specially-written 
 articles on various departments of Catholic Social Work at home 
 and abroad, and will be found, like the previous volumes, a mine 
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 FACTS & THEORIES 
 
 BEING A CONSIDERATION OF SOME BIOLOGICAL 
 CONCEPTIONS OF TO-DAY. 
 
 By SIR BERTRAM WINDLE, M.D., Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., etc. 
 
 President of University College, Cork. 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 ON "BIAS"— ON "DOGMA" AND " DOGMATISM "—ON "NATURE" 
 AND "SCIENCE," AND ON "FACTS," "LAWS," AND " HYPOTHESES "—ON 
 LIFE AND THE EXPLANATIONS OFFERED THEREON— ON THE ORIGINA- 
 TION OF LIFE : BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS— ON THE VARIABILITY 
 OF LIVING THINGS, AND ON " DARWINISM "—WHAT DARWIN HIMSELF 
 HELD— THE ORIGIN OF MAN— " DARWINISM " AND CERTAIN SUPER- 
 STRUCTURES : MORALITY AND MORALS— SOME OTHER " ISMS." 
 
 EXTRACT FROM PREFACE. 
 
 " These pages are intended to present a popular account of 
 certain fundamental biological problems and conceptions as 
 they stand at the moment, and an appreciation of their bear- 
 ing upon the beliefs of Catholics — indeed, I think I may say 
 of all persons holding the main doctrines of Christianity, for 
 it is against these main doctrines that the attack is being 
 made to-day. The old form of polemics is, if not dead, at 
 least on its death-bed, and no longer affects intelligent and 
 thinking people. It is, therefore, quite possible, and in my 
 opinion most advisable, for those interested in Christianity, 
 however they may differ on other points, at least to unite in 
 defence of the fundamental doctrines on which all persons to 
 whom the term ^ Christian ^ can, in any legitimate manner, 
 be applied, are agreed.'^ 
 
 The Month says : — " While of course a detailed discussion of any one 
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 superficial. He is very simple and at the same time very convincing. . . . 
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 limitations, throughout a world obscured by the mists of rationalism." 
 
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