LANING 
 OCIALISM 
 
 . BRUCE GLASIER
 
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 First Impression 1919. 
 
 Second Impeession 1920.
 
 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM
 
 THE MEANING OF 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 J. BRUCE GLASIER 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. HOBSON, M.A. 
 
 THE NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED 
 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET, MANCHESTER; 
 
 AND AT LONDON.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 For good or ill, the Socialist movement is a 
 tremendous fact in the world, and the probability 
 of the universal coming- of Socialism is either civi- 
 lisation's greatest hope, or its greatest peril. Alike 
 for those who desire and for those who dread that 
 event, the subject of what Socialism means as a 
 political movement and as an aspect of social and 
 moral evolution is therefore one of the most impor- 
 tant that can engage the attention of thoughtful 
 minds. 
 
 It has been the author's aim in the following 
 pages, not only to present a view of the main 
 political and economic objects of Socialist agitation 
 and revolution, but to discover the true origin and 
 nature of Socialism, what is its permanent direc- 
 tion, and, so far as we can discern it, what is its 
 final goal. But he confesses freely, and his work 
 must bear whatever detraction the confession 
 places on it, that he has pursued his task with a 
 lover's fervour and enthusiasm — believing, as he 
 does with all his heart that Socialism is not only 
 right, but good and beautiful, and is the only 
 system of society in which mankind can attain to 
 true freedom and true human grace and dignity. 
 
 Several of the chapters in this volume originally 
 formed part of a series of articles which appeared 
 weekly in the columns of the Labour Leader. These
 
 vi. PREFACE. 
 
 chapters have, however, all been revised, and 
 several of them almost completely rewritten. 
 
 The substance of the Socialist teaching which 
 the author has by pen and speech been promulgat- 
 ing in the country during the past forty years is 
 contained in this book. Whence he derived his 
 earlier ideas of Socialism he does not know. There 
 was then no Socialist movement in the country and 
 no Socialist literature ; but he finds, on referring 
 to notes and MSS. of his earlier lectures, that his 
 general view of Socialism — its principles, its practi- 
 cal policy and the faith inspiring its idealism and 
 enthusiasm — has remained unchanged, except on 
 minor points of interpretation and application, 
 since he first began his apostleship. 
 
 While he has since read all the more important 
 works on Socialism by British and foreign writers, 
 and has derived immense instruction from them, 
 he has not found cause to alter his earlier concep- 
 tions. This is probably also the case with most 
 Socialists who arrived at their Socialist convictions 
 not by the word from without, but by the word 
 within. The influences which have done most to 
 colour and enrich his conception of Socialism have 
 been above all his early association with William 
 Morris, his later association, for over twenty years 
 with J. Keir Hardie, his colleagues in the Indepen- 
 dent Labour Party, and his closest comrade and 
 colleague, his wife. He is indebted to Edward 
 Carpenter, Bellamy, Bernard Shaw, Hyndman, 
 Bax, Wells, MacDonald, Snowden, Kautsky, and 
 other well-known Socialist writers for many fresh
 
 PREFACE. vii. 
 
 points of insight and criticism alike of Socialism 
 and of existing society. 
 
 The author does not claim for this book that it 
 is an authoritative statement of Socialism, or of 
 the views of any Socialist school or party. There 
 is, and can be, no authoritative statement of 
 Socialism. Certain inferences concerning the 
 future evolution of industry and society have been 
 drawn from history and biology by prominent 
 Socialist thinkers, notably by Karl Marx, which 
 have been denominated "Scientific Socialism." 
 But these inferences, like all other suppositions 
 concerning the probabilities of human action or 
 events, have no validity other than the conviction 
 they bring to each mind. 
 
 The Socialist organisations in every country 
 have each drawn up statements of principles and 
 programmes of Socialism. These, while in general 
 accord on basic principles and in their practical 
 schemes, show many diversities of thought result- 
 ing from differences of racial temperament, of 
 economic situation, and of political custom. The 
 author can, however, he thinks, claim that the 
 general view of Socialism which he puts forward 
 in these pages, agrees in the main with the general 
 teaching of British Socialists, though there arc 
 points no doubt on which representatives of British 
 Socialist thought, who have earnest followers, may 
 disagree with him, even as they may disagree with 
 one another. Wherever this disagreement apf>ears 
 to affect vital issues, he has endeavoured to indicate 
 the personal character of his point of view.
 
 viil. PREFACE. 
 
 The author is greatly indebted to Mr. J. A. 
 Hobson for kindly furnishing- an introduction to 
 this volume. He regards it as a high honour that 
 his pages have been so generously commended by 
 one of the most eminent political economists and 
 finest public spirits of our time. He is also grate- 
 ful to his friends, Miss Laura Gibbings and Mr. 
 H. V. Herford, for much help with the proofs ; and 
 it is a joy to him to express, even in this formal 
 way, his gratitude to his wife, but for whose 
 encouragement, assistance, and loving care during 
 long months on a bed of pain, these chapters 
 would never have been written. 
 
 J.B.G. 
 
 September, igie
 
 IX. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 P\RT I.— AFTER LONG AGES. 
 
 PAGK. 
 
 I. The Ascent of Man ^ 
 
 II. The Hope of Socialism : Ideals and 
 Portents 
 
 III. The Great Disinheritance : The Land... 20 
 
 IV. Exploitation : The Stores of \Ye.^lth... 26 
 V. Landlord and Capitalist 32 
 
 VI. The Parable of Andrew Carnegie 37 
 
 VII. Is the CAPrr.\LisT Necessary? 42 
 
 paut II.— the epoch of freedom. 
 
 VIII The Reward of Labour : 
 
 I. Sources of Wealth oi 
 
 IX. The Reward of Labour : 
 
 II. The Value of Labour »» 
 
 X The Reward of Labour : 
 
 III. Wages : False and True w 
 
 XI. Thk Reward or Genius : 
 
 I. Genius and Society "^ 
 
 XII. The Reward of Genius : 
 
 II. Genius and Pots of Gold Oi 
 
 XIII. Freldom ok Work 92 
 
 XIV. Freedom of Life -^ 
 
 XV. Freedom of Education ^^^ 
 
 XVI. Freedom of Old Age 11° 
 
 XVII. Socialism and Private Property 120
 
 X. CONTENTS. 
 
 PART III.— SOCIALISM IN EXISTING SOCIETY. 
 
 PACE. 
 
 XVIII. Forms of Social Growth 133 
 
 XIX. The Family, Friendship, and Work 138 
 
 XX. Church, College, and School 146 
 
 XXI. MuNicip.AL Socialism 151 
 
 XXII. Interlude : The Revival of Village Life 157 
 
 XXIII. National Ownership 163 
 
 XXIV. "The Plague of Officials" 168 
 
 XXV. State .Socialism 176 
 
 XXVI. The State 180 
 
 XXVII. LfBERTY and the State 184 
 
 PART IV. -BEYOND ALL FRONTIERS. 
 
 XXVIIl. Nationhood 193 
 
 XXIX. Internationalism 198 
 
 XXX. The International 202 
 
 XXXL Socialism and War 209 
 
 XXXII. Conclusion : Axioms and Prophecy 218
 
 XI. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 By J. A. HoBsoN. 
 
 There have been many impulses toward. 
 Socialism and many entrances. The sense of the 
 injustice and needless suffering under existing 
 social institutions has doubtless been a common 
 force, impelling people to imagine or accept from 
 others a better order in which these evils shall be 
 remedied. This genuinely Utopian impulse has 
 underlain the reasoning and scheming of n-.any 
 past and living thinkers and workers who scorned 
 the imputation of sentimentalism, or even idealism, 
 and claimed to apply a vigorous rationalism to 
 their analysis of the processes of social evolution, 
 and to the policy of social conduct. But this 
 subordination of the Utopian impulse to the claims 
 either of the so-called scientific Socialism, or of a 
 Fabian tactical opportunism, or of a blind revolu- 
 tionism, has been a grave error. For, though the 
 earlier Utopians often dressed their ideas out in 
 crude or impossible circumstances, or made 
 incredible demands upon " human nature," they 
 had in them the roots of the matter, the creative 
 spirit working in the framework of society, 
 regarded not chiefly as an industrial system, or a 
 method of government, but as a mode of human 
 living.
 
 xii. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Those who have approached Socialism through 
 the door, not of economics, or politics, but of art 
 and morals, have done most to foster and to spread 
 this vital spirit, both of criticism and of construc- 
 tion. 
 
 Yet even artist and moralist are terms which 
 indicate a too confined treatment and method. 
 In choosing words one would say that the most 
 profitable labour for Socialism is in the field of 
 " humanism." If the term sounds a little 
 "precious" or " pedantic" that can't be helped. 
 It can and ought to be rescued from these contemp- 
 tuous implications. For it is wanted to express 
 the need and demand that Society shall be so 
 transformed as to furnish for all its members a 
 fully human life. From such a Socialism there 
 easily and inevitably falls away the charge of 
 materialism, based upon an over-stressing of dis- 
 tinctively economic conditions, the charge of regi- 
 mentalism and loss of liberty based on magnify- 
 ing the State, and the charge of proletarian violence 
 as the instrument of reform. 
 
 It is the high and peculiar merit of this book 
 of Bruce Glasier's, that it expresses more fully, 
 more freely, and, I think, more successfully than 
 any other of our time, this humanist interpreta- 
 tion and outlook. Though the writer disclaims 
 the title of an expert economist, he exhibits a well- 
 informed and thorough grasp of the structure and 
 operations of our productive system, including in 
 it not only the arrangements for turning Out 
 material utilities, but the professional, official, and
 
 INTRODUCTION. xiii. 
 
 artistic equipment of society. His informal and 
 illuminating incursions into many fields of activity 
 are never of a merely critical or destructive nature. 
 What he is "after" is the human powers and 
 faculties, which at present are repressed, abused, 
 or unused for g-enuinely human purposes. 
 
 By a series of different routes he gets to the 
 same goal of a full human personality. Socialism, 
 from the standpoint of politics and economics, is 
 envisaged as the set of just and reasonable arrange- 
 ments which make this goal attainable for all. 
 But it is the spirit of free personality and com- 
 radeship, the harmony of individual and social will, 
 and must inhabit this new domain. 
 
 Is the spirit of man equal to the achievement? 
 Is he inherently too selfish, too greedy, too lazy, 
 too brutish for the successful effort? Bruce Glasier 
 makes a splendid vindication of the nature of man. 
 His refutation of the allegations, that men of 
 genius, invention and initiative, will not render 
 their high social services except for high private 
 gain, that ordinary work must always be so dull 
 and repellent that ordinary workers will only do 
 their necessary share under the spur of economic 
 necessity, and that Socialised industries would be 
 eaten up by a plague of officials needed to force 
 workers to do their social duty, is a most effective 
 piece of controversy, shot through with sayings of 
 penetrating wit and wisdom, such as this, that 
 " Palaces are more fatal to genius than prisons." 
 He laughs to scorn the scoffers who begin with 
 their: " Human nature bein^ what it is" — as if
 
 xiv. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 human nature from the beginning- of history were 
 not always adapting itself to a new environment, 
 which was in increasing measure its own creation. 
 But a chief merit of Bruce Glasier's book is that 
 it is full of vision. He is aware that man is not 
 mainly and never will be, a reasoning animal. It 
 is on that account that scientific Socialism has so 
 little driving power, even were the science more 
 intellectually convincing than it is. The imaginative 
 faculty of art, working with knowledge upon the 
 awakening desire for a better life, and presenting 
 with literary power the image of that better life, 
 is of supreme importance. It is the gift of the 
 seer, the prophet. Glasier has much of this virtue, 
 some the product of his own musing, some nobly 
 borrowed from his master, William Morris, and 
 with it he paints for us bright pictures of the better 
 life he thinks attainable. 
 
 It will not be given to all to share fully his 
 faith. It is a difficult task just now to support 
 one's faith in the redemption of man. Bruce 
 Glasier indeed offers us no easy or quick panacea 
 of social ills. The service he renders is far more 
 profitable. For the great vision is held out to us, 
 not as the result of an inevitable process, but as a 
 continuation of the great experimental work by 
 which mankind has climbed with pain and difficulty 
 from the brutes to be as yet considerably lower than 
 the angels. 
 
 The book is an ambitious one. For it touches 
 not only principles, but many applications. Though 
 it does not profess to be a philosophic system, it
 
 INTRODUCTION. xv. 
 
 is inspired by a truly philosophic spirit. The 
 vision is not complete, but it is of many glimpses. 
 And, what is best, the argument is conducted in 
 so fine a temper that no hardened capitalist or 
 fanatical individualist could read it without 
 conceiving a better and a juster opinion of 
 Socialism than he had before. The ambition of 
 the writer is therefore justified of his child.
 
 PART I. 
 
 AFTER LONG AGES.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Ascent of Man. 
 
 Could a savage from the far back ages when man 
 lived wild in woods and caves be recalled to life, 
 he would require to be kept in a cage like a gorilla. 
 We should find this primeval man less sociable, 
 less human in many respects, than our finer 
 domestic animals. The dog, the horse, and the 
 elephant, so far as their physical limits permit, 
 show more sociability than would this strange 
 fellow-creature from primitive times. 
 
 It would be impossible to make this resurrected 
 ancestor of ours a public-spirited citizen or a 
 Socialist. 
 
 It would not perhaps be hard, after a time, to 
 make him eager to grab money, to take to gamb- 
 ling, to drinking, or to riding in a motor car. 
 Nor perhaps would it be difficult, were he trained 
 and put to hard work, to persuade him, once he 
 began to realise his position, to take part in a 
 strike or revolt against his masters. Or were he, 
 as he conceivably well might be, a successful gold 
 or diamond seeker, he might give handsomely of 
 his fortune to public charities or party funds. But 
 in none of these cases would his action be prompted 
 by motives of moral duty or social obligation, but 
 solely by motives of crude self-interest. The good 
 of others, the hope of helping to reconstruct 
 society in the equal interests of all, would have no 
 meaning for him. Herein the essential (inference
 
 4 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 between the character of the ancient savage and 
 civilised man begins to come into view. Let us 
 look more closely at this difference. 
 
 It is true that men and women to-day, rich and 
 poor alike, endeavour to grasp for themselves, 
 almost mercilessly, the fruits of the toil and suffer- 
 ing of others. It is true that they struggle in 
 many ways for existence and wealth almost as 
 fiercely and violently as would the primitive man. 
 It is true that in many ways they still live brutish 
 and selfish lives. These things are true, but they 
 do not sum up the motives, the feelings, the whole 
 purpose of civilised life to-day. 
 
 The struggle for existence and wealth which w-e 
 see going on in the industrial and commercial 
 world represents only one aspect of present-day 
 society life. There is, as we shall notice more fully 
 in these pages, a vast amount of co-operation and 
 mutual help going on also. There is an astonish- 
 ing amount of kindness, comradeship and self- 
 sacrifice. 
 
 For — let us note well the fact — it is chiefly in 
 the first scramble for wealth, the first rush for its 
 distribution, that the hateful struggle of man 
 against man takes place. Once the workman gets 
 his wages or the capitalist his profits, and steps 
 out of the factory or office, at the end of the day 
 or the end of the week, he leaves much of his 
 greed and selfish disregard of his fellows behind 
 him. He becomes, in many respects, a changed 
 being. He spends his wages or profits often 
 liberally in giving enioyment to others. He makes
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN 5 
 
 his property to no small extent the common 
 property of his friends. He feasts them, he gives 
 them the best of his house, he puts himself to no 
 end of trouble and expense to make them happy. 
 He gives away generously in promoting many 
 public and humane objects. He is not infrequently 
 almost as unselfish in giving away his wealth as 
 he was grasping in obtaining it. 
 
 This better self manifests itself even among the 
 keenest combatants in the commercial and indus- 
 trial struggle. It was said of Mr. H. H. Rogers, 
 the Standard Oil millionaire, that he was "merci- 
 less in business as a tiger," but one of the most 
 genial and generous of men outside of it. He was 
 one of Mark Twain's warmest friends. Similar 
 instances are within the knowledge of all of us of 
 men who, while grasping and unfeeling in business, 
 are kindly and generous in private life, often be- 
 stowing their wealth profusely on public objects 
 and displaying a high appreciation of the nobler 
 things in nature, literature, and human character. 
 
 There was in the North a professional athlete 
 who disgraced himself by his meanness in grasp- 
 ing money for his performances. Vet this mar» 
 was prodigal in helping his less fortunate com- 
 panions, and on eight occasions rescued people 
 from drowning at the risk of his own life. And 
 who has not heard of (many of us have seen) 
 the men at the d<x:ks tearing and trampling each 
 other to get jobs, and a few moments later patheti- 
 cally sharing their last crust or penny with their 
 bruised and disconsolate comrades?
 
 6 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 My readers will now understand why I recalled 
 our primeval ancestor upon the scene. He 
 represents our ignorant, unsocial selves — the selves 
 that once were our only selves, perhaps, and still 
 survive only too strongly in most of us. He marks 
 whence we came, and the distance that our social 
 evolution has brought us from the savage to the 
 civilised man. He, the primeval brute, still 
 afflicts us with the seven deadly sins. He is our 
 " dark companion," but is no longer alone in us. 
 The social being, the highly humane spirit, the 
 God-like man, is within us also. 
 
 In his strange story of " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
 Hyde," Robert Louis Stevenson exhibits in an 
 impressive, even if improbable narrative, this dual 
 nature of man. Dr. Jekyll is a most admirable 
 and humane citizen, always seeking the good of his 
 fellows. But by means of a secret drug which he 
 has discovered he is able to subdue completely 
 or hypnotise this higher self, and he at once 
 becomes a fierce, diabolical human monster, made 
 inconceivably wicked and cunning by the use of 
 the resources of his highly educated brain. ^ 
 
 1. It may be that the two natures, the savase and the social, 
 are not, as suggested by Mr. Stevenson's story, manifestations 
 of two separate personalities in us. Both may be but the 
 one personality acting under the influence of different " com- 
 plexes " of emotion. On the other hand, there are psycholot'lsts 
 who regard man as a compound or congeries of personalities, 
 which, for the most part, lie hidden or dorijiant in the 
 subconscious part of his being, except when called forth in 
 hyper normal ^^tates. The whole question of what man's 
 personality or being consists of is now the subject of highly 
 interesting scientific investigation and philosophical discussion, 
 and very remarkable evidence and theories relatlnj; to it will 
 be found in the works of Du Prel, Freud, Blnet, Bergson, Lodge, 
 J. A. Thomson, Jay Hudson, Maerterlinck, Carpenter, and other 
 scientific and " New Thought " writers.
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN 7 
 
 Differences of heredity, education, and other cir- 
 cumstances create infinite variations in the relative 
 strength and activity of the two natures among 
 mankind. But we are, everyone of us, in some 
 degree the ancient savage and in some degree the 
 modern socialised man. One or the other may 
 remain really or apparently, almost unawakened in 
 us — but they are both there. 
 
 But it is the better ^elf, as we have seen, that 
 gains vantage as civilisation grows. It is by the 
 gradual ascendancy within him of the better self 
 that man himself ascends towards the kingdom of 
 man. 
 
 And to what heights of moral enthusiasm and 
 sublime self-forgctfulness and sacrifice may he 
 not by it attain — nay, let us rather say, has he 
 not already in countless instances in ])ast and 
 present history attained? And strangest and most 
 prophetic fact of all, his most supreme self- 
 abnegation and endurance have often been dis- 
 played, not as one might expect, in struggle and 
 suffering for the beloved ones of his household, 
 his wife and children, and parents, f>r his friends ; 
 nor, indeed, for any acquisition or i)urix)se from 
 which he might hope to obtain lor himself material 
 happiness or reward. No, not for these : but for 
 invisible and intangible things — ideas and faiths, 
 beliefs and principles — for something he called 
 God, Truth, Justice, Freedom, which he did not 
 know, or for his country, which maybe had only 
 l>estowcd c>n hini an existence of ]K)verty and 
 oppression.
 
 8 THE MEAiNING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 "My mother," cries Enjalras in " Les Miser- 
 ables " — " iny mother is the Republic ! " And for 
 that idea the Parisian student was ready to fight, 
 suffer, and die. What, indeed, will the true man 
 not do for the mother of his soul's devotion, as for 
 the mother of his heart's affection? Will he not 
 work and wear himself away to the very marrow? 
 Will he not forget that life has any value except 
 what it may give for her? And does not 
 history tell us that it is just in this thriftless throw- 
 ing away of all he has, even of life itself, for his 
 love and faith that man has attained to the king- 
 dom of man? 
 
 Tiiis is the great counterblast of martyrdom, 
 revolt, romance, yea, of common life affections 
 and sacrifice, to history's long chronicle of man's 
 selfishness and brutality, man's inhumanity to 
 man. The hero for the craven, the martyr for 
 the oppressor, the apostle for the hedonist, the 
 truth seeker for the knave. See, down through 
 the ages, the shining stream of men and women 
 moving, pale-faced and red-eyed, to exile, to prison, 
 to the burning stake, and to the scaffold, faithfullv 
 enduring the utmost torment and ungrudgingly 
 yielding up their last breath for the Cause 
 imperatively beckoning their souls. Nay, we must 
 not fail to reckon this great fact to the credit 
 balance of mankind, while sternly recording, as 
 we rarely forget to do, the blackest infamies of 
 human knavery and oppression. 
 
 And not less is this strange and mysterious 
 power of self-sacrifice manifest in our own day.
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN 9 
 
 despite the canker of materialist ambition that 
 has warmed so deeply into the heart of modern life. 
 
 Hark ! There is a cry of Freedom somewhere in 
 the streets. And lo, out rush men and women 
 from their homes, hastening to greet Freedom, 
 heedless of all else. They struggle towards her 
 through shearing sheets of fire and lead, with glad 
 hearts to embrace and defend her — Freedom, 
 whom they have never seen ! They fall, these 
 infatuated fellow creatures of ours, their poor 
 bodies shattered into shreds, in pools of blood on 
 the paving stones. 
 
 Listen again ! In a little stifling room are 
 gathered a group of peasants. One rises witli a 
 far away light in his eyes, his face spectral-looking, 
 like that of Christ in Verestchagin's pictures, and 
 he says quietly to those around him, " We must 
 get freedom or die." And the rest answer simply. 
 "Yes, we must get freedom or die." They 
 separate each to his own hovel, to meet to-morrow 
 to get freedom or die : and by noon the soldiers or 
 police are shovelling away their shapeless bodies 
 in carts. 
 
 Of what land or people do I speak? Of any 
 land, of any people, maybe : of men and women 
 of any religious creed, of any political faction. 
 
 In every land men and women now, as in times 
 past, throw themselves away, lavish their lives for 
 Freedom — for the Cause. What madness, wli.it 
 heroism, what exaltation and glory of man has 
 there not been in it all ! What triumphing of the 
 newer self of the spirit over the older self of the 
 flesh !
 
 lo THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 It is on this better nature, this higher self, that 
 the only true hopes of human progress and civili- 
 sation depend. It is in the conviction — in the 
 faith, if you will — that this better nature will 
 triumph more completely, and more universally 
 than it yet has done, except in rare instances, that 
 Utopists have dreamed their dreams and cherished 
 their hopes of the earthly paradise. 
 
 Are these dreams, <hink you — these hopes that 
 men and women generally may become, if not 
 supermen or angels, at any rate much more 
 truly civilised; more nobly natured human beings, 
 wholly fanciful and irrational? Is it not, indeed, 
 reasonable to suppose that just as the average 
 man of to-day has evolved from his Pithecanthropus 
 •or Cro Magnon prototype of the caves and woods, 
 so may the average civilised man of the future 
 rise above the type of the average man of to-day? 
 
 But how : by means of what virtue and persua- 
 sions? By none other than those that have been 
 instrumental in transforming the troglodyte of the 
 glacial age intO' the modern citizen — those that have 
 enabled him to acquire power over his environment 
 and to become in some instances a Socrates, a St. 
 Paul, a Marcus Aurelius, a St. Francis, a Pascal, a 
 Leonardo da Vinci, a Shakespeare, a Newton, a 
 John Woolman, a Hegel, a Shelley, a Tolstoy, a 
 Walt Whitman, a William Morris. 
 
 Alas ! even so, it may be said, but consider how 
 long it has taken, how many thousands of years, 
 to accomplish that miracle ! 
 
 Indeed, .so it has. But let us also consider how
 
 THE ASCENT OF MAN ii 
 
 wonderful have now become man's powers of 
 mastership over the conditions of his life, and, if 
 only he sets himself earnestly to the task, his 
 powers of mastership over himself. Consider how 
 exhaustless are now the resources of wealth 
 p>ossessed by him ; how marvellous are the realms 
 of science, art, and literature which he has 
 acquired ; how vast his opportunities of moral, 
 social and political co-operation. Surely, with all 
 these acquisitions he is now become almost god- 
 like in his dominion over the destiny of his own 
 life, so that a day may be with him as a thousand 
 years, and a thousand years as a day? 
 And of such is the prophecy of Socialism. 
 
 No reader will, I hope, regard what is said in the fore- 
 going chapter or else'.vhere in the«e pages concerning 
 society as the creator of man, as implying a denial of the 
 existence of a spiritual nature in man. Tiie fact of man's 
 phyaical ascent from the animal kingdom is accepted 
 nowadays by virtually all thoughtful religious, as well 
 as by all scientific, minds. Alfred Russel Wallace, than 
 whom there wae no sLronger upholder of the doctrine of 
 man's spiritual existence, was the co-discoverer with 
 Darwin of the law of natural selection, and one of the 
 most ardent protagonists of the doctrine of man's physical 
 and BociaJ evolution from the animal kingdom. The 
 affirmation that miin has been " made by society," in the 
 sense spoken in these pages, in no wise conflicts vvith the 
 belief either that man is es.oentially a spiritual being, or 
 that evolution itself, physical and social, is spiritual in 
 its souice and power. It is open for us to assume that 
 man has evdlved as a social being because of an inherent 
 spiritual Jmpu!«e or self within him leading bim into 
 society as a meaus of unf<jlding his spiritual nature, and 
 therefore that s'X-iety is but an outer expression of his 
 inherent spiritual self; or on the other hand, • we may 
 take the view that socirtv is the medium or source of hi« 
 spiritual endowment. But whatever be our idea of the 
 nature or orit'in of man's nn'nd, consciousness or spirit, 
 the fact remains that it is only by means of society, or
 
 12 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 communion and co-operation with others that man's 
 higher and distinctively human powers become manifest. 
 Except for society, man would possess no speech, no 
 science, no art, no civilisation in fact. Thus the late Pro- 
 fessor Henry Drummond, who was not only a strong 
 believer in man's spiritual endowment, but an evangelical 
 Christian, and who, in his remarkable book, "The Ascent 
 of Man," following the line of observation in Kropotkin's 
 " Mutual Aid," assigns the " struggle for the life of 
 others " as the main factor in human evolution, affirms 
 that " like all other energy, spiritual power is contained 
 environment. Powerless is the normal state apart from 
 environment." 
 
 There are, I know, many who would place above all 
 material conditions of human happiness the increasing 
 knowledge and use of man's psychic or spiritual powers. 
 I speak particularly of thinkers like Maeterlinck and 
 Edward Carpenter, who while accepting the teaching of 
 science with respect to the physical and social evolution 
 of ma;ikind, nevertheles believe that there are possibili- 
 ties of the unfolding within man of higher powers than 
 those concerned with physical or sensory experience. 
 This likewise is the view taken by Eastern thought. 
 Attractive and significant as this conception may appear 
 to many readers, it belongs to a realm of speculation out- 
 side the scope of our present investigation. I am here 
 dealing with man and society solely on the plane of 
 physical and social environment.
 
 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Hope of Socialism. 
 
 My task in these pages is to speak of Socialism 
 — its ideals, its hopes, and its practical aims. 
 Socialism ! — the name is so new in the world, yet 
 already it is above all other names in political 
 fame. It was unheard in the French Revolution ; 
 Shelley, one of its sweetest and sublimest herald 
 singers, never heard it. It was first spoken in the 
 Chartist agitation, but it hardly came into political 
 notice until the Socialist movement began to show 
 itself at parliamentary elections in 1885. In Mr. 
 Gladstone's famous Midlothian speeches (1879- 
 1880), in which he dealt with every political topic 
 then in public view, the word Socialism was not 
 once mentioned. Now it rings from every platform, 
 from every newspaper, and is the topic of discussion 
 in every Parliament, every workshop, every draw- 
 ing-room and fireside throughout the political 
 nations of the world. 
 
 Socialism ! There are those who hate it; there 
 are those who fear it ; there are those who doubt it. 
 But there are millions who hope for it, rejoice in 
 it and work for il. No propaganda has cvci 
 made such rapid and far spread progress in th 
 world. The whole political movement of Socialism 
 has rome into being within the memory of living 
 
 B
 
 14 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 men. It was not until 1869 that the first Socialist 
 poHtical organisation was formed in Germany. 
 No definitely Socialist organisation existed in this 
 country until 1884. Now the movement grows 
 apace in every land, and has become the most 
 formidable political agitation that the world has 
 ever known. Even as I write these words, its 
 revolutions are tossing monarchs from their thrones 
 and shaking the foundations of the political and 
 social structure of every European State. 
 
 But it is not only, nor perhaps chiefly, in these 
 political perturbations that the growing power, the 
 real evangelism of Socialism is most prophetically 
 seen. Political agitation and upheaval, as we 
 know, so often subside leaving but little trace ; 
 Joing no more than shake a fev/ twigs or branches 
 from the stem of the great tyrannies and wrongs. 
 It is in the spread and potency of the Socialist 
 idea itself, everywhere inspiring the hopes and 
 re-creating the social imagination of mankind, 
 everywhere, moulding constructively the thoughts 
 and aptitudes of the people — rich and poor, 
 thinkers and workers. Christians, Jews, Gentiles 
 and Agnostics — it is in these less noisy, but more 
 creative and enduring modes of activity that the 
 transforming power of Socialism is most authenti- 
 cally manifest. 
 
 In these directions, it is hardly too much to say, 
 Socialism is operating like a new natural law come 
 into civilised life. Like the outburst of spring, 
 it is giving new colour and conformation to life. 
 It presses forth in innumerable forms of industriaV
 
 THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM 15 
 
 co-operation, mutual aid societies for health, for 
 sustenance, for science, and for recreation, in all 
 manner of leagues, associations, and joint enter- 
 prises, and more strikingly than all, perhaps, in 
 the remarkable growth of municipal communism 
 and collectivism, and State organisation and con- 
 trol. 
 
 A certain school of mystics entertain the notion 
 that from the sun there had first to come the heat 
 to fashion the earth as a wonderful habitation for 
 man. All the infinite evolution of land and sea, 
 and bird and beast, down through the countless 
 ages, has been but a preparation of the world 
 as a fit and radiant place for man, and a rough 
 shaping of man into human form. That accom- 
 plished, there is now coming a spiritual radiation 
 by which man will be recreated in mind and heart, 
 and made fit for his higher destiny " in earth as in 
 heaven." 
 
 This transcendental theory is not likely to win 
 wide acceptance among scientific minds; but, 
 fanciful though it may be, it has much 
 plausibility as a " working theory " of the 
 phenomena of the world and mankind around 
 us. For to those who can see through the 
 surface of things, does it not seem as if there 
 were indeed pouring into the world a new influence 
 — a power that is shaping the hearts and ways of 
 men against their own will and strivings, shapinj: 
 them for a new society, a new relationship of life? 
 A new power, did we say? — No, not new: the 
 power has long been growing in the world, hut
 
 i6 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 now, at least, it seems to have burst forth suddenly 
 as with full naked glow. 
 
 What ! some will cry, what idle prophecy is 
 this ! A new power of progress and brotherhood 
 come into the world ! Where, indeed, shall we 
 see it? In the awful apocalypse of the European 
 War, and its hardly less murderous sequel of 
 revolt and repression? In the fratricidal strife 
 and unabashed dictatorship of Russian and 
 German Revolutions glorying in the Socialist name? 
 In the monster power and ogreish greed of 
 millionaire capitalism with its rapacious mono- 
 polies and profiteering? In the seemingly hardly 
 less selfish and inconsiderate strike outbreaks and 
 boycotts of the working class? In the everywhere 
 manifest spirit of militarism, reaction, and political 
 cynicism? Is it in achievements such as these 
 that we are to discern the beneficent advent of 
 Socialism? 
 
 Not in these things indeed. These things are 
 not new. Except in outward shape, they are very 
 old. They have been from the beginning. Murder 
 and lies, tyranny and fraud, have not come into 
 the world yesterday or to-day. They have afflicted 
 humanity since history began. But shall dictator- 
 ship and oppression, and the universal wounds 
 and diseases of society, hide from our sight the 
 signs of better things : of healing and transforma- 
 tion? Shall we, because poor mankind still 
 writhes in the many torments of his long captivity 
 of hunger and fear, fail to see a new glow of health 
 on his face, a kinder murmur in his voice, a
 
 THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM 17 
 
 clearer look in his eye, and a less savage move- 
 inent of his limbs? Murder and robbery and 
 lies — these are old. But the growth of a nation- 
 wide, yea, a world-wide conscience and activity, 
 not merely against open, brutal violence and plun- 
 der, but for the permanent elimination of the 
 covert and more subtle, and often more inhuman 
 forms of callousness and greed, and above all for 
 the extinction of the causes, the poisoned streams 
 of social wrong — this is not old, it is new. 
 The clustering of citizens building up collective 
 wealth in our towns, the blending everywhere of 
 private interest in co-operative and community 
 interest, the heart of the nation beginning to beat 
 its tide of sustaining blood far and wide, to heal 
 and nourish every part — these things are not old — 
 these things are new. 
 
 And need I mark as one of the most positive 
 gains to civilisation, the advance of women into 
 political life and social freedom — a change out- 
 reaching perhaps in its probable effects that of any 
 other change in the political structure of western 
 civilisation. 
 
 These things are not only mw, but laden with 
 hoF>es. that brighten us with the promise of the 
 spring, our outlook on all the coming day.;. 
 
 Were it not so we might well say with William 
 Morris that the world had better not go on at all. 
 The light of the sun, the wonder of the seasons, 
 the joy of knowledge, literature, and our human 
 affections, would be but as a gicat mockery — as 
 9 grim garlanding of the feast of death. Who has
 
 i8 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 not at some time or other been struck with the 
 brilliant phosphorescent hues of certain substances 
 underg^oing corruption? Many, perhaps, have 
 seen the strangely irridescent colours shown on 
 plates of medical books illustrating the eruptions 
 of loathsome diseases, the rainbow glistening sec- 
 tions of diseased kidneys, the startling patterns 
 as of beautiful flower wreaths in leprous erosions 
 of the body. What sickness they strike into the 
 heart ! If there be devil's beauty at all, it must 
 be beauty like that. 
 
 Even so would all the lustre of life and of the 
 great glowing frame of earth and sea and sky be 
 to us, were we to believe that here — even in this 
 little speck of the universe — the cry of the poor, 
 the groan of the overburdened, the mirth of 
 tyrants, the havoc of Empire and slaying of men 
 and nations, were to endure for ever. Nothing 
 would comfort us. For then, indeed, would pro- 
 gress have no meaning ; our noblest feelings be but 
 aberrations ; our ideals be but lying dreams. 
 
 But let us lift up our eyes and see. Men still 
 go forth to kill ; but no less do men and women 
 go forth to heal. In propaganda, in education, 
 in organising life for the sick, the cripples, the 
 blind and the consumptive, and in making pleasant 
 days for the children, do we not see the foreshadow- 
 ing of better deeds? 
 
 The sweater sweats, but the anti-sweater is 
 intent upon his track. The slum owner thrives, 
 but the garden village enthusiast is stalking him 
 down. The millionaire rolls his monster coils
 
 THE HOPE OF SOCIALISM 19 
 
 about the nation and fouls our cities with his 
 wealth, but the young- Perseus is preparing his 
 spear, and soon will flash as from the sun the 
 annihilating stroke. 
 
 Uplift, then, our eyes and uplift our hearts. 
 Taste and see what in the world is good. Not 
 one but ten thousand dragons devouring and foul- 
 ing the earth there may be, but Socialism, lo ! its 
 light is in the world and its triumph is heralded 
 in every wind. It is the advent of peace, the epoch 
 of man released from the brute, the reign of 
 equality. 
 
 That is the word and power of Socialism arising 
 in the world. The word and power which in Russia 
 and Germany at this hour are leading the people 
 through revolution, and it may be, much anarchy, 
 much terror, much suffering, much fratricidal 
 strife — as a host of fire through freedom's gate.
 
 2o 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Great Disinheritance. 
 
 Such are the hopes and ideals of Socialism — 
 mere day-dreaming-, many who are usually favour- 
 able to advanced ideas think them — dreaming on 
 the mountain top, in which the far spreading 
 clouds below are fancied to be the glowing hills 
 and valleys of the solid earth. Indeed,,! shall not 
 lament should many of my readers for the present 
 so regard them, providing they accompany me 
 through the further chapters of this book. There 
 they will, I am persuaded, find themselves on the 
 solid enough ground of indisputable economic and 
 political fact. 
 
 For our purpose now is to consider whether the 
 Socialist indictment against the present-day 
 economic and social conditions is true, and what 
 the plans and means are by which Socialists pro- 
 pose to remedy those conditions and realise their 
 own ideals and hopes. 
 
 What, then, is the main political purpose of 
 Socialist agitation to-day? The main purpose of 
 Socialist agitation is to place the means of wealth 
 under the control of the community, in order to 
 liberate the working class from the power of land- 
 lordism and capitalism. It is around this proposal 
 that the chief political controversy concerning
 
 THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE ai 
 
 Socialism beats and breaks. It is against this 
 proposal that those who are opposed to Socialism 
 direct their chief controversy, their political opposi- 
 tion, their anger and abuse. Let us therefore look 
 closely into the statements which Socialists put 
 forth in support of their proposal. 
 
 Socialists declare that the land is monopolised. 
 
 Socialists declare that capital, by which they 
 mean the factories, machinery, mines, railways, 
 and other collectively produced means of making 
 wealth, is monopolised. 
 
 Socialists affirm that this monopoly of the means 
 of wealth is unjust, and imposes poverty and 
 oppressive toil on the mass of the people. 
 
 Socialists afiirm that public ownership and con- 
 trol of land and capital is the only system by which 
 this poverty and oppressive toil can be removed, 
 and social justice and equality established. 
 
 Are these propositions true? 
 
 First let us deal with the land. Who own the 
 land? Do the people generally, or the farmers or 
 labourers who work to produce wealth from the 
 land own it? Let us inquire for ourselves, using 
 our own eyes and ears. Let us go into the 
 country, whore wo can see the land. Hero 
 is a great agricultural region in Shrop- 
 shire. We will ask this old labourer at his 
 cottage dfx>r, who has worked all his life on the 
 neighbouring fields, if ho owns the land upon 
 which he has spent his fifty or sixty years of dailv 
 toil.' He tells us No. Ho owns nothing, ho says, 
 not even tho v.rofohod old cottage whiolt ho make
 
 33 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 trim and tries to keep in repair where he and his 
 family have lived all their lives. He can be dis- 
 missed any day, and turned out of the cottage on 
 a week's notice, with nowhere to go but the work- 
 house. We hail the farmer on the road, and ask 
 him if he owns the farm. He shouts, " Bless you, 
 no; the farm belongs to the Duke of Sutherland." 
 And the next farm? — the Duke of Sutherland. 
 And the next farm to that — the Duke of Suther- 
 land. This Duke of Sutherland, he assures us, 
 owns the whole land about for many miles, and 
 every farm and labourer's cottage upon it. He 
 points to a palace gleaming far away on a wooded 
 hillside beside a river ; that, he tells us, is where 
 the Duke lives for a few weeks each year ; but 
 he has several more palaces and great estates in 
 other parts of the country. 
 
 We go up for a holiday in the Highlands ; we 
 cross by rail, starting from Golspie, fifty or sixty 
 ■miles from sea to sea across the mainland of Scot- 
 land. We pass through innumerable valleys and 
 glens ; we swing under great mountains, piercing 
 into the mists, with wonderful streams and water- 
 falls flashing down their sides. We ask the 
 station-master and postman as we start out : To 
 whom does the land of this town and those hills 
 about it belong? The Duke of Sutherland. At 
 the next station we ask the porter and a shepherd 
 on the platform, to whom do all the beautiful 
 valleys, hills, woods, and streams belong ?_, The 
 Duke of Sutherland. We put the same question 
 at every station on our way until we reach the sea
 
 THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE »% 
 
 on the other side of Scotland, and we get always 
 the same answer — the Duke of Sutherland. 
 
 We try the mining districts. We meet a crowd 
 of Durham miners, returning black and dripping 
 with sweat from the pit, where they have been 
 working all night. We inquire to whom does the 
 pit belong? Lord Joicey. And to whom does that 
 other pit half a mile away belong? Lord Joicey. 
 And all those other pits which we can see smoking 
 at various points round the horizon? With one or 
 two exceptions they belong to Lord Joicey. 
 
 We turn to the towns. There we get the most 
 startling facts of the enormous value that life and 
 labour give to the land ; but at present we are con- 
 cerned only with the question of the ownership of 
 the land. Do the p>eople of the towns ovin the 
 land of the towns? Do the majority of the people 
 own any land whatever in the towns? 
 
 Shall we ask the people of Buxton to whom do€S 
 the land of Buxton belong? Put the question to 
 any man in the street, to the town clerk, to the 
 shopkeepers or hotel proprietors ; and from one 
 and all we shall get the uniform reply — the Duke 
 of Devonshire. The Duke, they will tell you, 
 owns not only all the land, but owns, or will own, 
 virtually all the town itself when the building leases 
 fall in. And the hills round about that are being 
 hacked and hewn away by the limestone quarries — 
 who owns them? The Duke of Devonshire owns 
 them also, and owns all the ground and every- 
 thing beneath the ground for miles around. 
 
 We go to Eastbourne, on the South Coast, two
 
 24 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 hundred miles away. This, also, is a fashionable 
 town. We ask who owns the land of Eastbourne? 
 And lo, we discover that Eastbourne also is owned 
 by the Duke of Devonshire. Marvellous Duke ! 
 
 In the larger industrial towns, where the land 
 has been sold or fenced for railways, factories, 
 and building- speculations. Landlordism and Capi- 
 talism have become so mixed up that it is difficult 
 to separate the one from the other. Nor is it 
 worth while attempting to do so, as they are both 
 but different forms of the same evil power. It is, 
 however, common knowledge that the Duke of 
 Westminster owns the greater part of Westmin- 
 ster, that the Duke of Norfolk owns a consider- 
 able part of Sheffield, and that the Earl of Derby 
 owns a large portion of Liverpool, Preston, and 
 Bury. 
 
 But though we inquire ever so diligently among 
 the tens of hundreds of thousands of working- 
 people in our cities, towns and villages, we shall 
 not find one among them in a thousand who owns 
 even so much as a yard of land, except it be in 
 the churchyard or cemetery. 
 
 Go where we will in any part of England, Scot- 
 land, or Wales, we find that the land, the woods, 
 the streams, the mines and quarries belong not to 
 the many who work and produce wealth from 
 them, but in most instances to the few who do 
 absolutely no work at all. 
 
 The monopoly of the land is therefore a fact, 
 and one of most appalling dimensions, too. 
 
 The land is owned by the landlords, who form
 
 THE GREAT DISINHERITANCE 25 
 
 but a small part of the community. A few dozen 
 landlords, in fact, own about one half of the whole 
 surface of these islands, while a few thousand 
 individuals in all, out of a population of nearly fifty 
 millions, own nine tenths of the surface. 
 
 The landlords did not create the land, or help in 
 any way to create it. They did not and could not 
 create a single grain of sand, or particle of clay, 
 rock, or coal, or a single blade of grass. 
 Shakespeare evidently had this thought in his mind 
 when he makes Cloten, the British prince in 
 Cymbeline, reply to Caesar's envoy : " When he can 
 hide the sun in a blanket, or put the moon in his 
 pocket, I'll pay him rent." 
 
 Nor do the landlords create, or help to create 
 the crops or other produce of the land. All the 
 landlords do (as landowners) is to take their rents 
 from the produce or use of the land. Were there 
 no workers on the land, or community to use the 
 land or materials derived from it, there would be 
 no rent. The land would be economically value- 
 less. 
 
 Nor do the landlords in return for their ownership 
 of the land do anything useful for the nation. This 
 the Duke of Northumberland frankly admitted in 
 his evidence before the Coal Commission, May, 
 rgig. Asked by Sir Leo Money, "What 
 particular service do you perform for the com- 
 munity as a coal owner?" the Duke replied : 
 
 "As a coalowner I do not perform any service 
 for the community. I look after my property to the 
 beat advantage. I do not know whether you call 
 that service."
 
 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Exploitation : The Stores of Wealth. 
 
 The people do not own the land. But neither 
 did they create it. Neither did the landlords 
 create it : who own it, nevertheless. 
 
 But the people — the workers, at any rate — do 
 create, or help to create wealth : without their 
 labour, there would, in fact, be no wealth created 
 at all. It is by means of their toil that not only 
 all the stores of wealth which keep the life of 
 nations going-, but all the factories, machinery, 
 railways and other instruments requisite for the 
 production of those stores of wealth, have any 
 existence. 
 
 Do, then, the people as a whole, or the workers, 
 own these great stores of wealth and the factories, 
 machinery, railways, etc., which are the offspring 
 of their labour? 
 Let us inquire : 
 
 In pursuing our inquiry concerning tlie owner- 
 ship of land we appealed only to such knowledge 
 as everyone can obtain by his own observation. 
 We quoted no authors and gave no statistics. It 
 is part of the scheme of these chapters to show 
 that the facts upon which the Socialist argument 
 rests are facts which everyone may know from his 
 own direct knowledge.
 
 EXPLOITATION : STORES OF WEALTH 27 
 
 Our inquiry need not take us far beyond our 
 own door, especially if we happen to live in Glas- 
 gow, Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford, or any 
 larg-e industrial town. 
 
 Early every morning thousands of men and 
 women pour along our streets on the way to their 
 work, and every evening may be seen the same 
 stream of toilers returning from their work. We 
 meet hundreds, and often thousands, of workers 
 flooding into or out of a single factory. These 
 workpeople do not go there for enjoym.ent. They 
 are not idle, they are busy as bees. The majority 
 of" them are upon piece-work — that is to say, they 
 only earn according to the amount of work they 
 do. They are so numerous, so busy, and so 
 strangely bound down to their tasks, and often so 
 begrimed and soiled by the material they use, that 
 when we see them in the mass we can hardlv 
 recognise them as human beings at all. We can 
 hardly think of them as men and women with 
 hearts and souls. We can hardly think of them 
 as being fellow citizens with the well-dressed, 
 unsoiled and pleasantly occupied or unoccupied 
 people who come down from their mansions dur- 
 ing the day to the shops and entertainments of 
 the town. It seems almost impossible that these 
 weary-looking, toil-doomed creatures can be the 
 fathers and mothers, the comrades and friends 
 whom we know and love. 
 
 Here in this street, in the blistering heat of a 
 summer day, or the wet and stinging blast of 
 winter, are workmen on the walls and joists of a
 
 28 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 building, some of them clinging to the scaffolding 
 of high towers. The walls and towers grow up 
 before our eyes. We see the labour of the men 
 making them grow. When the men stop working, 
 the building stops growing ! 
 
 From street to street we go, and the buildings 
 seem to have no end. We pass shop after shop, 
 warehouse after warehouse. What amazing 
 varieties of things are displayed and stored within 
 them — all made and placed there by the industry 
 of workers ! 
 
 The magnitude of human labour begins to 
 appal us as with a sense of infinitude. 
 
 Far away in the outer wilderness of the town 
 we enter a region of vast workshops. As we 
 glance through the gateways, vision upon vision 
 starts upon our eyes of men, machinery, fire and 
 steam, swirling and wrestling together as in 
 some surviving chaos. Onward we step to the 
 wharfs and railway sidings, and lo ! forth from 
 the whirling and flaming factories come great 
 boilers, shafts, wonderful machines, locoinotives, 
 and mighty ships, as from a mighty horn of 
 plenty, outpouring bounteously upon the world. 
 
 Labour everywhere — Labour working its 
 miracles — creating things of fabulous might and 
 cunning, far outreaching the powers of all the 
 gods of Greece or Rome ! 
 
 Surely, now is the mystery of Labour revealed 
 — here in our own town, before our very eyes. No 
 need have we to go to books or colleges or to 
 philosophers or politicians, to tell us the secret of
 
 EXPLOITATION : STORES OF WEALTH 29 
 
 wealth-making. Here is labour creating the wealth 
 before our eyes. 
 
 But for whom is labour working with all this 
 prodigious energy? To whom do all these things 
 which Labour creates belong? 
 
 Do the workers own the wealth they produce? 
 Do the workers own the factories and ^\orkshops, 
 the railways and the shops? Do they own the 
 machines thev use, or the machines thev make? 
 Do they own the goods they pack and distribute 
 in the shops? Do they own the houses they build 
 or the houses in w-hich they dwell? 
 
 Let us ask any one of the 8,000 or so men and 
 women who pour out of the Singer's sewing- 
 machine factory at Clydebank, near Glasgow, if 
 they own the factory, or anything inside of it, or 
 the sewing-machines which they make? No, we 
 are only working people, they will tell us ; the 
 factory and everything belongs to the company. 
 Who are the company? They do not know even 
 that, but they think they are American capitalists. 
 The company has big works in the United States 
 also. 
 
 We cross the river, and inquire of some of the 
 4,000 or more women in the great Coats' Thread 
 Works, in Paisley, whether they or any among 
 them own or have any part in the ownership of 
 the mills? They laugh : what a question to put 
 them ! Does not everybody know that the mills 
 belong to the Messrs. Coats, of the Coats-Clark 
 combine, who own all the thread mills, nt)t only 
 in Paisley, but in Great Britain ; and also own
 
 30 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 mills in America, Russia, Germany, and many 
 other lands? 
 
 In Newcastle we can see any day the remark- 
 able spectacle of some 15,000 or more workmen 
 streaming out from the different gates of the 
 Elswick Engineering and Shipbuilding Works. 
 Again we inquire to whom does this vast estab- 
 lishment belong? To the Armstrong-Whitworth 
 Company, which owns great works in Manchester 
 also, and in other places, including Genoa in 
 Italy. 
 
 In every town we meet with similar replies. 
 The hundreds of thousands of men and women 
 who p>our out of the Yorkshire and Lancashire 
 mills, the potteries in Staffordshire, the lace and 
 boot factories in Nottingham and Leicester, repeat 
 the same brief story. Do they own the factories 
 in which they work, or the things they produce in 
 them? No, they are only workers; the factories, 
 and everything within them, belong to their 
 masters. 
 
 These, the miracle workers of the world — the 
 men and women whose toil creates all the visible 
 fabric of our cities, all the houses, the shining 
 towers, the thundering wheels, the tremendous 
 enginery, endowed with the strength of a myriad 
 giants and speed beyond the swiftest wind of 
 heaven — these, the workers, are poor.' They own 
 in the great majority of instances little beyond 
 their household effects (and not always these), 
 and at most a score or two of pounds in the
 
 EXPLOITATION : STORES OF WEALTH 31 
 
 saving's banks or co-operative stores. All else 
 belong-s to their masters. 
 
 Their masters ! Who these wonderful masters 
 are we shall presently inquire. 
 
 Meanwhile, the fact of the monopoly of the 
 means, not only of wealth, but of life itself, grows 
 appalling^ly before us on every side as we pursue 
 our inquiry.
 
 32 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Landlord and the Capitalist. 
 
 There is a widespread notion that the capitalist 
 occupies a more defensible position than does the 
 landowner. This notion, like most widespread 
 notions, has a certain amount of justification in 
 fact. Land monopoly was one of the earliest 
 forms of monopoly, and the name of landlord and 
 land-robber has come down to us in history and 
 tradition associated with outrage and spoliation. 
 Capitalism in its highly organised form of whole- 
 sale exploitation of collective industry is of com- 
 paratively modern growth, and it has been asso- 
 ciated with many improvements in industrial 
 organisation and cheaper processes of manufac- 
 ture. The landlord's appropriation is obvious. 
 The capitalist's appropriation is subtle — it is 
 hidden under many apparently useful functions. 
 
 Henry George, in his remarkable book, " Pro- 
 gress and Poverty," did much to bring land- 
 lordism into special disrepute. No man made the 
 land, he said ; therefore anyone who holds land 
 as a private possession is claiming something he 
 has not made, and something no one was ever 
 entitled to sell to him. 
 
 It was different with capital. Capital, said Mr. 
 George, is made by Labour. Evidently what man
 
 THE LANDLORD AND THE CAPITALIST ;ii 
 
 makes by his labour, man may justly own or sell. 
 Therefore, capitalism stands on quite a different 
 foundation from landlordism. 
 
 Neither of these arg-uments is sound, though 
 they both express a relative truth. They express 
 a relative truth in so far as they ascribe to the 
 capitalist in many instances a certain agency, or 
 apparent agency, in producing capital, while the 
 landowner does nothing at all to produce land. 
 But the arguments are unsound, because with 
 respect to the landowner his claim to rent from 
 the land is simply a claim u{X>n labour, and if the 
 capitalist may acquire a right, through his agency 
 as a capitalist, to exploit labour, so may the land- 
 owner acquire a similar right either by purchase 
 or by some real or supposed military or other ser- 
 vice to the State. Besides, as we shall see later 
 on, the social right to wealth of any kind cannot 
 be exclusively determined by the question as to 
 whether the possessor has worked for it or not. 
 A child, for example, performs no labour; a dis- 
 abled person may perform no labour ; yet every 
 Socialist is agreed that these have a right to the 
 fullest measure of sustenance, and even non- 
 Socialists admit that children and the infirm must 
 be sustained. Mr. George's arguments are, 
 therefore, defective. 
 
 There are, however, further distinctions 
 between land and capital which we may notice. 
 
 Land is practically a fixed quantity. It does not 
 visibly increase or diminish except in the volcanic 
 islands of the South .Seas. Land does not, except
 
 34 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 in rare instances (and in the case of quarries and 
 mines), appreciably deteriorate in value with age,, 
 or even with much use. It does not rust or decay, 
 nor is it destroyed by fire or flood. 
 
 Capital, on the other hand, is not fixed in quan- 
 tity, and it is usually perishable. It has con- 
 stantly to be renewed or replaced. It deteriorates 
 by age and use, and may be completely destroyed 
 by fire, flood, or other accident. A ship, for 
 example, may be lost at sea, a factory may be 
 demolished by fire, a store of corn may rot and 
 become worthless with damp or age. Machinery, 
 whether used or not, rusts away or becomes worn 
 out and obsolete after a certain number of years. 
 
 The capitalist has, therefore, as a rule to give 
 attention to his monopoly either in person or 
 through someone acting in his behalf. The land- 
 lord as a rule need give no other attention to his 
 monopoly than to receive the payment of his rent. 
 
 The landlord may, therefore, be described as a 
 passive, and the capitalist as an active, monopolist. 
 
 But however much we distinguish the position 
 of the capitalist from the landowner, they are in 
 essence the same. The capitalist extracts for 
 himself by means of profit, even as the landlord 
 extracts for himself by means of rent, wealth 
 which the workers, aided by the genius and co- 
 operation of society, create by their labour. The 
 one uses his monopoly of capital, the other his 
 monopoly of land, as his instrument of extortion. 
 The landowner is lord of the raw material of
 
 THE LANDLORD AND THE CAPITALIST 35 
 
 wealth, the capitalist is lord of the manufactured 
 material of wealth. 
 
 The land is really a factory where fcKXi and 
 raw material are obtained by labour. Mines, 
 factories, machinery, and shops are really pieces 
 of transported land modified by labour. Neither 
 land nor capital is of any use to its owners except 
 so far as it enables them to command the labour 
 and extract the produce of labour from the 
 workers. 
 
 The extortion of the capitalist is, however, as 
 I have already said, usually hidden in the useful 
 function of the manufacturer or merchant. In its 
 elementary form the capitalist exploitation can 
 hardly be discerned at all. Thus the packman 
 tramping- over the hills with his wares, the small 
 shopkeeper working- hard all day, the small master 
 buying his raw material and employing only one 
 or two men, or perhaps only his own wife or son — 
 in these and similar cases, it would be hard to say 
 v/hether or not the capitalist was obtaining more 
 than or as much as a fair reward for his own 
 actual labour. 
 
 Practically the exploiting function of the capi- 
 talist only becomes apparent when the capitalist 
 buys and sells the labour of others so as to make 
 a profit of their labour over and above what may 
 be regarded as a fair reward for whatever useful 
 services he is supposed to perform as a practical 
 manager, manufacturer, or merchant. 
 
 Yet it is just here that the subtlety of capitalism 
 has so cunningly deceived the world.
 
 36 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Few people would think of denouncing publicly 
 the injustice of a small employer who employed 
 only one man, and made a profit of only 5s. a 
 week off that man. Yet most people begin to 
 feel some sense of injustice against the great 
 capitalist who employs 10,000 men even if he only 
 makes a profit of half-a-crown a week off each 
 of them. Yet the small capitalist is in this 
 instance the worse exploiter of the two.
 
 37 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Parable of Andrew Carnegie. 
 
 Let us consider more closely the means by which 
 the capitalist obt.iins his grip on the workers and 
 accumulates his weiilth. This we can perhaps 
 best do by taking a typical instance of " how 
 millionaires are made." I select the late Mr. 
 Andrew Carnegie, who, though an American 
 citizen, was a fellow countryman of my own by 
 birth, alike because he was in the time of the 
 zenith of his business activity the largest direct 
 employer of labour in the world, and because his 
 name is inscribed on scores of public libraries, and 
 because he was in his day the most out-spoken 
 member of his millionaire class. 
 
 In his speeches and writings Mr. Carnegie chal- 
 lenged discussion on the question of the rightful- 
 ness of his position as a capitalist, and has sought 
 to justify the caiJilalist system in opfX)sition to 
 Socialism. Let me add, in fairness to Mr. Car- 
 negie that, apart from his capitalist vocation, he 
 was a man of wide public sympathies and of 
 democratic views, and both by precept and 
 example, acknowledged the social obligation 
 which he felt rests upon wealthy men like him- 
 self to devote a large part of their fortunes to the 
 educational and social advance of the community.
 
 38 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Mr. Carnegie was of pure working- class stock, 
 and received only an elementary school education. 
 His father and family emigrated to Pittsburg, in the 
 United States, when he was a boy. From being 
 a poor working lad he became, by the time he was 
 forty years of age, one of the richest men that 
 have ever been in the world. 
 
 What Mr. Carnegie's fortune eventually amounted 
 to I do not know, .but twenty years before his 
 death it was stated to be not less than eighty 
 millions of pounds, and that, too, after his having 
 bestowed at least a dozen millions on Free 
 Libraries and other educational institutions. Mr. 
 W. T. Stead, after interviewing him about that 
 period at Skibo Castle, declared that Mr. Carnegie 
 had told him that he meant to dispose of sixty 
 million pounds in public benefactions before he 
 died — an intention which he is said to have ful- 
 filled. He had then but recently sold to the 
 American Steel Corporation his great iron, coke, 
 and lime works at Homestead, Pittsburg, for which 
 he had received ^50,000,000 in five per cent, bonds. 
 He had many other investments. 
 
 We may, therefore, estimate Mr. Carnegie's 
 income at that time at no less than ;^3,ooo,ooo a 
 year — a sum which works out at ;^6o,ooo a week, 
 or equivalent at that time to the wages of 60,000 
 British labourers ! 
 
 Does anyone believe that Mr. Carnegie was in 
 any" imaginable sense as capable or useful as 
 60,000 hard-working men? 
 
 I had occasion to meet Mr. Carnegie and heard
 
 THE PARABLE OF ANDREW CARNEGIE 39 
 
 him speak in public at that period. He was not a 
 giant, nor did he display any marks of genius. He 
 was a little, energetic, pushful, positive-looking 
 man. He had fought his workpeople relentless^ly ; 
 he had fought other capitalists relentlessly ; he 
 had used political influence and the tariffs to beat 
 out competitors and extend his monopoly. He 
 had written several books ; they were clever, 
 gossipy, and interesting. Free copies of them 
 have been given to many hundreds of our public 
 libraries. 
 
 Yet this one man possessed as much wealth as 
 a whole city full of people. He was richer than all 
 the men of genius in Europe and America put 
 together. Nay, were we able to estimate the money 
 reward obtained by all the greatest men in history 
 — prophets, philosophers, writers, artists, scientific 
 discoverers and heroes — including Homer, 
 ^schylus, Pheidias, Socrates, Plato, Scipio, 
 Virgil, Dante, Titian, Raphael, Guttenberg, 
 Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Handel, 
 Washington, Goethe, Schiller, Burns, Shelley, 
 Watt, George Stephenson, Nelson, Wellington, 
 Wagner, Darwin, and Victor Hugo — these and a 
 thousand more, their whole reward totalled up 
 together would not, we may assure ourselves, 
 amount to as much as that of this one man, 
 Andrew Carnegie, the Pittsburg ironmaster! 
 
 And how did Andrew Carnegie obtain this vast 
 wealth? By what marvellous means, what magic, 
 what miracle did this man, who was but a poor 
 lad fifty years before, accumulate such an almost 
 unmeasurable abundance of wealth?
 
 40 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 There is, indeed, no secret, no magic, no miracle 
 whatever in the matter. Andrew Carneg-ie 
 acquired his millions by just the same means as 
 that by which every master, every capitalist, 
 acquires his profit and wealth, however great or 
 small it be. He obtained his wealth not by his 
 own efforts, but by the efforts of others. 
 
 He obtained his wealth not by saving the fruits 
 of his own j^enius or labour, but by getting hold 
 of part of the fruits of the labour of forty thousand 
 other men endowed with the knowledge, skill, and 
 co-operation which ten thousand years of social 
 progress has made available for them. 
 
 How did Mr. Carnegie acquire his great Pitts- 
 burg forges and mills? He did not build them, 
 nor did he invent or make the machinery within 
 them. 
 
 But did he not pay money for the building and 
 making of them? 
 
 Yes, maybe. But where did he get the money? 
 He had no money to buy mills or machinery when 
 he worked as a boy employee stoking a furnace. 
 He had no money to buy or pay workmen for 
 building steel furnaces and mills and fitting them 
 up with machinery when he worked as an 
 employee, telegraphist or clerk. He was then still 
 a poor man, as all mere wage-earners are. So 
 long as he was a workman he received only a work- 
 man's wage. 
 
 It was not until Mr. Carnegie had acquired a 
 large salary as a railway superintendent, and had 
 received a large portion of the profits made by
 
 THE PARABLE OF ANDREW CARNEGIE 41 
 
 pushing a sleeping car invention, which he did not 
 invent, and had obtained a share of the big protits 
 of an oil creek property speculation, that he began 
 to have money wherewith to buy or get mills 
 erected and employ labour. It was, in fact, not 
 until he ceased being a workman and began to 
 derive his income, not from his own labour, but 
 from the labour of others, that he became a capi- 
 talist. Thereafter Mr. Carnegie was on the high 
 road to making his fortune. .As soon as he made 
 profits from the labour of one set of workmen, he 
 was able to use those profits to buy or build mills 
 and employ more workmen, and obtain profits 
 from them also. These profits he in turn used 
 for the purpose of getting more workmen to build 
 still more works for him, and to employ stiil mort- 
 workmen in producing profit for him. And thus 
 the process went on until Mr. Carnegie becajne 
 the biggest direct employer of labour in the world. 
 It was always with the profits of labour that he 
 was able to further employ labour. In other 
 words, it was from the labour of his workpeople, 
 not from his own labour, that he obtained his- 
 capital.
 
 42 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Is THE Capitalist Necessary? 
 
 We have seen the process by which the capitalist 
 gains possession of his capital. We have shown, 
 in the case of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, how men 
 may rise from the working class into the capi- 
 talist ranks and become millionaires. W^e have 
 shown that their vast fortunes are derived not 
 from their own ability or labour, but from the 
 labour of their workers and the community. 
 
 But, it may be asked, does the capitalist render 
 no service at all to the workers or to the com- 
 munity? Does he really do nothing to create the 
 profit which he receives? 
 
 This question cannot be dismissed by a mere 
 <ienial or a jibe. There is, as I have already said, 
 a deep-seated notion among not only capitalists 
 themselves, but among the working-class, that the 
 capitalist does in some way assist industry, and 
 is entitled to profit as his reward. Profit is not, it 
 is frequently said, obtained by underpaying labour 
 or overcharging the community, but is the incre- 
 ment of value which the capitalist gives to labour 
 by his organising ability and commercial skill. 
 
 It is, for example, pointed out that were a 
 workman to work by himself alone without the 
 assistance of capitalist organisation of any kind, 
 and were he to sell the things he made at the
 
 IS THE CAPITALIST NECESSARY? 43 
 
 same price as that charged for similar articles 
 made by capitalist firms, he would probably 
 remain poorer than any workmen employed at the 
 same trade under capitalists. And that is quite 
 true. 
 
 If, then, that be true, how can Socialists justify 
 the statement that capitalists obtain their profits 
 by exploiting labour? 
 
 Because without the exploitation of labour there 
 could be no profit, no capital. The capitalist by 
 himself, without workmen, would cease to be a 
 capitalist, and would himself have to become a 
 workman simply. 
 
 But granting that the capitalist does not of him- 
 self create his profit or capital, may it not still be 
 maintained that neither does labour by itself create 
 that profit or capital. Is not the capitalist the 
 chief factor in giving to workmen's labour the 
 additional value which the capitalist appropriates? 
 
 Does not, for example, a present-day workman 
 who works nine hours each day produce more in 
 a factory by his labour than his great-grandfather 
 could do working nine hours a day in a small 
 workshop a hundred years ago? And is not this 
 additional production which the present-day 
 workman's labour yields due, not to his working 
 harder or with more ability than did his great- 
 grandfather, but to the increased knowledge of 
 machinery and organisation which capitalism has 
 brought into play? 
 
 That also is in the main true. But the truth 
 affords capitalism little justification.
 
 44 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Capitalism has, in the providence or improvi- 
 dence of things, been undoubtedly an agency in 
 developing industrial organisation and in bringing 
 into use important labour-saving processes. But 
 the capitalist himself, in so far as he has played 
 the part of an organiser of industry, has only done 
 so by thrusting himself into a place of vantage 
 in the industrial system which the evolution of 
 society has created. He has merely anticipated 
 for his own benefit the application of science and 
 collective methods to production which social pro- 
 gress has created. 
 
 The capitalist, in so far as he has been an active 
 agent in industry, is only as one in a vast army 
 moving forward — he, more selfish or more adven- 
 turous, perhaps, than the rest, steps a bit ahead, 
 while the others are clearing a path through the 
 forest, and lays claim to the territory through 
 which all must immediately pass. 
 
 The truth of this statement is easily shown. 
 Suppose present-day capitalists were deprived of 
 the knowledge of industry and science which they 
 have obtained from this age, and were put back 
 into the conditions of a hundred years ago — the 
 majority of them would find it impossible to 
 become capitalists at all. Suppose they were put 
 back five hundred or a thousand years, they would 
 possess ^''absolutely no knowledge or means of 
 capitalist organisation — except by devoting them- 
 selves to highway robbery. 
 
 It is the world-wide development of science, 
 Industry, social co-operation, and civic govern-
 
 IS THE CAPITALIST NECESSARY? 45 
 
 ment which provides capitalists' enterprise with 
 its opportunity. The capitalists who scoop in the 
 advantages of these improvements have not 
 created them. They have merely grasped posses- 
 sion of them. 
 
 Do Socialists, then, allow no claim at all on the 
 part of capitalists to the profits which they appro- 
 priate? 
 
 None whatever, except so much as may be 
 regarded as a fair payment for actual services of 
 management ; and it is not those services that 
 constitute the capitalist's claim to prolit. His 
 suppKDsed right to the profits of labour is derived 
 solely from his possession, not of ability, but of 
 capital. The capitalist himself recognises this ; 
 for does he not, even when taking no active part 
 at all in his business, claim the entire profits to 
 himself simply as his right as the owner of the 
 capital? Whatever services the capitalist may 
 render as a business man are services of manage- 
 ment, such as a tramway manager or postmaster 
 may render in community undertakings in which 
 they have no capitalist claim, and from which they 
 only receive pay as employees. 
 
 This is clearly seen in the case of Limited 
 Liability companies where the two functions — those 
 of capitalism and business management — are 
 separated. In these companies the general body 
 of capitalist investors take no part in the business 
 at all, but hand over the control of it to a few of 
 their number as directors who receive fees for their 
 services. Ihe directors in turn usually appoint one 
 
 c
 
 46 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 of their number as managing- director, who receives 
 a special salary for acting- in that cappacity. 
 
 In thus effacing- themselves, the investors ack- 
 nowledge that they have no part in the function of 
 wealth production. It is their capital not them- 
 selves that counts and operates. So wholly are 
 they without any instrumentality' in the business 
 or industry from which they derive their profits 
 that they possess no right whatever to interfere in 
 the concerns of the company, except when once a 
 year, or half-year, they assemble to appoint 
 directors. In no other way are they differently 
 related to the undertaking of which the}' are the 
 proprietors than are the members of the general 
 public. If, for example, the undertaking be that 
 >f a railway company, they must pay their fares 
 like other passengers when travelling on its lines ; 
 or, if it be a drapery company, they must pay the 
 usual rates for their purchases. Nor may they 
 enter any office or department of the company 
 from which the public are excluded. They may 
 one or all be disabled from work of body or mind ; 
 they may live abroad ; they may be inmates of a 
 lunatic asylum, or under lock and key in prison; 
 but the business of the company is unaffected by 
 the circumstance. They may die, but their profits 
 run on for the benefit of their heirs, who may be, 
 as yet, unborn. 
 
 The essence of capitalism is, I must repeat, the 
 possession simply of the power to exploit the 
 labour of the community. The capitalist does so 
 directly through the Avorkmen he employs
 
 IS THE CAPITALIST NECESSARY? 47 
 
 Through theia he exploits not only the science, 
 skill, and co-operation of existing society, but the 
 heritage of toil and genius handed down to us 
 from all bygone generations of men. 
 
 Had capitalism not intervened, we must not 
 suppose that human thought, science, and inven- 
 tion w ould have ceased to go on, or that the wealth 
 of the world would not have increased. There 
 was wonderful moral and social and intellectual 
 achievement before modern capitalism came. 
 
 The principle of co-operative enterprise was far 
 more widely adopted and more highly organised 
 than that of capitalist enterprise until within two 
 hundred ye.irs ago. All the great achievements in 
 industry, architecture, and public service in 
 Greece, Rome, and mediaeval Europe were national, 
 municipal, or other collective undertakings. The 
 idea of great co-operative schemes of community 
 labour, applying science to industry, and other- 
 wise increasing the health, wealth and happiness 
 of the whofle people, preceded the idea of schemes 
 of capitalist organisation. More's " Utopia " and 
 Lord Bacon's "New .Atlantis" preceded .Adam 
 Smith's " Wealth of Nations " and Malthus' 
 "Law of Population." Saint Simon's " Systeme 
 Industriel" preceded Andrew Carnegie's "Trium- 
 phant Democracy," and F^)bcrt Owen's'" New 
 Lanark industrial community, which provided for 
 the old and young, preceded the modrrn capitalist 
 device of discharging men as foo old at 40. 
 The Rochdale pioneers discerned the advantage of 
 the workers combining for the common good
 
 48 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 before capitalists discovered the advantage of com- 
 bining to exploit the public. 
 
 Capitalism may have played an important part 
 in socral evolution ; but who shall say, when we 
 look at the fearful havoc it has wrought with 
 human life and happiness, and its woeful 
 degradation of art, honour, and noble aspiration, 
 that its achievement has been a beneficent one? 
 Whatever improvement has taken place in the 
 common well-being during the past two hundred 
 years has been the outcome not- of capitalism, but 
 rather of the social and legal restraint of the capi- 
 talist power.
 
 PART II. 
 THE EPOCH OF FREEDOM.
 
 51 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Part I. 
 The Reward of Labour. 
 
 It is manifest then that the landlord and capitalist 
 enrich themselves from the toil of the workers. 
 Therefore it is that Socialists speak of the land- 
 lord and capitalist as the exploiters and oppressors 
 of labour, and declare that the plig'ht of poverty 
 and hardship, the state of general meanness and 
 deg-radation of the lives of the wagfe-earners and 
 their families are the inevitable result of the evil 
 dominion of the landlord and capitalist system. 
 
 In speaking thus Socialists are not speaking 
 wildly. The indictment, though it rings some- 
 times with over-vehemetice, and with an unphiio- 
 sophic personal note from Socialist platforms, is, 
 in broad terms, true and indisputable. 
 
 Ne\ertheless, it is essential to the full and clear 
 understanding of the Socialist position, that we 
 should l<x>k deeper than we have yet done into the 
 roots of wealth j)ro(luction, of wh'ch our million- 
 aires are the crowning fr\iit. 
 
 For the question presents itself — the question 
 raised by the more discerning apologists of the 
 present system and the critics of Socialism — Do 
 the landlord and capitalist derive their rents and
 
 52 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 profits wholly from the depletion (or robbery) of 
 the wage-earners? Granted, it is said, that all, 
 or for the most part all, economic wealth is pro- 
 duced through the instrumentality of the labour of 
 the wage-workers : — granted, also, that the land- 
 lord or capitalist does not by any individual labour 
 of his own hands, or any exertion or skill of his 
 own mind, produce or create the actual products 
 from which he derives the rent or profit which he 
 enjoys — is there no other store or fund of wealth 
 from which his rent or profit is drawn than that 
 which can be claimed by the workers as the 
 unaided produce of their own toil, and, therefore, 
 rightfully belonging to themselves as the reward 
 of their labour? 
 
 In a word : Do the landlord and capitalist rob 
 the worker as a worker? Are their rent and 
 profit extracted wholly or mainly from the unpaid 
 labour of the wage-earners? 
 
 In order to answer that question clearly it is 
 necessary for us to consider by what means wealth 
 is actually produced. Of what elements are the 
 products composed which constitute wealth? 
 
 Commonly, we speak of three things — land, 
 capital and labour — as being essential to wealth 
 production. That is true so far as it goes, but it 
 does not carry the analysis far enough. 
 
 What is meant by the word " labour" in this 
 connection ? Does it mean simply the work put into 
 production, singly or together, by the workers 
 employed in the actual processes of manufacture? 
 
 In quite primitive forms of production that
 
 THE REWARD OF LABOUR 53 
 
 mig-ht be so. It might be said, for example, in 
 the case of the cave-man in the stone age chip- 
 ping his spear-heads from the flints found near his 
 dwelling, or in that of the present day South Sea 
 Islander gathering with his own hands cocoa-nuts 
 or bread-fruit from uncultivated palm trees that the 
 labour involved in the act of production was the 
 single labour of the single producer : though even in 
 these instances one traces in the skill of the cave- 
 man chipping the flints, and in the freedom which 
 enables the South Sea Islander to obtain his food 
 so simply, an element belonging to tribal practice 
 or bygone collective agency. 
 
 In the highly organised and highly cultivated 
 conditions of modern civilised life, labour, in that 
 primitive sense, is non-existent, or if it exists, has 
 no economic value. 
 
 Not even in the simplest and most personal con- 
 cerns of life can anyone produce, or even do, any- 
 thing by his or her own exclusive skill and labour. 
 Every article or tool which any one of us handles, 
 is the product of socially created labour, and every 
 skilful act that anyone of us does is the product 
 of socially created labour, or knowledge, or both. 
 The schoolboy carving with his pocket knife a toy 
 boat, or hewing a cricket bat out of a piece of 
 wood found by the wayside ; the lonely crofter 
 striking his spade into his potato patch, or casting 
 his net into the sea, and the housewife baking or 
 sewing in her home, are alike indebted for 
 the material, tools, and skill which they employ to 
 the collective industry and skill of the community.
 
 54 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 In workshops and factories, especially on a large 
 scale, an apparently additional element enters into 
 the composition of manufactured products. This 
 is the momentous factor in production which is 
 termed capital, and consists of specially appointed 
 buildings, machinery, engines, management, etc., 
 and (though invisible perhaps to the worker's eye) 
 the banking, commercial agencies, and general 
 means and resources by which the organisation 
 and disposal of the production of the factory is 
 carried on. 
 
 We may, therefore, discover in the composition 
 of modern wealth production the following factors 
 or elements : 
 
 Land. — Including soil, and the timber, coal, 
 minerals, water, and other materials of the 
 earth, created by nature. 
 
 Manual Labour. — (i) The simple labour energy 
 and intelligence of the individual worker, which 
 he finds in his own body and mind. And (2) the 
 increased effectiveness of that labour resulting 
 from the co-operation and sub-division of tasks 
 in the factory. 
 
 Social Organisation and Culture. — The general 
 knowledge, skill and invention derived from the 
 past and present co-operation and experience of 
 the whole community. 
 
 Community Labour. — The general means of com- 
 munication and transport, making easy and safe 
 the procuring of materials and the distribution
 
 THE REWARD OF LABOUR 55 
 
 of production, partly in private and partly in 
 public possession, such as roads, bridges, rail- 
 ways, shipping, water and light supply, the post 
 and telegraphic system, etc. 
 
 Capital. — i.e., the immediate implements of 
 manufacture in the workshop and factory, such 
 as buildings, machinery, motive power, manage- 
 ment, etc., and the trade agencies outside con- 
 nected therewith. 
 
 I do not claim for the above that it is a scienti- 
 fic definition or analysis of wealth production. It 
 is a layman's definition; and I beg of Mr. J. A. 
 Hobson and other experts in economic- science, 
 who may happen to cast their eyes upon it, to 
 believe that it is not put forward pretentiously. 
 I am setting it down simply as a means of getting 
 in my own way at the substance of the process oi 
 wealth production, so as to display what I con- 
 ceive to be the essential, even if inextricably 
 blended and disproportionately mixed, elements 
 op>erating in it. 
 
 It may be asked why have I not included money 
 under the heading of capital? Is not money, after 
 all, the prime factor in capital? Without money 
 how could the buildings, machinery, etc., be pro- 
 vided, and the wages of the workers be paid? 
 'vl have not included money among the elements 
 Ofjerating in the production of wealth, for the 
 simple reason that money does not enter into the 
 production of wealth of any kind. Money pro- 
 duces nothing, except strife .';nd misery maybe.
 
 56 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Money is merely a means of exchange, not of 
 goods themselves, but of the ownership of goods. 
 It is true that under existing conditions money is 
 required by the capitalist in order that he may 
 procure buildings, machinery, material, etc., and 
 pay his workpKJoples' wages ; but neither the 
 money itself, nor the possession of the money, 
 enters into or aids in the actual production of any 
 kind of commodity or form of wealth whatever. 
 As a means of promoting the exchange of goods 
 money, whether in coin or paper, cheques or pro- 
 missory bills, is immensely serviceable, so much 
 so that it is more than probable that so long as 
 wealth is limited (as in many of its forms it is 
 likely always to be) : so long, at any rate, as the 
 bulk of wealth is not communised, money of some 
 kind will be in general use. But money itself, I 
 repeat, is not wealth, nor does it create wealth. 
 
 Nor (a scandalous omission !) have I mentioned 
 the capitalist. For, needless here to say, capital 
 and the capitalist (or capitalism) are quite different 
 and not necessarily connected things. The com- 
 munity cannot do without capital (as here defined), 
 but it can do, and in many instances as in State, 
 municipal, and industrial co-operative concerns 
 does do, without the capitalist. 
 
 The capitalist (simply as capitalist) contributes 
 nothing contained in or produced by himself, to 
 ihe material or process of wealth production. He 
 merely uses, or permits to be used, his claims upon 
 a certain quantity of already produced, or yet to 
 he produced, buildings, machinery, etc., for their
 
 THE REWARD OF LABOUR 57 
 
 assemblage together in some given place and pur- 
 pose. Every particle of the buildings, machinery, 
 and other implements which are thus put in opera- 
 tion by his command or consent (with the object of 
 his obtaining a profit from their employment) has 
 been created without his labour or skill. Whatever 
 he does do in the way of useful direction or man- 
 agement is independent of his function as capi- 
 talist. Such direction and management are, as a 
 matter of fact, performed, nowadays in almost 
 all large and highly profitable concerns, such 
 as mining, shipping, great engineering and 
 textile factories, by superintendents, managers, 
 and foremen, who are themselves not capital- 
 ists, but employees working for salaries or 
 wages. And, as need hardly be pointed out, the 
 services of such managers can as readily be 
 obtained by the community itself for the undertak- 
 ings carried on solely for the public use as by capi- 
 talists for undertakings carried on for private 
 profit making.
 
 58 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Reward of Labour. 
 
 Part II. — The Value of Labour. 
 
 We may now consider, in the light of the forego- 
 ing chapter, what value belongs to the labour of 
 the present-day worker or workers generally, per- 
 formed by them in the production of wealth. 
 
 Needless to say the workers' labour plays no 
 part in the actual production of land or the raw 
 material derived from it. 
 
 The workers, simply by means of their own 
 individual and self-contained energy and intelli- 
 gence (without which, it is true, no material 
 wealth can be produced at all), contribute but a 
 small part to the general energy and skill which 
 they are instrumental in bringing into operation 
 in the factory. What proportion the labour of the 
 individual worker bears to the work and skill, 
 which is contributed by the general social organ- 
 isation and culture of society, it is impossible to 
 say. 
 
 We may guess at it, perhaps, by asking our- 
 selves the question (which is, indeed, as ridicu- 
 lous as it sounds) — how many pairs of boots, how- 
 many yards of cloth, how many knives, or spades, 
 or chairs, or watches, or electric motors, could a 
 present day worker produce in a week, a month.
 
 THE VALUE OF LABOUR 59 
 
 or a year, working eight or nine hours a day, were 
 he as destitute of the advantages of social co- 
 operation and culture as was the primitive cave- 
 man or a jungle-boy like Kipling's Mowgli, 
 brought up from babyhood outside human society? 
 
 And even if we credit to the present day worker 
 the knowledge and skill which he has obtained by 
 education and experience from civilisation, how 
 much in the way of wealth production of any kind 
 could he produce in any given time by his own 
 labour were he unsustained by all kinds of socially 
 created food, clothing and shelter, and unaided by 
 socially created means of production and trans- 
 p)ort — machinery, railways, etc. ? 
 
 Finally, to sum up quite categorically the result 
 of this part of our inquiry, we may say that : 
 
 1. The labour of each worker, in a workshop or 
 factory, by itself alone is valueless. Thus, by him- 
 self alone, a workman in an engineering shop, a 
 shipyard, a mine, a spinning factory, or on a rail- 
 way, could produce nothing fit for use. 
 
 2. The labour of all the workp>eople assembled in 
 any given factory or employment, would by itself, 
 without the labour of workpeople in other factories 
 or employment, be valueless — or more correctly 
 speaking, impossible. Thus, the work ^ of 
 engineers would be impossible without the work 
 done in the mines, the iron smelting works, and 
 on the railways ; and would be valueless without 
 the work of the distributors and the other work- 
 {>eople who make use of the tools and machines 
 produced by the engineers.
 
 6o THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 3. Similarly, the labour of workpeople in any 
 given trade, craft, or occupation, would be impos- 
 sible and valueless, were it possible, without the 
 labour of workpeople in other trades, crafts and 
 occupations. Thus, the labour of turners and fitters 
 in an engineering- shop would be impossible and, 
 were it possible, useless without the labour of the 
 enginemen, the draughtsmen, and the pattern- 
 makers, together with (afterwards) the labour of 
 the carters, railwaymen, and other distributors. 
 So also the labour of engine drivers or signalmen, 
 or clerks, or platelayers, separately on the rail- 
 ways would be impossible and futile without the 
 labour of all the other trades, crafts and occupa- 
 tions connected with the railways. This is seen 
 whenever a strike takes place in one department 
 of an industry : soon or late the strike if not settled 
 compels a stoppage of work in all other depart- 
 ments. 
 
 4. Likewise with respect to the products of 
 labour themselves. No single product, however 
 complete in itself, would be of any appreciable value 
 without the use of other products, except in a com- 
 paratively few instances, such as bicycles, chairs, 
 watches, spectacles, and the like self-suflticient 
 articles. Thus, a p>en is of no use without paper 
 and ink ; a needle or sewing machine without 
 thread ; a locomotive without a railway track or 
 properly constructed road; a fire grate or pot 
 without coal or other fuel ; a candlestick without 
 a candle, a motor-car without petrol, an electric 
 lamp, telephone or tramcar without a dynamo and 
 generating station.
 
 THE VALUE OF LABOUR 6i 
 
 Once more, therefore, we see that without the 
 existence of the g^eneral community, and its collec- 
 tively created science, skill, affections, wants, and 
 policy of life, labour and production, as we know 
 and use them in civilised society, would be impos- 
 sible, and even if possible (as by magic or a 
 miracle) useless and valueless. 
 
 And the right understandingf of all this matter 
 constitutes the distinction between the position 
 and social outlook of the Socialist and that of the 
 mere Labourist. 
 
 It is with the community as with the human 
 body. Without the separate cells, organs and parts, 
 the body could neither have life nor existence. Vet, 
 nevertheless, all these cells, organs and parts 
 would not together of themselves, form a human 
 body or create the senses, intelligence and capacity 
 within it, without the collective organisation and 
 the common life and mind which belong not to 
 the cells or parts, but to the primal germ and the 
 whole existence of the body as an organism. 
 
 In certain instances it doubtless may fairly be 
 said that the capitalist does obtain a portion at 
 least of his profits from the under-payment of his 
 employees. Very likely he does so in the specially 
 sweated industries, or where indentured coolie and 
 Chinese labour or the like is employed, when the 
 standard of life of the poor wretches falls, if not 
 beneath that of the cave-man, at any rate, far 
 below that of the free, self-employed worker of 
 pre-capitalist days. 
 
 But, broadly speaking, it is clear from our
 
 62 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 investigation that the profits of the capitalist are 
 not derived from the spoliation of the individual 
 worker whom he himself actually employs: hut 
 from the spoliation of the whole mass of the 
 workers, not so much in their capacity as workers 
 as in their capacity as members of the community. 
 
 Not only have we found an answer to the ques- 
 tion : " From whence does the capitalist derive 
 his profit? " but we have found a principle which 
 throws an important light on the question : "Is 
 not the worker entitled to the fruits of his 
 labour?" 
 
 If by his "own labour" is meant his own 
 labour only, our reply surely must be that he is 
 fully entitled to every particle of the fruits of it. 
 
 But heaven help him and civilisation as well, if 
 he, as a citizen, as a civilised man, is entitled to, 
 and is going to be content with no more than the 
 fruits of his own mdividual labour as a worker ! 
 He is poor enough as it is, but his condition would, 
 in most instances, be even more deplorable were 
 he and his family to obtain in food and comfort 
 no more than the exact measure of what he could 
 or what he does produce by his own unaided 
 intelligence and strength. As things now are he, 
 in all probability, receives twice or thrice as much 
 as that. 
 
 What the worker does not receive, and what the 
 workers in the mass do not receive, is their share 
 as members of the community, of the socially 
 created increment of wealth. 
 
 And to that share he and they are entitled, not
 
 THE VALUE OF LABOUR 63 
 
 simply because they are workers, but because they 
 are men, citizens, members of the brotherhood of 
 society, or the nation. 
 
 The worker is, in all truth, robbed grievously 
 by the capitalist. But the robbery though per- 
 petrated in the workshop, pillages him not so 
 much, if at all, of the fruits of his own labour as a 
 worker, but of the share that belongs to him, as 
 a member of the brotherhood of the community, 
 of the collective produce of the collective labour, 
 genius and skill of the whole of society. This the 
 capitalist does by paying him a wage which is not 
 equivalent to the full share of the collectively pro- 
 duced wealth to which he, as a member of the 
 community, is entitled, but only to a share of so 
 much of that wealth as remains after the capitalist 
 has considerably depleted the store by his rent and 
 profit. 
 
 And in fighting, as the worker is now beginning 
 to do (chiefly as the result of a better understand- 
 ing of his own and his fellows' plight, and of the 
 liope of deliverance from it, which he has gained 
 from Socialist teaching) he is fighting, not really, 
 as he imagines he is doing, for the mere fruits of 
 his own labour, as a wage-earner, but for the 
 common ^fruits of social co-operation, progress 
 and civilisation which are his own and his fellows* 
 heritage and right as members of the rommon- 
 we.'dth.
 
 54 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Reward of Labour. 
 
 Part III. — Wages : False and True. 
 
 But the stage of Socialism, or perhaps I should 
 say Communism, requisite for the realisation of 
 ideal conditions of wealth distribution, is not 
 likely to be reached until Socialism has evolved 
 a considerable change in the character and habits 
 of the generality of men and women. Before that 
 high stage of social equality is reached society 
 will doubtless have to pass through many inter- 
 mediate stages, during which labour in different 
 trades and of different qualities will possess a 
 different exchange value or price. Highly skilled 
 workers, and workers possessing greater strength 
 and fitness than the average of their fellows, will 
 for some time yet command higher wages or 
 salaries than the general run of workers. It is 
 but right also to say that many Socialists, while 
 not denying the possibility of the realisation of 
 complete social equality, do not, in speaking of 
 Socialism, speak of a system in which work and 
 wage distinctions will have ceased altogether to 
 exist. 
 
 We shall proceed, therefore, to consider briefly, 
 for that is all we need attempt to do at this stage, 
 the practical application to transitionary stages of
 
 WAGES : FALSE AND TRUE. 65 
 
 Socialism, of the g-eneral principle respecting the 
 wages of labour arrived at in the two preceding 
 chapters. 
 
 How important it is that we should possess a 
 right understanding on the subject of wages, and 
 have a grasp of true Socialist principle to guide 
 us in present day industrial troubles is manifest 
 on every occasion of a wage dispute. 
 
 Rarely does one hear, either from the employers' 
 side or the workpeople's, an argument or plea 
 which is not wholly opportunist in character and 
 does not bristle with economic fallacies. More 
 rarely still does one hear a speech from a strike 
 platform, unless the speaker happens to be a 
 Socialist emancipated from the narrower dogmas 
 of his creed, in wliich the claims of the strikers 
 are based on a clear conception of the true posi- 
 tion and claims of the worker in relation to the 
 general commonwealth. 
 
 The following letter addressed to me a few years 
 ago in the Labour Leader, and replied to at the 
 time, is an example of the misconception of which 
 I speak, and provides a suitable text for the 
 application of the principles I have been setting 
 forth : — 
 
 Sir, — Will you kindly answer the following question, 
 if relevant, in the correspond enoe column of the T/Eader? 
 
 Socialism says labour creates wealth, and that the 
 labourer i,i entitled to the product of liis labour. Now, I 
 am a labourei in a law office, and my master dictates on 
 an averap;e ten letters a day, and I write thcin, for which 
 he gets OS. each — that is, £2 10k. for the lot. Will a 
 Socialii^t say I im entilU'd to the £2 lOs., or, if not the 
 whole, how much? — Thanking you in anlicij)ation, yours 
 respectfully, C. B. McK.
 
 66 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 We shall resist the temptation to discuss 
 whether or not either lawyers or lawyers' clerks 
 would be necessary among us had we attained to 
 a state of society in which social justice, not 
 merely with respect to wages, but all other condi- 
 tions of life was established. We shall take 
 "C.B.McK's" case as he puts it, and assume 
 (grudgingly perhaps) that both he and his employer 
 represent useful forms of service to the com- 
 munity. 
 
 Now, in the first place, it should be observed 
 that " C. B. McK " overlooks an important item 
 in stating his case. He assumes, virtually, that 
 the letters which he writes from bis employer's 
 dictation are the products of his (the clerk's) 
 labour. That is self-evidently not the fact. The 
 letters are the joint production of himself and the 
 lawyer ; and, as things go, the lawyer's part in 
 them is the most valuable part. It is the legal 
 advice contained in, or supposed to be contained 
 in, the letters, not the manual labour of merely 
 writing them out, which gives them their present 
 price value. Without the legal advice which the 
 lawyer dictates the letter would have no value at 
 all, no matter how much labour " C. B. McK." 
 put into them. It is obvious, therefore, that " C. 
 B. McK." cannot claim that he is entitled to the 
 price obtained for the letters as the reward due 
 to his own labour alone. 
 
 What, then, is the product or real social value 
 of " C. B. McK.'s" labour in writing out the 
 letters referred to, assuming the letters are useful?
 
 WAGES : FALSE AND TRUE. 67 
 
 It is impossible to say. The advice given in 
 them is not his. The paper, pen and ink, the 
 office, g-as and coal which he uses are not his, nor 
 were they made by his employer, who nominally 
 provides them. " C. B. McK." and his employer 
 also use food, clothes, education, and a thousand 
 other thing's which are the product of the labour 
 of countless generations of workers with hand 
 and brain. 
 
 There is, in truth, as we have already shown and 
 said, no means known under heaven, whereby we 
 can tell now, or to all eternity, what the exact 
 product or social value of any person's labour is 
 as a separate item. No man's labour can be 
 weighed and valued as a thing by itself. As well 
 attempt to say what is the labour value of any 
 one living cell in the human body as against that 
 of all the other cells. Without the co-operation 
 of the other cells no single cell would be of any 
 use or value in the body at all. 
 
 We do not, in fact, attempt to estimate the value 
 of anyone's labour. What we do is to estimate 
 the price of obtaining a man to perform the labour. 
 What is that price? That price is determined by 
 the law of supply and demand under capitalist 
 monopoly and competition. If there are manv 
 clerks competent to write letters from dictation (as 
 there indeed are), the price will be low. If there 
 are few, the price will be high. Similarly, if there 
 were many competent lawyers and very few clerks, 
 and especially if lawyers were quite incapable of
 
 68 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 writing letters themselves, then the price of law- 
 yers would be low, and the price of clerks high. 
 
 It is, therefore (allowing for education and skill, 
 legal or Trade Union restriction of admission 
 to professions and trades), the quantity of men in 
 the market who are capable of doing any required 
 labour that decides the price that will be paid for 
 their services. The actual value of the labour 
 itself is not considered in the price at all. Price 
 is merely the ratio at which the products of labour 
 exchange with one another, and that price in 
 regard to things in ordinary use is decided not bv 
 the social value of the thing exchanged, but by the 
 market price of the workers and merchants, with- 
 out whom the things cannot at present be 
 obtained. 
 
 We must turn now from the lawyer's clerk's 
 query to the larger question : What will deter- 
 mine the standard of wages during the period of 
 Socialist transition? 
 
 As Socialism advances the law of supply and 
 demand, while still continuing to operate, will; 
 we cannot doubt, do so in an ever lessening degree ; 
 but so long as that law does operate the rates of 
 wages will remain subject to its influence. 
 
 But many new laws, economic and political, 
 will, as time goes on, intervene to modify the 
 effects of supply and demand. Among these will 
 be: 
 
 I. The establishment of minimum or "living" 
 wages in all State and municipal and, perhaps, in- 
 all private employment.
 
 WAGES : FALSE AND TRUE 69 
 
 2. The equalisation of skill and ability as the 
 result of education, improved physical and mental 
 powers, and social opportunities. 
 
 3. The increased competition in intellectual 
 spheres of labour following- from the foregoing, 
 tending, eventually, as Bernard Shaw has put it, 
 greatly to enhance the price of manual labour, so 
 that probably artists, actors, editors, doctors, and 
 lawyers and scientific men will be easier to get and 
 be paid less than the bricklayers and miners. 
 
 4. The growing socialisation of the people wliich 
 "will tend to make them less desirous of possessing 
 wealth above their fellows, and to make them 
 more glad to engage at less pay in public services 
 for all than at higher pay in serving masters or 
 rich customers : 
 
 5. And, above all, the general increase of com- 
 munal wealth, such as "free" water, electricity, 
 trams, railways, medical service, meals for school 
 children, old-age pensions, the endowment of 
 motherhood, and all other additions to the means 
 of collective well-being. These in time will begin 
 to dwarf completely the importance and need of 
 things which wages, high or low, will enable the 
 people to obtain. 
 
 Perhaps the most important — because it is the 
 one likely to penetrate most deeply and most 
 potently into the social structure — of all the 
 remedi.il changes indicated above, is that of 
 the endcKvment of motherhood. If adequately 
 accomplished this provision will liberate, almost 
 at one stroke, not merely mothers themselves, but
 
 70 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 the family group irom the most grievous anxiety 
 and most baneful oppression of the existing wage 
 system. 
 
 But if, as I hope, the aim of human progress is 
 to make society a real civilisation ; if the 
 prophecies of ages are to be fulfilled, and this 
 planet of ours is ever to become something like a 
 heaven upon earth, assuredly there can be no halt- 
 ing until the wage system is completely swept 
 away. Then shall every man and woman, whether 
 they work as producers of wealth which possesses 
 market value ; or whether, as in the case of 
 mothers, nurses and teachers, their work is of a 
 nature that brings forth no ponderable wealth at 
 all, but nevertheless serves for the sustenance and 
 life of the nation ; or whether, as in the case of 
 children, the weak, the disabled and the infirm old, 
 they are unable to work or serve their fellows in 
 any material way at all — then, I repeat, shall every 
 man, woman and child in the community, what- 
 ever be his or her work or inability to work, be 
 entitled to share equally and fully in all the means 
 of life and happiness of the commonwealth, so 
 long as they are deemed fit to be allowed to live 
 in the community at all. 
 
 And that is the only final solution of the Labour 
 problem. It is the only true Socialist answer to the 
 question of what are the wages which now or here- 
 after the worker is entitled to receive. 
 
 And that, moreover, is a prime Socialist pres- 
 cription which not only denies the arrogant 
 assumption on the part of capitalists to the right
 
 WAGES : FALSE AND TRUE 71 
 
 to oppress the workers and plunder and intimi- 
 date society, but which also denies and rebukes the 
 pretensions of workers as individuals or sections 
 to overawe or penalise other sections of workers, 
 or the general community, in asserting for them- 
 selves (as happily they rarely do) claims or privi- 
 leges which could not be equally claimed and 
 enjoyed by all sections of the workers and all 
 members of the nation.
 
 72 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Reward of Genius. 
 
 I. — Genius and Society. 
 
 The question of the reward of genius is one 
 which excites great interest in connection with 
 So<:ialist discussion. Workmen, even of the most 
 poorly rewarded class, who will oftentimes turn 
 away impatiently from discussions upon their own 
 economic position, will usually listen spellbound 
 when the subject relates to the position and reward 
 of men of genius. This intense sympathy with 
 genius is a wholesome sign. It is an indication of 
 the idealism which grows deep down in the hearts 
 of the people — an idealism in which they discern, 
 however dimly, the truth that mere work and 
 wealth are not all-suflRcing things for man. Thus, 
 even amongst those who have had the hardest lives 
 there upwells an emotion of love for whatever 
 helps to give beauty and honour to the purposes 
 of life. 
 
 The opponents of Socialism are alive to the 
 value of this sentiment, and seek to put it to 
 account in the defence of capitalism. So, whenever 
 the injustice of the inequality of rich and poor is 
 pressed hard upon them, they exclaim : What ! shall 
 genius have no reward? Is there to be a dull, dead 
 level? Are the great thinkers, the great inventors.
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 73 
 
 the men of extraordinary ability, to have no incen- 
 tive to excel their fefllows? Must a Shakespeare, a 
 Newton, a James Watt, be no better paid than the 
 dullest and laziest of his fellows? 
 
 Now we may reply to this objection by asking 
 how, as a matter of history, the great thinkers 
 and doers of ancient and modern days, have 
 been rewarded? Is it not a fact that many of the 
 most wonderfully gifted men the world has known 
 were allowed to live and die in poverty? Have we 
 not seen, on the other hand, how one single modern 
 capitalist, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, may pile up 
 a fortune that vastly exceeds in amount all the 
 reward in gold which the greatest prophets, poets, 
 painters, philosophers, inventors, and heroes have 
 altogether received since the world began? It is, 
 as we shall presently see, one of the chief injustices 
 of capitalism that it makes no provision for the 
 reward of genius at all. 
 
 And let us in passing, also note that whatever 
 the claims of genius to reward may be, the 
 capitalist, as such, need have no genius at all, 
 except it be the genius for beggaring one's neigh- 
 bour — a species of ability which in simpler and 
 perhaps more honest days brought many an enter- 
 prising rogue to the gallows. 
 
 But the subject of genius and its reward is so 
 interesting In itself, and affords such a convincing 
 test of the validity of our Socialist principles, that 
 I propose to discuss it on its own merits, though 
 indeed it is but a particular aspect of the general 
 subject of wealth 'ind wages, which has been the
 
 74 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 theme of our three preceding chapters. And if the 
 discussion leads us, as indeed it must do, over 
 ground, past and present, already frequently tra- 
 versed in these pages, it will, I hope, do so by fresh 
 and instructive paths. 
 
 We shall first consider what the origin and con- 
 ditions of Genius are. And that we can perhaps 
 best do by my laying down in the form of three 
 affirmations or postulates the main thesis of my 
 argument. 
 
 I. The first postulate is, that Genius is not self- 
 acquired by the individual possessing it. Genius 
 comes to him with his birth, and whateTer be its 
 primal source, is derived by him. and can only be 
 developed in him, through society. It is, in its 
 manifestations at least, a product of social evolu- 
 tion. Man is himself created by society ;* all his 
 human powers, his speech, his erectness of stature, 
 the shape and capacity of his head, fingers, and 
 limbs, are the results of long generations of social 
 co-operation. Genius, and all superiority of mind 
 and body, are derived from, or only come into 
 manifestation through the special race or stock 
 and social conditions to which the man of eenius 
 belones. 
 
 * See note at end of Chapter I. I may, however, to prevent 
 misconception, repeat that the statement that '■ society creates 
 man " must not be regarded ai opposed to the beUef held by a 
 v»st number of religious and philosophical minds, that man's 
 evolution and the evolution of society itself are but the unfold- 
 ment of the spiritual power (Plato's divine idea) v.ithin him. 
 What is affirmed above is that whatever be the nature of the 
 soul, or the primal essence of mind or life in man, it is only 
 through the existence and agency of >;oeiety that man (or his 
 physical and mental faculties) as we know him has evolved from 
 the brute to the human or civilised man. Without society, man, 
 by his inheient sjnritual capacity or his final destiny what it 
 may, would remain in his paleolithic stage of mental and 
 «inotion:i! development.
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 75 
 
 In other words, the man of genius does not create 
 his genius. He does not create himself. He has 
 had absolutely no say as to his own making ; no 
 choice as to when or where, or how he should be 
 made. He has not even had the selection of his 
 parents — a most serious deprivation from an indi- 
 vidualist standpoint, as it very largely depends upon 
 who our parents are who we ourselves shall be 
 The fact that a man is born with the capacity to be 
 clever or stupid is no more a merit or demerit on his 
 part than the fact that he is born dark or fair, 
 strong or weak, handsome or ugly. 
 
 Genius of certain kinds is more frequently dis- 
 played among some races or peoples than among 
 others. Thus the ancient Greeks gave the world 
 poets, philosophers, and sculptors, who have never 
 been excelled. Mediaeval Italy gave us great 
 painters ; while modern Germany has given us great 
 composers ; and Britain and America great inven- 
 tors. In nations where art, poetry, science, and 
 invention have not been cultivated through many 
 generations, great artists, poets, scientists, or 
 inventors rarely, if ever, arise. No Plato, Kepler, 
 or Holbein, for example, has ever been discovered 
 among the Congo negroes, or the Esquimaux ot 
 Kamschatka, nor has an Angelico, a Mozart, or a 
 Kelvin yet made his appearance in Turkey, 
 Morocco, or Paraguay. 
 
 These facts prove that genius is not self-created, 
 but is derived from certain qualities of race and 
 social organisation inherited through parentage. 
 That being so, wc are entitled, no matter how high
 
 76 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 our admiration for genius may be, to say that the 
 man of genius is as much indebted to society for 
 the creation of his genius as society may be to 
 him for anything which he in turn may create. 
 
 II. My second postulate is that society educates 
 and shapes genius, and gives to it whatever means 
 it possesses of expressing itself at all. 
 
 Consider what would become of genius were it 
 not for the knowledge, skill, science, art, materials 
 and tools which society provides ! But for these, 
 genius would perish as a flower deprived of soil, sun- 
 shine, and rain. The child born with poetic genius, 
 but without the language, the traditions of romance 
 and song which society preserves would never 
 become a poet. The child born with artistic g-enius, 
 but never seeing any art, and never having instruc- 
 tion or even the use of pencils, colours, or paper, 
 would never become a painter. And so likewise 
 the child born with inventive genius, did he never 
 obtain knowledge of science, never see any 
 mechanical operation, and never have tools or manu- 
 factured material given him, would never become 
 an inventor. 
 
 Were it conceivable that a Dante, a Victor Hugo, 
 or a Burne-Jones could be born among the 
 aborigines of Australia or the ryots of India, it is 
 inconceivable that he would ever become a Dante, 
 a Victor Hugo, or a Burne-Jones. We have only 
 to read the lives of these and other men of genius 
 to see^ how every turn of their minds and achieve- 
 ment of their hands was determined by the 
 circumstances and events of the civilisation around 
 them.
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 77 
 
 Genius may, therefore, be regarded as the rarer 
 blossomings on the historical stems or branches of 
 intellectual culture. So that we may say that had 
 there been no Pheidias and Apelles there would 
 have been no Michael Angelo or Raphael, or Van 
 Evck or G. F. Watts; had there been no Euclid 
 and Archimedes, there would have been no Coper- 
 nicus, Newton, or Faraday ; and had there been no 
 Homer and ^schylus, there would have been no 
 Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, or William 
 Morris. 
 
 HI. The third postulate is that society bestows 
 uf>on the works of genius whatever economic value 
 these works possess. 
 
 This proposition is self-evidently true. 
 
 Were it not for society, there would be no work- 
 men capable of making, and no workmen capable 
 of using, the steam plough, steam engine, power 
 loom, or any other invention. Were it not for 
 society, there would be no people capable of under- 
 standing or appreciating books, pictures, science, 
 or great works of any kind. 
 
 Were it not for society, men of genius would 
 have no time or opportunity for poetry, art, philo- 
 sophy, or science ; they would be obliged to give 
 their whole energies, like primitive man, to finding 
 food and shelter to keep themselves alive. 
 
 Were it not for society, there would be no accu- 
 mulated wealth, and, therefore, nothing whatever 
 to give authors and inventors in exchange for their 
 works. 
 
 Therefore, whatever " exchange value " the pro- 
 
 D
 
 78 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ducts of g-enius may have under existing- conditions 
 is a value created by society. Works of g-enius 
 would have no exchange value if there were no- 
 body who esteemed them of value. 
 
 These are my three propositions. They bring 
 into view the social origin, power, and value of 
 genius. They divest genius of every individualistic 
 pretension. They show that genius is but as the 
 visible stream flashing down the mountain side, 
 wherein are gathered the rains and dews collected 
 on every pebble and ileaf, from the dim summit 
 high in the clouds down to the far shimmering 
 valleys below. 
 
 In this respect, genius typifies, as we have 
 already seen, all degrees of ability and all kinds of 
 manual labour. 
 
 Behold the peasant who cultivates his own land. 
 He toils in the field even as did his primitive 
 ancestor. He tills the soil, sows the seed, and 
 swings his scythe into the crops. As the golden 
 grain falls joyously from his scythe, see, we 
 exclaim, what abundance this one man's labour 
 has brought forth ! He has prepared the soil in 
 the winter, he has sown the seed in the spring, and 
 now in the summer he reaps the harvest — the 
 fruits of his own unaided toil. 
 
 His own unaided toil ! How thoughtlessly and 
 ungratefully we speak ! 
 
 The worker in the field reaps much more than 
 the fruits of his own toil ! He reaps the fruits of 
 the labour and experience of all the g^enerations 
 of husbandmen and craftsmen since the world
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 79 
 
 began. His spade, his plough, his scythe — he did 
 not make these. No living man has made them. 
 They have grown up and taken shaj>e in men's 
 hands from century to century. Two thousand 
 years ago there were no steel spades, or ploughs, 
 or scythes — there were only crooked spears and 
 tree-trunks cleft into rude ploughshares, and 
 clumsy reaping hooks. Only out of infinite 
 experience and adaptation have the finely-shaped 
 and efficient agricultural implements of our day 
 been designed, and only by the labour of miners, 
 engineers, woodmen, and carpenters, are these 
 tools made and provided for the farmer's use. 
 
 So, too, with the crops themselves. There was 
 a time when the utmost skill and labour could 
 bring forth no rich crops. There was a time when 
 no fields of tall-stemmed, many-eared corn awaited 
 the harvester, in Egypt or elsewhere; when no 
 edible potatoes or cultivated vegetables of any kind 
 could be found on the face of the globe. It has 
 taken many thousands of years of stubborn toil and 
 dearly won knowledge of plants, and soils and 
 seasons, to produce the generously yielding crops 
 and fruits which grow in our fields and gardens 
 to-day. And this saying might be repeated with 
 respect to the domestication and breeding of the 
 horse, the cow, the sheep, the poultry, and all 
 other creatures useful to man. 
 
 Thus we see that the farmer of our day, when 
 he reaps his fields and rears his stock, has co-- 
 operating with him the labour and skill not only 
 of the workmen in the fields and cities around him,
 
 8o THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 but also that of rnillions of workers whose dust 
 has long been mingled with the mould of his fields. 
 And what is true of the farmer is similarly true 
 of the carpenter, the ironworker, the weaver, the 
 author, and inventor, and all workers by hand or 
 brain. There is not a building-, a machine, a pic- 
 ture, a book, or a piece of music produced in our 
 midst to-day but has stored within it in some 
 measure the genius, the experience, and the toil 
 accumulating from age to age in the human race 
 since the very dawn of human intelligence. Like 
 the human body, civilisation constantly renews it<^ 
 substance as it grows, and acquires higher powers. 
 Not all the genius or wealth then existing in the 
 world could have provided Solomon or Alfred the 
 Great with the electric light, the railway service, 
 the steamships, the aeroplanes, the nev/spapers, the 
 surgicaJ skill, or any of the innumerable modern 
 wonders of science and invention which even the 
 humblest worker of our day may enjoy.
 
 8i 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Reward of Genius. 
 
 Part II. — Genius and Pots of Gold. 
 
 I HAVE, I hope, brought clearly into view the social 
 descent of g-enius, and its brotherhood with all 
 degrees of skill and labour. With genius thus 
 revealed in its full human significance, we are now 
 in a position to consider how genius should be 
 rewarded. 
 
 And first let us make sure that we realise how 
 genius is dealt with as an economic factor to-day. 
 For unless we keep before us the position of 
 genius under capitalism we shall argue in vain as 
 to whether genius will be better or worse off under 
 Socialism. Mr. Mallock, the ex-Kaiser of Germany, 
 and other more or less distinguished apologists of 
 capitalism, have alleged that Socialism would 
 deprive genius of its stimulus by denying it due 
 recompense in coin of the realm. We shall see if 
 this be true. 
 
 How is genius rewarded with wealth to-day? 
 
 The reply to that question is a startlingly 
 simple one. To-day genius as such is not rewarded 
 at all. There is no legal, no religious, no moral 
 guarantee of recompense to genius. There is no 
 obligation whatever on the part of the State or of
 
 82 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 you or me, or anyone, to provide g-enius with even 
 a penny or a crust of bread in reward for anything 
 genius may achieve. If you or I were to write a 
 most wonderful book, paint one of the greatest 
 pictures, or invent a most useful machine, there is 
 nobody in all the world who is bound either to buy 
 our work or pay us a farthing for having produced 
 it. 
 
 When an author, painter, or inventor produces 
 a work, he has to endeavour, like any fishwife or 
 huckster, to sell it in the market. He may make 
 a good bargain, and obtain a handsome price for 
 it — especially if he can, like an enterprising manu- 
 facturer, get his reputation advertised ; he may 
 make a poor bargain and get less than a labourer's 
 wage for the mere time spent upon it ; or he may 
 get nobody to buy it — the most likely occurrence 
 of all if the work possesses highly original merit, 
 or if its main idea is in advance of the times. 
 Ruskin has assured us that really great artists 
 have little or no chance of selling their pictures 
 until their lives are worn out, unless they have 
 influential friends, or themselves possess a keen 
 commercial faculty — a faculty that has no relation 
 to artistic genius. 
 
 Few of the great men of genius in modern times 
 have made as much by their works as the common- 
 place lawyers, merchants, or courtiers of their day. 
 It was not as an author, but as a bnsiness 
 manager, that Shakespeare compiled hi& Jittle 
 fortune. Sir Isaac Newton — the greatest name 
 in modern science — made practically nothing' by
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 83 
 
 his writing's and discoveries, and only received a 
 Government sinecure towards the close of his days 
 at the solicitation of influential friends. Wagner, 
 the great composer, was rescued from a precarious 
 existence by the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria — 
 and owed to this mad King the opportunity of 
 eventually placing his works before the world. 
 But mad kings are an uncertain providence. 
 Millet, the French painter, one of whose pictures 
 was bought many years after his death for 
 ;^25,c)oo, did not receive a fourth of that sum 
 during his lifetime for all his paintings. The 
 history of genius is, indeed, largely one of tragedy 
 — of brilliant and sensitive spirits struggling 
 against poverty and discouragement, enduring con- 
 stant humilation, and often hurried to the end 
 broken in body and mind. 
 
 The lives of the composers, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 Schubert, and Berlioz were made wretched and cut 
 short by the hardship of their struggle for bread, 
 as were also the lives of the painters, Masaccio, 
 Watteau, Barry, and many others. Mozart's works 
 brought him applause and fame but little remunera- 
 tion, and he died in poverty, was buried as a 
 common pauper, and his grave is unknown. 
 Rembrandt, though his masterpieces were highly 
 appreciated while he lived, died in miscrj- and 
 neglect. Columbus, whose great discoveries were 
 famed over Eurof)e, and Camcens, the national poet 
 of Portugal, also died in poverty and obscurity. 
 The fates of Tasso, Otway, Chatterton, and Burns 
 are proverbial. Blake's poetry and designs were
 
 84 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 little known or heeded in his own day, though he 
 reached a ripe age ; and he and his wife lived in a 
 single room in humble circumstances, but he 
 despised money-making, and rejoiced in his 
 spiritual vision and hope, and was not unhappy. 
 Milton received altogether only ;^i5 for his 
 "Paradise Lost." Neither Shelley nor Keats 
 obtained any money from the publication of their 
 poems. 
 
 Industrial invention, one might have supposed, 
 would prove a particularly fortunate sphere for 
 genius. Here, if anywhere, the enlightened self- 
 interest of capitalism had an opportunity of playing 
 the part of fairy godmother to genius. Labour- 
 saving inventions, unlike poetry, paintings, and 
 music, are productive of marketable commodities. 
 Yet in no other domain of creative skill and industry 
 has genius been so heartlessly and systematically 
 (so one might almost say) ill-requited, plagcarised 
 and defrauded. The pages of industrial history 
 teem with instances of inventors who have gone to 
 the grave humiliated and despoiled. Richard 
 Roberts, of Manchester, whose numerous inventions 
 enormously developed engineering manufacture, 
 died a poor man. - Henry Cort, whose inventions, 
 Samuel Smiles tells us, made gigantic fortunes for 
 ironmasters, never received a shilling of royalty for 
 any of them, and was only saved from dying in 
 destitution by a pension from the Government. 
 And what student of science and mechanics is not 
 familiar with instances within quite recent experi- 
 ence of inventors and investigators who have
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 85 
 
 received little or no reward for their valuable dis- 
 coveries? How often, too, has the inventor to 
 suffer the mortification of seeing his inventions 
 evilly misused for the disservice rather than em- 
 ployed for the benefit of mankind? 
 
 How then under Socialism will g-enius be 
 rewarded ? 
 
 And by Socialism must here be understood com- 
 plete Socialism, wherein all the essential means of 
 wealth will be collectively owned, and no one will 
 work merely to enrich himself, but all will work 
 for the commonweal and the commonweal will be 
 for all. In this way everyone will receive the 
 fullest measure of wealth and freedom that society 
 can bestow. 
 
 That under such a system enough and abun- 
 dance will be provided for all, hardly needs 
 argument. Even as things are to-day there 
 is wealth enough produced to amply supply 
 everyone were it rightly distributed, not- 
 withstanding the terrible waste resulting from 
 competition, unemployment of rich and poor, 
 unproductive work of all kind, and expenditure on 
 armies, navies, and other destructive services. 
 That being so, it is evident surely that under a 
 system in which there was complete co-operation 
 and production for use, and where everyone would 
 take part in the duties of the State, more than 
 enough could easily be protluced to satisfy plenti- 
 fully the needs of everyone, old and young, strong 
 and weak, capable and incapable. Wealth for 
 public and private use would abound.
 
 86 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 When therefore everyone has enough, what 
 more than that shall we give to men of genius? 
 
 The notion that genius is entitled to be rewarded 
 with pots of gold or with extra beefsteaks at 
 dinner, or with palaces and flunkeys, is a notion 
 which betrays the barbarism which still clings to 
 our minds and social customs. It is obvious, of 
 course, that under existing conditions, in which 
 no one has any means of living except what labour 
 of his own he can sell, or what labour of others 
 he can steal, the man of genius, like everybody 
 else, is justified in seeking to get the most he can 
 for his works. Socialism would, however, heaven 
 be thanked, expurge that horrible thieves' market 
 custom from civilised life. 
 
 Besides, what need has genius for special 
 reward? Does the man of genius require greater 
 provision for the health and happiness of him- 
 self and his family than does his less accomplished 
 brother, who sweats in the mine and the factory? 
 Does he require more food or better clothing? 
 Surely not. True, the great composer, Handel, 
 used to order dinners for two when he dined by 
 himself, and was in the habit, it is said, of regal- 
 ing himself with good wine while giving his guests 
 inferior liquor ; but Handel was as exceptional in 
 his appetite as in his musical capacity. Byron 
 was a very small eater; and Edison, the great 
 American inventor, takes, he tells us, less than 
 half the quantity of food usually consumed by 
 other men. As a rule, too, men of genius have 
 been sublimely careless in the matter of dress.
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 87 
 
 Shelley occasionally went about without any cloth- 
 ing at all. But whatever his taste may be, the 
 man of genius cannot sleep in two beds at a time, 
 nor travel in two trains at once. 
 
 And what else would the giving of extra money 
 or wealth to men or women of superior ability 
 mean in a Socialist community but the bestowing 
 upon them of superfluities which would cloy and 
 encumber their own lives while imposing extra toil 
 upon the lives of their fellows?, What else indeed 
 do riches accomplish to-day? The rich can mul- 
 tiply around them the outward means of comfort 
 and pleasure, but they cannot apply to their own 
 use more than a portion of their abundance. They 
 cannot multiply their limbs or their senses. They 
 cannot add a minute to the length of the hours of 
 their day. 
 
 Palaces are more fatal to genius than prisons. 
 Rarely or never has any great work of art or inven- 
 tion come out of them. 
 
 It was not because Robert Burns was without a 
 lord's income that his life was made memorably 
 sad, but because the hard conditions and tempta- 
 tions of his task of winning bread broke him 
 down. Sir Walter Scott, more fortunate, had a 
 palace built for himself, but he only used one or 
 two rooms in it, and his straining to make money 
 to build it and purchase a landed estate eventuated 
 in a misfortune ihat shadowed the light of his 
 career. The majority of great thinkers and 
 workers in the world, even when they have owned 
 considerable wealth, have themselves lived very 
 simply.
 
 88 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Our answer then to the question, What reward 
 will genius have under Socialism? — is, That 
 g-enius, like virtue, will be its own exceeding- great 
 reward. And there never has been and never will 
 be any other right reward for genius than that. 
 The joy of discovering or of creating new things, 
 the joy of affording new joy to others — that is the 
 supreme happiness and reward of genius. Like 
 love, like faith, like heroism, like life itself, genius 
 can have no other recompense than the pleasure 
 of fulfilling itself. Socialism will afford genius 
 opportunities of growth and achievement such as 
 the greatest riches have never been able to give. 
 Genius which under such conditions would demand 
 to be bribed with moneybags and the selfish mono- 
 poly of others' labour is genius which the world 
 can well afford to do without. 
 
 True genius, indeed, has never sought any other 
 reward than the joy of fully and freely using its 
 powers. 
 
 What other reward than this had the great Greek 
 philosophers, poets, heroes and athletes? Was 
 not the simple crown of bay leaves, the applause 
 of the people, or the acceptance of their works the 
 highest expression of gratitude that they hoped to 
 obtain. What other reward did the innumerable 
 monks and craftsmen of the middle ages seek who 
 built the magnificent cathedrals and filled them 
 with every device of art and praise that their hearts 
 and minds could invent? What other reward had 
 the countless unknown poets and musicians whose 
 songs and tunes have bedewed with joy the hearts
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 89 
 
 of lovers, and soldiers, and workpeople down 
 througfh thousands of summer and winter nights 
 and days? Was it for money that Milton wrote 
 his " Paradise Lost," that Burns wrote his " Tarn 
 o' Shanter " and "Mary Morrison," that Sir 
 Isaac Newton wrote his " Principia," or that G. F. 
 Watts painted his g-reat pictures which he gave to 
 the nation as a free gift? 
 
 Sir Humphrey Davy, the inventor of the Safety 
 lamp which has been the means of saving the lives 
 of thousands of miners, gave the invention free to 
 the nation, though he could have made a fortune by 
 patenting it. Bertholet, the famous French 
 chemist, though receiving only a small salary from 
 his professorship, refused to accept any payment for 
 his discoveries which benefited French industry to 
 the value of many millions of pounds. Scheele, the 
 renowned Swedish chemist, was similarly nobly- 
 minded, and sought no reward for his great dis- 
 coveries which did so much to advance chemical 
 science and to improve chemical processes of manu- 
 facture. 
 
 The poet or painter (as Ruskin, I think, said) 
 who would not, while in prison and fed on bread 
 and water, write verses or make designs, though 
 he could publish them no further than prison walls, 
 is no real poet or painter at all. Many famous 
 works were, as we know, written in prison when 
 the writers had little expectation of ever seeing 
 them publi.sheo. Cervantes wrote the first part of 
 " Don Quixote " in yjrison, as did also Sir Walter 
 Raleigh his " History of the World," Campanclla 
 his "City of the Sun," Lovelace his beautiful
 
 go THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 "Lucasta" lyrics, Bunyan his " Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress," and Voltaire the first part of his 
 "Henriade." Ernest Jones, the Chartist poet, 
 wrote his poem, " The Revolt of Hindustan," when 
 in solitary confinement in gaol, where, having no 
 ink, he used instead, it is said, blood drawn from 
 his own arm. Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi, 
 and other great Italian painters who were monks 
 painted their pictures without thought or possibility 
 of accepting any payment for their work. Cor- 
 reggio when a lad, but already marvellous with his 
 brush, begged a rich nobleman tO' give him only 
 food and colours and he would cover his state- 
 room with pictures. . 
 
 Genius will out and assert itself in the face of 
 poverty, or unpopularity, or of persecution, if only 
 it has a chance to come to life at all. So far from 
 asking for or being in need of the inducement of 
 premiums or prizes, true genius, once it realises 
 its powers, will strive to exercise them, in spite of 
 almost overwhelming discouragement. Like love, 
 like strong religious faith, genius, if it but fledge 
 its wings, will seek flight in the face of all obstacles, 
 though it break its wings dashing against cage or 
 prison bars. 
 
 Our chief indictment against existing social 
 conditions with respect to genius is not so much 
 that genius, when it manifests itself, is so often 
 discouraged and repressed, especially if it takes 
 new or unfamiliar paths. That truly is a serious 
 enough rnatter. But what is far more serious is 
 that under existing conditions genius, or variety 
 of natural talent, must in countless instances be
 
 THE REWARD OF GENIUS 91 
 
 blig-hted while yet only in the germ, and thus never 
 have an opportunity of coming into bud or mani- 
 festing itself at all. Who can say how many men 
 and women now doomed to a life of dull toil in 
 factories might have displayed high gifts of mind 
 had those gifts but had a fair chance of growth and 
 of unfolding themselves in childhood? Therein 
 lies one of the deepest wrongs of present-day 
 society. 
 
 Socialism will not starve, or curse, or imprison 
 genius. It will nourish it and set it free. It will 
 be to genius as sunshine and warmth and refresh- 
 ing showers are to the woods and fields — bringing 
 it forth, sustaining it, and providing- it with a world 
 in which it can unfold its glowing hues. 
 
 Let none, therefore, be afraid of Socialism lest 
 it should destroy or discourage g-enius. Socialism 
 comes to deliver genius. It comes to endow men 
 and women v/ith new capacities and opportunities 
 for creating beauty and gladness. Capitalism can- 
 not do this. Capitalism has never inspired any 
 exquisite creation or noble deed. Genius and valour 
 and generosity are of the diviner spirit in man — 
 they cannot be bought with gold ; they spring, as 
 I have said, as a fountain from the social well of 
 life in the race. And so long as children with 
 eager fingers and creative fancy play at our feet, 
 and the mother sings to the baby on her knee, 
 and the lover has song in his heart for his lass — so 
 long, indeed, as the skylark fills the morning with 
 melody and the flowers spread their glory to the 
 sun — there will be abundance of genius and art and 
 sons' and invention under Socialism.
 
 92 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Freedom and Variety of Work. 
 
 Important and necessary as are many of the 
 measures which iire put forward as a present day 
 means towards socialism, and although for con- 
 venience sake we may call them socialist measures, 
 it must not be supposed that they represent the 
 policy of life which would prevail were socialism 
 in anything like a complete form attained. Many 
 of them indeed, are of a nature which would, I 
 am convinced, be unendurable in a socialist com- 
 munity. Nor do I doubt that the circumstance 
 that these proposals figure so prominently in 
 political discussions, as though they were of the 
 very essence of Socialism, has done much to turn 
 many thoughtful and imaginative minds against 
 Socialism altogether. 
 
 The measures of which I here speak are those 
 which seem to Imply that socialism will consist 
 largely of rules forbidding or restricting freedom 
 of personal taste or choice of work and mode of 
 living, and that life generally will be regulated on 
 a " mass " or regimental system — a herding of 
 the pyeople in barracks and the like, with little or 
 no privacy of life. Typical of such measures are 
 those for enacting a universal eight hours working 
 day, the public feeding of school children, and 
 the compulsory attendance at school or college of
 
 FREEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 93 
 
 all boys and girls under 16 or maybe 18 years of 
 age. 
 
 But are not these measures integral parts of all 
 socialist political programmes? — it will be asked. 
 
 In truth they are. There was no choice but to 
 put them there. They are necessary steps out of 
 the bondage of capitalism into the freedom of 
 socialism. But they are not of themselves 
 Socialism, nor do they form part of the permanent 
 elements of Socialist policy. 
 
 They are not Socialism : they are merely hos- 
 pital or ambulance measures designed to bind up 
 the wounds and heal maybe some of the worst sores 
 of the capitalist system, and to sustain the people 
 through the perico of transition from capitalism 
 to socialism. But we should bear clearly in 
 mind that 
 
 State interference with the oppression and results 
 of capitalism is not Socialism. 
 
 Let us consider, for example, the eight hours 
 proposal. The demand for the reduction of the 
 hours of labour to eight hours or less a day was 
 put forward by Socialists as a necessary means of 
 liberating the workers from hours of toil which 
 at the period when the Socialist agitation began 
 (1883) generally ranged from 10 to 12 hours a day, 
 and sometimes to 14 or more hours a day. The 
 establishment by law of a minimum eight-hours 
 day was necessary, So<Malists declared, not only to 
 release the workers from the overstrain of thcrse 
 long hours and to afford them more leisure and rest, 
 hut in order to absorb where possible unemployed
 
 94 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 labour, and at the same time break in some degree 
 the capitaHst power of so-called "free contract" 
 over the wage-enslaved workers. 
 
 But under any right social order, work will not 
 be carried on for an undue period of hours ; nor 
 will it be regarded as a penalty, as a thing to be 
 got rid of, if possible, altogether. Work will, I 
 hope be looked upon instead by the generality of 
 healthy men and women, as it often was in pre- 
 capitalist days of our history, and as it is to-day 
 looked upon by the few luckier people who have 
 work to do congenial to their taste and free from 
 the terrorism of employers, not as a hardship, but 
 as an enjoyment. So far from desiring to be rid 
 of work, even arduous work, except such as is 
 mechanically monotonous or dangerous to healtH 
 or limb, they will to a great extent make it a means 
 of recreation. Fcr were work as it might be, 
 as William Morris, the greatest craftsman of his 
 day, so constantly insisted it ought always to be : 
 work (i) worth doing, (2) not exhausting, (3) varied 
 in nature, and (4) carried on under pleasant con- 
 ditions and surroundings, it would be indeed one 
 of the great pleasures of life. While, therefore, 
 the fixed hours of work required for the needs of 
 the community as a whole might be no more than 
 four hours a day or less (as might, indeed, be the 
 case to-day, despite the wastefulness of so much of 
 it)* the majority of citizens would wish to employ 
 
 • William Hoyle, a well-known Lancashire manufacturer and 
 reformer (but not a Socialist) calculated in his book, " Our 
 Nationul Resources," published in 1S82, that not more than l\ 
 hours work a day would be necessary for each person were every 
 able-bodied person to share equitably in the work, and wer« 
 demonstrally useless and wasteful work eliminated from our 
 industrial system.
 
 FREEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 95 
 
 a larg-e part of their leisure time in pursuing crafts 
 and occupations pleasing- to their tastes, thus work- 
 ing maybe not four hours, but, if they wished, 
 nearer fourteen hours a day. 
 
 For, I repeat, once work is freed from capitalist 
 exploitation and tyranny, and the workers no 
 longer work for the enrichment of the capitalist 
 and their own enslavement, but for themselves, 
 their fellow citizens and the commonwealth ; once 
 men know that by working beyond a given span 
 of hours they will not be excluding other men 
 from jobs or wages ; once work is made not a 
 misery but a pleasure — will not both men and 
 women, think you, be eager to work freely and 
 without regard to length of hours for the enjoyment 
 of exercising their strength and skill and adding to 
 their own comfort and as a free gift to the common- 
 wealth? Will they not wish to give a considerable 
 part of their leisure hours to their gardens, 
 to rebuilding, decorating and furnishing their 
 homes, to building public halls for art and 
 science, to working in municipal craft-workshops 
 and scientific laboratories, or to getting up 
 concerts, plays and other means of education 
 and entertainment? For you do not^ 1 hope, 
 really Ijclieve that the citizens in a Socialist 
 community will want to spend one half of the Jay 
 doing nothing except engaging in idle chatter, 
 loafing at street corners, or watching other people 
 make themselves happy by exercising their energies 
 and abilities at games and other performances — as, 
 alas, so many people do to-day, knowing no better
 
 96 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 how to pass the time? Hear William Morris 
 speak on this point : 
 
 And I may say that as to that leisure, as I should in 
 no case do any harm with it, so I should wish often to 
 do some direct good to the community with it by 
 practising arts or occupations for my hands and brain, 
 which would give pleasure to many citizens ; in other 
 words, a great deal of the best work done would be done 
 in the leisure time of men relieved from any anxiety 
 as to their livelihood, and eager to exercise their special 
 talent as all men, nay all animals are.l 
 
 Socialism comes not, therefore, to restrict or 
 repress men and women in the wholesome exer- 
 cise of their energies and freedom. It comes to 
 liberate them, and to afford them such scope as 
 never yet has been for the growth and use of their 
 bodily and mental powers. 
 
 It is rarely the amount of work that exhausts 
 the streng-th or injures the health. It is the mono- 
 tony or pace of it ; it is the poison of the spirit 
 and body that comes from the worry and injustice 
 of having to work all day, and day after day, at 
 the same '^ull task, which, even when not in itself 
 unhealthy or over laborious, is often wholly 
 mechanical, uninteresting and unnecessary. But 
 with due changes of occupation, and with work 
 made interesting, as in most instances it might be, 
 by its obvious usefulness, and by its affording the 
 worker a means of self-expression — how different 
 it all would be? It was this variety of occupation 
 which helped to make life in the olden time so 
 
 1 " Signs of Change " lecture on " How We Live and How We 
 Might Live.'
 
 FREEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 97 
 
 often pleasurable, despite the many grievous 
 burdens which the workers had to endure. It was 
 by changing- from one kind of craft or piece of work 
 to another after r. reasonable spell of work at 
 each, thus bringing into play fresh thoughts and 
 energies, that the great master craftsmen of history 
 were able to exeicise their great gifts and to 
 accomplish their marvellous achievements. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci was at once a great painter, 
 sculptor, craftsman, engineer, natural philosopher, 
 anatomist, musician, poet and statesman. 
 
 Our ov/n William Morris, who, as Theodore 
 Watts Dunton said, accomplished the work of 
 six men of genius in his day and, as his doctor 
 said, expended the energy of ten ordinary men, did 
 so by turning, as need or inclination demanded, to 
 writing poetry, designing and making tapestries 
 and furniture, painting stained glass windows, 
 dyeing beautiful fabrics, printing beautiful books, 
 writing essays and romances, doing gardening 
 work and preaching Socialism at indoor and out- 
 door meetings. 
 
 Morris' own testimony on the subject of variety 
 of work of which he could speak with the authority 
 of his unique powers and experience may well be 
 cited here : — 
 
 To compel a man to do, day after day, the same task, 
 witliout any hope of escape or change, means nothinf; 
 short, of a prison torment. Nothinf; but the tyranny of 
 profit-grinding makes it necessary. A man niif,'lit easily 
 learn and practice at least three crafts, varying 
 sedcntaiy occupation with outdoor — occupation calling 
 for the exercise of strong bodily energy for work in
 
 98 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 which the mind had more to do. There are few men, 
 for instance, who would not wish to spend part of 
 their lives in the most necessary and pleasanteafc of all 
 work — cultivating the earth. i 
 
 Listen also to his further testimony on the 
 subject of work and leisure : 
 
 Well, so much for my claims as to my necessary 
 work, my tribute to the community. I believe people 
 would find as they advanced in their capacity for 
 carrying on social order, that life so lived was lese 
 expensive than we now can have any idea of, and that, 
 after a little, people would be rather anxioue to seek 
 work than to avoid it ; that our working hours would 
 rather be merry parties of men and maids, young men 
 and old, enjoying themselves at their work, than grumpy 
 wearisome as it mostly is to-day. Then would come the 
 time for a new birth of art, so much talked of, so long 
 deferred ; people could not help showing their mirth 
 and pleasure in their work, and would be always 
 wishing to express it in a tangible and more or le^s 
 enduring form, and the workshop would be once more 
 a school of art, whose influence no one could escape 
 from, t 
 Consider how different from the present day 
 
 system of toil was that of pre-capitalist days. Then 
 the weaver could rise from his loom and relax him- 
 self in tilling- his garden, or in fetching- fuel from 
 the wood, or water from the well, or in mending 
 his cottage roof, in harvesting or in salmon 
 fishing in the river, or maybe in poaching 
 in the king's or baron's deer forest ! Even up to 
 quite recent times, in some of the country districts 
 especially, men were often "handymen" in quite 
 
 1 " Signs of Change " lecture on " Useful Wo.k versus 
 Useless Toil." 
 
 t " Signs of Change " lecture on " How We Live and fl[ow We 
 Might Liye."
 
 FREEDOM AND VARIETY OF WORK 99 
 
 a wonderful way, and while never ceasing 
 apparently to be occupied from early morn till 
 night, were usually happy and often long-lived 
 men. A grand uncle of my own, for example, a 
 peasant farmer in the Western Highlands, who 
 reached over 90 years of age, and was active 
 almost to his last hour, was not only a good farmer 
 and sea fisherman, but built his own house and 
 farm steadings, did the joinery and thatching, 
 made tables and chairs, and cupboards, could 
 forge horse shoes, and mill his own corn, mend 
 harness and repair boots, and knit stockings, was 
 a good violinist and bag-pipe player, and could 
 dance, sing and tell stories with the best of them ! 
 Socialism, then, I repeat, comes not to fetter 
 men's energies or destroy their aptitudes, but 
 rather to call them forth and give them abundant 
 opportunity and freedom. It comes not to 
 encourage idleness and vacuous leisure but to 
 make work a joy and recreation and a means of 
 giving fulness to life and of enriching the common- 
 wealth.
 
 lOO 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Freedom of Life. 
 
 The idea that Socialism consists in what is called 
 " herd," or " pack " or mass life of some promis- 
 cuous kind, is, however, so widespread that we 
 must consider a little further the argument of our 
 previous chapter. For were that a true concep- 
 tion either of Socialism itself, or of the form of 
 society which Socialists might in a mistaken zeal 
 for social equality attempt to bring- about, the 
 new social order would, I doubt not, be as much 
 disturbed with strikes and rebellion, and as 
 embarrassed with conscientious objectors as our 
 present-day regime. 
 
 Socialism means freedom — the highest freedom 
 that is consistent with the principle that all should 
 alike share the duties and obligations of the 
 commonwealth. Even then, I should hope, a 
 Socialist community would not seek to impose 
 universally or forcefully any duty or restriction 
 which, while being such as its members generally 
 willingly accepted for themselves, was clearly 
 oppressive to the capacity or the conscience of some 
 of its members. It will not, indeed, be a real 
 Socialist community at all, no matter how radically 
 it socialises material wealth, if it does not rely upon 
 the assent and goodwill of all its members rather 
 than upon any coercive laws or forceful compul- 
 sion.
 
 FREEDOM OF LIFE loi 
 
 Socialism does not mean uniformity of mode of 
 living, or mere levelness of life of any kind, other 
 than levelness or equality of liberty, rights and 
 duties. The more diversity of life and character 
 the greater will be the freedom, the happiness and 
 the progress of the community. And most 
 assuredly Socialism does not mean that all are to be 
 housed, fed or clothed alike, or squadded in public 
 institutions. 
 
 It is eood for all men and women and for child- 
 ren also, that they should occasionally, perhaps 
 frequently, not only meet together, but feast 
 together, in public assembly. And it is most 
 probable that in Socialist communities, many 
 people will, from free choice, prefer to live (as do 
 many people to-day) in associated homes, or guest 
 houses, with common dining rooms; and that 
 there may be many schools in which children will 
 be brought up during part of their childhood 
 boarding together with their teachers, or guar- 
 dians, as they do in many instances to-day. But 
 it is wholly false to imagine, therefore, that 
 .Socialism or democracy implies as a principle with 
 respect cither to children or adults, the elimina- 
 tion of the family (which ought to be the purest 
 fount of social culture), or the breaking down of 
 privacy of association generally, and the substitu- 
 tion of a universal system of herding or squadding 
 the people in masses o*- of regimenting their per- 
 sonal ways of life, as in an army, a hospital, or a 
 workhouse. 
 
 Democracy, rightly understood, does not, in
 
 I02 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 fact, consist in mass living-, mass thinking-, mass 
 working-, or mass action at all. Democracy is not 
 a pack or a mob, but a society. Its virtue is not 
 in ag-gfregation, but in association and org-anisa- 
 lion — in the interflowing- of thought and emotion 
 through all its members. Never are men or 
 women so dissociated from each other, so really 
 isolated and at the same time so completely bereft 
 of their individuality and means of self-expression, 
 as when maiised together in large numbers. 
 Deeply true afi is the old belief in the spiritual 
 benefit, as well as political need, of public assembly 
 — the old prescription that " wherever two or 
 three are gathered together " a higher spirit of 
 wisdom and love may come among them — it is, 
 nevertheless wholly erroneous to think, therefore, 
 that mass or pack life is the true form of expres- 
 sion of society or democracy. All experience goes 
 to show that we get closer to the real heart of 
 society, to the soul of democracy, by keeping in 
 constant touch with the community tl.irough groups 
 of those with whom we are in friendly rela- 
 tions, or with whom we are for the time being 
 sympathetically associated in work, study or play, 
 than by mixing in indiscriminate crowds, r>r 
 by being regimented with our fellows in large 
 aggregations. Never do we feel so lonely, so far 
 away from companionship as in large cities 
 where we have no particular friends or associates ; 
 never are our hearts less humanly drawn towards 
 our fellow creatures than when we are thrust 
 among them in huge crowds, or see them swarm 
 in a black, endless throng in the streets.
 
 FREEDOM OF LIFE 103 
 
 Nor must I fail to recall the fact, so profoundly 
 significant, that in all ages and climes men of 
 creative minds and of intense energy, no less 
 than men of religious and philosophical mood, 
 have almost without exception craved for and 
 sought frequent periods of retirement from con- 
 course, even with their friends, secluding them- 
 selves either in the privacy of their homes, in 
 cloisters, or in the woods and wilds. 
 
 It is not in their mere aggregations of humanity 
 that the true benefit of cities and nations consists. 
 It is rather in the greater opportunities which they 
 afford, as compared with villages or clans, of gel- 
 ting into touch with a wider variety of those with 
 whom we can intimately associate in friendship, 
 study, work and play. 
 
 Cities and nations, heyond a certain size in area 
 and population, varying, of course, with race, 
 stage of social development, and other circum- 
 stances, not only cease to be helpful to social inter- 
 course, education, and progress, but become 
 positive hindrances to them. It is for this reason, 
 in great part at least, that small nations and 
 cities have so often attained a higher civilisation 
 than large nations and empires. Thus we find a 
 small kingdom like Palestine bringing forth a 
 religion and a race of people that have outlasted 
 all the majestic empires of the ancient world ; 
 that Athens, being small, was yet so great ; and 
 that Rome, Venice and Florence, when they were 
 small republics, and Antwerp, Paris and Oxford, 
 when they were virtually little independent states, 
 were so rich in genius and fame in their day; and
 
 I04 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 that London, three hundred years ago, had within 
 its then small population, more poetry, more philo- 
 sophy, more mirth than the whole British nation 
 to-day. 
 
 Similarly, as surely every one of us has experi- 
 enced, small companies of friends are usually more 
 enjoyable, and small committees more efficient, than 
 large ones ; and workshops in which only a 
 small number of workers are associated together 
 are much more cheerful and agreeable to work in 
 than large factories, where scores or hundreds 
 maybe, are all busy in one shop. 
 
 And so also with respect to children. It is found, 
 as all thoughtful observers are agreed, that large 
 school classes are much less educational than small 
 ones, and that the more children are free to form 
 their own little groups of associates, and eat and 
 play according to their own tastes and preferences, 
 the happier they are, the more bright and intelligent 
 they become, and the more do they tend to con- 
 serve and develop their own individuality and 
 genius. 
 
 Away, then, with any notion that Socialism 
 means that either adults or children arc to have 
 their meals or be put to bed or dressed and herded 
 every day in battalions ! Away with all that dead 
 levelism of routine, habits, tastes and Slinking. 
 which already, alas, as the result of modern fac- 
 tory life and crowded working conditions in our 
 towns, has done so much to destroy the initiative 
 and extinguish the idealism of children and the 
 nation.
 
 I05 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Freedom of Education. 
 
 As a present-day expedient, the compulsory pro- 
 vision of meals in school for children hardly needs 
 vindication. The nation must not allow its chil- 
 dren to g-o unfed, either at school or at home, no 
 matter whether their privation be due to the mis- 
 fortune or the neglect of their parents. And if no 
 better way can, in the present state of public 
 opinion, be found of ensuring that the children 
 have at least a minimum of food than by providing 
 meals for them at a common table at school every 
 day, then in God's name let there be tables enough 
 spread for them from Land's End to John o' Groats. 
 But let us not, therefore, assume that either school 
 feeding, except where convenient as a midday 
 meal, or barrack life of any kind, represents the 
 Socialist ideal of how children should be reared 
 under right conditions of society. 
 
 It is unnecessary, after what has been said in 
 the previous chapter, to dwell upon the undesir- 
 ableness of overdosing either children or adults 
 with assembly life. .\or need I do more than 
 emphasise the fact already referred to that the 
 most earnest educationists speak as with one 
 voice against the disadvantages of large classes, 
 and all "wholesale" methods of dealing with child- 
 ren. I may, however, remind my readers of the
 
 io6 THE MEANING OF J^OCIALISM 
 
 widespread feeling that the nowadays prevalence in 
 an almost endemic form of all manner of children's 
 diseases, is in great part the result of the close 
 confinement of large masses of children in school- 
 rooms and playgrounds. More doubtful, perhaps, 
 is the impression possessed by many parents that 
 their children suffer collosity of feeling and a cer- 
 tain-vulgarisation of behaviour, especially in the 
 larger public schools. 
 
 My purpose in these observations is not, as I 
 have said, to dissociate Socialism, or my own 
 views of Socialism, from the desirableness or 
 necessity of present-day measures for providing 
 public meals for children. Hungry and neglected 
 children, I repeat, must be fed, and school meals 
 appear to be the most simple and efficient means 
 at hand for accomplishing that object. Nor 
 do 1 see the least objection, either under 
 existing or under better conditions of life, to child- 
 ren having meals in common at school, where 
 it is found to be the most convenient way of feed- 
 ing them with their own and their parents' con- 
 sent. What I am contending against is the 
 erroneous assumption that because of either of 
 those circumstances, the idea should be enter- 
 tained that systematic public feeding, or public 
 living of any kind, whether of children or adults, 
 forms part of the Socialist or democratic concep- 
 tion of the general policy of life. 
 
 No less erroneous is the idea that in the Socialist 
 Commonwealth, children will be forbidden to 
 engage in any useful work, and be compelled to
 
 FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 107 
 
 stick at mere schooling until they are grown well 
 into manhood and womanhood. Yet this idea is 
 a natural enough inference from the prominent 
 place given in Socialist, as well as many Labour 
 programmes, to the compulsory full time atten- 
 dance of children at school or college until 16 or 
 18 years. The Workers' Educational Association 
 demands that compulsory full time schooling should 
 be extended at least to the age of 16. Here, 
 again, as in the case of the feeding of children, the 
 proposal is, perhaps, justifiable as a means of 
 rescuing children from the results of the capitalist 
 system. But is it really necessary, we may well 
 ask, that the lives of the children should be maimed 
 in order to save them from capitalist exploitation? 
 Is not the remedy hardly less harmful than the 
 disease? 
 
 The belief that education consists wholly or even 
 chiefly in learning lessons in school is a relic of 
 the times when illiteracy was general and books 
 were few, and when the only way for children to 
 acquire any knowledge beyond what was possessed 
 by their parents or was common in the neighbour- 
 hood, was to go lo schools under teachers who 
 had themselves acquired special instruction. But 
 these days are gone, and with them ought now 
 to go the idea also that mere school education 
 is at all as important an acquisition as it was and 
 is still generally supposed to be. "Learn by 
 doing" was the precept of the great Froebel, but 
 the apparent aim of modern education (though 
 there are dawning signs of better things) is to
 
 io8 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 prohibit boys and g-irls from attempting to do any- 
 thing useful at all until they have reached an age 
 when their faculties and fingers have become too 
 stiffly set to learn anything with facility or plea- 
 sure. 
 
 Can it astonish us that so many of the great 
 creative thinkers and doers in history have been 
 men of little or no school education? Among the 
 more familiar instances of famous men who had but 
 elementary schooling and who acquired what learn- 
 ing they needed or desired chiefly by pursuing their 
 own bent or during leisure from work, we need only 
 recall in literature the names of Shakespeare, 
 Bunyan, Rousseau, Chatterton, Burns, Blake, 
 Dumas, Cobbett, Dickens, Whitman, Mark Twain, 
 and Maxim Gorki. Science and invention give us 
 Palissey, Bramah, Jacquard, Arkwright, Franklin, 
 Sir Wm. Herschel, Wedgwood, Watt, George 
 Stephenson, Sir Humphrey Davy, Farraday, and 
 Edison. Navigation and discover)' give us 
 Columbus, Pizarro, Sir John Hawke, Captain 
 Cook, and Sir John Ross. Nelson entered the 
 Navy when only 12 years of age. Most of the 
 famous mediaeval and many later-day painters 
 began their studio training as children, with no 
 more than the rudiments of schooling (and some of 
 them without even that), among the typical in- 
 stances being Giotto, Donatello, Michael Angelo, 
 Raphael, Diirer, Watteau, Hogarth, Romney, 
 Opie, Barry, Etty, Turner, and Walter Crane. 
 Many of the great composers began their musical 
 careers also in childhood, and had only a fragmen-
 
 FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 109 
 
 tary school education. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 Rossini, Verdi, and Dvorak are notable examples. 
 Among- famous reformers a..d liberators v^fho had 
 little or no school training were St. Francis 
 d'Assisi, George Fox, John Woolman, Toussaint 
 rOuverture, George Washington, Abraham 
 Lincoln, and Garibaldi. Joan of Arc had no school 
 education at all.^ 
 
 And if, in accordance with general precept, we 
 are to reckon the capacity for business success as a 
 kind of genius, and " making money " as a desir- 
 able aim in life (and our educational system is based 
 on that supposition), then we are faced with the 
 startling paradox that the most successful con- 
 tractors and manufacturers of the last three or 
 four generations were what is termed uneducated 
 or self-taught men. Almost without exception the 
 millionaire capitalists of this country and America 
 have been men who rose from the ranks of the 
 working class, and who began work in boyhood 
 with at best only a few years' elementary school 
 instruction. 
 
 1 A careful reading of biography would reveal many additional 
 Instances of men and women of genius and remarkabl* character 
 whose school education wa« under rather than above our 
 present-day elementary standard. I do not know whether my 
 readers generally are dlsjiosed to regard the capacity for political 
 agitation and democratic npostleshin aH coming within the rank 
 of genius. But It Is a signiflcant fact, surely, that so many of 
 the leaders of democratic opinion In recent times have been 
 men of the working class, who, possessing but a scanty school 
 education, have dUplavcd high intellectual gifts and striking 
 Indlvldiialltv of character. A page might he filled with examples, 
 but I need only mention at random a few typical instances: 
 Thomas Paine, Oeorge .Tacob Holyoake, Charles nradlauoh, 
 Lloyd Oarrison. Henry Oeorge, MIrhael Davitt, Kelr Hnrdlc. 
 John Burns, Robert BlaUhford, Eugene Debs, and Robert 
 Smillio. Richard Cobdcn. though belonging to the business dnas, 
 had only some forir vears' schooling, and Lord Beaconsfleld had 
 almost no regular schooling at all.
 
 no THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 What, we may well wonder, would have hap- 
 pened in the case of the majority of the great 
 painters and musicians, who began the full-time 
 practice of their arts while yet in their childhooti, 
 had they been compelled instead to attend routine 
 school classes until they were i6 or i8 years of 
 age? What in such a case would have been the 
 achievement of Turner, who exhibited his first 
 Royal Academy picture when only 15 years of age ; 
 or of Mozart, who was already a virtuoso at 10 
 years of age ; or of Paganini, who as a child prac- 
 tised his violin ten hours a day and was famous 
 on the concert stages of Europe at 11 years of 
 age? And can we believe that it would have been 
 any benefit to themselves or the world had Bramah, 
 George Stephenson, Nasmyth, Brindley, or 
 Richard Roberts been kept at ordinary scho^>l 
 attendance until an age at which they had already 
 become highly-skilled mechanics and were working 
 out some of their remarkable inventions? 
 
 Cramming the mind with school or college learn- 
 ing, has in truth, never been a means of the real 
 education of men and women or of the progress of 
 mankind. 
 
 The Athenians were, it is universally acknow- 
 ledged, the most accomplished people of antiquity, 
 and have not been excelled in intellectual and 
 aesthetic capacity by any modern nation. Their art, 
 poetry, and philosophy remain the admiration of 
 the world. In citizenship and in warriorship they 
 were alike pre-eminent. Yet, so far as we can 
 ascertain, their education, though reckoned of the
 
 FREEDOM OF EDUCATION in 
 
 highest quality, was exceedingly simple in charac- 
 ter. In range of subjects it did not exceed that of 
 our present-day elementary school standard. Of 
 Alcibiades, who was one of the most brilliant as 
 well as of the wealthiest of its citizens, his friend 
 Socrates says that he had learned his letters (read- 
 ing and writing), and to play the guitar, and was 
 well trained in wrestling and other athletic accom- 
 plishments. Plato's education by the time he was 
 twenty years of age had chiefly consisted in writing 
 poetry and practising athletics. These subjects, 
 together with rhetoric, appear to have formed the 
 regular curriculum of .'\thenian education. Sculp- 
 ture, painting, geometry, and philosophy were 
 studied by those who wished to qualify themselves 
 specially in these pursuits. It was a proverbial 
 saying in Athens that for the true Athenian the days 
 of his learning were never done. Old men fre- 
 quently joined in the special studies of the philo- 
 sophical schools. The word school itself is 
 derived from the Greek word for leisure. 
 
 Nor did scholarship and learning in Europe until 
 quite recent days consist of many studies. Even 
 during the Renaissance period, which gave the 
 world so many famous thinkers and pioneers of 
 science, school and college instruction was not of a 
 multiform or congestive kind. Reading, writing, 
 simple arithmetic, and Latin were the staple sub- 
 jects of instruction in the best schools, while in the 
 universities, Btudents could proceed with mathe- 
 matics, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, and such 
 slender and mostly inaccurate science as was then
 
 113 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 possessed. Whatever special learning- such famous 
 scholars and philosophers as Abelard, Thomas 
 Aquinas, Dante, Petrarch, Copernicus, Erasmus, 
 Montaig-ne, Pascal, Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes 
 possessed they owed chiefly to their own studies. 
 This was likewise the case with John Milton, 
 Leibnitz, and Newton. 
 
 It is an unnatural — I was almost saying- a 
 monstrous — idea that young- lads and girls should 
 be regimented in schools and their minds stuffed 
 with mere book-learring at a time when their 
 whole being cries out for physical activity, and 
 when their arms and fingers should be acquiring 
 deftness and skill for work and handicraft. It is 
 an idea of education that may accord with the 
 middle-class notion of making boys into black- 
 coated "gentlemen " ; it does not accord with any 
 true idea of making boys into men. It is an idea 
 that has unfortunately ensnared the minds of the 
 working class. 
 
 Not one word said here will, I hope, be construed 
 as a plea for " half-timing" or any other system 
 of employing children in mills or factories for 
 profit-making or capitalist exploitation of any kind. 
 Better children were never born than that they 
 should be degraded into tools of human greed or 
 made slaves to machinery. 
 
 One need not agree with Bernard Shaw's whole- 
 sale indictment of our modern school system in 
 order to sympathise with his pronouncement that 
 " if the advance of civilisation is to mean nothing 
 more than the widening of the net of the child
 
 FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 113 
 
 prison and boy-farm until none of us can escape 
 from it, we had better abolish it altogether." Nor 
 need we accept lilerally William Morris's account 
 in his "News from Nowhere," of how he fancied 
 children should be educated, in order to feel per- 
 suaded with him that under right social condi- 
 tions children would, if allowed a reasonable 
 measure of freedom, to a large extent educate 
 themselves. There are, I believe, a growing- 
 number of Socialists and educationists who feel 
 that were boys and girls, once they had acquired the 
 primary elements of education, reading, w-riting, 
 arithmetic, and perhaps some inkling of history, 
 literature and science, allowed to have the free 
 run of the woods and meadows and of the muni- 
 cipal and guild worl'vshops, laboratories, libraries, 
 art galleries, etc., and were they not discouraged 
 from beginning to practice work as soon as the 
 desire to do so grew in them, they would thereby 
 learn by " doing " much sooner and better than by 
 mere schooling. It would b-^ surprising indeed, if 
 under such conditions they did not grow up with 
 far more highly developed capacities for life and 
 happiness than do the majority of boys and girls 
 to-day, after passing through Secondary and 
 Higlicr Grade Schools. 
 
 In saying this I do not pretend to know what 
 the true way of education is. Nor do I (ind that 
 the thotiglilful and eclectic educationists among 
 us are at all certain that they themselves have 
 discovered the true path, if indeed any universally 
 true path is discoverable. But what many of us
 
 114 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 do believe we have discovered, for the fact cannot 
 escape the observation of those who observe at all, 
 is that the conventional present day path is not 
 the rig-ht one, and that there is grave danger in 
 the nation attempting to impose more than a 
 minimum of compulsion on the children and a 
 minimum of uniformity in its system of education. 
 All the most fruitful reforms that have recently 
 come into public notice have originated in heretical 
 ideas and oflficially discountenanced methods — as, 
 for example, the remarkable open air nursery school 
 at Deptford, founded by Margaret McMillan^ and 
 her sister Rachel, and now carried to such a point 
 of success under the most discouraging conditions. 
 And I must again affirm my conviction that 
 whatever ideas or systems of education may 
 evolve in the future, experience and Socialist 
 principles alike wholly discountenance the notion 
 that all children, irrespective of aptitude or inclina- 
 tion, or of prospective vocation as workers by 
 hand or brain, are to be forbidden work, whether 
 work of skill or of strength, until they have passed 
 beyond the golden years of aptitude and acquisi- 
 tion. 
 
 And lastly, let us not forget that children are 
 entitled to their rights and liberties as well as are 
 
 1 See, both for information regarding Miss McMillan's school 
 and for her many highly instructive and suggestive ideas, her 
 books, " EdMcation throngli the Imagination " (Swan Sonnenachein 
 and Co.) and " The Child and the State " (National Labour 
 Press). Nothing more luminous has been .said jibcut child 
 education than some of the ideas in these books. 
 
 There is much, too, that is thoughtful and promising In 
 Mr. Edmond Hornes's " V/hat Is and What Might Be " 
 (Constable and Co.), where a fascinating account is given of a 
 ITtopian School.
 
 FREEDOM OF EDUCATION 115 
 
 their elders. Who are we who arrogate to our- 
 selves the right to assume that we know better 
 than our children how they should grow up in 
 mind and body, prompted and guided by their own 
 wonderful intuitions? Are not we ourselves only 
 just beginning to emerge from the bondage of our 
 own ignorance, fear, and folly? How little do we 
 know about educating ourselves, not to speak of 
 our children? 
 
 Happily, the children — the elder boys and girls 
 at any rate — whom we are resolved to keep in 
 school imprisonment till they are 16 or 18 years 
 of age, may have themselves something tO' say on 
 this subject ere long. Nor let us be surprised if 
 one of these days we see them caught up in tlie 
 spiriv of freedom and boldly break out of 
 school, make a bonfire of their grammars and 
 text-books, and make off to the hayfields and the 
 workshops, or to the ships and the far-horizons 
 beyond the reach of our ignorance and folly I
 
 n6 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Freedom of Old Age. 
 
 Nothing searches more keenly into the heart of 
 a nation's civiHsation than the question of how 
 the aged workers fare in its midst. The treat- 
 ment of children goes together with the treatment 
 of the old, but it is a less certain test. The 
 preservation of children appeals to the economic 
 self-interest of a co'mmunity, as well as to the 
 self-affection of its members ; but the care of the 
 old people when done with as wealth earners is a 
 burden for which there is no apparent economic 
 reward. 
 
 Here in Western civilisation we have begun the 
 provision of old-age pensions for the workers ; 
 and no one who realises the plight of poor old 
 men and women to-day can but feel that any 
 decent pension is a great social boon. But do we 
 realise that even at best a pension is a poor make- 
 shift for the means of comfort and happiness, and 
 the personal human service, that should be possible 
 for the men and women of the working class in 
 their older years? Nay, do we reflect that in 
 this respect, at least, the old people of our time, 
 whatever pension may be given them, will be less 
 well provided for than were the old people 
 of the working classes in former times. I speak
 
 FREEDOM OF OLD AGE 117 
 
 particularly of the older village life, where families 
 were all neig-hbours, and when workmen owned 
 their workshops and tools and were their own 
 employers, and worked as much or as little as they 
 liked. Often, too, the more destitute old people 
 were provided with cottages or almshouses by 
 the guilds or Parish Church, and might spin or 
 weave at home, or work for a neighbour, or other- 
 wise employ their time as they wished. 
 
 Merely to have the means of livelihood is 
 not to have much. Merely to survive is not to 
 live ; it is but to die slowly, however humanely 
 relieved from want of food or shelter the period of 
 dying may be. It is not a human fate at all for 
 old people to be provided for only as outworn 
 animals during the eventide of their lives. Old 
 people, unless we regard their old age as a crime 
 disqualifying them from our human affection and 
 fellowship, need more than mere sustenance of 
 food, clothing, and shelter. 
 
 In the days of " Merry England," the bulk of 
 the population dwelt in the country or in small 
 towns, with the members of their family either 
 around them or not far away. Their old age brought 
 no sudden or perceptible change in their relation 
 with their surroundings or everyday duties. Old 
 age., indeed, instead of being a marked disadvan- 
 tage, was in many instances no disadvantage at 
 all, except from its natural deprivation of energy 
 and excitement. The old farmer, if less vigorous 
 and lithe than his son, had at least more experi- 
 ence concerning the crops and animals and
 
 ii8 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 seasons, and his v/isdom was often of more impor- 
 tance than the young- man's ardour or strength. 
 So it was in all the crafts. The old blacksmith 
 or builder might not be able to do so much heavy 
 or hasty work as the younger man, but he could 
 do more skilled and more difficult work. The old 
 tailor always got the more important garments to 
 make, and the old shoemaker the special pairs of 
 shoes. The old gardener was invaluable from his 
 experience in the habits of plants and in making 
 cuttings and graftings, and the old tanner and 
 saddler and cabinetmaker were similarly of high 
 account in their line. 
 
 There are still to be found in some districts old 
 men of seventy-five and eighty years and more 
 who are not only strong in body, but able in their 
 occupation to do innumerable skilful and impor- 
 tant things that none of the younger generation 
 can do. 
 
 But in our large towns all is different ; and the 
 bulk of old mien are now imprisoned there. Once 
 discarded from the factory because they cannot 
 keep up the raw speed with younger men, their 
 life is well-nigh done. Ther^ is little more for them 
 to do or to live for. Their skill and experience are 
 reckoned of no value to employers, and can be 
 put to no account for themselves. What can a 
 mason, or blacksmith, or saddler, or wheelwright 
 do in a town if he cease to find a master? Nothing 
 at all, and for him an old-age pension is simply 
 a means of sustenance until such time as he will 
 need it no longer. For nothing is more certain
 
 FREEDOM OF OLD AGE 119 
 
 than that sudden cessation of activity is sentence 
 of death. A'n active man cut off from occupation 
 speedily falls into dotage and second childhood. 
 His body and his brain creep in. Many a hundred 
 thousand old men to-day are feeble-looking, inane 
 beings at 70, who, under right conditions, would 
 be full of intelligence and capacity for work for 
 ten or twenty years more. 
 
 Is not this a pitiful fate? Is it not one of the 
 most shameful A\astes of human body and soul 
 that modern life has familiarised us with? I'o 
 think that just at the period when men have gained 
 most wisdom and most expertness and tenderness 
 and care of purpose they should be cast aside to 
 wither away ! 
 
 Surely, then, the hope of Socialism for old age 
 is one of its brightest and most humane promises. 
 With the means of industry within the reach of 
 all ; with the test of mere strength and haste 
 abolished ; with the homes of the people spread 
 out into the country ; and with gardens, work- 
 shops^ and provision for individual occupation 
 always at hand — what an opening up of new life 
 to the old and the young there will be, and what 
 a great increase of real wealth for the community I
 
 I20 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Socialism and Private Property. 
 
 Does Socialism involve Communism, and, if so, 
 the abolition of private property ? 
 
 Recently Mr. Victor Berg-er, a prominent Ameri- 
 can Socialist, came out with a strong- protest, which 
 was widely reproduced in the Socialist Press, 
 against the assumption that Socialism is Com- 
 munism. Communism, he declared, means the 
 abolition of private property ; Socialism means the 
 collective possession of land, and those means only 
 of wealth production which are collectively pro- 
 duced and used — such thing-s, for example, as 
 mines, railways, factories, machinery, and national 
 capital. 
 
 A popular Catholic priest has, on the other hand, 
 been warning his hearers against Socialism, 
 because, he says. Socialism meant Communism and 
 the complete abolition of private property. 
 
 It will thus be seen that the Catholic priest con- 
 demns Socialism for being something which Mr. 
 Berger declares is not Socialism at all — Communism 
 and the abolition of private property. 
 
 Which of these statements is correct? Or is 
 neither? 
 
 The question is one of much interest and of great 
 importance in Socialist discussions, and it is 
 highly desirable that we should all be quite clear
 
 SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 121 
 
 up)on It. While there is nowadays considerable 
 sympathy, even outside the Socialist ranks, with 
 the idea that the nation should coillectively own the 
 great monopolies such as mines and railways and 
 general public services, there exists much prejudice 
 against the Communist conception of Socialism as 
 generally understood. There is, it might be said, a 
 deeply instinctive repugnance to the idea that we 
 should, none of us, possess anything that we could 
 call our own, but that everything used by us 
 should belong equally to everybody else. 
 
 Now, the idea of Communism is not a product 
 of modern Socialism at all. It is an idea engrained 
 in religious sentiment and in political idealism, as 
 well as in family custom, from the earliest times. 
 It doubtless had its origin, partly at least, in the 
 facts and traditions of primitive Communism. In 
 early times. In quite undeveloped conditions of 
 society, there was often practically no private pro- 
 perty distinction at all, except, perhaps. In weapons 
 and articles of personal adornment. The tribes 
 and single communities were virtually families or 
 families of families, whose possessions were mostly 
 few and f>erishable. Their sense of personal 
 autonomy was consequently slight, and little need 
 or inclination existed for discriminating between 
 what things belonged to any one f>erson and what 
 should belong to his neighbours. The growth of 
 the desire for private property undoubtedly corres- 
 ponded with the growth of individuation of 
 character, occupation, and ability — with civilisa- 
 tion, in fact.
 
 122 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Whether, as certain writers {Socialists among- 
 others) have affirmed, it was impossible for man- 
 kind to reach the higher stages of civilisation with- 
 out the disruption of the early Communist system, 
 is a question we need not discuss. A good case 
 could be stated on the other side. But this at least 
 we know that in ancient folk-lore, poetry, and myth, 
 the passing away of the simple tribal or village 
 fraternalism, and the incoming of strife for pro- 
 perty and selfish advantage, is uniformly lamented 
 as a misfortune to mankind. 
 
 There can be no question but that the idea of out 
 and out Communism and the extinction of the 
 selfish sentiments of " mine and thine " was deeply 
 rooted in the religious thought of the early 
 Christians. Communism was, indeed, reckoned 
 an essential] condition of brotherhood, not only in 
 the Apostolic Churches, but in most religious com- 
 munities in the East. Nor can there be any 
 question but that Communism was the recognised 
 polity in mediaeval monasteries and among many 
 of the reformed communities such as the .A.lbi- 
 genses, the Anabaptists, the Moravian Brethren, 
 as it has been also among certain modern religious 
 sects. 
 
 Rousseau and many idealists before and after 
 him, in their schemes of a perfect society, have 
 more or less insisted on the principle " that all 
 things should be hdid in common." But they have 
 usually insisted also upon a return at the same 
 time to " natural " or primitive conditions of life. 
 Proudhon, the French anarchist communist,
 
 SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 123 
 
 declared that " property is theft." And so also did 
 Marx in his Communist Manifesto, issued before 
 he wrote his " Das Kapital," but he explicitly 
 declared that he meant only " bourgeois private 
 property," and not the property won by the artizan 
 or peasant as " the fruits of his own labour." 
 And, finally, for the present summary, our own 
 William Morris — and, indeed, John Ruskin, who 
 called himself "a reddest of red Communists" 
 — looked to some form of voluntary Communism 
 as the goal of society. 
 
 In the face of these facts, then, are not alike 
 Socialists and the enemies of Socialism justified 
 in declaring that Socialism and Communism are 
 closely related? Indeed they are; but, as we shall 
 see, neither Socialism nor Communism in the 
 Socialist use of these terms involves the denial of 
 f>ersonal property rights. 
 
 Modern political or " scientfic " Socialism, has, 
 as we have said, never set forth the complete 
 abolition of private property as one of its aims or 
 principles. Karl Marx, as we all know, levelled 
 the whole of his attack upon capitalism, not on 
 the ground that capitalism instituted or sanctioned 
 private prop)erty, but on the ground that it deprived 
 the workers of the property which they created, 
 and that it yielded to the capitalist class a mono- 
 p)oIy in the means of wealth, and so deprived the 
 community generally of the right of wealth or 
 property altogether. 
 
 And that undoubtedly is the main contention of 
 modern S<^x:ialists, whether they agree with Marx's 
 n>ethod of reasoning out his proposition or not.
 
 124 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Socialism as it is advocated politically to-day 
 makes no affirmation that there shall be no private 
 property. It declares that there shall be no robbery 
 by one class (the capitalist class) from another 
 class (the working- class) of the vi^ealth or property 
 which the working class or society collectively 
 produces; and that there shall be no monopoly by 
 any one dass of the means — land and capital — 
 without which no wealth can be produced. 
 
 For Socialism is not going back either to primi- 
 tive or barbarous conditions. The state ol human 
 feeling which, as among the Esquimaux, makes it 
 tolerable for several families to occupy one hut, 
 without separate bedrooms, picking their food with 
 their fingers from one pot, and breathing intensely 
 foul air, is a state of feeling from which civilisation 
 is removing us further at every step. More and 
 more do we discern that cleanliness, the due separa- 
 tion of our clothes and persons, the regard for 
 each other's special articles of use and for each 
 other's self-respect, are essential conditions alike 
 of health and comfort, and of the growth of 
 aesthetic taste and higher social sympathy. 
 
 The truth is that Socialism, instead of abolish- 
 ing private property would, for the first time in 
 history, really endow every member of the com- 
 munity with property which they could use as their 
 own, knowing it had not been obtained by the 
 unjust deprivation of others. 
 
 It is important, however, in considering the 
 future of property rights, that we bear in mind 
 what existing property rights are. The notion that
 
 SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 125 
 
 property is, or ever has been, sacrosant or 
 inviolable is a delusion. 
 
 No race or nation has ever sanctioned absolute 
 private rights in property of any kind. Every par- 
 ticle of property in a nation may be lawfully appro- 
 priated by the State for the defence of the State, 
 and all estates and incomes may be levied by 
 taxation to u'hatever extent required for the upkeep 
 of the State and public services. Kings and parlia- 
 ments composed of property holders have expro- 
 priated wholesale the property of churches and 
 classes of the community without compensation or 
 compunction when it has suited their interests to 
 do so. 
 
 In universal theory and practice children and 
 members of a family have a claim on the property 
 of parents or those possessing property in the 
 family. In all religious systems the people are 
 under a moral, and often legal, obligation to yield 
 up a portion of their property to the Church or for 
 the succour of the poor. 
 
 In our own country the land is still legally not 
 private property at all, but held in usufruct to the 
 State. The laws of primogeniture and entail on 
 the one hand, and the law of hypothec on the 
 other, limit the property rights of both landlord 
 and tenant. The Income Tax and indeed all forms 
 of taxation arc acknowledgments of the State's 
 claim upon the private possessions of the citizens. 
 
 There is, therefore, let us agree, no absolute 
 right of property recognised either in civilised or 
 primitive States. The right of private propert/ 
 has always been a limited and conditional right.
 
 126 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 It is a right that may be cancelled in case of 
 national urgency altogether. It is a right, too, 
 that is always held to be subject to proof that the 
 property in question has been honestly, or, at least 
 legally acquired. Public sentiment and law can 
 always determine the right or wrong of any pos- 
 session whatsoever. 
 
 Bearing these facts in mind, let us see in what 
 way Socialism would invade existing customs of 
 private property. 
 
 Socialism declares that no one has a right to 
 hold as his private property those sources of wealth 
 supply that are collectively created and are collec- 
 tively required by the general community. It 
 declares that no one has the right to monopolise 
 any means of wealth production in such a way as 
 to deprive other members of the community of the 
 opportunity of enjoying equally the benefit of those 
 means of wealth, or in such a way as would enable 
 one man to compel others to work for his own 
 advantage and to their detriment. 
 
 Socialism declares, therefore, that land, fac- 
 tories, railways and all publicly required means of 
 wealth shall become national or social property, 
 and shall be for collective or common use, and only 
 be '''or private use in so far as the private use of 
 them is consistent with the equal rights of all. 
 But Socialism also affirms that those things which 
 are needed by, and can be afforded to each person 
 or family for their private use, shall be possessed 
 by them as their own property inviolably so long 
 as they are not wastefully misused to the unjust
 
 SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 127 
 
 deprivation of others. In the late war we saw 
 prosecutions for the waste of private property, 
 i.e., food, p>etrol, uncultivated land, etc. 
 
 Communism is, in truth, not the wild revolu- 
 tionary thing that many people suppose it to be. 
 It is not new — it is old. It is not bad — it is good. 
 The family is a communistic group. Our towns are 
 already in a considerable measure Communistic 
 organisations. Our roads, streets, and bridges 
 are common property. Our municipal public 
 parks, water supply, free libraries, museums, hos- 
 pitals, and elementary schools, are examples of 
 actual Communism in our midst. These services 
 belong to us all equally. We all contribute to 
 their maintenance, according to our supposed 
 ability through the rates. We can all use them 
 freely and equally without money or price. No 
 one has private property rights in them. 
 
 On the other hand, our municipal gas supply, 
 our trams and electric light are collective, not 
 Communist possessions. They are collectively 
 owned, but are not communistically used. No one 
 may use them beyond the price he or she pays for 
 the use of them. 
 
 >But trams will probably be communised at no dis- 
 tant date, and the railways, too, once they are 
 nationalised — even as roads and bridges have been. 
 Collectivism in general public services develops 
 into Communism in proportion as the recognition 
 of the common need and advantage of the equal 
 freedom of their use grows. The municipal supply 
 of bread and coal trnd milk will prf)bal)ly be collec- 
 tivist at first and Communistic later on.
 
 128 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 It is in this sense that the term Communism 
 is used nowadays in SociaUst writings. Primi- 
 tive Communism, in which little or no distinction 
 whatever was made between the personal belong- 
 ings of one or another, is a thing of the past. It 
 could only exist, as has already been said, under 
 primitive conditions. As social organisation 
 develops, and as men and women grow in self- 
 respect and intellectual conscio'usness, the area 
 of their needs and rights extends. 
 
 The growth of public freedom does not reduce 
 but expand personal freedom. The growth of 
 public health does not lessen but increase personal 
 health. So the increase of public or collective 
 wealth will not take away, but add to, the private 
 wealth of everyone. 
 
 From the fields and factories there will then come 
 intO' every home the collectively produced wealth. 
 The house that a family inhabits will be theirs. 
 The food within ihe house, the clothes they wear, 
 the soap and the towels they use, the bicycles, 
 razors, umbrellas, all things which they require for 
 personal and family use, will be theirs — more abso- 
 lutely their own than any property can be to-day. 
 For to-day the private wealth of one may be taken 
 away from him by a bad bargain, by misfortune 
 or by fraud at any moment. Under Socialism all 
 production will be for use, and the user will use 
 it without fear lest any will take it away, or doubt 
 lest any might be in greater need of it than him- 
 self. 
 
 We may sum up, therefore, by saying that : (i)
 
 SOCIALISM AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 129 
 
 Socialism merg^es insensibly into Communism, (2) 
 Communism does not deny the right to possess as 
 private property things required for private use : 
 it denies the right to appropriate as private pro- 
 perty things that are required for the common 
 needs and use of the community. (3) Communism 
 aims to secure for the community generally the 
 fullest means of wealth for the common use of all, 
 and to the individual the fullest means of vi'ealth 
 for personal or family use.
 
 PART III. 
 SOCIALISM IN EXISTING SOCIETY.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Forms of Social Growth. 
 
 It is often said that Socialism is a highly beau- 
 tiful conception, but that it is impracticable; that 
 it never has been and never will be. 
 
 And it is quite true that Socialism in the com- 
 plete sense has never been. But it is not true to 
 say, therefore, that Socialism never has been. As 
 well say that because we have never had complete 
 freedom, or complete justice, or complete know- 
 ledge that therefore freedom, justice and know- 
 ledgre have never been. 
 
 If freedom, justice and knowledge have 
 never been then they never will be ; for 
 things that have no existence in some form 
 now will never exist. If Socialism never has been, 
 not even in rudimentary shapes, then the sweater 
 and the tyrant may rejoice, f<jr in that case 
 Socialism can never be. 
 
 But Socialism has existed, exists now, and will 
 continue to exist with increasing power and per- 
 fectness as humanity progresses. Were it not lor 
 the existence of Socialism in, at least, elementary 
 forms, civilisation itself would not exist ; for 
 whatever is truest and best in the common life of 
 the world is the outcotne of fellowship and 
 co-operation.
 
 134 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Look at the fruit tree in the early spring-. Its 
 stems are almost bare, only here and there we 
 may see a tiny g-erm point or bud. (If none of 
 these be there, then the tree is dead.) But when 
 the summer comes, behold the tree is mag-ically 
 transformed, and it pours forth its leaves and 
 blossoms as a fountain of beauty and sweetness 
 over the shining grass. 
 
 Therein is the promise of Socialism pre-figured 
 to our eyes. 
 
 When, therefore, Socialists say that they are 
 working to achieve Socialism, they do not mean 
 to imply that there is no Socialism whatever 
 to-day ; they mean that they are endeavouring 
 to bring about the complete realisation of 
 Socialism — that they are seeking to abolish capi- 
 talism and all forms of individualism that obstruct 
 the growth of Socialism, and are hastening the 
 adoption of all the means of collective service by 
 which the Socialist commonwealth will be fully 
 realised. 
 
 It is important that we should look with an 
 earnest eye into the forms of Socialism which 
 have already grown up in the common life of all 
 civilised nations. This we shall do in the chap- 
 ters which follow ; meanwhile, to make clearer 
 the purpose of my present argument, these forms 
 of social growth may be conveniently brought into 
 view under their historical emblems. 
 
 The Hearth. (The family.) 
 
 The Feast Hall. (Social intercourse and friend- 
 ship.)
 
 FORMS OF SOCIAL GROWTH 135 
 
 The Workshop, Market, and Guild. (Industrial 
 and commercial organisation.) 
 
 The Church, School and College. (Religious, 
 benevolent, and educational associations.) 
 
 The Village and Town. (Municipal co-operation 
 and enterprise.) 
 
 The Nation. (Defence, law, and government.) 
 
 In all these, as indeed in innumerable other 
 interlacing forms of association, we shall discover 
 that the cohesive principle which creates and sus- 
 tains them is the Socialist principle of mutual help 
 and collective effort. We shall find indeed that 
 incomplete and deeply indented with selfishness, 
 capitalism, and every mark of individualism as 
 these forms of co-operation in many of their mani- 
 festations are, there are nevertheless diffused 
 among them so many elements of Socialism that 
 it might fairly be said, were they all put together 
 and organised, not for sectional advantage, liut 
 for the good of the whole, they would be enough 
 to establish complete Socialism in our midst. 
 
 Indeed, whether we regard the present political 
 Socialist movement as working towards gradual, 
 or what is called revolutionary, change, its pur- 
 p>osc may quite accurately be described as that of 
 bringing all existing elements of Socialism 
 nationally together and eliminating from among 
 them every devouring and corrupting element of 
 individualism. 
 
 In making iron we do not make anew (he 
 material of which the metal is composed, or 
 attempt to alter the laws of attraction and repul-
 
 136 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 sion of its particles ; we merely fuse and bring- 
 these particles tog-ether, casting out the foreign 
 matter in the process. Or, to take a closer illus- 
 tration : When the warring clans of Scotland, 
 and eventually the kingdoms of Scotland and 
 England, were constituted into one nation, so that 
 instead of perpetually fighting against each other, 
 to their mutual injury and loss, they combined 
 for their common protection and well-being, no 
 new material of population and no additional 
 self-abnegation were required for that purpose. 
 The people of the countries concerned were 
 the same people as before, and the self- 
 sacrifice required of them in the way of 
 self-restraint and contributions for defence 
 purposes and the maintenance of the State, was 
 not greater but less than before. 
 
 So it is with Socialism. Bad as we all may 
 be, there is yet enough good among us, were that 
 g-ood organised so as to keep the bad out, to 
 make a fairly good start as a Socialist community. 
 
 And, as 1 have said, the function of the Social- 
 ist to-day is to help in that task. It is to arouse 
 and give voice to the Socialist inclinations of the 
 people. It is to give national shape and scope 
 to the existing accumulation of methods of 
 co-operation, and to eradicate completely every 
 form of capitalism. 
 
 Fifty years ago ships were sailing on every 
 sea, but the journey from Britain to Bombay was 
 eleven thousand miles. Then, as with the stroke 
 of a pen, a way was cut for the water and ships
 
 FORMS OF SOCIAL GROWTH 137 
 
 througfh the isthmus of Suez, and the journey was 
 shortened by half its former leng-th. A century 
 and a half agfo there were wagons and iron and 
 steam. But they did not know each other. Then 
 came James Watt, George Stephenson, and a 
 far stretching line of inventors. They brought the 
 steam, the iron, and the wagons cleverly together, 
 and lo ! space and time were changed as by an 
 almighty hand. 
 
 Socialists are the engineers and inventors whose 
 purpose it is to make a short cut to the accom- 
 plishment of the Social Revolution ; to bring 
 together the elements of Socialism ; and, as far 
 as possible abolish the time and space that 
 separate us from the full realisation of the 
 national and international commonwealth.
 
 138 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Family, Friendship and Industry. 
 
 We now proceed to glance at those associations 
 and customs in present day (and past) society, 
 which reveal, as has just been said, not only the 
 growth of Socialism in society, but witness to the 
 fact that SociaHsni is the very essence and 
 power of society itself. We shall see, in fact, 
 that those institutions which constitute the true 
 pillars of society and civilisation owe their utility 
 and desirableness solely to their Socialist struc- 
 ture and nature ; and that just in proportion to 
 the degree in which they are Socialist in their 
 nature so is both their beauty and the happiness 
 which they afford us. And this precept applies, 
 I believe, to all things and actions in life. Noth- 
 ing that acknowledges itself to be unsocial or 
 unsocialistic is finally agreeable to us. No action 
 or conduct, for example, that violates our inherent 
 sense of social justice or equality is ever regarded, 
 save by vulgar taste or convention, as right or 
 good, or what we term "gentlemanly" or 
 "ladylike." 
 
 And first, let us consider those associations and 
 customs pertaining to the hearth or fam.ily.
 
 FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP AND INDUSTRY 139 
 
 The Hearth (The Family.) 
 
 The family in its truest examples is a small 
 Socialist community in which each is for all and 
 all are for each. Within its circle those who are 
 able to work contribute to the common store, 
 while the young, the weak, and the aged share 
 equally with them in the common wealth of the 
 home. There is no degree of sacrifice — even to 
 the extent of the voluntary relinquishment of life 
 — which members of a family have not made for 
 each other in tens of millions of instances in ib.e 
 world's history. 
 
 The family has evolved feelings which still 
 represent to us the deepest social affection and 
 devotion of which mankind and the higher mam- 
 mals are capable. We have derived from it our 
 ideal of the brotherhood of nations and our highest 
 conception of the unity of mankind. 
 
 Nor does the fact that the family is held 
 together by blood relationship, or what is termed 
 " physiological ties," or that its primary motive 
 is redirected self-interest, lessen its significance as 
 an example of mutual help. Blood relationship docs 
 not establish the family; the family establishes 
 blood relationship. Where there is no family 
 Aie, as amongst lowly-organised creatures, there 
 is no recognition of blood relationship, not ev^n 
 between mother and offspring. 
 
 In the So<:ialism of the family the rule of indivi- 
 dualism is void. When tiic table is spread idl 
 gather round, as in Hurns's " Cottar's Saturday 
 Night." None are excluded, none are abase.l.
 
 I40 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 None are asked to fare upon the scraps that fall 
 from the table. Nay, in every true family the 
 feeble in strength and age are all the more kindly 
 served because of their greater needs. Do we 
 not know how the love of a mother goes out to 
 her cripple child, and how the solicitude of all 
 is shown towards a delicate brother or sister? 
 
 The old arm-chair in the cosiest nook by the 
 fireside — consider what meaning of love and 
 honour that symbolises for us in all true types of 
 family life. It is the throne of the home provided 
 for the worn-out father and mother who have in 
 their day toiled for their parents and children, 
 and whose children now in turn ungrudgingly 
 afford them the utmost comfort that they can give 
 — labour and affection inseparably flowing from 
 life to life. Does not, indeed, the old arm chair 
 prefigure the provision of Old Age Pensions, 
 cottage homes, and kindred benefits for the aged, 
 which, mainly as the result of Socialist agitation, 
 our own and other nations are now beginning to 
 grant to the elders of the working class ? 
 
 Factory and commercial conditions have in 
 modern times made great havoc v/ith the solidarity 
 of the family, and have deprived many children of 
 the "breeding" (in the right sense) which home 
 training formerly bestowed upon them. Do we 
 not see in the hooliganism of our cities the direct 
 effects of the blight on the finer sympathies and 
 grace of behaviour of so many young men which 
 results from the premature rupture of the family? 
 And do we not see also in the bargaining as to
 
 FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP AND INDUSTRY 141 
 
 payment for board between parents and children, 
 which has become customary in many factory 
 districts, the destroying effects of capitalism upon 
 family fellowship? And where, among any people 
 above the savage state (if even there), except 
 where commercialism has rotted the very roots 
 of family life, do we find parents abandoning" 
 their children, or children their parents, to desti- 
 tution so long as they could, by sharing their last 
 crust or by working the flesh from their fingers, 
 avert that inhuman extremity? 
 
 The Feast Hall (Friendship). 
 
 Beyond the family circle comes the wider circle 
 of friendship. In some respects friendship is 
 even more distinctively a sign of social culture 
 than family affection. It springs less immediately 
 from economic needs, it is more voluntary, and 
 is preserved by no legal obligations. Many 
 animals display intense family affection, that 
 nevertheless show no capacity for friendship with 
 other members of their tribe. 
 
 Friendship is essentially community of feeling. 
 And it is important to note that this feeling 
 expresses itself immediately and chiefly in com- 
 munity of goods. Fiom the earliest times the 
 breaking of bread together has been the sacra- 
 ment of comradeship — a comradeship in which 
 the utmost degree of Socialism is often exempli- 
 fied. Thus the feast lall, where many make merry 
 in common, is the temple of friendship, as the 
 hearth, where the few sustain life in common, is 
 the shrine of the family.
 
 143 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Amongfst every race and in every age friendship 
 has called forth the warmest altruism of mankind. 
 History, romance and poetry are blazoned with 
 the red hues of the wine and blood which have 
 flowed, not always wisely or well, in friendship's 
 name — from the heroic affections of Achilles and 
 the Greek companions, and the chivalries of the 
 knights, down to the pathetic devotion of com- 
 rades in modern days on fields of battle, in ship- 
 wrecks on sea, lonely wildernesses, and black 
 suffocating mines. And how, too, the roofs have 
 rung in mighty chorus down the ages with the 
 mirth and pledge, the song and dance of com- 
 panions — rattling as it were the very bones of 
 death, and scaring the ghosts of individualism 
 into the shadows of the night ! 
 
 Where true friendship is, there Socialism is 
 also. The measure of the one is the measure of 
 the other. Friendship establishes between friends 
 social equality, and abolishes between them all 
 separations of class and creed, and, within vary- 
 ing limits, of property use and even ownership. 
 
 Friendship permeates every rank and range of 
 society with this leaven of Socialism. Consider 
 what is implied in the well-used and often mis- 
 used compliment — " a gentleman in his own 
 house." What else but this, that the said gentle- 
 man treats his friends and even dependents in 
 his house as his equals, bestowing upon them 
 bounteously every comfort of his home as though 
 they were his own brothers and sisters? 
 
 Among poor and rich alike this communism
 
 FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP AND INDUSTRY 143 
 
 widely prevails. In cottage and castle so soon 
 as friends cross the threshold of the door they 
 enter into a communist society, where indivi- 
 dualism is treason and is punished with banish- 
 ment. 
 
 Even men of the type of the late Lord Weniyss 
 and Lord Avebury, who were ardent champions 
 of Individualism against Socialism, practise " tlie 
 detestable principles of Socialism" whenever 
 they invite their individualist friends to spend a 
 week-end with them in their houses or yachts — in 
 order, maybe, to discuss how best to resist the 
 Socialist proposals of the Labour Party ! 
 
 The Workshop, the Market and the Guild. 
 (Industrial and Commercial Co-operation). 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to dwell upon the 
 growth of mutual help and co-operation which 
 has signalised every department of industry and 
 exchange from ancient to modern days. This 
 subject forms part of the general argument of 
 Socialism which is cither directly affirmed or 
 implied in every economic statement of Socialism, 
 and it has already been presented in many aspects 
 in the course of these chapters. 
 
 I shall here only remind my readers that the 
 whole measure of the difference between the weallh 
 produced in the aggregate by the people to-day 
 as compared with the aggregate wealth (if such 
 it can be called) of our far-back ancestors in the 
 stone age, is simplv the measure of increased 
 co-operation of thought and labour involved in 
 modern industry. The stone axe and bone needle
 
 144 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 were virtually (though not actually) individual 
 productions, for individual use; the steam engine 
 and the power loom are the result of the inter- 
 national co-operation of invention and labour, and 
 are only made useful by the co-operation not only 
 of whole factories of workers, but of national and 
 international community exchange. 
 
 Were it conceivable that the creative and mul- 
 tiplying power of co-operation were suddenly to 
 be extinguished in industry, the whole fabric of 
 modern cities and commerce would disappear and 
 the nations perish. 
 
 Not a single industrial or commercial function 
 is possible to-day by individual effort alone. 
 Capitalism itself is only made possible by almost 
 infinite cohesions of co'-operative responsibility 
 and labour. Without workshops, railways, 
 exchanges, banks, insurance offices, consular ser- 
 vices, and (as we shall see later on) national laws, 
 courts of justice, and armies — all of which are 
 modes of co-operation — capitalism in its present 
 form, and indeed in any gigantic form at all, 
 could not exist. Capitalism is, in truth, little 
 more or less than individual exploitation of collec- 
 tive organisation. 
 
 Similarly, all working-class methods of so-called 
 "self-help" are really methods, not of "self" 
 help at all, but of collective or mutual help. Thus 
 in joining Trade Unions to raise their wages, 
 Co-O{>erative Societies to obtain the most (presum- 
 ably) for what they spend, savings banks to keep 
 safe and increase their savings, friendly societies
 
 FAMILY) FRIENDSHIP AND INDUSTRY 145 
 
 to help them or their families in case of sickness 
 or death — in joining- any or all of these the "self- 
 help " workmen are but acknowledging that 
 " self" help is a delusion, and that collective help 
 is a reality. In other words, the workman 
 who wishes to be what is called " inde- 
 pendent " must cease absolutely to be independent. 
 He must depend as much as possible, not upon 
 his own means of support, but upon the collective 
 means of support of his fellows. 
 
 Restricted and exclusive, and even selfish as, 
 therefore, may be their primary motive, every one 
 of these forms of industrial, friendly, and commer- 
 cial co-operation derives whatever virtue it pos- 
 sesses from the elements of Socialism contained 
 in it. The Trade Unionist or the Co-operator who 
 opposes Socialism is denying the very principle 
 and purpose for which his Trade Union or Co- 
 operative Society exists. The capitalist who 
 opposes Socialism is denying the principle that 
 provides him with all the means of wealth and 
 security which he has unjustly appropriated.
 
 146 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Church, College and School. 
 
 We have seen how essentially Socialistic is the 
 principle operating- in, and giving vitality to the 
 family, friendship and industrial organisation. We 
 shall discover the same principle operating in our 
 religious, educational, and civic and political 
 systems, and general customs of public life. Our 
 inquiry will first deal with institutions which are 
 not commonly regarded as of a political nature. 
 
 The Church, the College and the School (reli- 
 gious, EDUCATIONAL AND BENEVOLENT ORGANISA- 
 TION. 
 
 Whatever our views as to creeds may be, we 
 cannot ignore the vast social importance of reli- 
 gious organisations ; as well attempt to deny the 
 whole history of mankind. Temples, priesthoods, 
 and religious societies, missions, and propaganda 
 are, perhaps, of all the primitive human institu- 
 tions the most distinctly human. Animals have 
 their families, their friends, their economic co- 
 operation, and even their towns, and, it might be 
 said, their nations ; but only amongst mankind 
 do religious associations exist. 
 
 To assert that what is universally the habit of 
 mankind is, or has been, always useless to man- 
 kind is to deny the rationality not merely of man- 
 kind, but of social evolution. Religious associa- 
 tion has in many instances superseded, as among
 
 THE CHURCH, COLLEGE AND SCHOOL 147 
 
 the Mohammedans, political association, and in 
 earlier times it is probable that relig-ious combina- 
 tion often preceded political organisation — as 
 among the Jews, Buddhists, Druids, and in the 
 Christian Church in the Middle Ages. 
 
 The circumstance that religious zeal or bigotry 
 has frequently roused persecution and war, and 
 that every human vice has flourished under even 
 the strictest public observance of religion, must 
 not blind us to the immense influence that religious 
 ideas and fellowship have had on the moral and 
 social development of mankind. Wars, persecu- 
 tions, lies, lust, and robbery were not created by 
 religions ; they belong to the barbarism of the race. 
 A band of friends, an enraged city, or nation, 
 may perpetrate plunder or massacre, but we do 
 not therefore say that friendship, citizenship, or 
 national self-government provoke these crimes. 
 
 Nor, again, is it to the purpose to allege that 
 in the majority of cases religious communities 
 have been moved by a selfish hope of blessing or 
 fear of punishment in this or another world, rather 
 than by a purely altruistic desire for the happiness 
 of their fellows. For if we begin to inquire deeply 
 into the origin of any form of social sympathy or 
 mutual help — including modern Socialism itself — 
 where else will our inquiry lead us but back either 
 to selfishness (transformed latterly into social 
 interest), or to obedience to a command, whether 
 social or religious, which overawes our self-seek- 
 ing and "makes for righteousness." 
 
 Many and wonderful have been the forms of 
 fellowship which have been manifested under the
 
 148 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 impulse of religious feeling- and sense of duty. 
 Every highly evolved religion affords us examples 
 of people foregoing all the usual self-interests of 
 their class and opportunities, to dwell in more or 
 less complete terms of equality with their asso- 
 ciates. The Jewish book of law relating to the 
 land and social conduct of the people was, with 
 all its defects, essentially coUectivist in its pur- 
 pose. The intense and often fantastic sacred com- 
 munities which were formed in the East ; the early 
 Christian Churches, v. here all things were held to 
 be in common ; the innumerable brotherhoods off- 
 shooting from the Catholic Church, in which, until 
 they became corrupt with wealth and power, every 
 duty of manual toil and service of charity and 
 mercy was cheerfully performed ; the many strange 
 semi-Socialist religious communities which have 
 sprung up in all parts of the Western world in 
 more recent centuries — these and similar examples 
 which might be cited from the history of all reli- 
 gions, east and west, must surely be accepted as at 
 least buddings of the growth of Socialism in man- 
 kind. 
 
 Then, too, the magnificent collective genius and 
 emotion which inspired and provided the work 
 which shaped out of nothingness the Greek and 
 Roman temples and academies, and the great 
 cathedrals and abbeys and colleges of the Middle 
 Ages — shall we not account these also as mani- 
 festations of the Socialist spirit bursting through 
 the fetters of the individualism and barbarism of 
 their times? It should be borne in mind that the 
 great churches, cathedrals, and colleges (as well
 
 THE CHURCH, COLLEGE AND SCHOOL 149 
 
 as Town and Guild Halls and other important 
 building-s) of the Middle Ages, which are the 
 admiration and despair of architects and art lovers 
 to-day, were all the products not only of co-opera- 
 tive workmanship but of co-operative design. 
 They were designed and built in most instances bv 
 co-operative groups or guilds of workmen. The 
 leading Society of Cathedral builders was that of 
 Comocine Brethren, who were bound together by 
 the strictest rules of apprenticeship, work, and con- 
 duct. It is from this remarkable fraternity that 
 (so it is believed) the modern institution of Free- 
 masonry derives its origin or descent. 
 
 Religion, in the sense of sacerdotal beliefs, 
 represents only one aspect of the intellectual 
 fraternalism of mankind. All forms of educa- 
 tional and benevolent propaganda, all pleadings 
 and preachings of ideas of right against wrong, of 
 truth against error, are related to religious 
 idealism. Political .Socialism in our own day 
 inevitably assumes a religious complexion in the 
 minds of its more earnest advocates. 
 
 And whence the philanthropic and propaganda 
 spirit in mankind at all? Whence the burning 
 desire to proclaim our religious beliefs and our 
 conceptions of justice and truth? Whence <.ur 
 hatred of ignoble conduct on our own part or on 
 the part of others; our desire for the educational 
 enlightenment of our fellows; our zeal for social 
 and political reform? Why should we wish to 
 instruct others at all, or risk our own peace and 
 lives in battling against what we conceive to be 
 error, superstition, and ignorance?
 
 ISO THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Why did Socrates, Bruno, and Servetus, who 
 had no expectation of the " martyrs' crown " in 
 another world, die for their conceptions of truth 
 which affected in nowise their own material happi- 
 ness? 
 
 And what secret power led forth St. Francis 
 d'Assisi, John Woolraan, Dr. Livingstone, Father 
 Damien, and all the hosts of warm-hearted and 
 succouring- men and women who have devoted 
 their lives to wrestling with the poverty, the 
 plagues, the sin, the ignorance, and the oppres- 
 sion of the people? What is it that has from the 
 beginning of society stirred men to forsake their 
 own comfort, and plunge into the hard, thorny 
 ways of reform and the scorching furnaces of 
 revolution — the John Balls, the William Wallaces, 
 the Toussaints, the Winkelrieds, the John Browns, 
 the Sophie Perovskayias? 
 
 Think of these things — these urgings, aspira- 
 tions, and sympathies which have burst forth in 
 religious, humane, educational, and political devo- 
 tion — think of all they have meant, of noble 
 purpose and sacrifice of every sweet and dear 
 interest in life; think of all the amassed service of 
 man to man in hospitals, village schools, and 
 plague-stricken cities, and of all the glad leaping 
 forth of heroes and martyrs breaking their poor 
 bodies in great causes — let us think, I say, of all 
 these wonderful deeds of selfish man, and will not 
 the answer throb loudly in our hearts and brains — 
 lo ! these are heraldings of the coming universal 
 reign of Socialism ?
 
 15^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Municipal Socialism. 
 
 We turn now to forms of public co-operation, 
 which are more distinctively political in their 
 origin and nature than those we have just been 
 considering-. 
 
 It is from the creation of villages, towns, and 
 cities that civilisation in the proper sense is 
 derived. It is from the necessary co-operation 
 and communion in building, provisioning, and 
 defending these collective dwelling places that 
 mankind has attained a practical, economic intelli- 
 gence beyond what has been nurtured in family 
 life. Indeed, all our wider industrial powers, as 
 well as our capacity for national life, have grown 
 up from our corporate training as citizens. 
 
 Nomad or wandering tribes and isolated herd- 
 ing peoples make little or no intellectual or social 
 pr<^ress. This fact itself is rife with the meaning of 
 Socialism as opposed to individualism. Indivi- 
 dualism is only, strictly speaking, possible or 
 logical for individuals who live individually — that 
 is to say, outside of society. Socialism, on the 
 other hand, is the inevitable outcome of associated 
 life. 
 
 The arts and sciences, and the higher powers v)f 
 man v.'crc all cradled, so to speak, in the cities.
 
 152 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Philosophy, astronomy, sculpture, painting-, the 
 drama, music, commerce, manufacture, schools, 
 and legal government first become known to us in 
 history in Thebes, Babylon, Tyre, Carthag^e, 
 Athens, and Rome. Thence they have come down 
 to us, receiving- fresh birth and Increasing powers 
 O'n the way, and spreading- their influence over the 
 hills and plains, through Constantinople, Venice, 
 Florence, Antwerp, Geneva, Paris, London, and 
 other great mediaeval towns. 
 
 In many of these ancient and mediaeval cities, 
 as in many of our early English villages and 
 towns, collectivism developed to quite a remark- 
 able extent. Walls, streets, bridges, baths, 
 schools, halls, markets were built by collective 
 enterprise, and oftentimes the towns carried on 
 collective trade with foreign ports, and bought and 
 sold important produce for the citizens. The 
 sense of civic equality and the recognition of public 
 rights were thus developed to a high degree. The 
 rise of modern Capitalism broke up the com- 
 munity feeling and habits of the towns to such an 
 extent that about loo years ago public rights 
 almost entirely disappeared, and individualism 
 ravaged life like an epidemic. To-day we are 
 recreating municipal Socialism on a higher and 
 wider plan. 
 
 Municipal enterprise may be divided into two 
 classes — one, reproductive and trading, and the 
 other non-productive and non-trading. To the first 
 belong all undertakings which produce commodi- 
 ties for sale or provide services for which payment
 
 MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 153 
 
 is charged at competitive rates. The chief of 
 these are water, gas and electricity, tramways, 
 markets, and housing. To the second belong all 
 such services as education, hospitals, art galleries, 
 concerts, road upy-keeping, sanitation, public parks, 
 and the like. The latter, though non-productive, 
 are essentially Socialistic, and the cost of their 
 upkeep is usually defrayed out of the rates. 
 
 Both in regard to reproductive and non-produc- 
 tive services there is the further distinction that 
 some are communistic and some simply collectivist. 
 Those services, the use of which is allowed free 
 of charge, and which all, rich and poor alike, may 
 equally enjoy, are communistic — as, for example, 
 the water supply, elementary education, roads and 
 streets, art galleries, etc. On the other hand, gas, 
 electricity, and tramways are at present simply 
 collectivist undertakings — that is to say, they are 
 collectively owned by the townspeople, but the use 
 of them is not free. They are paid for in propor- 
 tion to use, and those who are rich can afford to 
 use and enjoy the advantage of them to a greater 
 extent than those who arc poor. 
 
 There is, however, it should be noted, an evolu- 
 tionary tendency in certain forms of collectivism 
 towards communism. Thus formerly a toll was 
 levied on passengers, cattle, and vehicles for the 
 use of roads and bridges, and parents had to pay 
 a fee for every child sent to .school. Now these 
 services are free for the use of all. In time to come 
 no doubt the use of the tramways and the supply of 
 gas and electricity will be free, and perhaps, as
 
 154 
 
 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 some Socialists like Bernard Shaw and some 
 Radicals like M. Clemenceau have urged, the 
 provision of bread also. 
 
 It would be manifestly impossible within the 
 limits of our space in the present section to give 
 a complete account of municipal ownership and 
 enterprise. The following table may, however, 
 serve our purpose. 
 A "Bird's-eye View" of Municipal Enterprise. 
 
 LAND, FARMS, 
 
 &c. 
 Farms. 
 
 Forests. 
 Allotments. 
 Watersheds. 
 Town Building 
 Sites, etc. 
 
 BUILDINGS, &c. 
 i.Iarket Halls. 
 Public Halls. 
 Commercial Build- 
 ings. 
 Workmen's Houses. 
 J.fodel Lodgings. 
 Women's Homes. 
 Churches. 
 
 COMMUNICA- 
 TION. 
 
 Roads, Streets. 
 
 Bridges, Docks, and 
 Harbours. 
 
 River Improve- 
 ments. 
 
 Ferries. 
 
 Tramways. 
 
 Light Railways. 
 
 Telephones. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 Colleges. 
 
 Technical Sciiools. 
 Elementary Schools. 
 Secondary S( hools. 
 
 Libraries & Read- 
 ing Rooms. 
 Museums. 
 Art Galleries. 
 
 HEALTH. 
 
 Town Cleansing. 
 
 Sanitary Inspec- 
 tion. 
 
 Milk Supply. 
 
 Food Inspection. 
 
 Hospitals. 
 
 Sanatoria, etc. 
 
 Free Medicine. 
 
 Children's Nivr- 
 series. 
 
 Maternity Homes. 
 
 Lunatic Asylums. 
 
 Baths. 
 
 Laundries. 
 
 .Mineral Wells. 
 
 Meals for School 
 Children. 
 
 RECREATION, 
 &c. 
 Public Parks and 
 
 Gardens. 
 Gymnasium. 
 Playgrounds. 
 Golf Courses, Bowl 
 
 ing Greens, Race 
 
 courses, etc. 
 Tennis Courts. 
 Bands. 
 Concerts. 
 
 FOOD, &c. 
 Tea Rooms. 
 Refreshment 
 
 Kiosks. 
 Restaurants and 
 
 Dining Rooms. 
 
 PUBLIC SEIl 
 VICES. 
 Gas Lighting. 
 Electric Power. 
 Gas Cooking and 
 
 Heating. 
 Coal Depots. 
 Fire Brigades. 
 Markets. 
 
 Weighing Machine.*.. 
 Abattoirs. 
 Cold Stores. 
 Pr.blic Clocks. 
 Burying Grounds. 
 
 MANUFAC. 
 TURES. 
 Tram Carriage 
 
 Building. 
 Gas Stoves. 
 Paving Stones, etc. 
 
 BANKS, &c. 
 
 Saving Banks. 
 Fire Ins;;rance.
 
 MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM 155 
 
 Considerable progress has been made in recent 
 years by municipalities in regard to the provision 
 of better housing for the working class, and great 
 schemes of municipal housing, assisted by State 
 funds are now in contemplation ; but how far when 
 carried out they will prove encouraging examples 
 of public enterprise from an economic or artistic 
 point of view remains to be seen. Considerable 
 advance also, one is glad to acknowledge, has 
 been made by public authorities in beginning to 
 regulate the planning of towns with the object of 
 making them not only healthier and more con- 
 venient for traffic, but more beautiful of aspect. 
 Why, indeed, we may ask, should not the com- 
 munity build all its own dwellings co-operatively, 
 and why should not our towns, which are the 
 greatest works of our hands, be made also our 
 noblest works of art? 
 
 As to the present-day economic advantages of 
 municipalisation : the question of the " profitable- 
 ness," in a commercial sense, and general benefit 
 of municipal production and trading hardly needs 
 discussion nowadays. The subject, it wiM be 
 remembered, was made the topic of universal 
 debate several years ago, when the supporters of 
 private profit-making^ interests exerted every effort 
 to defeat the policy of municipalisation at the polls. 
 The anti-municipal campaign was completely 
 routed. The facts in favour of public ownership 
 were overwhelmingly convincing. It was proved 
 that municipal services were in almost every in- 
 stance better in quality, cheaper to the consumers
 
 156 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 or users, and afforded better conditions of wages 
 and hours of work to the employees, than did 
 private profit-making undertakings of a similar 
 kind. It was also shown that in the majority of 
 instances municipal undertakings, after paying all 
 outlays, including capital charges and allowances 
 for depreciation and renewal, yielded a handsome 
 surplus or profit for use as additional capital, the 
 reduction of rates, and other purposes relating to 
 the " common good." 
 
 Philip Snowden estimates accurately, I think, 
 the favourable state of public opinion concerning 
 the operation of municipal as contrasted with 
 private ownership of the more important public 
 services. " Ask," he says, " the citizens of Liver- 
 pool, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield and fifty other 
 towns which have taken over the tramways from 
 the private companies, if they would go back to 
 the former system of private ownership? Ask the 
 citizens of any of the municipalities which own the 
 gas, water, or electric services if they would accept 
 the offer of a private syndicate to purchase the 
 undertaking at a hundred per cent, premium on 
 the nominal capital value? It is the example of 
 the great success of public ownership which has 
 given the stimulus to the movement (for municipal- 
 isation) in the last twenty years."* 
 
 1 " Socialism and Syndicalism," page 152.
 
 157 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 An Interlude : The Revival of Village Life. 
 
 The land calls the people, and the people, 
 unbound, hasten to the land. 
 
 Look and see on .1 holiday morning-, and con- 
 sider the marvel of it. A shout of joy greets the 
 daybreak, and the gates of the cities burst open. 
 Forth, as from prison, the people fly, panting for 
 breath. Multitudes and multitudes of them, many 
 of them grievously misshapen, many of them sadly 
 poor ; but all making a brave show of gaiety with 
 new dresses, or old ones brightened up anew. 
 
 Forth they come, struggling forbearingly with 
 each other for standing room in the crowded tram 
 and train and steamboat. In tens of thousands 
 they speed together, several millions of them in 
 all — lads and lasses, fathers and mothers, with 
 children flocking by their side shouting gleefully, 
 and worn-out grandparents, vieing with the 
 children in their enthusiasm, all eagerly expectant, 
 their pale faces aglow. 
 
 Whither? 
 
 To the green fields and the open sky ! East 
 and west, north and south. The sunshine and the 
 winds alone seem to guide their flight. Forth 
 they go, speeding headlong and happy to the 
 fields, the woods, and the seashore, seeking a
 
 158 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 brief taste of Elysium, a draught from the cup of 
 life. 
 
 Follow the children — freedom and wisdom are 
 in their ways. The chains of oppression fall 
 easily from their soft limbs, and of such is ihe 
 King^dom of Heaven. Joyously they plunge into 
 the meadows, rolling- on the grass and revelling 
 among the wild flowers. Down to the brooks 
 they swarm, and knee-deep, bestrew the pools 
 with a thousand fragmentary ships. Like sea- 
 gulls, they spread themselves on the beach, digging 
 their fists and spades into the sand with Herculean 
 might ; like merlings they splash out into the 
 waves. 
 
 Have these things, think you, not a great mean- 
 ing for us? Do they not tell us more of the 
 secret of human happiness than all the precepts 
 of political economy ? 
 
 Break the chains, set the people free, and the 
 people will return to the land. The children will 
 lead them. 
 
 The fields and the valleys call us. They also 
 know the bitterness of the oppressor; they are 
 grown stunted and feeble and barren. They are 
 hungry for our hands ; they plead for our com- 
 panionship. They call on us to come, bringing 
 with us freedom and knowledge and co-op>eration. 
 They call on us to come, and they will yield our 
 toil a hundredfold, and bless our children with 
 health and joy and shapeliness of body and soul. 
 
 Break the chains and set the people free ; break 
 the chains and set free the land ! Then will the
 
 THE REVIVAL OF VILLAGE LIFE 159 
 
 prophecy of the ages be fulfilled, and the vallevs 
 rejoice, the barren places burst into bloom, the 
 hillsides become richly clad, and the streams flow 
 sweet and glad through meadow and city. 
 
 The towns and cities will also rejoice. Thev, 
 too, are in chains, and cry to be free. They are 
 compressed, overcrowded, and foul. They cry 
 for air, light and space, and for release froni 
 devouring landlordism. 
 
 The restoration of the land to the people and of 
 the people to the land will not impair, but recreate 
 and greatly sweeten and brighten the towns. 
 They will no longer ^le the enemies of the villages 
 and the fields, but will become friends with them, 
 co-operating and each benefiting mutually by the 
 other's help. The towns will re-energise the 
 country, and the country will refresh and nourish 
 the towns. The towns will spread themselves out 
 into the gardens and fields, and the fields and 
 gardens will stretch pleasantly into the towns. 
 That is the law of adjustment which Socialism vi/ill 
 fulfil. 
 
 Village life will be restored, invigorated, and 
 enriched. The knowledge, the intellectual energy 
 and collective aptitude of the towns and cities will 
 be diffused into the remotest valleys, and Ihe 
 countless means of modern communication and 
 transport will act as nerves and arteries, stimu- 
 lating the activities and interchanging the sus- 
 tenance and sympathy between town and country. 
 Agricultural villages nowadays are usually hope- 
 lessly dull and lifeless, and the notion that they
 
 i6o THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ever have been or ever can be made desirable 
 places to work and live in, endowed with splendid 
 craftsmanship and public spirit, seems almost 
 fantastic. Nevertheless in former times the 
 villagers were often intellectually abreast of the 
 cities, and famous for their local industries, arts, 
 and political championship; woollen, flax, leather, 
 blacksmithing-, pottery, and cabinet-making 
 industries flourished in them. The towns pos- 
 sessed little advantage in knowledge or social 
 organisation over the villages, and the villages as 
 the result of the closer interests and more stable 
 traditions of the inhabitants were in many respects 
 better organised communities than those of the 
 large towns. 
 
 The growth of modern factory industry and the 
 universal private monopoly of the land, have left 
 the villages derelict — the former by destroying 
 the village handicrafts and compelling the 
 villagers to seek employment in factories, and the 
 latter by the confiscation of the parish lands and 
 other communal possessions. It should be remem- 
 bered also that in former days the farmhouses and 
 ploughmen's cottages were not spread far away 
 from the villages, but formed part of them. The 
 creation of large farms with steadings, far 
 removed from the villages, is a custom which has 
 grown up with, and is really a complementary 
 part of, the modern capitalist system. Thus the 
 farmer and his servants have lost touch with 
 society and civic life, and as a result have become 
 the most selfish and unprogressive section of the 
 population.
 
 THE REVIVAL OF VILLAGE LIFE i6i 
 
 So, therefore, the villages and farmhouses are 
 lifeless and dreary. The jolly miller, the jovial 
 farmer, the melodious blacksmith, the blithe 
 cobbler, and the merry milkmaid are no more. 
 
 Often when I have walked through English 
 villages or passed farmhouses on the wayside in 
 the evening, when outdoor work has ceased for 
 the day, I have felt as if I were in a deserted or 
 plague-stricken land. No note of song, not even 
 of a mother crooning to her child ; no mingling of 
 voices in conversation ; no sound of social com- 
 munion whatever, unless on thf rarest occasions, 
 has greeted my ear. The fiddle-bow is never 
 lifted, and dancing and merry-making are as if 
 they never had been known, or had been forbidden 
 by public decree. Even the village alehouse is 
 usually silent except for an occasional brawl or the 
 advent of some soldier or sailor revisiting the home 
 folk after many years. 
 
 It was not, as I have said, always so. Merry 
 England was' once a real'ty, though not, maybe, 
 such a reality as would please us nowadays. The 
 villages were alive — even more alive than our 
 towns now are. The people gathered out of doors 
 on the summer evenings, and on the winter nights 
 they assembled in each other's houses and made 
 merry at supper time. There v.erc riumerous 
 holy-days, festivals, fairs, games, and entertain- 
 ments. Every season brought a changed succes- 
 sion of pleasant ceremonies and observances — the 
 May festivals when ihe milkmaids and plough- 
 men held carnival, the feasts ol midsummer night,
 
 i62 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 the harvest-homing, All Hallow's Eve, and the 
 great mid-winter festival of Christmas. The 
 public affairs of the locality excited wonderful 
 interest, and there were old men famed for their 
 wisdom, and young men highly reputed for their 
 feats of skill and strength, their musical talents, 
 and their gallantries. 
 
 Have my readers ever considered what wealth 
 of song and story, of dance and games, of folk- 
 lore and of wisdom concerning the seasons, the 
 nature of plants, and the habits of animals and 
 birds, was possessed in olden days by the country- 
 folk and handed down from children to children, 
 and how impossible such a heritage of genius and 
 knowledge would have been had country life 
 always been as listless and sodden as it is to-day? 
 
 Think you, did the beautiful melodies, the 
 quaint verses, and the dances which Mr. Baring 
 Gould and Mr. Sharpe have been gleaning from 
 the fast-disappearing traditions of the West 
 Country come from a spiritless and loutish 
 peasantry? And did the marvellous songs of the 
 Border minstrelsy, the Highland lays and reels, 
 the unsurpassed fiddle tunes of Neil Gow, and the 
 songs of Robert Burns come from a dull-brained, 
 witless people such as we see on the farms and in 
 the agricultural cottages to-day? 
 
 What song heard nowadays in London music- 
 halls can compare for humour, or tenderness, or 
 bravery, with the old country songs of the West 
 of England, of Scotland, and Ireland of a hundred, 
 two hundred, or three hundred years ago?
 
 1 63 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 National Ownership. 
 
 In a previous chapter I dealt with the forms and 
 growth of Socialism in the public life of our 
 villages and towns. Socialism of this description 
 is usually called Municipal Socialism. We must 
 now glance at the development? of collective 
 service and enterprise in the wider sphere of the 
 State, which bears specially the name of State 
 Socialism. The term nationalisation is commonly 
 used to denominate the process of bringing pro- 
 perty, industries and services into the ownership 
 and control of the State or nation collectively. 
 
 It is to this State Socialism or Collectivism that 
 the name of Socialism is most frequently applied 
 in political discussion, though obviously public 
 ownership of this kind is in principle no more 
 Socialistic than is municipal or town ownership. 
 The only difference is that in the one case the 
 sphere of ownership is the whole nation, whereas 
 in the other it is local. 
 
 So far as it has been yet developed. State owner- 
 ship is as a rule less Socialistic in actual result 
 than is municipal or local ownership. For in 
 most instances of town ownership, as in the case 
 of water, gas, and electricity supply, tram service 
 and public parks, baths, art galleries, etc., the
 
 i64 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 benefits derived are such as are estimable as forms 
 or means of wealth. As yet, apart from the postal 
 system, and in other countries the railway?, State 
 enterprise has been confined mainly to the provi- 
 sion of military defence, public justice, and educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Nor should it be necessary to point out that 
 State ownership, like many forms of municipal 
 ownership, is as yet for the most part a form of 
 State Capitalism. Labour and wage conditions 
 and all other thing's connected with it, are based 
 upon the usages of capitalist employment. Nor 
 could it well be otherwise in the present stage of 
 transition, for were the State to show marked 
 favour in wage and hour conditions to its own 
 employees there would be general resentment and 
 reaction against public enterprise. The main 
 difference at present between private ownership 
 and State ownership is that in the latter there is no 
 wasteful competition, and that the profits derived 
 fro'm the undertaking, when it is a profit-making 
 concern, go, or will eventually go, to the National 
 Exchequer instead of into the banking accounts 
 of a few (or many) private shareholders. But the 
 public ownership of land and capital forms the 
 economic basis of Socialism. Until the means of 
 production and distribution aie owned by the 
 nation, the nation cannot cor.trol and use them 
 for the national benefit. If, when owning them, 
 the nation or the people do not see to it that their 
 possessions are used and carried on in the right 
 way and for the right purpose, the fault lies not in
 
 L^ 
 
 NATIONAL OWNERSHIP 165 
 
 the principle of public ownership, but with the 
 people themselves. 
 
 National or State ownership is potentially the 
 most important development of collective property 
 and enterprise, as it is likely to include the land, 
 railways, mines, and all the great controlling 
 industries and means of transport. It is 
 also for the most part the more recent develop- 
 ment of public ownership and service. This late- 
 ness of development of the economic function of 
 the State is to be accounted for chiefly by the 
 fact that the State itself in a highly organised form 
 is of comparatively modern growth. For though 
 Kingdoms and even Empires have existed since 
 the earliest ages of civilisation, their function, 
 until quite modern days, consisted mainly in sub- 
 serving the military power and personal aggran- 
 disement of monarchs and oligarchies. The nation 
 or State was in fact a dominion rather than an 
 organic community or democracy. Thus, ^\hile 
 in mediaeval England the towns and villages were 
 often highly organised co-operative communities, 
 the State or central governmeil was little more 
 than an instrument for providi.ig military ser\ ice 
 and taxation for the monarchy. 
 
 It is only indeed within the past hundred years 
 or so, and chiefly during the past fifty or sixty 
 years, that the Slate has begun to develop its 
 functions as the instrument of the economic well- 
 being of the collective nation. As lately as sixty 
 years ago, the State performed virtually no econo- 
 mic service for the nation beyond owning and keep-
 
 i66 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ingf in repair certain hig-hways, carrying the public 
 post, and enacting- and enforcing-, mostly in the 
 interests of the landlord and capitalist class, the 
 Poor Law system and certain rudimentary factory 
 and health regulations. 
 
 Even as yet, in our own country, differing in 
 this respect from some continental countries, and 
 more notably from Australia and New Zealand, the 
 collective enterprise of the State has been confined 
 mainly to services which, however useful and 
 important in themselves, such as public health 
 provisions, education, Old Age Pensions, and 
 National Insurance, are such as do not entrench 
 upon the property and the rent and profit-making 
 interests of the landlord and cajDitalist class. For 
 the most part they are services which involve 
 heavy State outlay, but bring in no income or 
 economic return to the State. 
 
 I write these pages while our own country 
 and the great States of Europe are still reeling 
 from the economic and political effects of the 
 great war. That vast developments of State 
 ownership and enterprise are likely to tako place 
 as the result alike of intense economic and political 
 pressure, not only in Russia, Germany and other 
 States, which have undergone Social Revolution, 
 but in our own and probably all other States, is 
 highly probable. I can, however, only speak his- 
 torically of things as they were before the out- 
 break of the war. 
 
 As already noted, State enterprise has attained 
 a high degree of development in Australia, largely
 
 NATIONAL OWNERSHIP 167 
 
 as the result of Socialist agitation and the coming- 
 into power of the Labour Parties, alike in the 
 Commonwealth and the various State Parliam.ents. 
 The railways, and large portions of the land 
 have been nationalised, and the State has embarked 
 upon shipping, banking, mining, engineering and 
 many other industrial and commercial undertakings. 
 Wages and hours of labour alike in private and 
 public occupations have been brought under Slate 
 regulation; and Old Age Pensions, pensions for 
 widows and fatherless children, and other endow- 
 ments of a like kind on a comparatively generous 
 scale are bestowed by the State. In New Zealand, 
 the railways and a number of coal mines are 
 nationalised and many important commercial 
 duties in the common interests of citizens are 
 discharged by the State. In Europe the railways 
 were already nationalised in most countries before 
 the war. And in several countries, notably 
 Germany, State enterprise had reached a much 
 M^ider range and higher degree of efficiency than 
 in Great Britain.
 
 1 68 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 The Plague of Officials. 
 
 The cry that Socialism would bring upon the 
 nation a huge " plague " or " flood " of officials 
 whose duty it would be to police and dragoon Ihe 
 people at every turn is constantly repeated by the 
 opponents of Socialism. Herbert Spencer gave 
 this accusation great authority and currency in 
 his later days. Nor need we be surprised if public 
 experience during the recent war-time of a harass- 
 ing and corrupt bureaucracy has given weight to 
 the objection in many minds. 
 
 Officialism is not beloved of the people. And 
 small wonder. All down history officials have 
 represented the oppressive power of monarchs, 
 lords, class governments, landowners, and capi- 
 talists. Thus the very name of official has become 
 synonymous in the public mind with interference, 
 insolence, and extortion. 
 
 But when the people are no longer under the 
 rule of monarchs, class governments, landlords, 
 masters, and monopolists — what then? How, 
 then, shall officials oppress the people? What 
 motive then will officials have when they no longer 
 act as the instruments of oppression and greed 
 to torment and humiliate their fellows? From 
 whom will they derive authority or power to order 
 and interfere with the people at any or every turn?
 
 THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 169 
 
 These are questions which those who resound 
 the cry ag-ainst Sociahsm have evidently not con- 
 sidered ; nor have they reaUsed how easy it is 
 to show how much more vexatiously the people are 
 ordered about and coerced by the officials of 
 landlords and capitalists, by rent collectors, 
 bailiffs, gamekeepers, managers, foremen, and 
 flunkeys, than by the public officials of the 
 Government and municipalities. 
 
 The accusation that Socialism will flood the 
 nation with officials is one that can be turned with 
 crushing effect against the present system. 
 
 For the "plague of officials" is not a terror 
 of the future — it is an actuality to-day. The lives 
 of the people are already well-nigh suffocated with 
 officialism which is in no sense intended to sub- 
 serve any real purpose of national well-being, but 
 solely to sustain the selfish interests of the ruling 
 classes. Every movement of the workers during 
 the working hours, which absorb the greater por- 
 tions of their everyday existence, is under the 
 surveillance and control ot managers, directors, 
 and foremen, who have virtually absolute power 
 to order employees to do whatsoever their masters 
 wish them to do. 
 
 Every morning of the week some twenty 
 millions of men and women, boys and girls, pass 
 entirely out f>f the realm of such public freedom 
 as the State and its officials allow thcni, and are 
 regimented into the innumerable fields, factories, 
 workshops, warehouses, shops, and olfices where
 
 I70 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 capitalism and its officials have full dominion over 
 their every action all day long-, until the day's 
 slreng-th of their bodies and minds has been 
 exacted from them. Not merely must the workers 
 do whatever work their masters and officials 
 require of them, but they may not do anything- 
 else — not even manifest the existence of their 
 immortal souls or mortal bodies, if so be their 
 masters forbid them. 
 
 They may not speak or sing, or laugh or weep ; 
 they may not move about the place or leave it for 
 any purpose without permission. They are 
 watched by official all-seeing eyes from morn till 
 night. Nay, do we not hear that in some work- 
 shops there are officials with cunning lenses, taking 
 tell-tale photographs should the workpeople but 
 so much as rise from their benches to stretch their 
 cramped limbs or to open their lungs for a breath 
 of fresh air — these photographs being presented 
 to them at the week-end, together with a note of 
 deductions from their pay, as punishment for their 
 temerity? Even the physical calls of their bodies 
 may not be attended to (such is the freedom to 
 which capitalism has evolved poor humanity !) 
 without official sanction and registration ! 
 
 Let us not fail to remind the exponents of 
 capitalist freedom against Socialist officialism 
 of these patent facts — facts which the workers 
 know, facts which rule out quite diabolically God's 
 own images from the primal laws of living 
 creatures, not to speak of the beatitudes of the 
 Gospel.
 
 THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 171 
 
 Socialism will not increase officialism. Socialism 
 will enormously reduce the number of officials of 
 every kind in the State. Socialism will do aw.iy 
 with the need and the purpose of the great majority 
 of the functionaries employed alike by the Govern- 
 ment and by the industrial masters of the people, 
 to sustain the present unjust and wasteful system 
 of capitalist monopoly and exploitation. 
 
 Under Socialism there will, indeed, be officials, 
 but they will be relatively few compared with the 
 hosts of agents, inspectors and foremen who are 
 employed to-day. The officials will then be the 
 servants or comrades of the people. It will be 
 their duty and interest — it will, I believe, be their 
 joy — not to hurt or hinder the people's lives, but 
 to help and enrich them. 
 
 Officialism will then be but another name f<'r 
 the due and orderly carrying on of the nation's 
 industry and the supervision of the general 
 welfare. The officials will be the equals and 
 neighbours of the people, sharing all the common 
 duties of citizenship, and removable should they 
 culpably neglect or exceed their duties. 
 
 In order that we may, at a glance, form some 
 idea of the magnitude of the number of officials 
 who have power — great or small — over the people 
 in present-day society, and in order also that we 
 may in some degree realise how great a clearing 
 out, so to speak. Socialism will make of officialism, 
 let us scan the following much epitomised sum- 
 mary of the officials who " flcx)d " and " plague " 
 the present day life of the nation : —
 
 172 
 
 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Governmental. 
 
 King and Cabinet 
 
 Parliament 
 
 Army and Navy 
 
 Government Departments 
 
 Civil Service Officials 
 
 Post Office Officials 
 
 Excise and Customs Officials 
 
 Judges and Law Officers 
 
 Police Officials 
 
 Prison Officials 
 
 Asylum. Officials 
 
 Poor Law Officials 
 
 School Teachers 
 
 School Inspectors 
 
 School Attendance Officers 
 
 Factory Inspectors 
 
 Mine Inspectors 
 
 Health Officers 
 
 Sanitary Inspectors 
 
 Milk Inspectors 
 
 Meat Inspectors 
 
 Weights and Measures 
 
 Inspectors 
 Magistrates 
 Magistrates' Clerks 
 Gas, Water, and Tiam 
 
 Inspectors and Collectors 
 Art Gallery, Free Library, 
 
 Baths, and Park Officials 
 
 Capit.\listic. 
 
 Railway Directors 
 
 Managers 
 
 Inspectors 
 
 Sub- Inspectors 
 
 Foremen 
 
 Stationmasters 
 Mine Directors 
 
 Managers 
 
 Engineers 
 
 Foremen 
 
 Deputies 
 Shipping Directors 
 
 Managers 
 
 Officers 
 
 H arbour- M asters 
 
 Police 
 Bank Directors 
 
 Managers 
 
 Inspectors 
 
 Agents 
 Insurance Directors 
 
 Managers 
 
 Inspectors 
 
 Agents 
 
 Collectors 
 General Industry 
 
 Companies 
 
 Masters 
 
 Managers 
 
 Foremen 
 
 Chief Clerks^ 
 
 Cashiers 
 
 Etc., etc. 
 Landlords 
 
 Agents 
 
 Factors 
 
 Bailiffs 
 
 Rent Collectors 
 
 Property Inspectors 
 
 Gamekeepers 
 
 Flunkeys
 
 THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 173 
 
 Philanthkopic, Religious, Social, etc. 
 
 Bishops, Deans, Trade Unions 
 
 Clergymen, Ministers. Committees 
 
 Churchwardens Secretaries 
 
 Deacons Treasurers 
 
 Collectors Collectors 
 
 Caretakers Organisers 
 
 Charity Organisers Co-operative Sociktibs 
 
 Committees Committees 
 
 Agents Managers 
 
 Inspectors Foremen 
 
 Collectors Friendly Societies 
 
 Cruelty to Animal Inspectors Committees 
 Cruelty to Children Inspectors Agents 
 
 Collector* 
 
 The above list but faintly indicates the tremendous 
 army of officials of all kinds who, under the present 
 system of class government and capitalist 
 industry, tax, order, and dragoon the people at 
 every turn. 
 
 Let me put the matter in a more arithmetical 
 way. There are, apart from the Army and Navy 
 and the general Government service of the country, 
 some 25,000,000 or more people engaged in work 
 of some kind or another in Great Britain. Of 
 these, at the very lowest estimate, there are one 
 in ten, or, say 2,500,000, who are employed as 
 managers, inspectors, foremen, or other officials. 
 
 Let us now see how Socialism would reduce the 
 above quite appalling number of functionaries. 
 
 Consider, first, what effect the transformation 
 of the Government of the country into an indus- 
 trial democracy would have in doing away with 
 the necessity for the present vast staff of Govern- 
 
 O
 
 174 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ment officials. We may leave out of account at 
 present the Army and Navy, hoping that when 
 Socialism becomes international there will no 
 long-er be any pretence for the need of armies and 
 navies of any kind. 
 
 The greater proportion of law officers, whose 
 duties result chiefly from disputes relating to pro- 
 perty, contracts, and criminal cases arising from 
 existing social injustice, would be dispensed with. 
 The Customs staff would also be unnecessary, as 
 would also be the greater portion of the Govern- 
 ment and Municipal staffs engaged in the levying 
 and collecting of taxes and rates, and the enforce- 
 ment of regulations of capitalist conditions. A 
 considerable portion of the police force and all the 
 battalio'ns of Poor Law, factory, food insp>ection, 
 charity, cruelty to children, and, let us hope, prison 
 officials, would be transferred to more pleasant 
 employment. 
 
 ?n industrial employment, following upon the 
 abolition of the innumerable private companies, 
 with their competition, driving, account keeping, 
 and espionage in the interest of private profit- 
 making, a no less sweeping change would be 
 made. Managers and foremen v/ould still be 
 required, but in much fewer numbers, and the 
 great mass of agents, inspectors, and collectors 
 would disappear. The enormous staffs of officials 
 of insurance companies, private banks, and 
 middlemen would have more useful vocations pro- 
 vided them. 
 
 On the other hand, the displacement of private
 
 THE PLAGUE OF OFFICIALS 175 
 
 enterprise and the increased service of the State 
 would involve an augmentation of officials in 
 certain departments. The Post Office (let us say), 
 by taking over whatever functions remained of 
 banking, insurance, and the like, might require 
 an additional staff. Our educational system would 
 be greatly extended, and there would be more 
 teachers and smaller classes. 
 
 Except, however, in these and a few other depart- 
 ments, there would be no increase in officials, and 
 such increase would be hardly appreciable as com- 
 pared with the vast decrease of officials in the 
 present industrial and Governmental departments 
 of the nation, who, I must again remind my 
 readers, are chiefly needed because of the necessity 
 for interference with the anarchistic conditions of 
 capitalist society.
 
 176 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 State Socialism. 
 
 Socialism will doubtless assume widely different 
 forms and customs among different races and 
 nations, especially those widely separate from each 
 other in physical type and climatic and other natural 
 conditions. One can hardly suppose, for example, 
 that Socialism in Japan will present quite the same 
 external features as Socialism in Great Britain, 
 or that Socialism in Palestine or Egypt will be 
 identical in its customs with Socialism in Finland 
 or Canada. Even in Europe, one may exp>ect to 
 see great variations in the type of Socialist system 
 adopted In different countries. Already we observe 
 in Russia a great tendency towards Socialism of a 
 decentralised communal tyi>e, whereas in Germany 
 the tendency appears rather to be more towards 
 centralised collectivism or State Socialism. 
 
 Here in Great Britain it is likely that Socialism 
 will take a more composite form than in either 
 Russia or Germany — a form in which local or 
 Municipal Socialism and National or State Social- 
 ism will be more equally blended. In the British 
 or so-called "Anglo-Saxon" character (which is 
 in fact very largely Celtic) there is a manifest com- 
 promise between the disposition to preserve 
 domestic and local autonomy and the desire for 
 national uniformity and legal sanction. Thus our
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 177 
 
 local government institutions thrive side by side 
 with our national institutions, and seldom does any 
 serious friction arise between them. 
 
 But whatever be the particular type of Socialism 
 adopted in different countries, it is reasonable to 
 suppose that there will be in all instances, and 
 always, a blending- together of State or centralised 
 and local or decentralised functions — vary 
 as they may in degree in each case. Certain 
 forms of property, industry and public service 
 |>ertain from their nature specially to the people 
 in their own localities and particular occupations, 
 while certain other forms of public property and 
 enterprise relate from their nature to the common 
 interests of the whole nation. Thus the ultimate 
 ownership and control of the land, varying as it 
 does so much in natural suitability of soil and 
 and richness of minerals and water supply, will 
 rest with the Central State in order that the land 
 may, as far as possible, be used for the equal 
 advantage of the whole community. Railway, 
 shipping and general transport services, the 
 mines, the post and telegraphs, etc., and the 
 general scheme of industry, including the local 
 allocation of wealth production and distribution, 
 will similarly belong to the function of the Central 
 State or bodies acting under its direct authority. 
 On the other hand the local provision of dwelling 
 hou.ses, public buildings, parks and gardens, 
 trams, lighting, baths, libraries, and the general 
 means of distributing labour and wealth in each 
 locality will bflong to the functions of the muni-
 
 lyS THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 cipalities and other locally appointed administrative 
 bodies. 
 
 Also, it is quite likely that Trade Unions or 
 craft guilds, and other voluntary associations of 
 workers, educationists, artists, scientists, and 
 specialists and enthusiasts of all kinds will enjoy 
 a large measure of freedom and autonomy in con- 
 nection with their own particular occupations and 
 pursuits. It may be found, for example, that by 
 allowing-, subject to the general system of State 
 and local control, the building trades, the i)akers, 
 electric supply and tramway workers (to mention 
 only one or two instances at random) to adopt, 
 with little or no external interference, whatever 
 method of organising their work and rules of 
 conduct they choose, the best results may be 
 obtained, both for themselves and the general 
 community. So also, it may be found, as is largely 
 the case at present, that groups of art, musical, 
 and scientific enthusiasts, building and garden- 
 ing associations, swimming, cricket and football 
 clubs and the like, can be entrusted to employ their 
 abilities in their own way, with equal satisfaction 
 to themselves and the public. 
 
 Surely, in a word, it is plain that the object to 
 be arrived at in adopting and carrying out any 
 Socialist system, is to allow and encourage the 
 utmost possible freedom of initiative and of self- 
 government to every citizen, every associated group 
 of citizens and workers, and every town, or locality, 
 consistent v/ith the general commonwealth scheme 
 and supervision of the Central Government? And
 
 STATE SOCIALISM 179 
 
 surely there is little need of our meanwhile worry- 
 ing greatly over the precise method or means by 
 which this result may be mutually and har- 
 moniously achieved? Many difficulties, many 
 sharp conflicts of methods and opinions, many 
 errors and failures there doubtless v.ill be ; and 
 no end of occasions for political excitement and 
 agitation over them. But what of that? Is there 
 not more than enough occasion for agitation and 
 strife under existing conditions? Nor do any 
 of us, I hope, object to agitation or even strife, 
 so long as it is free from violence, oppression, 
 and ignoble passion. It is indeed only by agitation 
 and strife of the spirit that man discovers in him- 
 self and others the powers and ways to higher 
 things.
 
 i8o 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 The State. 
 
 Nevertheless, there exists a wide-spread appre- 
 hension that by greatly increasing the sphere of 
 State ownership and public service, and conse- 
 quently its power also, the State will become 
 more and more autocratic and inimicable to per- 
 sonal liberty and to all forms of local and indus- 
 trial autonomy. And this apprehension is not 
 confined by any means to those who adopt the 
 extreme individualist standpoint against Socialism 
 which characterised the anti-State agitation of 
 Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, and Lord 
 Wemyss a generation ago; nor to Anarchist- 
 Communists of the type of Kropotkin and Nieuen- 
 huis. It is a feeling shared by many Socialists 
 who are avowed CoUectivists, particularly by 
 Industrial Unionists, Syndicalists, and National 
 Guild Socialists, as well as by many of our 
 Quakers and anti-militarist friends. As the 
 matter is one which relates not only to the prac- 
 tical politics of Socialism, but to questions which 
 concern the deepest spiritual instincts of civilised 
 man, my readers will not, I hope, tire of me if I 
 devote the present chapter to the consideration of 
 this subject. 
 
 And first let us note that by the term State 
 is usually meant one of two things (or both). It
 
 THE STATE i8i 
 
 is used to desig-nate (i) the entire community of 
 the nation viewed as a politically organised 
 body, and (2) not the community itself, but the 
 political functions of the community exercised by 
 themselves or in their name, particularly those 
 pertaining to and exercised by the central govern- 
 ment of the nation. It is in this latter sense that 
 the term State is generally used in political con- 
 troversy, and will be used by me in my present 
 argument. 
 
 The State is described and condemned, I 
 observe, as being a capitalist institution in some 
 of the text-books of Industrial Unionism. Even 
 were that accusation true, it would not necessarily 
 involve the outright condemnation and rejection of 
 the State by Socialists. There are many institu- 
 tions, inventions, and forms of industrial organisa- 
 tion, which have originated under capitalism and 
 were meant to serve capitalism, which are in 
 themselves exceedingly useful and commendable. 
 Capitalism, notwithstanding its multitudinous 
 inhumanities, is nevertheless itself a human insti- 
 tution, a product of society, a form of social 
 evolution. This, indeed, is one of the main pro- 
 positions of Marx's famous thesis in his "Das 
 Kapital." 
 
 The affirmation that the State is a capitalist 
 institution is, nevertheless, untrue. The State, 
 historically, is not of capitalist origin. It 
 existed in various forms before either land- 
 lordism or capitalism in any institutional 
 form was in existence. It germinated, as
 
 i82 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 did the village, the city and the nation in the 
 clan, the tribe and the community settlement ; 
 and grew up and extended with the growth of the 
 community itself. 
 
 In earlier times, the State, as it broadened out 
 from the tribal or village group, did so in many 
 instances as an expression of religious rather than 
 of military or industrial hegemony, and was 
 Theocratic or priestly rather than political in 
 character. This was the case in the Jewish State, 
 and in the Tibetan, and in many of the Indian 
 States, and in the early Mohamedan States. 
 
 As tribes, villages and cities extended and 
 enriched their domain, the control of the State 
 fell into the hands of the dominant caste, tribe, 
 or class, and hence began to assume more auto- 
 cratic and dynastic forms : notably in the case of 
 Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Rome in the 
 ancient world, in the Feudal Kingdoms of 
 mediaeval times, and in the political kingdoms of 
 later days. 
 
 The circumstance that the rapid growth of the 
 functions and powers of the State in modern 
 times is coincident with the growth of the capitalist 
 system, in nowise changes the essential principle 
 of the State as the expression, however imper- 
 fect or erroneous, of the communal or national 
 body politic, nor does it justify our regarding the 
 State as a capitalist institution. All modern 
 achievements and institutions have grown up 
 under the capitalist system, and might quite as 
 justly as the State be stigmatised as capitalist
 
 THE STATE 183 
 
 institutions. On such a precept as that we might 
 call science, education, public health, political 
 democracy, and even modern Socialism, capitalist 
 institutions ! 
 
 The simple truth is that the State always is 
 for the time being very largely the instrument of 
 the self-interest of the dominant person, faction 
 or class in the community, whosoever they may 
 be. If, as in the Middle Ages, the landlord class 
 be in the ascendant, the State will necessarily be 
 feudal or landlord in its character. If, as in later 
 times, the capitalist class are in the ascendant, the 
 State will be capitalist in its complexion and in 
 the use of its powers. While if, as at the present 
 moment in Russia, Germany and other revolu- 
 tionary States, the Socialists or working class 
 gain the upper hand, the State immediately begins 
 to assume, autocratically maybe, a Socialist pur- 
 pose and character. 
 
 And that, as it seems to me, is the whole sub- 
 stance of the matter. The State is and will be what 
 the general voice or consent of the community wish 
 it to be. So likewise will the public customs, 
 industry, education, freedom and all other circum- 
 stances and conditions of civilised life that are 
 subject to human control.
 
 1 84 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Liberty and the State. 
 
 But whatever view we take of the State — whether 
 we reg-ard it as essentially an evil and undesirable 
 power, or as a necessary and potentially beneficent 
 power — the fear lest with the g^rowth of its power, 
 both political and economic, the State will become 
 oppressive of minorities, obstinate against new 
 ideas and a constant menace to personal freedom 
 and conscience, is a very general fear. Nor is 
 it to be dismissed as mere political timidity, 
 
 JMevertheless, if we look carefully at the matter, 
 'we shall find, I am convinced, that some of the 
 apprehensions upon which that fear is founded 
 are for the most part groundless. The belief, for 
 example, that because the State becomes stronger 
 and more important it is likely to become more 
 arbitrary and vindictive is, I think, a mistaken 
 one. The State can only become more powerful 
 by becoming at the same time more widely repre- 
 sentative and more highly organised, and both 
 these changes will tend, not to increase but lessen 
 the disposition and temptation of the State 
 to become inconsiderate and oppressive. Neither 
 men nor institutions as a rule, become 
 tyrannical because of strength, but chiefly from a 
 sense of weakness or peril. The stronger and 
 more democratic the State becomes, the more sen-
 
 LIBERTY AND THE STATE 185 
 
 sitive, I hop)e, and indeed believe it will be 
 to injury or pain inflicted on any part of 
 its organism, and more tolerant towards opposi- 
 tion of opinion and action. 
 
 For indeed, as a matter of history and fact, the 
 modern highly organised State is not more, but 
 less arbitrary and oppressive than the older State. 
 (I speak not of the exceptional powers and actions 
 of the State during the recent panic circumstances 
 of the war. It would be most unfair — it would 
 be false witness — to judge the State, or indeed 
 nations, by their comportment during the anarchi- 
 cal condition of war.) Not slavery, not the thumb- 
 screw and the rack, not arbitrary interference with 
 local self-government nor repression of political or 
 religious freedom, have characterised the policy 
 of the State since it began its newer regime of 
 social and economic activity. Rather has it been 
 the sweeping away of slaveries, of religious and 
 political disabilities, of barbarities and inequali- 
 ties of law. That surely is a true and a greatly 
 reassuring consideration. 
 
 It is, in truth, not so much from the State, except 
 in despotic countries, as from the tyrannies of 
 custom, of public ignorance and prejudice; from 
 commercial interests ; and from, in many instances, 
 illegal outbreaks of the populace, that innovators, 
 heretics and reformers have in these more modern 
 days, suffered the greatest obstruction and per- 
 secution. 
 
 It was not the State that compelled children to 
 act as chimney sweepers, or to go down into the
 
 i86 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 mines, or into the factories for sixteen hours a 
 day. It was the State (capitalist though it was) 
 that abolished these customs. It was not the State 
 that burned down Joseph Priestley's home and 
 valuable library and laboratory in Birmingham, 
 and eventually compelled that noble-minded 
 reformer and scientific discoverer to seek refuge 
 across the seas. It was not the State that rioted 
 and burned down the houses and mauled the 
 persons of pacifists in our own country during the 
 Boer War. Nor during the recent European war 
 was it the State, armed though it was with every 
 resource of arbitrary power, that showed itself 
 most hostile to dissentient opinion and freedom 
 of conscience. It was the State that granted 
 exemption to conscientious objectors to military 
 service ; it was locally appointed tribunals, com- 
 posed of neighbours and fellow townsmen of the 
 applicants that insulted them and denied them the 
 benefits of the law. It was not the State that 
 .^fused the use of public and privately owned halls 
 for pacifist meetings and violently broke up 
 Socialist and peace gatherings throughout the 
 country. It is not the State that still lynches 
 negroes in America with horrible tortures of burn- 
 ing ; nor was it the State that recently in America 
 tarred and feathered and burned alive pacifists 
 because they would not violate their consciences 
 by cheering for the war. 
 
 > How few of the actual worries, hardships and 
 despairs of our daily life come from any laws or 
 interferences of the State ! How many of them
 
 LIBERTY AND THE STATE 187 
 
 come from our fellows in business and occupation, 
 and even from our chosen comrades and friends ! 
 Have we not heard employers complain more 
 bitterly against their competitor employers and 
 ag-ainst their workpeople and their Trade Unions, 
 than against the State ; have we not heard work- 
 men complain more bitterly against the tyranny of 
 their masters and foremen — yea, of their fellow 
 workmen and of their own Trade Union officials — 
 than against the tyraimy of the State? 
 
 What is, I would suggest, an influence of far 
 greater peril to freedom than is the increasing 
 power of the State over the regulation of our 
 ways of life, is the tendency observable in all 
 classes towards a decay of thoughtfulness of opinion 
 and a weakening of the public judgment. It is here 
 we shall find the real source of our misgivings ; it 
 is here where lies the canker that leaves the nation 
 exposed to hasty and violent appeals to popular 
 notions. Not the State, but the public press, is the 
 great menace which we have to face, and in some 
 way overcome, in our immediate march freedom- 
 wards. That, however, is a subject that I must 
 not attempt to discuss in these pages. Only this 
 will I say, that it is part of our Socialist faith 
 and hope, that with the regeneration of our whole 
 social life which Socialism will bring, the people 
 will become better, wiser and nobler alike as 
 individuals and as a community of citizens. 
 
 That there exists, not perhaps as a new, or even 
 as an increasing peril, grave danger of the adop- 
 tion of hasty legislation, which may put sore prcs-
 
 i88 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 sure on the convictions and conscience of the more 
 enlig-htened and sensitive spirits among us, must 
 be acknowledged. This danger is all the greater 
 because in most instances the object aimed at is, 
 or appears to be, a desirable one, and commends 
 itself to general approval. It is in the means of 
 accomplishing the object, rather than in the object, 
 that the peril most frequently lies. Such for 
 example are the provisions of many of the educa- 
 tion and public health proposals at present under 
 discussion in Parliament. In these we find under 
 the plea of physical culture in schools the introduc- 
 tion of military drill and the practise of weapons 
 of war, the general compulsory moculations of 
 serums and anti-toxins, compulsory submission ro 
 surgical operations and medical treatment, and 
 the enactment of powers to the police to arrest 
 citizens for physical examination. To many among 
 us ordinances such as these, of which military 
 conscription is the archetype, are of the deepest 
 essence of tyranny ; decrees which many feel should 
 be resisted to the point of imprisonment or even 
 death. But again let us remind ourselves that the 
 real tyrant here is not the political State, but an 
 ignorant or apathetic public. For, observe, one or 
 all of the above mentioned decrees were already in 
 compulsory operation with little, generally with no 
 public protest in many schools, colleges. Friendly 
 Societies, and commercial establishments before 
 they even had been suggested to Parliament. 
 
 The problem raised by the perils of these 
 invasions of freedom and conscience is, therefore,
 
 LIBERTY AND THE STATE 189 
 
 one which involves the question of, not so much 
 the character of the State, as the character of civi- 
 Hsation itself. There is no solution of it except in 
 the g^eneral enlig-htenment and moral improvement 
 of the race. There is no effective recourse ag-ainst 
 it save in political agitation, and in the last 
 instance (if need be) in the immemorial and 
 glorious right of rebellion and martyrdom.
 
 PART IV. 
 BEYOND ALL FRONTIERS.
 
 193 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Nationhood. 
 
 Nations are forms of social organisation, and 
 national or patriotic sentiment is an expression 
 of social emotion. 
 
 Nations (I speak of nations not of king- 
 doms) are not mere accidental herdings together 
 of people, though accidental circumstances of 
 contact or conquest have in many instances deter- 
 mined their character and shape. Nor is 
 patriotism an ignorant and selfish sentiment, 
 though ignorance, selfishness, and the utmost 
 knavery, often enough invoke it and batten on 
 it. The folly and crime of quarrels and wars 
 between nations no more prove the irrationality of 
 patriotism or the inutility of nationhood than 
 the strife between neighbours or political parties 
 proves the futility of citizenship, or the misdeeds 
 of capitalism or the misjudgments of juries prove 
 the absurdity of industrial organisation or of 
 public courts of justice. 
 
 Why have men in all ages and of all 
 classes voluntarily given their lives for 
 their country? Doubtless multitudes of them have 
 gone into battle in the name of their coufitry who 
 were solely actuated by the love of fighting 
 and adventure, or the desire for plunder. But 
 what of the millions of men in history who have
 
 194 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 risen to arms from peaceful pursuits ; men who 
 have had no love, but hatred and terror of battle, 
 and yet have given away their lives freely and 
 gladly, for what they believed to be their country's 
 sake? Their country's sake ! What was their 
 country's sake to them, knowing they must die, 
 and their families almost certainly perish also? 
 What was Russia's sake to the thousands of 
 Russian revolutionists who gave themselves to^ 
 death, or worse than death, horrible torture and 
 imprisonment for Russian freedom? 
 
 If we look rightly at this matter we shall see 
 in it a revelation of the social spirit in mankind — 
 the working of a spirit of devotion and altruism 
 which leads men irresistibly to sacrifice their own 
 small lives for the larger life and social progress 
 of the race. Without this civic devotion or 
 patriotism, the local evolution of society would, as 
 far as we can discern, have been impossible, and 
 Socialism on a large and effective scale would 
 perhaps for ever have been unattainable. 
 
 The great benefits (doubtless with many draw- 
 backs) to civilisation which have resulted from the 
 coming together of local groups of people into 
 national combination may be seen by comparing 
 the state of Britain during the early centuries, 
 when each clan or settlement of people was a law 
 to itself, with the state of Britain afterwards when 
 national unity was achieved. The frequent 
 battles, the local friction, the deep prejudice of 
 each locality against the customs of other locali- 
 ties, the impossibility of co-operation for common
 
 NATIONHOOD 
 
 defence or interchange of products, the enti, 
 lack of maui roads or regular avenues of distan, 
 communication — made industrial and social pro- 
 gress in the early centuries slow indeed. In Scot- 
 land the history of civilisation (apart from the 
 older clan culture such as it was) practically 
 begins with the combination of the towns and 
 tribes into one kingdom under Kenneth. Similarly 
 in England, it is not until .Alfred laid down the 
 framework of England as a nation that we find the 
 means of social improvement beginning to grow 
 and spread. 
 
 In our own day we see how vast have grown 
 the means of wealth and progress under national 
 organisation, notwithstanding the fact that the 
 State has been largely an instrument of the 
 capitalist classes. The great highways, the postal 
 system, the general protection of life, the institu- 
 tion of public means of education, the provision 
 of powers for the extension of railways, and the 
 development of great collective means of water 
 distribution, sanitation, and constructive legisla- 
 tion — these and innumerable other forms of col- 
 lective well-being which inevitably tend towards 
 universal Scx:ialism could not have been achieved 
 without the existence of national organisation. 
 
 But the growth of coninninities into nations and 
 of nations into larger nations, must be a natural or 
 voluntary expansion, not n fon cfiil one of con- 
 quest and oppression, or there \sill be rebellion 
 and constant provocation of war. Hmi)ircs are 
 almost always the rr-sidt of conquest, not of the 
 voluntary federation of nations.
 
 196 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 It would appear to be a law of social evolution 
 that each community, small or large, must, in the 
 interest of race progress, preserve, for a time at 
 any rate, its individual characteristics — its blood, 
 its language, its customs, and its beliefs. The 
 preservation of these local diversities of social 
 growth has, it would seem, been essential to the 
 common means of the development of mankind 
 generally. Peoples and nations of all kinds, there- 
 fore, have fought passionately for their indepen- 
 dence — that is to say, for their existence. Only 
 under conditions that have ensured the preserva- 
 tion of their blood and local customs until at least 
 such time as these would be assimilated in a higher 
 collective life have peoples ever willingly con- 
 sented to resign their local independence. 
 
 Patriotism, therefore, has been an essential 
 element in civilisation. Had patriots not died for 
 their country, their country would not have lived. 
 Ireland's fierce struggle for nationhood has been 
 justified even in its seeming defeat. She has sus- 
 tained her national life by revolt long enough to 
 enable her to diffuse her blood, her genius, and 
 hor character, not only among her conquerors, 
 but among all civilised races. 
 
 Several important qualifications of this appraise- 
 ment of patriotism must, however, be made. One 
 is that with the increasing organisation of society 
 nations have become more resistant to debase- 
 ment or destruction by external conquest. Con- 
 quest in fact, becomes less and less able to 
 deeply aifect the organic structure and modes of
 
 NATIONHOOD 197 
 
 national life. A second is that the increasing 
 development of institutional diplomacy and mili- 
 tarism has more and more exposed the people to 
 the danger of external aggression and weakened 
 their power of resistance to an abuse of patriotic 
 sentiment. Another is that, as we shall presently 
 see, the growth of international conditions of 
 civilised life has brought into view the possibility 
 of eliminating the danger of conquest, and thereby 
 of releasing nations from the function of national 
 defence altogether. 
 
 Nevertheless, Socialism comes not, I repeat, as 
 the destroyer, but as the preserver and creator of 
 social sentiments and institutions. It condemns 
 no moral or national sentiment that uprises from 
 the right social aspirations of mankind. It comes 
 not to destroy families, municipalities, or nations, 
 but to vivify them and endow them with greater 
 sustenance and freedom. It comes to harmonise 
 their interests, and widen, by the fullest national 
 and international co-operation, their powers for 
 their individual and collective well-being. 
 
 Hence," therefore, Socialism is not only 
 nationalist, but internationalist.
 
 io8 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Internationalism. 
 
 Internationalism does not mean the extinction 
 of nationhood. It means the bringing of nations 
 together in the bonds of friendship and brother- 
 hood. 
 
 Important and necessary as has been, and still 
 is, the function of nationhood, it no longer suflices 
 for the needs and conditions, not to speak of 
 the sentiments, of civilised life. Modern pro- 
 gress — for progress we must term it, despite all 
 its baser accompaniments — has wrought a great 
 change in the sphere of nationhood. Apart 
 altogether from any preconceptions we may have 
 as to the desirability on wide humanitarian 
 or political grounds of an enlargement of social 
 unity beyond the boundaries of nations, we can- 
 not fail to see that nationhood no longer fulfils the 
 whole purpose of co.mmunity organisation which it 
 once fulfilled. The general tendency of modern 
 civilisation, especially during the past hundred or 
 so years, has been towards the wider interdepen- 
 dence of communities. The extraordinary develop- 
 ment of the means of transport and communica- 
 tion has to a large extent lessened the self-con- 
 tainedness of national economic life, and broken 
 down the barriers of national reserve and enter- 
 prise. More and more all the means of wealth
 
 INTERNATIOx\ALISM 199 
 
 and the interests of life have begun to interflow 
 between nations ; so that, except for the barriers 
 of language, national custom, artificial tariff 
 restrictions, and the limitations of the political 
 autonomy of States, there has almost ceased to 
 be any demarcation between one country and 
 another. The general veins of life, so to speak, 
 have begun to connect, and social blood to flow, 
 across continents as freely as though national 
 boundaries did not exist. 
 
 Commerce, travel, art, literature, science, and 
 general social intercourse have, in fact, to a great 
 extent ceased to be national or racial, but have 
 become international. 
 
 I speak, of course, of things as they were before 
 the war, and as they will be again when the normal 
 course of civilisation in Europe is resumed. 
 
 We see, in fact, a process going on of expansion 
 of the community from national to international co- 
 operation and unity, similar to that which took 
 place when clans and towns and smaller States 
 began to merge into the larger co-operation and 
 unity of the nation. 
 
 Internationalism has therefore become, or is 
 becoming, a new and further stage of social 
 integration. The nation is ceasing to be the 
 largest, even if it still remains the chief, organ 
 of community life. This does not mean that 
 nationhrKxl is sfx>n going to become, f)r will ever 
 become, extinct ; but it does mean that nationhood 
 is no longer going to be the all-inclusive sphere 
 of community life that for the most part it hitherto
 
 200 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 has been. Extension of the community circle from 
 the smaller local into the wider national unity- 
 did not involve the destruction of the local unity. 
 It was supplementary rather than derogatory to it. 
 But it nevertheless became the greater and even- 
 tually the more important of the two. So doubtless, 
 in utrn, will it be with the greater international 
 unity of the United States of Europe, and of the 
 world. 
 
 Socialist Internationalism is doubtless very 
 largely the moral or political expression of these 
 modern changes in the material conditions of 
 civilisation, as indeed is all effort towards unity 
 among nations. It also derives from these newer 
 circumstances much of its logical appeal to the 
 wider self-interest of the working class. But it is 
 well to bear in mind that the sentiment or ideal of 
 the international brotherhood is not a product of 
 modern days. It did not originate in modern 
 material developments, though it has been enor- 
 mously quickened and spread by them. The senti- 
 ment of universal brotherhood existed and found 
 expression in the idealism of mankind in the earliest 
 ages of civilisation. It has been latent apparently 
 in man since his birth as a social being. Like the 
 instincts of sex-love, of motherhood, of friendship, 
 which slumber unfelt and unobserved in the child at 
 birth, to come to awakening later on when condi- 
 tions favourable to their exercise arise, the 
 sentiment appears to have been prophetic in 
 the social nature of men. We find its syllables 
 in the earliest poetry and precepts of religion —
 
 INTERNATIONALISM 201 
 
 often indeed among peoples who had liltle or no 
 material intercourse with outside races or nations, 
 and who knew little of mankind beyond the limits 
 of their own community, except as enemies and 
 worshippers of alien gods. 
 
 In the Hindu Laws of Manu, written at least 
 500 years before the Christian era, we read : 
 " 'This is my countryman; this other is a 
 stranger ' — so thinks the man of narrow mind and 
 heart. The noble soul regards the whole world as 
 his kin." 
 
 To hasten, perhaps by many generations, the 
 realisation of that great ideal, alike as a means of 
 the general social welfare of nations and progress 
 of mankind, and as a means of destroying mili- 
 tarism and war, and establishing universal peace, 
 is the international mission of Socialism. Therein 
 lies its proud claim to be " the hope of the world." 
 
 We must turn, therefore, to the International 
 Socialist movement, and see how far its record 
 and present position justify its assumption of that 
 high apostleship, that transcendent hope.
 
 202 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The International. 
 
 The International Socialist movement did not 
 prevent the European war. It could not. 
 
 It was too weak in numbers, in organisation, 
 and in political power. It was only 25 years old. 
 Its affiliated membership in all the belligerent coun- 
 tries totalled just about 2,000,000 souls. Germany 
 alone accounted for half that number, the member- 
 ship roll of the Social Democratic Party in that 
 country being no less than 1,200,000. In France, 
 the Socialist Party consisted of hardly over 
 100,000 enrolled members, though its political 
 power was vastly greater than these figures 
 indicate. In Great Britain the entire membership 
 of the Socialist bodies affiliated to the Inter- 
 national was under 50,000. 
 
 In no country did the movement, even if we 
 reckon in the electors who voted for Socialist 
 Parliamentary candidates, count a majority of the 
 people or, except in Finland and Germany, a fifth 
 part of the electorate. In no country, therefore, did 
 Socialists control Parliament, diplomacy or 
 armaments. Was it conceivable that a movement 
 as yet so young, so inexperienced, so loosely 
 organised, and without the means of rapid consul- 
 tation and action, could possibly prove a match
 
 THE INTERNATIONAL 203 
 
 for the gigantic powers of Governments and mili- 
 tarism, backed up, as these were, by the traditions, 
 passions and interests of thousands of years? 
 
 Nevertheless, some of us had, in our optimism, 
 hoped the International might be able to prevent 
 any general European conflict. And some of us 
 (dreamers that we are !) still cherish the belief 
 that had the crisis which precipitated the war been 
 delayed for ten, perhaps even five years, the 
 International might have achieved that great 
 benefaction and fame. 
 
 International Socialism was not, however, (we 
 should bear in mind) the only self-appraised power 
 for peace and civilisation, which failed to prevent 
 the war. Education and industrial progress, 
 political democracy and Trade Unionism, 
 Liberalism, religion, and above all militarism, 
 despite its vaunting itself as the only guarantee of 
 peace, all failed to prevent the war. 
 
 The Catholic Church, which alike by reason of 
 its vast communion, its Christian Confession, and 
 its international organisation and great political 
 influence, seemed the likeliest of all powers to 
 present effective resistance to diplomacy and mili- 
 tarism, failed to prevent the war. It had an 
 enormous advantage over International Socialism. 
 Its communicants formed the vast majority of the 
 fX>pulation in Austria-Hungary, France and 
 Belgium, a third of the population of Germany, 
 and a fifth of the population of Circat Britain. It 
 had rulers, cabinets and military commanders 
 under its authority. It po.ssessed the tremendous
 
 J204 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ordinance of ex-communication and anathema. 
 Yet the Cathohc Church failed as signally as the 
 International Socialist movement to prevent the 
 conflict, though the Pope personally appealed then 
 and afterwards, with deep emotion, for peace. 
 
 The International strove hard to avert war. It 
 opposed the Government policies and armament 
 rivalries that led the nations into it. For years 
 it had made peace and anti-militarism the chief 
 subject of its propaganda. It had held unprece- 
 dented peace demonstrations in all the cities of 
 Europe — from Lisbon to Bucharest and Salonika. 
 It had organised fraternal delegations across all 
 the frontiers, it had held a special International 
 Peace Congress at Berne. On the eve of the out- 
 break of the war it exerted its utmost powers by 
 means of huge demonstrations in Berlin, Paris, 
 London and countless other cities to avert the 
 catastrophe. It called a special Congress to be 
 held at Paris, in the hope that the Congress might, 
 were the situation favourable, effectively inter- 
 vene between the nations and diplomacy. The 
 outbreak of war prevented that congress being 
 held. 
 
 The International did not and could not prevent 
 the war. Nor, under the circumstances of the 
 situation could it prevent the armies moving into 
 battle. No reproach can reasonably be laid upon 
 it on that score. 
 
 But how did the International itself withstand 
 the shock? 
 
 It gave way lamentably under the strain. Its
 
 THE INTERNATIONAL 205 
 
 ties snapped, and several of its great national 
 sections ranged themselves on the side of their 
 capitalist governments and took part in the fratri- 
 cidal strife. Then, to our dismay and grief, we 
 witnessed the woeful and affronting spectacle of 
 Socialists pledged to international brotherhood, 
 sworn to the high faith of comradeship, irrespec- 
 tive of what rivers or hills divided them or kings 
 ruled over them, being swept into battle to slay 
 their comrades who, through no fault of their own, 
 happened to be born in a different part of Europe 
 from themselves. 
 
 That was the tragedy of the International. 
 
 But all this being acknowledged, it is but right 
 to acknowledge also that the apostacy of the 
 Socialist national groups was much less general 
 than appears to be commonly supposed. In the 
 first place the out-and-out pacifist groups held 
 their ground splendidly. The Socialist Party of 
 Italy stood out from the first in almost unbroken 
 ranks against participation in the war, nor did it 
 alter its attitude after Italy had actually joined in 
 the struggle. There is reason to believe also that 
 the vast majority of Russian Socialists remained 
 resolutely opposed to participation in the war. The 
 Social Democratic members of the Duma were 
 imprisoned and exiled because of their opposition 
 to the war credits, though, it is true, a number of 
 the well-known Russian leaders who were 
 refugees in other countries, such as BourtzeiT 
 Roubanovich, Pleckanoff and Kropotkin, at once 
 became intensely jjatriotir nnrl backed the war
 
 2o6 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 policy of the Impfrialists. The majority also of 
 the American Socialist Party stood out against the 
 war on clear International ground. And, lastly, 
 in our own country the Independent Labour Party 
 (the I.L.P.), the largest Socialist organisation in 
 Great Britain, not only officially, but actually, 
 with the exception of not more than a score of its 
 several hundred branches, and a few individual 
 secessions from the other branches, remained 
 solidly and energetically opposed to the war from 
 the outset. So also did the majority of the 
 branches of the British Socialist Party, as well 
 as all the branches of the Socialist Labour Party. 
 It may thus be said that the British Socialist 
 movement in the mass proved entirely faithful to 
 International Socialist principles. 
 
 Furthermore, and very important, we have to 
 acknowledge that the International Socialist move- 
 ment generally was the only political organisation 
 that put forth any effort during the course of the 
 war to bring about reconciliation and peace. The 
 attempts made by the permanent committee of 
 the International at the Hague, and by many of 
 the national groups, including the minority 
 sections of the German and French parties, to 
 stem the flood of war passion and unite the 
 democracies in a movement to end the slaughter, 
 stand out among the few redeeming political 
 circumstances of the war. It will not be denied 
 that these efforts did much to keep alive interna- 
 tional idealism and to spread the agitation for 
 peace. Most notable was the proposed Stockholm
 
 THE INTERNATIONAL 207 
 
 Conference in the autumn of 1917, which would 
 have been held but for the refusal of the Allied 
 Governments to grant passports. Indeed, but for 
 the almost unsurmountable barriers placed by the 
 Governments against not only the assembly of 
 any international conference, but ag-ainst any 
 communication whatever between the vSocialist 
 bodies of the different countries, the International 
 would, I believe, have been in full organised action 
 for peace immediately after, if not before, the 
 advent of the Russian Revolution. As it was, in 
 spite of these obstacles, the more determined 
 pacifist groups succeeded in holding an unofficial 
 conference at Zimmerwald in September, 1915; 
 while as early as March in the same year the 
 women's section of the International outwitted 
 the governments and held a memorable gathering 
 at Berne. In both instances representatives both 
 of the Allied nations and of the Central Empires 
 were present, and met each other in friendly 
 accord. 
 
 Lastly, though still broken into factions, the 
 International remains in being. Its re-assembly, 
 though in a mutilated form, at Berne during the 
 Versailles Peace Conference, and the agreement 
 displayed between the groups from the belligerent 
 countries on the greater principles of a pence 
 settlement, were reassuring signs. The fact also 
 that arrangements have been made for keeping the 
 international groups in closer touch alike for con- 
 certed action in case of need or opportunity, and 
 that the more inten.sely pacifist sections appear
 
 2o8 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 resolved to have the International reconstituted 
 on a more representative Socialist basis, and with 
 more definite pacifist aims, may well inspire 
 us with hope that the International will ere long- 
 become not only the evangel, but the palladium of 
 the world's freedom and peace. 
 
 What may be the outcome of the great revolu- 
 tionary struggle now going on in Russia and 
 Germany and in a less manifest form in other 
 European countries, none of us can foresee. But 
 if out of it all, despite its many recourses to 
 violence and repression in the passion and terror 
 of the hour, there does not come something in the 
 nature of a perpetual concordat for peace among 
 the democracies of Europe and the world, what 
 has appeared to us to be the veritable dawn of a 
 new epoch of human deliverance will prove no 
 real sunrise at all, but merely a false zodiacal 
 glimmer in the sky.
 
 209 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Socialism and War. 
 
 When shall the saner, softer, policies, 
 Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, 
 And pritriotigm, grown Godlike, scorn to stand 
 
 Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas ? 
 
 Thomas Hardt- 
 
 We must not, however, leave the subject of 
 Socialism and war with an expression of hope 
 merely. 
 
 For war is the greatest of all crimes. It is the 
 greatest of all crimes not only because it causes 
 the greatest magnitude of suffering and is the most 
 inhuman of all man's misdeeds, but because it in- 
 volves and justifies every crime. It involves and 
 justifies the violation of the decalogue, the beati- 
 tudes, all morality, and all human law. It glorifies 
 blasphemy, murder, plunder, lies, the destruction 
 of wealth and the most precious creations of human 
 skill and toil, espionage, the spreading of false 
 reports, the suppression of truth, the abrogation 
 of public liberty, the spread of disease, and 
 recourse to every cruel, cunning and mean device 
 of human fear and cowardice. 
 
 In view, therefore, of the appalling conse- 
 quences of war, and of the confusion which the 
 late war brought among Sfxrinlists, and of the mili^ 
 tarist tendencies still lingering in the minds and 
 programmes of many Socialist parties, especially 
 on the continent, it is important that we should
 
 2IO THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 discover what is the true and universal precept of 
 Socialism on the subject of militarism and war. 
 
 One of three positions is possible for Socialists 
 in the event of war. The first is to refuse to take 
 up arms whatever the alleged ground of the war ; 
 the second is to fight only if convinced that their 
 Government (or country) is in the right ; and the 
 third is to fight if their "country is in danger," 
 no matter whether their Government or country 
 be in the right or the wrong. I submit that the 
 first position is the only sound International posi- 
 tion. I submit that the third position is the only 
 sound alternative position. The second position, 
 which is the one professed by many Socialists who 
 supported their Governments in taking part in the 
 European war, is the least logical and the most 
 dangerous. For if Socialists who believe in 
 military defence are only going to fight for their 
 country when persuaded that their own 
 Government is in the right, how grave is their 
 responsibility ! They, the Socialists, may be 
 wrong in their judgment, and, in any case, are 
 they going to allow what they call " their country, 
 their freedom, and civilisation" tO' be destroyed 
 because their Government has blundered? On 
 the other hand, if, as in the third position, 
 Socialists are going to fight against other nations, 
 and their Socialist brethren in them, whenever 
 their Government brings about a war, irrespective 
 of the right or wrong of its action, then is Inter- 
 national Socialism a lie, and Socialists deluded 
 and deluders.
 
 SOCIALISM AND WAR 211 
 
 Yet this third position appears to have had wide 
 acceptance among Socialists in the belligerent 
 countries, especially in Germany, during the late 
 war. It was on the plea of It that thousands of 
 Socialists, who had denounced the war-like policies 
 of their own Governments up to the actual moment 
 of war, justified their participation afterwards in 
 the struggle. "We are patriots as well as 
 Socialists," they declared " and must defend our 
 country and our liberties now that we are 
 threatened with invasion and conquest. We are 
 not, as Socialists, responsible for bringing about 
 the war, but we are responsible as Socialists and 
 citizens for the protection of our families and 
 our nation." Thousands of pacifists who were not 
 Socialists, but who had also denounced the war- 
 provoking policies of their Government, justified 
 themselves in joining the fighting ranks on the 
 same plea. 
 
 In taking up that position Socialists commit 
 themselves, as I have pointed out, to participation 
 in every war in which their country may be 
 involved. For one's country is always in danger 
 of attack and invasion, as much so when it 
 declares war against another nation as when 
 another nation declares war against it. And how- 
 ever defensible that position may be, it is wholly 
 unnecessary to impart a Socialist motive into it. 
 Socialism has no more to do with it than has 
 Christianity, Agnosticism, Eugenics, or scientific 
 research. It is a position which appeals to men 
 simply as men or patriots. French Socialists fight
 
 212 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 for France, as do their anti-Socialist fellow country- 
 men, because they are Frenchmen ; Germans 
 similarly because they are Germans ; British 
 because they are Britishers. They fight for the 
 defence of their country, not because they discern 
 that by so doing- they are conforming to any 
 Socialist principle or ideal, or because they hope 
 thereby to hasten the advent of Socialism or 
 universal peace. They fight because they are im- 
 pelled to do so by patriotic emotion and the appeal 
 the fight makes to their fighting instincts — feelings 
 which they share with the generality of mankind. 
 
 But happily, as we have seen, not all Socialists 
 adopt this position : not by any means. The great 
 majority of Socialists in this country, in Italy, in 
 America and probably in Russia, as well as a 
 large section of Social Democrats in 
 Germany (larger than most of us were aware 
 of at the time) stood out against participation in 
 the war, even on the plea of national defence. 
 What proportion of these did so on the ground 
 of firm internationalist faith, and what proportion 
 simply on the ground that the war was a capitalist 
 war, we do not know. But whichever was their 
 ground, they one and all resisted the plea that 
 the duty of National Defence should override their 
 convictions or conscience. 
 
 I am, I think, justified in saying that there is 
 a large and growing number of Socialists in all 
 lands who are now adopting resolutely anti-war 
 principles. In Russia perhaps the majority of 
 the Socialists, at any rate among the peasantry,
 
 SOCIALISM AND WAR 213 
 
 notwithstanding their rallying to the support of 
 the Social Revolution against foreign aggression, 
 are ready to lay down their arms for ever. A con- 
 siderable section of Socialists in France before the 
 war were similarly disposed to renounce arms. 
 There is a strong movement in that direction in 
 Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan. Here, 
 in our own country, as our band of 7,000 con- 
 science objectors, the greater part of whom were 
 Socialists, who suffered imprisonment rather than 
 obey the Military Service Act, testifies, the reso- 
 lute pacifist faith is also gaining wide adherence. 
 Perhaps, too, I should not omit the significant 
 widespread agitation against militarism in any 
 shape or form in China, where communist and 
 pacifist feeling has been deeply rooted for thou- 
 sands of years among the rural population. 
 
 Socialists who adopt the pure pacifist faith do 
 not ignore the fact, so rightly insisted on by 
 Ramsay MacDonald, that the primary political 
 duty of Socialists is to oppose and destroy the 
 imperialist policies and governments that create 
 war. Nor do they think that its adoption, even 
 by the majority of Socialists, would render war 
 impossible, so long as capitalist governments and 
 armies and navies exist. The justification of their 
 faith lies, they declare, in its potency as an affirma- 
 tive of Socialist principle, essential to the life, 
 truth, and comradcshif), of International Socialism 
 itself, and to the eventual deliverance of mankind, 
 not only from war, but from all violence and 
 oppression.
 
 214 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Shelley in his " Declaration of Rights" affirms 
 the anti-militarist position in short but funda- 
 mental terms: "Man has no right to kill his 
 brother. It is no excuse that he does it in 
 uniform : he only adds the infamy of servitude to 
 the crime of murder." And to those who are 
 inclined to give ear to the so-called "biological" 
 plea for u^ar — the plea, namely, that warfare or 
 combat is in man, as in the tiger or sword-fish, an 
 instinct as natural as that of hunger, sex impulse, 
 or any other feeling for which nature has made 
 physiological provision — the observation of 
 Erasmus, couched in theological phrase though it 
 be, may be commended as scientifically apposite : 
 " God made man unarmed. But anger and revenge 
 have mended the vi'ork of God, and furnished his 
 hands with weapons invented in hell." 
 
 I may be reminded that in our chapter on 
 Nationhood I contended that the sentiment of 
 nationhood and the defence of one's country was a 
 product of genuine social emotion and a mode 
 of social evolution. True, but, as I also pointed 
 out, that does not imply that the sentiment of belli- 
 gerent patriotism must always remain so. It may, 
 with the growth of a wider social synthesis and a 
 rebirth of social conscience, cease to be a useful 
 sentiment, and may even become a positive hin- 
 drance to the general social advance of nations 
 and the race. And that is a stage of social evolu- 
 tion which many of us contend has now been 
 reached. We believe that with the more highly 
 organised conditions of society in all civilised coun-
 
 SOCIALISM AND WAR 215 
 
 tries, with the growth of international solidarity, 
 and, above all, with our clearer perception 
 of and deeper trust in the spiritual powers of 
 man, the danger of national extinction by military 
 conquest, and the need for protective barriers of 
 all kinds between nations, have become obsolete. 
 Just as the narrower patriotism of the clan and 
 the city has given place to the wider patriotism 
 of the nation, so the narrower patriotism of the 
 nation must give place lo the wider patriotism of 
 internationalism. And just as the clansman and 
 the citizen had to rest in the faith that the real 
 interests of his clan and his city would not suffer, 
 but gain by the change, so must Ihe nationalist 
 to-day have faith for the welfare of his nation in 
 the larger unity of internationalism. 
 
 But, above all, our appeal, as Socialists address- 
 ing Socialists on this matter, must be to the deeper 
 and more prophetic intuitions of our Socialist 
 faith. We must, whether we share the Tolstoyan 
 or Quaker belief in the " inward light," the 
 " Kingdom of God within us," or not, realise that 
 there is a potency in peace, in refraining either 
 from giving provocation or from receiving it, in 
 trusting to the genius and power of human brother- 
 hfxxl, which is mightier for freedom and for the 
 security of all we love of our country, than is any 
 defence that recourse to armies can give. 
 
 "The nation," said Keir Hardie at the Inter- 
 national Socialist Congress at Copenhagen in 
 1910, " the nation that has the courage to be tlie 
 first to throw away its arms will win for itself
 
 2i6 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 one of the greatest names in history." Nations 
 and races have rarely been destroyed or eliminated 
 by conquest from without. More often has the 
 conquering- nation fallen by its conquest than the 
 conquered nation. Weakness of social solidarity, 
 corruptioin and tyranny within, have been the 
 chief cause of the decline and disappearance of 
 nations and races. What is really of the spirit 
 in a race or nation, what freedom, genius and 
 virtue it possesses in its heart, cannot be destroyed 
 by external conquest. 
 
 There is, we believe, in peace itself, a power of 
 safety beyond what nations have ever yet known. 
 War has been glorified and worshipped by com- 
 munities for its own sake. Peace never, except 
 hy a few religious sects. Who knows what peace 
 will do for nations that really trust in her? 
 Hitherto when peoples have submitted to conquest 
 rather than fight they have done so from cowardice 
 or indifference, not from conviction and faith. 
 How could they expect their conquerors to respect 
 independence and liberties, which the people them- 
 selves so little valued? But when men and nations 
 deliberately disarm themselves and decline to fight, 
 not from cowardice, but courage ; not from fear of 
 being slain, but from willingness to lose their own 
 lives rather than take the lives of others ; their 
 action will have a new significance, a new appeal, 
 a new power. A tremendous inhibitory influence 
 will proceed from it — a sense of perpetrating 
 unprovoked and cold-blooded murder which no 
 civilised nation or soldier would nowadays be 
 guilty of.
 
 SOCIALISM AND WAR 217 
 
 *' Because he does not strive, no one in the 
 world can strive against him " — was one of the 
 wisdom saying-s of the venerable Chinese philo- 
 sopher, Laotsze, twenty-five centuries ago. Man- 
 kind may at last learn that this axiom is as pro- 
 foundly true of human conduct as it is of all the 
 forces of the physical universe. 
 
 But persuasive as these considerations be, there 
 is yet for all true pacifists the imperative one of 
 conscience — of that hig-h reliance and faith, which 
 is the loftiest endowment of the human spirit, and 
 which has its final sanction in no perception of 
 utility, or of eventual reward whatever, but solely 
 in its own sense of right-doing-. It is on the 
 fuller emergence and authority in each and all of us 
 of this "dweller in the innermost" of whose presence 
 we are still but dimly conscious, that the validity 
 of all our Socialist hopes of the redemption of the 
 human race, must eventually depend.
 
 2l8 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Conclusion : AbcioMs and Prophecy. 
 
 This bring-s me to the end of my present task, 
 for in order that this book may fulfil the purpose 
 desired of it, it is necessary that it should not be 
 a bigf book, or be loaded with too many themes. 
 I have written so much, and yet I seem to have said 
 so little, or to have left so much still unsaid ! 
 Almost it seems to me as if I had but begun my 
 subject ; had only just unfolded some of its outer 
 garments, so to speak. For Socialism is so great, 
 so all-comprehensive, once we begin to grasp its 
 full meaning, once we begin to see into its real 
 depths. It is as when one becomes curious to know 
 something about astronomy, in order maybe 
 simply to learn something about the wonders of 
 the sky ; soon one discovers that the science of 
 astronomy leads into every other science, mathe- 
 matics, physics, chemistry, geology, that it is 
 related to all we know about the whole universe 
 of life, energy and matter. 
 
 So when one at first begins to look into the 
 subject of Socialism. One thinks of it maybe 
 simply as a subject concerned with the question 
 as to whether it is desirable and possible to remedy 
 the grosser wrongs of present-day social condi- 
 tions, by bringing about the nationalisation of land 
 and the general means of wealth production
 
 AXIOMS AND PROPHECY 219 
 
 and distribution. But as our enquiry proceeds we 
 beg-in to realise that the principles with which we 
 have to deal are fundamental and all-penetrating", 
 that they affect our every action in life, our every 
 relation to our fellows and to the whole world 
 around us, our understanding of history, industry, 
 art, literature, science, philosophy and religion. 
 For once the full light of the meaning of Socialism 
 — its origin and nature as a growth or evolution 
 of Society, its promise of change, its whole 
 potency and idealism — dav.ns upon us, all the 
 past begins to become new to us, and every human 
 activity and achievement acquires for us a new 
 significance and forecast. 
 
 Nay, this is not hyperbole, nor mere literary 
 effusion. It is true experience which all earnest 
 Socialists feel in their own minds, and have found 
 in others. How often have those of us engaged 
 in propaganda had testimony of its truth from 
 artisans in the big industrial towns — from miners 
 in Scotland, Northumberland, Durham and South 
 Wales ; agricultural labourers in Norfolk and 
 Cumberland; crofters in the West Highlands; 
 fishermen at Grimsby, Yarmouth and Peterhead ; 
 and from school teachers, university and art 
 students, wherever we have talked with tluin? 
 How often have they told us how Socialism had 
 changed completely their outlook on life ; their 
 feelings towards their fellows, yea towards their 
 wives and children, maybe, and towards animals 
 and nature; their desires and hopes for the future 
 — confessing, too, that religion, concerning which
 
 220 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 they had been indifferent or scornful, had acquired 
 a fresh interest to them as something of real 
 importance in the world? How often have miners, 
 remote from public libraries, shown us the books 
 they were now, as a result of their Socialist 
 awakening-, buying- for their own bookshelves — 
 books such as Plato's " Republic," Plutarch's 
 "Lives," Bacon's "Essays," Mill's "Liberty," 
 Carlyle's "Heroes" and "Past and Present," 
 Ruskin's "Unto this Last," Morris's "John 
 Ball" and "News from Nowhere," Spencer's 
 "Study of Sociology," Darwin's "Descent of 
 Man," Huxley's " Essays," and volumes of the 
 works of Emerson, Tolstoy and Russell Wallace, 
 together with a goodly array of the poets. Usually, 
 also, the collections included some present-day 
 writers on social questions and problems of belief. 
 In not a few homes of Socialist workmen, I have 
 found libraries of 500 or more volumes. And in 
 almost every such instance I have been told that 
 most, if not all the books, had been acquired since 
 the workman became a Socialist, or that he owed 
 to his possession of them the ripening of his mind 
 for the reception of Socialist ideas. 
 
 And is not this intellectual and moral awaken- 
 ing which Socialism brings to its real devotees a 
 reassuring and hopeful sign for democracy, for 
 civilisation? Surely there can be no greater gain 
 to the world just now than that working men and 
 women, and our young men and women prepar- 
 ing for intellectual pursuits should have their 
 minds awakened to a serious interest in the mean-
 
 AXIOMS AND PROPHECY. 221 
 
 ingf of the world in which they live, and that their 
 outlook upon it should be brightened by a real 
 glow of social emotion, a radiance of social 
 idealism ? 
 
 What hope else is there for democracy and 
 civilisation? 
 
 Everywhere there are signs of great revolu- 
 tionary change in the constitution of nations and 
 in the structure of society itself. Already we see 
 Russia, Germany and the whole centre and East 
 of Europe undergoing a profound social and 
 political upheaval ; while in our own country, in 
 France, Italy and the northern states, there are 
 unmistakable signs of political and industrial 
 revolt. 
 
 This wave of revolutionary excitement will, of 
 course, subside, as all orgasm.s of men and nations 
 must do. But what tremendous changes and 
 potentialities of change may meanwhile be 
 brought into being? Doubtless the hastily 
 accomplished social revolutions in Russia, 
 Germany and elsewhere, will not endure in 
 their present form. It may even be that they 
 will be overthrown from without or from within. 
 Nor need Socialists view such an event with any 
 g-reat feeling of disappointment and certainly not 
 of despair. History has taught us to discount the 
 mere upturnings of revolutions — but not to 
 disregard the causes which engender lliem, or 
 the forces set free by them. No Socialist thinker 
 of repute has encouraged the idea that the trans- 
 formation from capitalist to Socialist society can
 
 222 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 be accomplished at a stroke. Marx, William 
 Liebknecht, Bebel, Morris, Jaur6s, and Keir 
 Hardie, who are gone, all warned us against any 
 such expectation or design. The true advance to 
 Socialism will come, as I have insisted in a 
 previous chapter, not from acts of revolution 
 themselves, or from any processes of arbitrary 
 change or violence, but from the growing forces of 
 socialisation within society, of which political 
 revolt is often only a temporary symptom. 
 
 But though the new proletarian Republics in 
 Europe may be overwhelmed, or if they stand, db 
 so only by greatly modifying, for the time being, 
 their revolutionary schemes and policy ; yet they 
 are forerunners of the coming of universal 
 Socialism in the world. 
 
 For SociaUsm is inevitable. I do not repeat 
 this Socialist shibboleth because I accept the 
 crude Marxist dogma of historical materialism or 
 economic determinism. I repeat it because I 
 believe that the intelligence and progress of man- 
 kind render the permanence of the capitalist 
 system impossible, that short of destroying the 
 thinking powers of the hulk of mankind, and of 
 abolishing not only democracy, but education, 
 art, Hterature, and society itself, the eventual real- 
 isation of Socialism cannot be prevented. In other 
 words — I believe Socialism is inevitable not simply 
 because of the economic and material factors of 
 modern civilisation, but because also of the 
 spiritual factors of social evolution. It is inevitable 
 less because man is an animal than because he is a
 
 AXIOMS AND PROPHECY. 223 
 
 thinking and spiritual being. Man is governed by his 
 ideals as well as by his appetites. It will go hard 
 with any political doctrine of which it can be said, 
 as Nietzsche said of Darwinism — " Darwin has 
 forgotten the spirit." There is a mighty difference 
 between a tiger or gorilla and a St. Paul, a 
 Marcus Aurelius, an Alfred, a St. Francis, a 
 Spinoza, a Dr. Livingstone, or a Mary Kingsley. 
 The law of the jungle is not the law of the city — 
 the law of human aspiration that gave us Athens 
 and Florence, a Rouen and an Oxford. 
 
 Socialism presents itself to us, as we have seen, 
 mainly in a two-fold aspect, (i) As a process of 
 social evolution transforming mankind from a 
 state of loosely associated and often competing 
 and warring families, groups and communities, into 
 a complete co-operative commonwealth, nationally 
 and internationally. And (2) a political movement 
 mainly of quite recent growth, having for its 
 object the preparing of society for that achieve- 
 ment and the hastening of its advent. This 
 political movement is itself but the expression <)i 
 the ripening of the general mind and circumstances 
 of society towards Socialism. 
 
 The aim of the political Socialist movement 
 cannot perhaps be better set forth than in the words 
 of the statement of principles of the Independent 
 Labour Party — viz. : that 
 
 The object of the Socialist movement is the 
 
 establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth. 
 By Socialist Commonwealth is meant a state 
 
 of .society in which the struggle and competition
 
 224 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 for individiv^J gain will give place to co-operation 
 for the collective good, and the highest well- 
 being of each will be realised in the highest well- 
 being of all. 
 
 To this end the private appropriation of the 
 means of labour and production, which results in 
 the undeserved enrichment of the few and in 
 undeserved poverty, over-work, and waste of 
 life for the many, will give place to the collec- 
 tive ownership and use of land and capital, in 
 order that the public services and the general 
 industry and provision of wealth may be carried 
 on by the State, municipalities, and industrial 
 associations, for the comm.on and, as far as 
 possible, the equal welfare and happiness of all.^ 
 Socialism, it will be seen, goes beyond all 
 existing political systems, and ranks in precept 
 with the higher religions. It belongs in ethical 
 affirmation to the common stem from which the 
 social idealism of religion is nourished. It defines 
 man's duty towards man in terms of fellowship 
 and love as well as of citizenship and justice : nor 
 can there be true citizenship without fellowship, nor 
 
 1 Substantially the same is the liefinition of Socialism put forward in 
 the " Manife?fo of British Socia'ists" (1893) by the Joint Committee re- 
 presenting the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, and 
 Hammersmith Socialist Society. 
 
 Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete 
 ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manu- 
 facture, the mines, and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever 
 to the wage system, to sweep away all distinction of class, and event- 
 ually to establish national and international communism on a sound 
 basis. 
 
 This statement, signed among others, by William Mi^rris H. M, 
 Hyndman, Hsrry Quelch, Bernard Shaw, Sidney Web'>, Sidney Olivier, 
 Walter Crane, and Belfort Bax, may be accepted as embodying the main 
 principle of th - political Socialist movement, not only in ths country, 
 but in all lands. The Manifesto from which it is taken also included » 
 definite repudiation of Aairchism,
 
 AXIOMS AND r-ROPHECY 225 
 
 justice without love. We each must seek to 
 harmonise our weal with the wellbeing of others; 
 our highest happiness must be in the happiness 
 of all ; our selfishness must be transmuted into 
 unselfishness. Not the nation only, but the whole 
 world must be our commonwealth. " Rightly 
 understood," says Thomas Kirkup, a well- 
 informed and careful writer, in his History of 
 Socialism, " Socialism will be seen to embody the 
 highest conceptions of life, ancient and modern, 
 and the highest aspirations of Christian ethics 
 interpreted and applied by the experiences of the 
 centuries." And, it should be said, not of 
 Christian ethics only, but of the enlightened 
 thought of the Eastern world. For of Socialism 
 also is the teaching of Ldotsze, the father of 
 Chinese Taoism, which declares that the seeker of 
 the Heavenly Way " strives not, but conquers by 
 love," " Blesses all and hurts none," and "com- 
 pensates evil by goodness"; and the Wisdom of 
 Buddha, which enjoins his followers to " Cultivate 
 towards the whole world above, below, around, 
 a heart love unstinted " and "Be ever suffusing 
 the whole world with thoughts of love, far-reach- 
 ing, grown great, beyond measure, void of anger 
 and ill-will." 
 
 Historically, indeed, Socialism is more closely 
 related to religious than to p>olitical propagandism. 
 It is from the prophets, apostles, and saints, the 
 religious mystics and heretics, rather than from 
 statesmen, ^economists and p)olitical reformers, 
 that the vSocialist movement derives the example
 
 226 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 and ideals that inspire its nobler enthusiasm and 
 hopes to-day. 
 
 Commonly we speak of Socialism as meaning- 
 the socialisation of wealth. It indeed means that, 
 but by wealth it implies not only land, capital and 
 the general means of production and distribution, 
 but all the means and opportunities of life and 
 happiness — knowledge, art, recreation, travel and 
 freedom of educating our powers and practising 
 our strength and skill. 
 
 Socialism means not only the socialisation of 
 wealth, but of our lives, our hearts — ourselves. 
 
 In Socialist politics, it is true, the question of 
 the distribution of material wealth, or the means 
 of material wealth, figures as the all-important 
 one. And indeed so' it is, and must be, until such 
 times as right conditions of wealth are established. 
 That is not because Socialismi looks upon material 
 wealth itself as the only or even the chief object of 
 life or m.eans of happiness. It is because, in the 
 first place, the possession of a certain degree of 
 material comfort is an essential condition, not only 
 of life and health, but of the opportunities of 
 leisure, art and general progress ; and because, in 
 the second place, the just distribution of material 
 wealth is the one indispensable condition, a test 
 condition in fact, of the just relationship existing 
 between man and m.an in society. It is in the 
 justice or equality of the relationship which it 
 seeks to constitute, rather than in the degree or 
 quantity of wealth itself, that the essential principle 
 of Socialism is found. Thus the great wrong of
 
 AXIOMS AND PROPHECY 227 
 
 existing- social conditions does not lie in the mere 
 circumstance that many are poor while many are 
 rich, but in the injustice and degradation, in the 
 assertion of superiority and inferiority, in the 
 denial of brotherhood, which these conditions 
 imply. Were all poor alike, the poverty mig-ht 
 not only be quite endurable, but great fellowship 
 and happiness might be possible with it. A com- 
 munity in which the standard of wealth for all was 
 not more than equivalent to that provided by an 
 ordinary artisan's or even a labourer's wage, but 
 in which there was complete co-operation and 
 fellowship, would enjoy an incomparably higher 
 degree of happiness and human dignity than 
 would a community in which the standard of life 
 for none was lower than that of our present-day 
 middle class, but in which some of its members 
 possessed vast excesses of wealth, and in which 
 there was class separation and tyranny, selfish 
 grabbing, and the absence of neighbourly kind- 
 ness and brotherhood. 
 
 Socialism, it will be seen, therefore, does not 
 mean mere working class rcxoll or acquisition, 
 though the p<:)Iitical Socialist movement is mainlv 
 a working chtss movement. Socialism naturally 
 appeals most directly to the working class, because 
 they are the people who suffer most under the 
 existing industrial system, and arc those whose 
 material conditions will be most beneficially affected 
 by the abolition of capitalism and the establish- 
 ment of (he So<:iaIist Commonwealth. Ilieir 
 emancipation is therefore the most necessary and
 
 228 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 urgent aim of the Socialist ag-itation. But the 
 thoug-ht of SociaHsm — the desire for, and the hope 
 and faith in the possibility of realising, a state of 
 social equality and co-operation — did not originate 
 in the working class. Nor does Socialist teaching 
 to-day find less ready acceptance or excite more 
 fervent desire among the working class than 
 among the more thoughtful and right-hearted men 
 and women of the " educated " and higher classes. 
 Fortunately there are to be found as many sincere 
 Socialists in the ranks of literature, art, science, 
 and perhaps even of the wealthy, as in the ranks 
 of the wage-earners. 
 
 AH classes, rich no less than poor, are the pro- 
 ducts or victims of their circumstances. It is true 
 that the rich oppress and rob the poor, but except in 
 so far as they do so consciously, knowing they are 
 doing wrong, they are no* more culpable in the 
 doing of that wrong than are the poor in enduring 
 it. In precisely the same sense that we speak, as 
 did St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, of the rich as 
 a class being " thieves," we may speak of the 
 poor as being unsuccessful or unlucky "thieves." 
 For the ix)or are not poor because they wish to 
 be poor, because they prefer to be poor rather than 
 rich They would if they could be in the lucky 
 position of landlords and capitalists who now 
 oppress and rob them. The trade unionist is not 
 a worker because he desires to be a worker rather 
 than an employer, but because he cannot help it. 
 He does not consider (and even if he did he could 
 never find out) whether his wage represents less
 
 AXIOMS AND PROPHECY 229 
 
 or more than he actually contributes to the wealth 
 of his employer or the nation. He simply takes 
 as much wages as he can get, even as his employer 
 takes as much profit as he can get. He would take 
 a hundred or a thousand pounds a week if he could 
 get it — get it, I mean, without intentionally or 
 knowingly doing any more wrong than his em- 
 ployer realises he does when he obtains a hundred 
 or a thousand pounds a week in profit. Poor and 
 rich, wage-worker and capitalist are in fact both 
 of one flesh, and " there is little difference be- 
 tween clay and clay," as Bossuet said when apply- 
 ing the precept as a rebuke to the rich. 
 
 Socialism, in truth, consists, when finally 
 resolved, not in getting at all, but in giving; not 
 in being served, but in serving; not in selfishness, 
 but in unselfishness ; not in the desire to gain a 
 place of bliss in this world for one's self and one's 
 family (that is the individualist and capitalist aim), 
 but in the desire to create an earthly paradise for 
 all. Its ultimate moral, as its original biolo- 
 gical justification, lies in the principle, human and 
 divine, that " as we give, so we live," and only in 
 so far as we are willing to lose life do we gain life. 
 
 Thus, once again, we see that fundamcnlally 
 Socialism is a question of right human relation- 
 ship and is essentially a spiritual principle. 
 
 Socialism, therefore, is religion — not Ihat part 
 of religion that relates to our beliefs concerning 
 God, immortality, and the mystery of the unseen 
 universe, but that part, the all-essential, practical 
 part of it, that concerns the right state of our
 
 230 THE MEANING OF SOCIALISM 
 
 present lives, the right state of our relation to our 
 fellows, the rig-ht moral health of our souls. 
 
 Yet it may be better simply to say with William 
 Morris that Socialism is fellowship, and that fellow- 
 ship is life, and the lack of fellowship is death. 
 Fellowship is heaven and the lack of fellowship is 
 hell. 
 
 "Therefore, I bid you not dwell in hell, but in 
 heaven, or while ye must, upon earth, which is a 
 part of heaven, and forsooth no foul part." 
 
 The National Labour Press, Limited 30, Blacktriars Street, Manchester 27792
 
 The Minstrelsy 
 of Peace 
 
 A Collection of Notable Verse in the English 
 tongue relating to Peace (and War) ranging 
 from the fifteenth century to the present day. 
 
 Edited with Notes and an Intro- 
 duction on Poetry and War and 
 Peace in English Poetry :; by 
 
 J. Bruce Glasier 
 
 THIS is the first anthology of Peace Poetry that has been 
 pubhshed. It contains about 200 selections of songs, shorter 
 poems, and extracts in praise of Peace, or in dispraise of War, and 
 includes satirical verse. With but a few exceptions all the leading 
 poe.s are represented — Gower, Chaucer, Lindsay, Spenser, Daniel, 
 Shakespeare, Campion, Milton, Wither, Marvel!, P^ipe, Cowper, 
 Blake, Burns, Coleridfje, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Longfellow, 
 Lowell, Tunayson, Whitman, Morris, and living writers. A 
 supplememary yart contains some typical examples of genuine 
 soldiers' and sailors' ballads. 
 
 In his introduction the Editor challen;,'es the commonly accepted 
 idea that J'oetry is a " War Jade " and brings into witness the 
 testimony of ancient and modern poetry. 
 
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