LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 EARL CLEMENT DAVIS 
 
 AND 
 
 ANNIE FOSTER DAVIS
 
 7
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 A SUMMARY AND INTERPRETATION OF 
 SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES
 
 / 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN SPARGO 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE BITTER CRY OF THE CHILDREN," 
 
 " THE SOCIALISTS, WHO THEY ARE AND 
 
 WHAT THEY STAND FOR," ETC. 
 
 fforfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1909 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 SG11 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1906, 
 BT THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1906, 
 Reprinted November, 1906 ; January, 1909. 
 
 XortoooD }3rrsB 
 
 J. 8. Cuihlng & Co. Berwick ft Smith Co. 
 Norwood, M., U.S.A.
 
 GEOEGE D. HEEEON 
 
 " With two forms and with two figures, 
 but with one sovl, thou and I" 
 
 RUMI
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Is an apology needed for adding to the number 
 of books devoted to the exposition of modern So- 
 cialism? I hardly think so. If the reader will 
 carefully examine the bibliographies, he will find 
 that, with the exception of those books issued 
 directly through the established agencies of the 
 Socialist propaganda, there is hardly a single book 
 devoted to the exposition of Socialism, wholly affirma- 
 tive in tone and written frankly from the standpoint 
 of a convinced Socialist. Hence, almost all the 
 books on the subject issued through the ordinary 
 channels are apologetic and lacking in conviction. 
 Not only so, but they are generally unsatisfactory 
 to the Socialist for the additional reason that their 
 authors have failed to understand the spiritual, 
 dynamic forces of the modern Socialist movement. 
 
 This little volume is wholly unpretentious in its 
 aim. Its purpose is to state in popular language 
 what Socialism really means and what it does not 
 mean. It is intended to be an introduction merely 
 to a great and profoundly impressive subject of 
 growing international interest and importance. Dur- 
 ing many years spent in the propaganda of Socialism 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 in two continents, the need of such a volume has 
 been deeply impressed upon my mind; hence this 
 attempt to meet the necessity. 
 
 During twelve years spent in the earnest propa- 
 ganda of Socialism by voice and pen, particularly 
 as a lecturer to all classes of audiences in various 
 lands, I have had exceptional opportunities for know- 
 ing the nature of the difficulties which most serious- 
 minded, intelligent men and women encounter when 
 they begin to consider Socialism. I have felt it 
 incumbent upon me to face these difficulties with 
 the utmost frankness and sincerity, and I have 
 written this little volume in that spirit. I have 
 tried to be as frank with the reader as I am with 
 my own soul, realizing that 
 
 " Men in earnest have no time to waste 
 Patching fig leaves for the naked truth." 
 
 The method of treating the subject, somewhat 
 different from the methods commonly employed by 
 Socialist writers, is a result of that same fund of 
 experience. I have adopted the method of presenta- 
 tion which I have found to be most effective in my 
 work as a lecturer. If the critical reader finds 
 portions of the book somewhat discursive, owing to 
 the weaving-in of much biographical matter relating 
 to Owen, Marx, and others, I venture to hope that 
 the gain in human interest will atone for an other- 
 wise inexcusable failing. Be that how it may, I
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 purposely chose to write in the spirit of frank and 
 earnest conversation, as friend to friend, rather than 
 in the spirit and language of academic thought. 
 
 While in the main I believe that this statement 
 of their principles will be acceptable to the vast 
 majority of Socialists, in this country and abroad, 
 it is only fair that I should warn the reader against 
 holding the Socialist movement in general, and the 
 Socialist party in particular, responsible for my 
 personal views. Throughout the text I have tried 
 to preserve a clear distinction between those views 
 which are universally accepted by Socialists and 
 those which are largely personal. In the chapter 
 entitled Outlines of the Socialist State, I have tried 
 to lay down certain fundamental principles which, 
 it seems to me, must characterize the Socialist regime 
 and which are involved in modern Socialism. I 
 believe that, in the main, these principles will be 
 accepted by the vast majority of my fellow-Socialists 
 throughout the world, and that they will welcome 
 most of all the effort made to show that the Socialist 
 regime involves no rule by a great bureaucracy, no 
 crushing out of individual liberties, none of that 
 repression of genius which Herbert Spencer and 
 others, down to the crude romancer of The Scarlet 
 Empire, have imagined and decried. At the same 
 time, I must accept personal responsibility for the 
 attempt made in this chapter to state Socialism con- 
 structively without Utopian romanticism.
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 If this little book leads to a juster view of Social- 
 ism and the Socialist movement ; if it succeeds in 
 inducing men and women to study the subject with 
 calm reason; if, finally, it results in enlightening 
 the opponents of Socialism so that they abandon 
 their quixotic tasks of tilting at windmills, attacking 
 a Socialism which has no existence outside of their 
 imaginations, to devote their efforts to serious and 
 candid discussion of the issues involved, I shall be 
 amply repaid for the labor of writing it. 
 
 JOHN SPARGO. 
 PBOSPBCT HOUSE, YONKBHS, N.Y., 
 May, 1906.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Changed attitude of the public mind toward Socialism 
 Growth of the movement responsible for the change 
 Unanimity of friends and foes concerning the future 
 triumph of Socialism Herbert Spencer's belief and its 
 awful pessimism Study of Socialism a civic duty No- 
 bility of the word "Socialism" Its first use Confu- 
 sion arising from its indiscriminate use "Socialism" 
 and "Communism" in the Communist Manifesto Un- 
 fair tactics of opponents Engels on the significance of 
 the word in 1847 Its present significance . . , 1-13 
 
 CHAPTER H 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 
 
 Utopian Socialism and Robert Owen Estimates of Owen by 
 Liebknecht and Engels His early life Becomes a 
 manufacturer The industrial revolution in England 
 Misery caused by the introduction of machinery " Lud- 
 dite" riots against machinery Early revolts against 
 machinery Marx's views Owen as manufacturer 
 As social reformer The New Lanark experiment He 
 becomes a Socialist Failure of his communistic colonies 
 Owen compared with Saint-Simon and Fourier . 14-46 
 zi
 
 XU CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IH 
 THB "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Communist Manifesto Conditions in 1848 when it was 
 written Communism of the working class Weitling 
 and Cabet Marx and Engels The Manifesto as the 
 first international declaration of a working-class move- 
 ment Literary merit of the Manifesto Its fundamental 
 proposition stated by Engels Socialism becomes a sci- 
 ence The authorship of the Manifesto Engels' testi- 
 mony 46-63 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OP HISTORY 
 
 Socialism a theory of social evolution Not economic fatalism 
 
 Leibnitz and the savage Ideas and progress Value 
 of the materialistic conception of history Foreshadow- 
 ings of the theory What is meant by the term " mate- 
 rialistic conception" Results of overemphasis : Engels 1 
 confession Limits of the theory The doctrine of free 
 will Darwin and Marx Application of the theory, 
 specific and general Columbus and the discovery of 
 America General view of historical progress Antiquity 
 of communism Cooperation and competition Slavery 
 
 Serfdom Class struggles The rise of capitalism and 
 
 the wage-labor system 64-96 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 CAPITALISM AND THE LAW OF CONCENTRATION 
 
 A new form of class division arises in the first stage of capital- 
 ism The second stage of capitalism begins with the 
 great mechanical inventions The development of for- 
 eign and colonial trade Theoretic individualism and 
 practical collectivism The law of capitalist concentra- 
 tion formulated by Marx Competition, monopoly,
 
 CONTENTS Till 
 
 MM 
 
 socialization Trustification, interindustrial and inter- 
 national Criticisms of the Marxian theory The small 
 producers and traders Concentration in agriculture 
 Failure of the bonanza farms Other modes of concen- 
 tration Farm ownership and farm mortgages The 
 factory and the farm The concentration of wealth 
 European statistics Dr. Spahr's estimate of the distribu- 
 tion of wealth in the United States General summary 97-122 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 
 
 Opposition to the doctrine Misrepresentations by the oppo- 
 nents of Socialism Socialists not the creators of the 
 class struggle Antiquity of class struggles The theory 
 as stated in the Communist Manifesto Fundamental 
 propositions in the statement Slavery the first system 
 of class division in history Class divisions in feudalism 
 Rise of the capitalist class and its triumph Main 
 class divisions of capitalist society Inherent antagonism 
 of interests between employer and employee Common- 
 ality of general interests and antagonism of special class 
 interests Individuals versus classes Vague and vacil- 
 lating interests of the middle class Class interests as 
 they affect thoughts, opinions, and beliefs Varying 
 ethical standards of economic classes Denials of class 
 divisions in America to-day Our " un titled nobility " 
 Class divisions real though not legally established They 
 tend to become fixed and hereditary Consciousness of 
 class divisions new in America Transition from class 
 to class becoming increasingly difficult No hatred of 
 individuals involved in the theory Socialism versus 
 Anarchism The labor struggle in the United States 
 Organized labor and organized capital Not due to mis- 
 understandings, but to antagonism of interests The 
 reason for trades unionism Trades union methods 
 Limitations of trades union powers Government and the 
 workers The call for the political organization of the
 
 XIV CONTENTS 
 
 FAOl 
 
 workers Anti-labor laws Capitalistic use of police 
 and military Judicial injunctions "Taff Vale law" 
 Political rising of the workers in England Triumph 
 of the workers will end class rule and liberate all man- 
 kind .......... 123-160 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 KARL MARX AND THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 First comprehensive statement of the materialistic conception 
 of history by Marx La Misere de la Philosophic, a 
 critique of Proudhon Marx's first essay in economic 
 science His frank recognition of the Kicardians Marx 
 in England becomes familiar with the Kicardians from 
 whom he is accused of " pillaging " his ideas Criticisms 
 of Menger and others Marx expelled from Germany 
 and France His removal to London His struggle with 
 poverty Domestic relations Capital an English work 
 in all essentials The Kicardians and their precursors 
 Superior method and insight of Marx The sociological 
 viewpoint in economics "Scientific Socialism," criti- 
 cisms of the term Its justification .... 161-181 
 
 CHAPTER 
 OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 The sociological principle pervades all the work of Marx 
 Commodities defined Use values and economic values 
 Exchange of commodities through the medium of 
 money The labor theory of value in its crude form 
 Some notable statements by the classic economists 
 Marx and Benjamin Franklin Scientific development of 
 the labor theory of value by Marx Price and value 
 Money as a price-expression and as a commodity The 
 theory of supply and demand as determinants of value 
 The "Austrian" theory of final utility as the determi- 
 nant of value English origin of the theory Its identity
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 PACK 
 
 with the supply and demand theory Labor-power as a 
 commodity Wages, its price, determined as the prices 
 of all other commodities are Wherein labor-power 
 differs from all other commodities The law of surplus 
 value Why Marx used the term "Surplus Value" 
 The theory stated The division of surplus value 
 Other theories of the source of capitalist income 
 Wherein they fail to solve the problem Fundamental 
 importance of the Marxian doctrine to the Socialist move- 
 ment 182-210 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 OUTLDTES OP THE SOCIALIST STATE 
 
 Detailed specifications of the Socialist regime impossible 
 Principles which must characterize it Man's egoism 
 and sociability Duality of motives and social progress 
 
 The idea of the Socialist state as a huge bureaucracy 
 
 Mr. Anstey's picture and Herbert Spencer's fear 
 Justification of this view in the propaganda of Socialist 
 Utopia-builders The Socialist ideal of individual liberty 
 Absolute individual liberty an impossibility Politi- 
 cally, the organization of the Socialist regime must be 
 democratic Automatic democracy unattainable The 
 need of eternal vigilance The rights of the individual 
 and of society briefly stated Private property and in- 
 dustry not incompatible with modern Socialism The 
 economic structure of Socialism Efficiency the test for 
 private or collective industry The application of demo- 
 cratic principles to industry The right to labor guaran- 
 teed by society, and the duty to labor enforced by 
 society Free choice of labor Methods of remunera- 
 tion Who will do the dirty work? The "abolition 
 of wages" The inheritance of property in the Socialist 
 regime The security of society against the improvidence 
 of its members The administration of justice Educa- 
 tion completely free The question of religious educa- 
 tion The state as protector of the rights of the child
 
 XVI CONTENTS 
 
 MM 
 
 No hostility to religion, but strict neutrality A maxi- 
 mum of personal liberty with a minimum of restraint the 
 Socialist ideal 211-239 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 National Platform of the Socialist party of America . 241-250 
 INDEX . 251-257
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 SUMMARY AND INTERPRETATION OP 
 SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 I 
 
 TIME was, and not so very long ago, when the 
 kindest conception of Socialism held by the aver- 
 age man was that of the once familiar and cynical 
 doggerel : 
 
 " What is a Socialist ? One who is willing 
 To give up his penny and pocket your shilling." * 
 
 There was another view, more brutally unkind, that 
 of the blood-curdling cartoon representing the poor 
 Socialist as a bomb-laden assassin. Both these views 
 are now, happily, well-nigh extinct. Great as the 
 ignorance of people concerning Socialism still is, 
 we have progressed so far that neither of these puerile 
 misrepresentations are commonly met with. It is 
 true that in the newspapers Socialists are sometimes 
 classed with Anarchists, especially hi times of 
 public excitement against the Anarchists, and that 
 
 1 By Ebenozer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer." 
 B 1
 
 2 SOCIALISM 
 
 we are not infrequently asked about our supposed 
 intentions of having a great general "dividing-up 
 day" for the equal distribution of all the wealth of 
 the nation. Still, it is the exception rather than 
 the rule to encounter these criticisms, and they do 
 not represent the attitude of the mass of people 
 toward the Socialist movement. 
 
 The reason for the changed attitude of the public 
 toward the Socialist movement and the Socialist 
 ideal, will, I think, be found in the growth of the 
 Socialist movement itself. There are many who 
 would change the order of this proposition and say 
 that the growth of the Socialist movement is a result 
 of the changed attitude of the public mind toward 
 it. In a sense, both views are right. Obviously, if 
 the public mind had not revised its judgments some- 
 what, we should not have attained our present strength 
 and development; but it is equally obvious that if 
 we had not grown, if we had still remained the small 
 and feeble body we once were, the public mind would 
 not have revised its judgments much, if at all. We 
 should still have been regarded as advocates of the 
 
 " Equal division of unequal earnings," 
 
 ready to enforce our sordidly selfish demands by the 
 assassin's cowardly weapons. It is easy to misrepre- 
 sent and to vilify a small body of men and women 
 when they possess no powerful influence.
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 But it is otherwise when that small body has grown 
 into a great body with far-reaching influence. So 
 long as the Socialist movement in America consisted 
 of a few poor workingmen in two or three of the largest 
 cities, most of them foreigners, it was very easy for 
 the average man to accept the views expressed in the 
 ferocious, blood-curdling cartoon and the sneering 
 distich of the poet's satirical fancy. But when the 
 movement grew, and, instead of a few helpless for- 
 eigners, embraced nearly half a million voters, in 
 all parts of the United States, it became a different 
 matter. It is manifestly impossible for a great world- 
 wide movement, numbering its adherents by the 
 million, and having for its advocates many of the 
 foremost thinkers, artists, and poets of the world, 
 to be based upon either sordid selfishness or mur- 
 derous hate. If that were true, if it were possible 
 for such a thing to be true, the most gloomy forbod- 
 ings of the pessimist would fall far short of the real 
 measure of Humanity's impending doom. 
 
 Still, the word "Socialism" is spoken by many 
 with the pallid lips of fear, the scowl of hate, or the 
 amused shrug of contempt; while in the same land, 
 people of the same race, facing the same problems 
 and perils, speak it with gladdened voices and hope- 
 lit eyes. Many a mother crooning over her babe 
 prays that it may be saved from the Socialism to 
 which another, with equal mother-love, looks as her
 
 4 SOCIALISM 
 
 child's heritage and hope. And with scholars and 
 statesmen it is much the same. With wonderful 
 unanimity, agreeing that, in the words of Herbert 
 Spencer, "Socialism will come inevitably in spite 
 of all opposition," they yet differ quite as much in 
 their estimates of its character and probable effects 
 upon the race as the most unlearned. One welcomes 
 and another fears ; one envies the unborn generations, 
 another pities. To one the coming of Socialism 
 means the coming of Human Brotherhood, the long, 
 long quest of Humanity's choicest spirits; while to 
 another it means the enslavement of the world through 
 fear. 
 
 Many years ago Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote an 
 article on The Coming Slavery, the whole tone of 
 which conveyed the impression that the great thinker 
 saw what he thought to be signs of the inevitable 
 triumph of Socialism. All over the world Socialists 
 were cheered by this admission from their implacable 
 enemy. In this connection the following incident 
 is worth noticing: In October, 1905, a well-known 
 Frenchman, M. G. Davenay, visited Mr. Spencer 
 and had a long conversation with him on several 
 subjects, among them, Socialism. A few days after 
 his return, he received a letter on the subject from 
 Mr. Spencer, written in French, which was published 
 hi the Paris Figaro a few days after Mr. Spencer's 
 death, in December, 1905, two months or thereabouts
 
 INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 from the time of the interview which called it forth. 1 
 After some brief reference to his health, Mr. Spencer 
 wrote: "The opinions I have delivered here before 
 you, and which you have the liberty to publish, are 
 briefly these: (1) Socialism will triumph inevitably, 
 in spite of all opposition; (2) its establishment will 
 be the greatest disaster which the world has ever 
 known; (3) sooner or later, it will be brought to an 
 end by a military despotism." 
 
 Anything more awful than this black pessimism 
 which clouded the life of the great thinker, it would 
 be difficult to imagine. After living his long life 
 of splendid service in the interest of progress, and 
 studying as few men have ever done the history of 
 the race, he went down to his grave fully believing 
 that the world was doomed to inevitable disaster. 
 How different from the confidence of the poet, 2 
 foretelling 
 
 "A wonderful day a-coming when all shall be better than 
 well." 
 
 The last words of the great French Utopist, Saint- 
 Simon, were, "The future is ours!" And thousands 
 of times his words have been reechoed by those 
 who, believing equally with Herbert Spencer that 
 Socialism must come, see in the prospect only the 
 
 1 I quote the English translation from the London Clarion, Decem- 
 ber 18, 1905. 
 
 William Morris.
 
 6 SOCIALISM 
 
 fulfillment of the age-long dream of Human Brother- 
 hood. Men as profound as Spencer, and as sincere, 
 rejoice at the very thing which blanched his cheeks 
 and filled his heart with fear. 
 
 There is, then, a widespread conviction that So- 
 cialism will come and, in coming, vitally affect for 
 good or ill every life. Millions of earnest men and 
 women have enlisted themselves beneath its ban- 
 ner in various lands, and their number is con- 
 stantly growing. In this country, as hi Europe, 
 the growth of Socialism is one of the most evident 
 facts of the age, and its study is therefore most im- 
 portant. What does it mean, and what does it 
 promise or threaten, are questions which civic 
 duty prompts. The day is not far distant when 
 ignorance of Socialism will be regarded as a dis- 
 grace, and neglect of it a civic wrong. For no man 
 can faithfully discharge the responsibilities of his 
 citizenship until he is able to give an answer to these 
 questions. 
 
 II 
 
 The word "Socialism" is admittedly one of the 
 noblest and most inspiring words ever born of human 
 speech. Whatever may be thought of the prin- 
 ciples it represents, or of the political parties which 
 contend for it, no one can dispute the beauty and 
 moral grandeur of the word itself. Derived from
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 the Latin word Socius, meaning a comrade, it is, 
 like the word "mother," for instance, one of those 
 great universal speech symbols which find their way 
 into every language. Signifying as it does faith in 
 the comradeship of man as the proper basis of social 
 life, prefiguring a social state in which there shall be 
 no strife of man against man, or nation against nation, 
 it is a verbal expression of man's loftiest aspirations 
 crystallized into a single word. The old Hebrew 
 Prophet's dream of a word-righteousness that shall 
 give peace, when nations "shall beat then- swords into 
 plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks," l 
 and the Angel-song of Peace and Goodwill in the leg- 
 ends of the Nativity, mean no more. Plato, spiritual 
 son of Socrates who for truth's sake drained the hem- 
 lock cup to its dregs, dreamed of such social peace 
 and unity, and the line of those whose eyes have 
 seen the same glorious vision of a love-welded world 
 has never been broken, More and Campanella, 
 Saint-Simon and Owen, Marx and Engels, Morris 
 and Bellamy, and the end of the prophetic line is 
 not yet. 
 
 But if the dream, the hope itself, is old, the word 
 which expresses the hope is new. It is hard to realize 
 that the word which means so much to countless 
 millions of human beings, in every civilized country 
 of the world, is no older than some of those whose 
 
 1 Isaiah ii. 4.
 
 8 SOCIALISM 
 
 lips speak it with reverence and hope. Because it 
 will help us to a clearer understanding of modern 
 Socialism, and because too it is little known, notwith- 
 standing its intensely interesting character, let us 
 linger awhile over that page of history which re- 
 cords the origin of this noble word. 
 
 Some years ago, anxious to settle, if possible, the 
 vexed question of the origin and first use of the word 
 " Socialism " I devoted a good deal of time to an inves- 
 tigation of the subject, spending much of it in a care- 
 ful survey of all the early nineteenth-century radical 
 literature. I early found that the generally ac- 
 cepted account of its introduction, by the French 
 writer, L. Reybaud, hi 1840, was wrong. Indeed, 
 when once started on the investigation, it seemed 
 rather surprising that the account should have been 
 accepted, practically without challenge, for so long. 
 Finally I concluded that an anonymous writer in 
 an English paper was the first to use the word, the 
 date being August 24, 1835. 1 Since that time an 
 investigation of a commendably thorough nature 
 has been made by three students of the University 
 of Wisconsin, 2 with the result that they have been 
 unable to find any earlier use of the word. It is 
 somewhat disappointing that after thus tracing 
 
 1 See Socialism and Social Democracy, by the present writer. 
 The Comrade, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1903. 
 
 * In The International Socialist Review, Vol. VI, No. 1, July, 1905
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 the word back to what may well be its first appear- 
 ance in print, it should be impossible to identify its 
 creator. 
 
 The letter in which the term is first used is signed 
 "A Socialist," and it is quite evident that the writer 
 uses it as a synonym for the commonly used term 
 "Owenite," by which the disciples of Robert Owen 
 were known. I think it is most probable that Owen 
 himself had used the word, and, to some extent, 
 made it popular; and that the writer had heard 
 "Our Dear Social Father," as Owen was called, use 
 it, either in some of his speeches or in conversation. 
 At any rate, one of Owen's associates, now dead, told 
 me some years ago that Owen often specifically 
 claimed to have used the word at least ten years 
 before it was adopted by any other writer. 
 
 The word gradually became more familiar in 
 England. Throughout the years 1835-1836, in the 
 pages of Owen's paper, The New Moral World, there 
 are many instances of the word occurring. The 
 French writer, Reybaud, in his Reformateurs Mo- 
 demes, published in 1840, made the term equally 
 familiar to the reading public of Continental Europe. 
 By him it was used to designate not merely Owen 
 and his followers, but all social reformers and vision- 
 aries, Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, 
 and others. By an easy transition, it soon came 
 into general use as designating all altruistic visions,
 
 10 SOCIALISM 
 
 theories, and experiments, from the Republic of Plato 
 onward through the centuries. 
 
 In this way much confusion arose. The word be- 
 came too indefinite and vague to be distinctive. It 
 was applied indiscriminately to persons of widely 
 differing, and often conflicting, views. Every one 
 who complained of social inequalities, every dreamer 
 of social Utopias, was called a Socialist. The en- 
 thusiastic Christian, pleading for a return to the faith 
 and practices of primitive Christianity, and the 
 aggressive Atheist, proclaiming religion to be the 
 bulwark of the world's wrongs; the State-wor- 
 shipper, who would extol Law, and spread the net 
 of government over the whole of life, and the icono- 
 clastic Anarchist, who would destroy all forms of 
 social authority, have all alike been dubbed Socialists, 
 by their friends no less than by their opponents. 
 
 The confusion thus introduced has had the effect 
 of seriously complicating the study of Socialism from 
 the historical point of view. Thus the Socialists of 
 the present day, who do not advocate Communism, 
 have always regarded as a classic presentation of 
 their views, the famous pamphlet by Karl Marx and 
 Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto. They 
 have circulated it by millions of copies hi practi- 
 cally all the languages of the civilized world. Yet 
 throughout it speaks of "Socialists" with ill-con- 
 cealed disdain, and always hi favor of Communism
 
 INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 and the Communist Party. The reason for this is 
 clearly explained by Engels himself in the preface 
 written by him for the English edition, but that has 
 not sufficed to prevent misconception in many cases; 
 nor has it prevented many an unscrupulous opponent 
 of Socialism from quoting the Communist Manifesto 
 of Marx and Engels against the Socialists of the 
 Marx-Engels school. 1 In like manner, the utterances 
 and ideas of many of those who formerly called them- 
 selves Socialists have been quoted against the mod- 
 ern Socialists, notwithstanding the fact that it was 
 precisely on account of their desire to repudiate all 
 connection with, and responsibility for, such ideas 
 that the founders of the modern Socialist movement 
 took the name Communists. 
 
 Nothing could well be clearer than the language in 
 which Engels explains why the name Communist was 
 chosen, and the name Socialist discarded. He says : 2 
 "Yet, when it (the Manifesto) was written, we could 
 not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Social- 
 ists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the 
 adherents of the various Utopian systems : Owenites 
 
 1 As an instance of this I note the following recent example : 
 "No severer critic of Socialists ever lived than Karl Marx. No one 
 more bitterly attacked them and their policy toward the trade 
 unions, than he. . . . And yet Socialists regard him as their patron 
 saint. " Mr. Samuel Gompers, in The American Federationist, August, 
 1905. 
 
 3 Preface to the Communist Manifesto, by F. Engels, Kerr edition, 
 page 7.
 
 12 SOCIALISM 
 
 in England, Fourierists in France, both of these 
 already reduced to the position of mere sects, and 
 gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most 
 multifarious social quacks, who, by all manner of tink- 
 ering, professed to redress, without any danger to 
 capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances, in 
 both cases, men outside of the working-class move- 
 ment, and looking rather to the 'educated' classes 
 for support. Whatever portion of the working class 
 had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere 
 political revolutions, and had proclaimed the neces- 
 sity of a total social change, that portion, then, 
 called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough- 
 hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, 
 it touched the cardinal point and was powerful 
 enough among the working class to produce the 
 Utopian Communism in France of Cabet, and in 
 Germany of Weitling. Thus Socialism was, in 
 1847, a middle-class movement; Communism, a 
 working-class movement. Socialism was, on the 
 Continent at least, 'respectable'; Communism was 
 the very opposite. And as our notion, from the 
 very beginning, was that the 'emancipation of the 
 working class must be the act of the working class 
 itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the 
 names we must take. Moreover, we have ever since 
 been far from repudiating it." 
 There is still, unfortunately, much misuse of the
 
 INTEODUCTION 13 
 
 word "Socialist," even by accredited Socialist writers. 
 For instance, writers like Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, and 
 others, are constantly referred to as Socialists, when, 
 as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the sort. 
 Still, the word is now pretty generally understood as 
 defined by the Socialists; not the "Socialists" of 
 sixty years ago, who were mostly Communists, but 
 of the present-day Socialists, whose principles find 
 classic expression hi the Communist Manifesto, 
 and to the attainment of which their political pro- 
 grammes are directed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 
 
 I 
 
 IN order that we may distinguish between modern 
 or scientific Socialism and the Socialism of the 
 Utopians, which the Communist Manifesto so se- 
 verely criticised, it may perhaps be well to consider 
 briefly Utopian Socialism at its best and nearest 
 approach to the modern movement. Thus we shall 
 get a clear vision of the point of departure which 
 marked the rise of the later scientific movement, 
 and, incidentally, of the good Robert Owen, whom 
 Liebknecht has called, " By far the most embracing, 
 penetrating, and practical of all the harbingers of 
 scientific Socialism." 
 
 Friedrich Engels, a man not given to praising 
 overmuch, has spoken of Owen with an enthusi- 
 asm which he rarely showed in his descriptions of 
 men. He calls him, "A man of almost sublime and 
 childlike simplicity of character," and declares, 
 "Every social movement, every real advance in 
 
 14
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 15 
 
 England on behalf of the workers, links itself on 
 to the name of Robert Owen." 1 And even this 
 high praise from the part-author of the Communist 
 Manifesto, who for so many years was called the 
 "Nestor of the Socialist Movement," falls short, 
 because it does not recognize the enormous influ- 
 ence of the man in the United States in the forma- 
 tive period of its history. 
 
 Robert Owen was born of humble parentage, in 
 a little town in North Wales, on the fourteenth day 
 of May, 1771. Perhaps it is well that he was born 
 in such humble circumstances, and that his parents 
 could not afford to gratify to the full the desire of 
 his boyhood for education. The lad thirsted for 
 knowledge, and wanted above all things a university 
 education. Poverty kills its thousands, destroys 
 hope, ambition, and courage in millions more. But 
 sometimes it fails, and the soul it would have killed 
 emerges from the struggle triumphant and strong. 
 Such a soul had this poor Welsh country lad. His 
 scanty schooling ended, and he set out to fight the 
 battle of life for himself in London, when he was 
 but ten years of age. When he was little more 
 than seven years of age, so he tells us in his Auto- 
 biography, he had familiarized himself with Milton's 
 Paradise Lost. By the tune he was ten years of 
 
 1 Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, by F. Engels, London, 1892, 
 pages 20-25.
 
 16 SOCIALISM 
 
 age, like Olive Schreiner's boy Waldo in The Story of 
 an African Farm, he had grappled with the ages-old 
 problem of life, and become a skeptic ! It is doubt- 
 ful, however, if his "skepticism" really consisted of 
 more than the consciousness that there were apparent 
 contradictions in the Bible, a discovery which many 
 a precocious lad has made at quite as early an age. 
 Still, the incident is worthy of note as indicating 
 the boy's inquiring spirit. 
 
 In London, the young lad was apprenticed to 
 a draper named McGuffeg, who seems to have been 
 a rather superior type of man. From a small peddling 
 business he had built up one of the largest and wealth- 
 iest establishments in that part of London, catering 
 to the wealthy and the titled nobility. Above all, 
 McGuffeg was a man of books, and in his well-stocked 
 library young Owen could read several hours each 
 day, and thus make up in a measure for his early 
 lack of educational opportunities. During the three 
 years of his apprenticeship he read prodigiously, and 
 laid the foundations of that literary culture which 
 characterized his whole life and added tremendously 
 to his power. 
 
 This is not in any sense of the word a biographical 
 sketch of Robert Owen. 1 If it were, the story of 
 the rise of this poor, strange, strong lad, from poverty 
 
 1 For a good sketch of Robert Owen's life, see the Biography, by 
 Lloyd Jones, in The Social Science Series, London, 1890.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 17 
 
 to the very pinnacle of commercial power and fame, 
 as one of the leading manufacturers of his day, 
 would lead through pathways of romance as wonderful 
 as any in our biographical literature. We are con- 
 cerned, however, only with his career as a social 
 reformer and the forces which molded it. And that, 
 too, has its romantic side. 
 
 II 
 
 The closing years of the eighteenth century marked 
 the beginning of a great and far-reaching industrial 
 revolution. The introduction of new mechanical 
 inventions enormously increased the productive 
 powers of England. In 1770 Hargreaves patented 
 his "spinning jenny," and in the following year 
 Arkwright invented his "water frame," a patent 
 spinning machine which derived its name from the 
 fact that it was worked by water power. Later, 
 in 1779, Crompton invented the "mule," which 
 was really a combination of the principles of both 
 machines. This was a long step forward, and greatly 
 facilitated the spinning of the raw material into 
 yarn. The invention was, in fact, a revolution in 
 itself. Like so many other great inventors, Cromp- 
 ton died in poverty. 
 
 Even now, however, the actual weaving of the spun 
 yarn had to be done by hand. Not until 1785, when 
 Dr. Cartwright, a parson, invented a "power-loom,"
 
 18 SOCIALISM 
 
 was it deemed possible to weave by machinery. 
 Cartwright's invention, coming in the same year as 
 the general introduction of Watt's steam engine in 
 the cotton industry, made the industrial revolution. 
 Had the revolution come slowly, had the inventors 
 of the new industrial processes been able to accom- 
 plish that, it is most probable that much of the misery 
 of the period would have been avoided. As it was, 
 terrible poverty and hardship attended the birth of 
 the new industrial order. Owing to the expense of 
 introducing the machines, and the impossibility of 
 competing with them by the old methods of produc- 
 tion, the small manufacturers themselves were forced 
 to the wall, and their misery, forcing them to become 
 wage- workers in competition with other already 
 far too numerous wage-workers, added greatly to 
 the woe of the time. William Morris's fine lines, writ- 
 ten a hundred years later, express vividly what many 
 a manufacturer must have felt at that time : 
 
 " Fast and faster our iron master, 
 The thing we made, forever drives." 
 
 But perhaps the worst of all the results of the 
 new regime was the destruction of the personal re- 
 lations which had hitherto existed between the em- 
 ployers and then* employees. No attention was 
 paid to the interests of the latter. The personal re- 
 lation was forever gone, and only a hard, cold cash 
 nexus remained. Wages went down at an alarm-
 
 EGBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 19 
 
 ing rate, as might be expected; the housing condi- 
 tions became simply inhuman. Now it was discov- 
 ered that a child at one of the new looms could do 
 more than a dozen men had done under the old con- 
 ditions, and a tremendous demand for child workers 
 was the result. At first, as H. de B. Gibbins 1 tells 
 us, there was a strong repugnance on the part of 
 parents to sending their children into the factories. 
 It was, in fact, considered a disgrace to do so. The 
 term "factory girl" was an insulting epithet, and it 
 was impossible for a girl who had been employed hi a 
 factory to obtain other employment. She could not 
 look forward to marriage with any but the very low- 
 est of men, so degrading was factory employment con- 
 sidered to be. But the manufacturers had to get 
 children somehow, and they got them. They got 
 them from the workhouses. Pretending that they 
 were going to apprentice them to a trade, they 
 communicated with the overseers of the poor, who 
 arranged a day for the inspection of the children to 
 suit the convenience of the manufacturer. Those 
 chosen were then conveyed to their destination, 
 packed hi wagons or canal boats, and from that 
 moment were doomed to the most awful form of 
 slavery. 
 "Sometimes regular traffickers would take the 
 
 1 The Industrial History of England, by H. de B. Gibbins, London, 
 Methuen and Co.
 
 20 SOCIALISM 
 
 place of the manufacturer," says Gibbins, 1 "and 
 transfer a number of children to a factory dis- 
 trict, and there keep them, generally in some dark 
 cellar, till they could hand them over to a mill 
 owner in want of hands, who would come and ex- 
 amine their height, strength, and bodily capacities, 
 exactly as did the slave owners hi the American 
 markets. After that the children were simply at 
 the mercy of their owners, nominally as apprentices, 
 but in reality as mere slaves, who got no wages, 
 and whom it was not worth while even to feed and 
 clothe properly, because they were so cheap, and 
 their places could be so easily supplied. It was often 
 arranged by the parish authorities, in order to get 
 rid of imbeciles, that one idiot should be taken by 
 the mill owner with every twenty sane children. 
 The fate of these unhappy idiots was even worse 
 than that of the others. The secret of their final 
 end has never been disclosed, but we can form some 
 idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of 
 the other victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. 
 The hours of their labor were only limited by ex- 
 haustion, after many modes of torture had been 
 unavailingly applied to force continued work. Chil- 
 dren were often worked sixteen hours a day, by day 
 and by night." 
 Terrible as this summary is, it does not equal in 
 
 1 Industrial History of England, page 179.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 21 
 
 horror the account given by "Alfred," * in his His- 
 tory of the Factory System. " In stench, in heated 
 rooms, amid the constant whirl of a thousand wheels, 
 little fingers and little feet were kept in ceaseless 
 action, forced into unnatural activity by blows from 
 the heavy hands and feet of the merciless overlooker, 
 and the infliction of bodily pain by instruments of 
 punishment invented by the sharpened ingenuity 
 of insatiable selfishness." The children were fed 
 upon the cheapest and coarsest food, often the same 
 as that served to their masters' pigs. They slept by 
 turns, and in relays, hi filthy beds which were never 
 cool. There was often no discrimination between 
 the sexes, and disease, misery, and vice flourished. 
 Some of these miserable creatures would try to run 
 away, and to prevent them, those suspected had 
 irons riveted on their ankles, with long links reaching 
 up to the hips, and were compelled to sleep and work 
 with them on, young women and girls, as well as 
 boys, suffering this brutal treatment. The number 
 of deaths was so great that they were buried secretly 
 at night, lest an outcry should be raised; and many 
 committed suicide. 
 
 These statements are so appalling that, as Mr. 
 R. W. Cooke-Taylor says, 2 they would be "absolutely 
 
 1 This anonymous historian is now known to have been Mr. 
 Samuel Kydd, barrister-at-law (vide Cooke-Taylor). 
 
 a The Factory System and the Factory Act*, by R. W. Cooke- 
 Taylor, London, 1894.
 
 22 SOCIALISM 
 
 incredible were they not fully borne out by evidence 
 from other sources." It is not contended, of course, 
 that the conditions in all factories were as bad as 
 those described. But it must be said emphatically 
 that there were worse horrors than any here quoted, 
 and equally emphatically that the very best fac- 
 tories were only a little better than those described. 
 Take, for instance, the account given by Robert Owen 
 of the conditions which prevailed in the "model fac- 
 tory " of the time, the establishment at New Lanark, 
 Scotland, owned by Mr. David Dale, where Owen 
 himself was destined to introduce so many striking 
 reforms. Owen assumed control of the New Lanark 
 mills on the first day of the year 1800. In his Auto- 
 biography, 1 he gives some account of the conditions 
 which he found there, in the " best-regulated factory 
 in the world," at that time. There were, says Owen, 
 about five hundred children employed, who "were 
 received as early as six years old, the pauper authori- 
 ties declining to send them at any later age." They 
 worked from six in the morning till seven in the 
 evening, and then their education began. They hated 
 their slavery, and many absconded. Many were 
 dwarfed and stunted in stature, and when they were 
 through their " apprenticeship," at thirteen or fifteen 
 
 1 In +wo volumes : London, Effingham Wilson, 1857 and 1858. 
 Vol. I contains the Life ; Vol. II is a Supplementary Appendix, and 
 contains Reports, Addresses, etc. Quotations are from Vol. I.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 23 
 
 years of age, they commonly went off to Glasgow or 
 Edinburgh, with no guardians, ignorant and ready 
 " admirably suited," is Owen's phrase to swell the 
 great mass of vice and misery in the towns. The 
 people in New Lanark lived "almost without control, 
 in habits of vice, idleness, poverty, debt, and destitu- 
 tion. Thieving was general." With such condi- 
 tions existing in a model factory, under a master 
 whose benevolence was celebrated everywhere, it 
 can be very readily believed that conditions else- 
 where must have been abominable. 
 
 As a result of the appalling poverty which devel- 
 oped, it soon became necessary for poor parents to 
 permit their children to go into the factories. The 
 mighty machines were far too powerful for the 
 prejudices of parental hearts. Child wage- workers 
 became common. They were subjected to little 
 better conditions than the "parish apprentices" had 
 been; in fact they were often employed alongside 
 of them. Fathers were unemployed, and fre- 
 quently took meals to their little ones who were at 
 work a not unusual thing even in the United 
 States at the present time. Michael Sadler, a Mem- 
 ber of the British House of Commons and a fearless 
 champion of the rights of the poor and oppressed, 
 has described this aspect of the Child Labor evil 
 in touching verse. The poem is too long to quote 
 entire, so I give only three stanzas :
 
 24 SOCIALISM 
 
 '"Father, I'm up, but weary, 
 I scarce can reach the door, 
 And long the way and dreary 
 Oh, carry me once more ! 
 To help us we've no mother, 
 And you have no employ, 
 They killed my little brother 
 Like him I'll work and die.' 
 
 " Her wasted form seemed nothing 
 The load was at his heart, 
 The sufferer he kept soothing 
 Till at the mill they part. 
 The overlooker met her, 
 As to her frame she crept, 
 And with his thong he beat her 
 And cursed her as she wept. 
 
 "All night with tortured feeling, 
 He watched his speechless child, 
 While, close beside her kneeling, 
 She knew him not nor smiled. 
 Again the factory's ringing 
 Her last perceptions tried, 
 When, from her straw bed springing, 
 ' "Tis time ! ' she shrieked, and died ! " l 
 
 During all this time, let it be remembered, the 
 English philanthropists, and among them many capi- 
 talists, were agitating against negro slavery in Africa 
 and elsewhere, and raising funds for the slaves' 
 emancipation. Says Gibbins, 2 " The spectacle of 
 
 1 The poem is given in its entirety by Mr. H. S. Salt, in Songs of 
 Freedom, pages 81-83. 
 
 2 Industrial History of England, page 181.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 25 
 
 England buying the freedom of black slaves by riches 
 drawn from the labor of her white ones affords an 
 interesting study for the cynical philosopher." 
 
 As we read the accounts of the distress which fol- 
 lowed upon the introduction of the new mechanical 
 inventions, it is impossible to regard with surprise, 
 or with condemnatory feelings, the riots of the des- 
 perate "Luddites," who went about destroying 
 machinery in their blind desperation. Ned Lud, 
 after whom the Luddites are said to have been named, 
 was an idiot, it is said ; but wiser men, finding them- 
 selves reduced to abject poverty through the intro- 
 duction of the giant machines, could see no further 
 than he. Was it to be expected that they should 
 understand that it was not the machines, but the 
 institution of their private ownership, and use for 
 private gain, that was wrong? The Luddites were 
 not, as some writers seem to infer, the first to make 
 war upon machinery. In 1758, for example, Everet's 
 first machine for dressing wool, an ingenious contriv- 
 ance worked by water power, was set upon by a 
 mob and reduced to ashes. From that time on 
 similar outbreaks occurred with more or less fre- 
 quency ; but it was not until 1810 that the organized 
 bodies of Luddites went from town to town, sacking 
 factories and destroying the machines in their half- 
 blind revolt. 
 
 The contest between the capitalist and the wage-
 
 26 SOCIALISM 
 
 worker, which, as Karl Marx says, dates back to 
 the very origin of capital, took a new form when 
 machinery was first introduced. Henceforth, the 
 worker fights not only, nor indeed mainly, against the 
 capitalist, but against the machine, as the material 
 basis of capitalist exploitation. In the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, the ribbon loom, a machine for weaving rib- 
 bons, was invented in Germany. Marx quotes an 
 Italian traveler, Abbe' Lancellotti, who wrote in 
 1579 as follows: "Anthony Miiller, of Danzig, saw 
 about fifty years ago, in that town, a very ingenious 
 machine, which weaves four to six pieces at once. 
 But the mayor, being apprehensive that this inven- 
 tion might throw a large number of workmen on the 
 streets, caused the inventor to be secretly strangled 
 or drowned." x In 1629 this ribbon loom was intro- 
 duced into Leyden, where the riots of the ribbon 
 weavers forced the town council to prohibit it. In 
 1676 its use was prohibited in Cologne, at the same 
 time that its introduction was causing serious dis- 
 turbances in England. "By an imperial Edict of the 
 19th of February, 1685, its use was forbidden through- 
 out all Germany. In Hamburg it was burned in 
 public, by order of the Senate. The Emperor Charles 
 VI, on the 9th of February, 1719, renewed the Edict 
 of 1685, and not till 1765 was its use openly allowed 
 in the Electorate of Saxony. This machine, which 
 
 1 Capital, by Karl Marx, London, 1891, page 427.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 27 
 
 shook all Europe to its foundations, was in fact the 
 precursor of the mule and power loom, and of the 
 industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. It 
 enabled a totally inexperienced boy to set the whole 
 loom, with all its shuttles, in motion, by simply 
 moving a rod backward and forward, and in its 
 improved form produced from forty to fifty pieces 
 at once." l 
 
 Much denunciation has been poured upon the 
 blind, stupid revolt of the workers against the ma- 
 chines, but in view of the misery and poverty which 
 they suffered, it is impossible not to sympathize with 
 them. As Marx justly says, "It took both tune and 
 experience before the work people learned to dis- 
 tinguish between machinery and its employment by 
 capital, and to direct their attacks, not against the 
 material instruments of production, but against 
 the mode in which they are used." 3 
 
 Ill 
 
 Under the new industrial regime, Robert Owen, 
 the erstwhile poor draper's apprentice, soon became 
 one of the most successful manufacturers in England. 
 At eighteen years of age we find him entering into 
 the manufacture of the new cotton spinning machines, 
 with a borrowed capital of $500. His partner was a 
 
 1 Capital, page 428. 
 8 Idem, page 429.
 
 28 SOCIALISM 
 
 man named Jones, and, though the enterprise proved 
 successful from a financial point of view, the partner- 
 ship proved to be most disagreeable. Accordingly 
 it was dissolved, Owen taking three of the "mules" 
 which they were making as a reimbursement for his 
 investment. With these and some other machinery, 
 Owen entered into the cotton manufacturing indus- 
 try, employing at first only three men, and made 
 $1500 as his first year's profit. 
 
 Erelong Owen ceased manufacturing upon his own 
 account, and became superintendent of a Man- 
 chester cotton mill, owned by a Mr. Drinkwater, and 
 employing some five hundred work people. He was 
 a most progressive man, always ready to introduce 
 new machinery, and to embark upon new experiments, 
 with a view to improving the quality of the product. 1 
 In this he was so successful that the goods manu- 
 factured at the Drinkwater mill soon commanded 
 a fifty per cent advance above the regular market 
 prices. Drinkwater, delighted at results like these, 
 made Owen his partner. Thus when he was barely 
 twenty years of age, Owen had secured an eminent 
 position among the cotton manufacturers of his 
 
 1 For instance, he so improved the machinery and increased the 
 fineness of the threads that, instead of spinning seventy-five thousand 
 yards of yarn to the pound of cotton, he spun two hundred and fifty 
 thousand ! At that time a pound of cotton, which in its raw state 
 was worth $1.25, became worth $50 when spun. Life of Robert 
 Owen, Philadelphia, 1866. Anonymous.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 29 
 
 time. It is interesting to recall that in the same 
 year, 1791, Owen used the first cotton ever brought 
 into England from the United States. "American 
 Sea Island cotton," as it was called, from the fact 
 that it was then grown only upon the islands near 
 the southern coast of the United States, was not be- 
 lieved to be of any value for manufacture, on account, 
 chiefly, of its poor color. But when a cotton broker 
 named Spear received three hundred pounds of it 
 from an American planter, with the request that he 
 would get some competent spinner to test it, he 
 applied to Owen, who, with characteristic readiness, 
 undertook the test, and succeeded in making a much 
 finer product than had hitherto been made from the 
 French cotton, though inferior to it in color. That 
 was the first introduction of American cotton, des- 
 tined soon to furnish English cotton mills with the 
 greater part of their raw material. 
 
 Owen did not long remain with Mr. Drinkwater. 
 He accepted another profitable partnership in Man- 
 chester, and it was at this time that he became active 
 hi social reform work. As a member of an impor- 
 tant literary and philosophical society, he was 
 thrown much into the company of men distinguished 
 in all walks of life, and here he began that agitation 
 which led to the passing of the very first factory act 
 of Sir Robert Peel, in 1802. The suffering of the 
 children moved his great humane heart to boundless
 
 30 SOCIALISM 
 
 pity. He well knew that his own wealth and the 
 wealth of his fellows had been purchased at a terrible 
 cost in child life. He was only a philanthropist as 
 yet; he saw only the pitiful waste of life involved, 
 and sought to impress men of wealth with what he 
 felt. 
 
 On the first day of the nineteenth century, Owen 
 began his wonderful New Lanark career, which 
 attracted universal attention, and was destined to 
 lead him to those social innovations which won for 
 him the title of "Father of Modern Socialism." 
 We have already seen what the conditions were in 
 the "model factory" when Owen assumed con- 
 trol. Here all his influence was directed to the 
 task of ameliorating the condition of his employees. 
 He shortened the hours of labor, introduced sanitary 
 reforms, protected the work people against the ex- 
 ploitation of traders through the vicious credit sys- 
 tem by opening a store and supplying them with 
 goods at cost, and established infant schools, the 
 first of their kind, for the care and education of chil- 
 dren from two years of age upward. Still, the 
 workers themselves were suspicious of this man 
 who, so different from other employers, was zealous 
 in doing things for them. He really knew nothing 
 of the working class, and it never had occurred to 
 him that they might do anything for themselves. 
 New Lanark under Owen was, to use the phrase
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 31 
 
 which Mr. Ghent has adopted from Fourier, "a be- 
 nevolent feudalism." Owen complains pathetically, 
 "Yet the work people were systematically opposed to 
 every change which I proposed, and did whatever 
 they could to frustrate my object." l 
 
 But a time came when Owen had the necessary 
 opportunity to win their affection and he em- 
 braced it. In 1806 the United States, in conse- 
 quence of a diplomatic rupture with England, placed 
 an embargo upon the shipment of raw cotton to that 
 country. Everywhere mills were shut down, and 
 there was the utmost distress in consequence. The 
 New Lanark mills, in common with most others, 
 were shut down for four months, during which time 
 Owen paid every worker his or her wages in full, at 
 a cost of over $35,000. Forever afterward he en- 
 joyed the love and trust of his work people. In 
 spite of all this expenditure upon purely philan- 
 thropic work, the mills yielded an enormous profit. 
 But Owen was constantly in conflict with his partners, 
 who sought to restrict him in his efforts, with the 
 result that he was compelled again and again to 
 change partners, always securing their interests and 
 returning them big profits upon their investments, un- 
 til finally, in 1829, he left New Lanark altogether. 
 During twenty-nine years he had carried on the 
 business with splendid commercial success and at 
 
 1 Autobiography.
 
 32 SOCIALISM 
 
 the same time attracted universal attention to it 
 as the theater of the greatest experiments in social 
 regeneration the world had ever known. Every year 
 thousands of persons from all parts of the world, 
 many of them statesmen and representatives of the 
 crowned heads of Europe, visited New Lanark to 
 study those experiments, and never were they seriously 
 criticised or their success challenged. Had Owen's 
 life ended here, he must have taken rank hi history 
 as one of the truly great men of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 IV 
 
 Let us now consider briefly the forces which led 
 this gentle philanthropist onward to the goal of Com- 
 munism. In the first place, his experiences at New 
 Lanark had convinced him that human character de- 
 pends in large part upon, and is shaped by, environ- 
 ment. Others before Owen had perceived this, but 
 he must ever be regarded as one of the pioneers of 
 the idea, among the first to give it definite form and 
 to demonstrate its truth. In the first of those won- 
 derful Essays on the Formation of Human Character, 
 in which Owen recounts the results of his New Lan- 
 ark system of education, he says, "Any general char- 
 acter from the best to the worst, from the most igno- 
 rant to the most enlightened, may be given to any 
 community, even to the world at large, by the ap-
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 33 
 
 plication of proper means ; which means are to a great 
 extent at the command and under the control of 
 those who have influence hi the affairs of men." To- 
 day this doctrine does not seem to us sensational 
 or strange; it might be promulgated in any one of 
 our fashionable churches, without exciting more 
 than a languid passing interest. But in Owen's 
 time it was quite otherwise. Such a doctrine struck 
 at the very roots of all that the church stood for, and 
 brought much bitter denunciation upon the heads of 
 its promulgators. A poet of the period, hi a poem 
 dedicated to Owen, aptly expresses the doctrine: 
 
 " We are the creatures of external things, 
 Acting on inward organs, and are made 
 To think and do whate'er our tutors please. 
 What folly, then, to punish or reward 
 For deeds o'er which we never held a curb ! 
 What woeful ignorance, to teach the crime 
 And then chastise the pupil for his guilt ! " 1 
 
 Owen had realized other things at New Lanark 
 besides the profound truth that man's character is 
 formed largely by his environment. Starting out 
 with no other purpose than to ameliorate the condi- 
 tions of his work people, he came, at last, to recog- 
 nize that he could never do for them the essential 
 thing, secure their real liberty. " The people were 
 
 1 The Force of Circumstance*, a poem, by John Garwood, Birming- 
 ham, 1808.
 
 34 SOCIALISM 
 
 slaves of my mercy," 1 he writes. He saw, though 
 but dimly at first, that no man could be free who 
 depended upon another for the right to earn his 
 bread, no matter how good the bread master might 
 be. The hopelessness of expecting reform from the 
 manufacturers themselves was borne upon his mind 
 in many ways. First of all, there was the incessant 
 conflict with his associates, who, while representing 
 the noblest and best elements of the manufacturing 
 class, still failed to comprehend the spirit of all 
 Owen's work, his profound belief hi the inherent 
 right of every child to the opportunities of sound 
 physical, mental, and moral culture. Then there 
 was the bitter hostility of those of his class who had 
 no sympathy whatever with him. 
 
 The Luddite riots of 1810-1811 awakened England 
 to the importance of the labor question, and Owen, 
 who since 1805 had been devoting much time to 
 its study, secured a much wider audience, and a 
 much more serious hearing than ever before. Then 
 came the frightful misery of 1815, due to the crisis 
 which the end of the great war produced. Every- 
 one seemed to think that when the war was over 
 and peace was restored, there would be a tremendous 
 increase in prosperity. What happened was pre- 
 cisely the opposite; for a time at least things were 
 
 1 Quoted by F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, page 22 
 (English edition, 1892).
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 35 
 
 immeasurably worse than before. Owen, more 
 clearly than any other man of the time, explained the 
 real nature of the crisis. The war had given an 
 important spur to industry and encouraged many 
 new inventions and chemical discoveries. "The war 
 was the great and most extravagant customer of 
 farmers, manufacturers, and other producers of 
 wealth, and many during this period became very 
 wealthy. . . . And on the day on which peace 
 was signed, the great customer of the producers died, 
 and prices fell as the demand diminished, until the 
 prune cost of the articles required for war could not 
 be obtained. . . . Barns and farmyards were full, 
 warehouses loaded, and such was our artificial state 
 of society that this very superabundance of wealth 
 was the sole cause of the existing distress. Burn the 
 stock in the farmyards and warehouses, and prosperity 
 would immediately recommence, in the same manner as 
 if the war had continued. This want of demand at 
 remunerating prices compelled the master producers 
 to consider what they could do to dimmish the 
 amount of their productions and the cost of pro- 
 ducing until these surplus stocks could be taken out 
 of the market. To effect these results, every econ- 
 omy in producing was resorted to, and men being 
 more expensive machines for producing than mechan- 
 ical and chemical inventions and discoveries so ex- 
 tensively brought into action during the war, the
 
 36 SOCIALISM 
 
 men were discharged and the machines were made 
 to supersede them while the numbers of the un- 
 employed were increased by the discharge of men 
 from the army and navy. Hence the great distress 
 for want of work among all classes whose labor was 
 so much in demand while the war continued. This 
 increase of mechanical and chemical power was con- 
 tinually diminishing the demand for, and value of, 
 manual labor, and would continue to do so, and 
 would effect great changes throughout society." * 
 
 In this statement there are several points worthy 
 of attention. In the first place, the analysis of the 
 crisis of 1815 is very like the later analyses of com- 
 mercial crises of the Marxists; secondly, the antag- 
 onism of class interests is clearly developed, as far 
 as the basic interests of the employers and then* em- 
 ployees are concerned. The former, hi order to con- 
 serve their interests, have to dismiss the workers, 
 thus forcing them into direst poverty; thirdly, the 
 conflict between manual and machine labor is frankly 
 stated. Owen's studies were leading him from mere 
 philanthropism to Socialism. 
 
 During the height of the distress of 1815, Owen 
 called together a large number of cotton manufac- 
 turers at a conference, which was held in Glasgow, 
 to consider the state of the cotton trade and the pre- 
 
 1 Quoted by H. M. Hyndman, The Economics of Socialism, page 
 160.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 37 
 
 vailing distress. He proposed, (1) that they should 
 petition parliament for the repeal of the revenue 
 tariff on raw cotton; (2) that they should call upon 
 parliament to shorten the hours of labor hi the cotton 
 mills by legislative enactment, and otherwise seek 
 to improve the condition of the working people. 
 The first proposition was carried with unanimity, 
 but the second, and to Owen the most important, 
 did not even secure a seconder. 1 The spirit in which 
 he faced the manufacturers is best seen in the follow- 
 ing extract from the address delivered by him at 
 this conference, with copies of which he afterward 
 literally deluged the kingdom: 
 
 "True, indeed, it is that the mam pillar and prop 
 of the political greatness and prosperity of our coun- 
 try is a manufacture which, as now carried on, is 
 destructive of the health, morals, and social comfort 
 of the mass of people engaged in it. It is only since 
 the introduction of the cotton trade that children, 
 at an age before they had acquired strength or men- 
 tal instruction, have been forced into cotton mills, 
 those receptacles, hi too many instances, for living, 
 human skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect, where 
 as the business is often now conducted, they linger 
 out a few years of miserable existence, acquiring 
 every bad habit which they may disseminate through- 
 
 1 The New Harmony Communities, by George Browning Lock- 
 wood (1902), page 71.
 
 38 SOCIALISM 
 
 out society. It is only since the introduction of this 
 trade that children and even grown people were 
 required to labor more than twelve hours in a day, 
 not including the time allotted for meals. It is only 
 since the introduction of this trade that the sole 
 recreation of the laborer is to be found in the pot- 
 house or ginshop, and it is only since the introduc- 
 tion of this baneful trade that poverty, crime, and 
 misery have made rapid and fearful strides through- 
 out the community. 
 
 "Shall we then go unblushingly, and ask the legis- 
 lators of our country to pass legislative acts to sanc- 
 tion and increase this trade to sign the death 
 warrants of the strength, morals, and happiness of 
 thousands of our fellow-creatures, and not attempt 
 to propose corrections for the evils which it creates? 
 If such shall be your determination, I, for one, will 
 not join in the application, no, I will, with all the 
 faculties I possess, oppose every attempt made to 
 extend the trade that, except in name, is more inju- 
 rious to those employed in it than is the slavery in 
 the West Indies to the poor negroes; for deeply as 
 I am interested in the cotton manufacture, highly 
 as I value the extended political power of my country, 
 yet knowing as I do, from long experience both here 
 and in England, the miseries which this trade, as it 
 is now conducted, inflicts on those to whom it gives 
 employment, I do not hesitate to say: Perish the
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 39 
 
 cotton trade, perish even the political superiority of 
 our country, if it depends on the cotton trade, rather 
 than that they shall be upheld by the sacrifice of every- 
 thing valuable in life." l 
 
 This conference had undoubtedly much to do 
 with Owen's subsequent acceptance of the Socialist 
 ideal, and it is probable, as one of his biographers 
 has hinted, that the change of the approbation of 
 the governing class to reprobation really dates from 
 that outspoken attack upon the economic interests 
 of the growing manufacturing industry rather than 
 from the fierce onslaught upon religion, or, more 
 correctly, religious hypocrisy, in the following year. 
 Be that how it may, the fact is that by 1815 Owen 
 was pretty much of a Socialist, though he did not 
 declare himself one until some years later. 
 
 In 1817 he proposed to the government the estab- 
 lishment of communistic villages, as the best means 
 of remedying the terrible distress which prevailed 
 at that time. Henceforth, Owen is the apostle of 
 Communism, or as he later preferred to say, Social- 
 ism. His ideal is a cooperative world, with perfect 
 equality between the sexes. He had so completely 
 demonstrated to his own mind that private prop- 
 erty was incompatible with social well-being, every 
 month of his experience at New Lanark had so deeply 
 
 1 Quoted by Lockwood, The New Harmony Communities, pages 
 71-72.
 
 40 SOCIALISM 
 
 impressed him with the conviction that to make it 
 possible for all men to live equally happy and moral 
 lives they must have equal material resources and 
 conditions of life, that he could not understand why 
 it had never occurred to others before him. He 
 regarded himself as one inspired, or as an inventor 
 of a new system, and believed that it was only neces- 
 sary for him to demonstrate the truth of his conten- 
 tions, argumentatively and in practice, to convert the 
 world. He conducted a tremendous propaganda, 
 by means of newspapers, pamphlets, lectures, and 
 debates, and above all, established various commu- 
 nities hi this country l and in England. With sub- 
 lime faith and unbounded courage, he kept on hi the 
 face of bitter opposition and repeated failure. And 
 to this day, the story of the New Harmony experi- 
 ment, despite the fact that it was short-lived, and 
 that it failed, is full of inspiration for him who would 
 give his life to the redemption of the world from the 
 cruel grasp of private greed. 
 
 Owen's communities failed, and the world has long 
 since written the word "Failure" against his name. 
 But what a splendid failure it was! Standing by 
 his grave one day, in the picturesque little church- 
 yard at Newton, by a bend of the winding river, 
 not far from the ruins of the ancient castle home 
 
 1 For a good account of these communities, see Lockwood's book, 
 The New Harmony Communities, already quoted.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 41 
 
 of the famous deist, Lord Herbert, I said to an old 
 Welsh laborer, "But his life was a failure, was it 
 not?" The old man gazed awhile at the grave, and 
 then with a voice of reverence and love, replied, "I 
 suppose it was, sir, as the world goes; a failure like 
 Jesus Christ's. But I don't call it failure, sir. He 
 established infant schools; he founded the great 
 Cooperative movement; he helped to make the 
 trade unions ; l he worked for peace between two 
 great countries. His Socialism has not been realized 
 yet, nor yet has Christ's but it will come!" As 
 I turned and clasped the old man's hand, the sun 
 emerged from the clouds and bathed the grave with 
 glory. 
 
 Owen was not the only builder of Utopias in his 
 time. In the same year that Owen launched his 
 New Harmony experiment, there died in Paris another 
 dreamer of social Utopias, a gentle mystic, Henry de 
 Saint-Simon, and in 1837, the year of Owen's third 
 Socialist congress, another great Utopist died in the 
 French capital, Charles Fourier. Each of these con- 
 tributed something to the development of the theories 
 of Socialism, each has a legitimate place in the history 
 
 1 Owen presided at the first organized Trade Union Congress in 
 England.
 
 42 SOCIALISM 
 
 of the Socialist movement. But this little work is not 
 intended to give the history of Socialism. 1 I have taken 
 one only of the three great Utopists, as representative 
 of them all : one who seems to me to be much nearer 
 to the later scientific movement pioneered by Marx 
 and Engels than any of the others. In the Socialism 
 of Owen, we have Utopian Socialism at its best. 
 
 What distinguishes the Utopists from their scientific 
 followers has been clearly stated by Engels in the 
 following luminous passage: "One thing is common 
 to all three. Not one of them appears as a repre- 
 sentative of the interests of that proletariat which 
 historical development had . . . produced. Like the 
 French philosophers, 2 they do not claim to emancipate 
 a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at 
 once. Like them, they wish to bring in the kingdom 
 of reason and eternal justice, but this kingdom, as 
 they see it, is as far as heaven from earth from that 
 of the French philosophers. 
 
 "For, to our three social reformers, the bourgeois 
 world, based upon the principles of these philosophers, 
 is quite as irrational and unjust, and, therefore, finds 
 its way to the dust hole quite as readily, as feudalism 
 and all the earlier stages of society. If pure reason 
 and justice had not, hitherto, ruled the world, this 
 
 1 For the history of these and other Utopian Socialisms, see Professor 
 Ely's French and German Socialism (1883) ; also M. Hillquit's History 
 of Socialism in the United States (1903). 
 
 1 The Encyclopaedists.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 43 
 
 has been the case only because men have not rightly 
 understood them. What was wanted was the in- 
 dividual man of genius, who has now arisen and who 
 understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that 
 the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an 
 inevitable event, following of necessity in the chain 
 of historical development, but a mere happy acci- 
 dent. He might just as well have been born five 
 hundred years earlier, and might then have spared 
 humanity five hundred years of error, strife, and 
 suffering." l 
 
 Neither of these great Utopists had anything like 
 the conception of social evolution determined by 
 economic conditions and the resulting conflicts of 
 economic classes which constitutes the base of the 
 philosophy of the scientific Socialists. Each of them 
 had some faint comprehension of isolated facts, but 
 neither of them developed his knowledge very far, nor 
 could these facts appear to them as correlated by Marx. 
 Saint-Simon, as we know, recognized the class struggle 
 in the French Revolution, and saw in the Reign of 
 Terror only the reign of the non-possessing masses ; 8 
 he saw, too, that the political question was funda- 
 mentally an economic question, declaring that poli- 
 tics is the science of production, and prophesying 
 that politics would become absorbed by economics. 3 
 
 1 Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, pages 6-7. 
 * Idem, page 15. * Idem,
 
 44 SOCIALISM 
 
 Fourier, we also know, applied the principle of evolu- 
 tion to society. He divided the history of society 
 into four great epochs savagery, barbarism, the 
 patriarchate, and civilization. 1 But just as Saint- 
 Simon failed to grasp the significance of the class 
 conflict and its relation to the fundamental character 
 of economic institutions which he dimly realized, so 
 Fourier failed to grasp the significance of the evolu- 
 tionary process which he described, and, like Saint- 
 Simon, he halted upon the brink, so to speak, of an 
 important discovery. His concept of social evolution 
 meant little or nothing to him, and possessed little 
 more than an academic interest. And the other great 
 Utopist, Owen, realized in a practical manner that 
 the industrial problem was a class conflict. Not only 
 had he found in 1815 2 that pity was powerless to 
 move the hearts of his fellow-manufacturers when 
 then* class interests were concerned, but later, in 
 1818, when he went to present his famous memorial 
 to the Congress of Sovereigns at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 he had another lesson of the same kind. At Frank- 
 fort, Germany, he tarried on his way to the Congress, 
 and was invited to attend a great dinner to meet the 
 Secretary of the Congress, M. Gentz, a famous diplo- 
 mat in his day, "who enjoyed the full confidence of 
 the leading despots of Europe." After Owen had out- 
 
 1 Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, page 18. 
 8 See page 37.
 
 ROBERT OWEN AND THE UTOPIAN SPIRIT 45 
 
 lined his schemes for social amelioration, M. Gentz 
 was asked for his reply, and Owen tells us that the 
 diplomat replied, "We know very well that what you 
 say is true, but how could we govern the masses, 
 if they were wealthy, and so, independent of us?" l 
 Lord Lauderdale, too, had exclaimed, "Nothing [i.e. 
 than Owen's plans] could be more complete for the 
 poor and working classes, but what mil become ofitsf" 2 
 Scattered throughout his writings and speeches are 
 numerous evidences of the fact that Owen at times 
 recognized the class antagonisms in the industrial 
 problem, 3 but to him also the germ of a profound 
 truth meant nothing. He saw only an isolated fact, 
 and made no attempt to discover its meaning or to 
 relate it to his teaching. 
 
 Each of the three men regarded himself as the 
 discoverer of the truth which should redeem the 
 world; each devoted himself with magnificent faith 
 and heroic courage to his task ; each failed to realize 
 his hopes ; and each left behind him faithful disciples 
 and followers, confident that the day must come at 
 last when the suffering and disinherited of earth 
 will be able to say, hi Owen's dying words: 
 "Relief has come." 
 
 1 Autobiography. 
 1 Idem. 
 
 1 See, for instance, The Revolution in Mind and Practice, by Robert 
 Owen, pages 21-22.
 
 CHAPTER in 
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" AND THE SCIEN- 
 TIFIC SPIRIT 
 
 THE Communist Manifesto has been called the 
 birth cry of the modern scientific Socialist move- 
 ment. When it was written, at the beginning of 
 1848, little remained of those great social movements 
 which hi the early part of the century had inspired 
 the world with high hopes of social regeneration and 
 rekindled the beacon fires of faith in the world. The 
 Saint-Simonians had, as an organized body, dis- 
 appeared; the Fourierists were a dwindling sect, 
 discouraged by the failure of the one great trial of 
 then* system, the famous Brook Farm experiment hi 
 the United States ; the Owenite movement had never 
 recovered from the failures of the experiments at New 
 Harmony and elsewhere, and had lost much of its 
 identity through the multiplicity of interests em- 
 braced hi Owen's propaganda. Chartism and Trades 
 
 46
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" 47 
 
 Unionism on the one hand, and the Cooperative 
 Societies on the other, had, between them, absorbed 
 most of the vital elements of the Owenite move- 
 ment. 
 
 There was a multitude of what Engels calls "social 
 quacks," but the really great social movements, 
 Owenism in England, and Fourierism in France, were 
 utterly demoralized and rapidly dwindling away. 
 One thing only served to keep the flame of hope alive 
 "the crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of 
 Communism" of the workers. This Communism of 
 the working class differed hi its essential features 
 from the Socialism of Fourierism and Owenism. 
 It was based upon the "rights of labor," and its 
 appeal was, primarily, to the laborer. Its exponents 
 were Wilhelm Weitling in Germany, and ]tienne 
 Cabet in France. 
 
 Weitling was a man of the people. He was born 
 in Magdeburg, Germany, hi 1808, the illegitimate 
 child of a humble woman and her soldier lover. He 
 became a tailor, and, as was the custom in Germany 
 at that time, traveled extensively during his appren- 
 ticeship. In 1838 his first important work, The 
 World as it Is, and as it Might Be, appeared, published 
 hi Paris by a secret revolutionary society consisting 
 mainly of German workingmen of the "Young 
 Germany" movement. In this work, Weitling first 
 expounded at length his communistic theories. It
 
 48 SOCIALISM 
 
 is claimed * that his conversion to Communism was 
 the result of the chance placing of a Fourierist paper 
 upon the table of a Berlin coffeehouse, by Albert 
 Brisbane, the brilliant American friend and disciple 
 of Fourier, his first exponent in the English language. 
 This may well be true, for, as we shall see, Weitling's 
 views are mainly based upon those of the great French 
 Utopist. In 1842 Weitling published his best-known 
 work, the book upon which his literary fame chiefly 
 rests, The Guaranties of Harmony and Freedom. This 
 work at once attracted wide attention, and gave 
 Weitling a foremost place among the writers of the 
 time in the affections of the educated workers. It 
 was an elaboration of the theories contained in his 
 earlier book. Morris Hillquit 2 thus describes Weit- 
 ling's philosophy and method: 
 
 "In his social philosophy, Weitling may be said to 
 have been the connecting link between primitive and 
 modern Socialism. In the main, he is still a Utopian, 
 and his writings betray the unmistakable influence 
 of the early French Socialists. In common with all 
 Utopians, he bases his philosophy exclusively upon 
 moral grounds. Misery and poverty are to him but 
 the results of human malice, and his cry is for 'eternal 
 
 1 Cf. Social Democracy Red Book, edited by Frederic Heath (1900), 
 page 79. 
 
 2 History of Socialism in the United States, by Morris Hillquit, 
 pages 161-162.
 
 THE " COMMUNIST MANIFESTO " 49 
 
 justice ' and for the ' absolute liberty and equality 
 of all mankind.' In his criticism of the existing order, 
 he leans closely on Fourier, from whom he also bor- 
 rowed the division of labor into three classes of the 
 Necessary, Useful, and Attractive, and the plan of 
 organization of ' attractive industry.' 
 
 "His ideal of the future state of society reminds us 
 of the Saint-Simonian government of scientists. The 
 administration of affairs of the entire globe is to be 
 in the hands of the three greatest authorities on 
 'philosophical medicine,' physics, and mechanics, who 
 are to be reenforced by a number of subordinate com- 
 mittees. His state of the future is a highly central- 
 ized government, and is described by the author with 
 the customary details. Where Weitling, to some 
 extent, approaches the conception of modern Social- 
 ism, is in his recognition of class distinctions between 
 employer and employee. This distinction never 
 amounted to a conscious indorsement of the modern 
 Socialist doctrine of the 'class struggle,' but his 
 views on the antagonism between the 'poor' and the 
 'wealthy' came quite close to it. He was a firm 
 believer in labor organizations as a factor in develop- 
 ing the administrative abilities of the working class; 
 the creation of an independent labor party was one 
 of his pet schemes, and his appeals were principally 
 addressed to the workingmen. 
 
 "Unlike most of his predecessors and contempo-
 
 50 SOCIALISM 
 
 raries, Weitling was not a mere critic; he was an 
 enthusiastic preacher, an apostle of a new faith, and 
 his writings and speeches breathed of love for his 
 fellow-men, and of an ardent desire for their happi- 
 ness." 
 
 fitienne Cabet was, hi many ways, a very different 
 type of man from Weitling, yet then- ideas were not 
 so dissimilar. Cabet, born in Dijon, France, in 1788, 
 was the son of a fairly prosperous cooper, and re- 
 ceived a good university education. He studied both 
 medicine and law, adopting the profession of the 
 latter, and early achieving success hi its practice. 
 He took a leading part in the Revolution of 1830 as 
 a member of the "Committee of Insurrection," and 
 upon the accession of Louis Phillipe was "rewarded" 
 by being made Attorney-General for Corsica. There 
 is no doubt that the government desired to remove 
 Cabet from the political life of Paris, quite as much 
 as to reward him for his services during the Revolu- 
 tion ; his strong radicalism, combined with his sturdy 
 independence of character, being rightly regarded as 
 dangerous to Louis Phillipe 's re'gime. His reward, 
 therefore, took the form of practical banishment. 
 The wily advisers of Louis Phillipe gave him the 
 gloved hand. But the best-laid schemes of mice and 
 courtiers "gang oft agley." Cabet, in Corsica, joined 
 the radical anti-administration forces, and became 
 a thorn hi the side of the government. He was re-
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" 51 
 
 moved from office and returned to Paris, whereupon 
 the citizens of Dijon, his native town, elected him as 
 then* deputy to the lower chamber in 1834. Here he 
 continued his opposition to the administration, and 
 was at last tried on a charge of lese majestt, and given 
 the option of choosing between two years' imprison- 
 ment or five years' exile. 
 
 Cabet chose exile, and took up his residence in 
 England, where he fell under the influence of the 
 Owen agitation and became a convert to Owen's 
 Socialistic views. During this tune of exile, too, he 
 became acquainted with the Utopia of Sir Thomas 
 More and was fascinated by it. The idea of writing 
 a similar work of fiction to propagate Socialism im- 
 pressed itself upon his mind, and he wrote a "philo- 
 sophical and social romance," entitled Voyage to 
 Icaria, 1 which was published soon after his return to 
 Paris, hi 1839. In this novel Cabet follows closely 
 the method of More, and describes "Icaria" as "a 
 Promised Land, an Eden, an Elysium, a new ter- 
 restrial Paradise." The plot of the book is simple in 
 the extreme and its literary merit is far from being 
 very great. The writer represents that he met, in 
 London, a nobleman, Lord William Carisdall, who, 
 having by chance heard of Icaria and the wonder- 
 fully strange customs and form of government of its 
 inhabitants, visited the country. Lord William kept 
 
 1 Voyage en Icarie.
 
 52 SOCIALISM 
 
 a journal, in which he described all that he saw in this 
 wonderland. It is this journal, we are told, which 
 the traveler had permitted to be published through 
 the medium of his friend, and under his editorial 
 supervision. The first part of the book contains an 
 attractive account of the cooperative system of the 
 Icarians, then' communistic government, equality of 
 the sexes, and high standard of morality. The second 
 part is devoted to an account of the history of Icaria, 
 prior to, and succeeding, the Revolution of 1782, 
 when the great national hero, Icar, established 
 Communism. 
 
 The book created a tremendous furore in France. 
 It appealed strongly to the discontented masses, and 
 it is said that by 1847 Cabet had no less than four 
 hundred thousand adherents among the workers of 
 France. It is possible, cum grano salis, to accept this 
 statement only by remembering that a very infini- 
 tesimal proportion of these were adherents in the 
 sense of being ready to follow his leadership, as sub- 
 sequent experience showed. Still, the effect of the 
 book was tremendous, and it served to fire the flag- 
 ging zeal of those workers for social regeneration 
 whose "hearts must otherwise have become deadly 
 sick from long-deferred hopes. 
 
 The confluence of these two streams of Communist 
 propaganda represented by Weitling and Cabet con- 
 stituted the real Communist "movement" of 1840-
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" 53 
 
 1847. 1 Its organized expression was the Communist 
 League, a secret organization with its headquarters 
 in London. The League was formed in Paris in 
 1836 by German refugees and traveling workmen, 
 and seems to have been an offspring of Mazzini's 
 "Young Europe" agitation of 1834. At different 
 tunes it bore the names, "League of the Just," 
 "League of the Righteous," and, finally, "Communist 
 League." 2 For many years it remained a mere con- 
 spiratory society, exclusively German, and existed 
 mainly for the purpose of fostering the "Young Ger- 
 many" ideas. Later it became an International 
 Alliance with societies in many parts of Europe. 
 Thus it was that, in 1847, the League hi Paris wrote 
 inviting Karl Marx, who was at that time in Brus- 
 sels, where, in accordance with an understanding 
 arrived at with the leaders of the Paris League while 
 he was in that city, he had formed a similar society 
 to join, together with Friedrich Engels, the inter- 
 national organization, and promising that a congress 
 should be convened in London at an early date. 
 Engels was in Paris at that time, and was probably 
 responsible for the step taken by the League leaders. 
 We may, in view of Engels' after career as the poli- 
 tician of the movement, surmise so much. Be that 
 
 1 F. Engels, Introduction to The Communist Manifesto, page 5. 
 1 E. Belfort Bax, article on Friedrich Engels, in Jiwtice (London), 
 No. 606, Vol. XII, August 24, 1895.
 
 54 SOCIALISM 
 
 how it may, the reason for the step, the object of the 
 proposed Congress, is quite clear. Marx himself has 
 placed it beyond dispute. During his stay in Paris, 
 he and Engels had discussed the position of the 
 League with some of its leaders, and he had, later, 
 criticised it in the most merciless manner hi his 
 pamphlets. 1 He desired a revolutionary working 
 class party with a definite aim and policy. The 
 leaders of the League who agreed with him hi this 
 were the prime movers for the Congress, which was 
 held in London, in November, 1847. At this Con- 
 gress, Marx and Engels presented their views at 
 great length, and outlined the principles and policy 
 which their famous pamphlet later made familiar. 
 Their views finding much favor, as was perfectly 
 natural with an inchoate mass of men only waiting 
 for leadership, they were requested to prepare 
 "a complete theoretical and working programme" 
 for the League. This took the form of the Commu- 
 nist Manifesto, published in the early part of January, 
 1848. 
 
 II 
 
 The authors of the Manifesto were men of great 
 intellectual gifts. Either of them alone must have 
 won fame; together, they won immortality. Their 
 
 1 Disclosures about the Communists' Process, Herr Vogt, etc.
 
 THE " COMMUNIST MANIFESTO " 55 
 
 lives, from the date of their first meeting in Paris, 
 in 1844, to the death of Marx almost forty years later, 
 in 1883, are inseparably interwoven. The friendship 
 of Damon and Pythias was not more remarkable. 
 
 Karl Marx was born in 1818, on the fifth day of 
 May, at Treves, the oldest town in Germany, dating 
 back to Roman times. 1 His father was a Jewish law- 
 yer of prominence and great learning ; his mother, the 
 descendant of Hungarian Jews who in the seventeenth 
 century had settled in Holland. On his father's 
 side, Marx was the descendant of a long line of Rab- 
 bis, 2 unbroken for two hundred years prior to his 
 father. The true family name was Mordechia, but 
 that was abandoned by the grandfather, who adopted 
 the name of Marx. Either shortly before the birth 
 of Karl, or shortly afterward, 3 his father received 
 notice that he must either forego his official position 
 and the practice of his profession, or, with his family, 
 accept the Christian faith and baptism. Caring 
 nothing for the Hebrew religion, steeped in the mate- 
 rialism of eighteenth-century France, and an ardent 
 
 1 Liebknecht, Karl Marx : Biographical Memoirs, page 13. 
 
 2 Thus Franz Mehring, quoted by Kirkup, History of Socialism, 
 page 130; thus, also, Dawson, German Socialism and Ferdinand 
 Lassalle, page 91 ; but Eleanor Marx, quoted by Liebknecht, Memoirs 
 of Marx, page 165, seems to place the rabbinical ancestry on the 
 mother's side. 
 
 3 The date of this occurrence is not known. It is given variously 
 from 1814 to 1824. In the Memoirs Liebknecht says it was soon 
 after the birth of Marx (page 13), but on page 164 he quotes Marx's 
 daughter's opinion that it was before the son's birth.
 
 56 SOCIALISM 
 
 disciple of Voltaire, he did not hesitate to submit to 
 the decree, and he and his family were baptized. But 
 the son, though he likewise cared nothing for the 
 Jewish religion, never forgave the slight thus put 
 upon his race. He was proud of being a Jew, proud 
 of his rabbinical ancestry, and perhaps owed to the 
 latter some of his marvelous gift of exposition. 
 
 At the earnest behest of his father, Marx studied 
 law at the universities of Berlin and Bonn. But 
 "to please himself," he studied history and philosophy 
 and won great distinction in those branches of learn- 
 ing. He graduated in 1841, as a Doctor of Philosophy, 
 with an essay on the philosophy of Epictetus, and it 
 was his purpose to settle at Bonn as a lecturer hi 
 philosophy. That plan was abandoned, partly be- 
 cause he had already discovered that his bent was 
 toward political activity, and partly because the 
 Prussian government had made scholastic independ- 
 ence impossible. Accordingly, Marx accepted the 
 offer of the editorship of a democratic paper, the 
 Rhenish Gazette, in which he waged bitter, relentless 
 war upon the government. Tune after time the 
 censors interfered, but Marx was too brilliant a 
 polemicist, even thus early in his career, for the 
 censors. So, finally, at the request of his managers, 
 Marx retired. They hoped thus to avoid being com- 
 pelled to suspend the publication, but in vain; the 
 government suppressed the paper in March, 1843.
 
 THE " COMMUNIST MANIFESTO " 57 
 
 Soon after this he removed to Paris, with his young 
 bride of a few months, Jenny von Westphalen, the 
 playmate of his childhood. The Von Westphalens 
 were of the nobility, and a brother of Marx's wife 
 afterward became a Prussian Minister of State. 
 The elder Von Westphalen was half Scotch, related, 
 on his maternal side, to the Argyles. Liebknecht 
 tells an amusing story of how Marx, many years later, 
 having to pawn some of his wife's heirlooms, especially 
 some heavy, antique, silver spoons which bore the 
 Argyle crest and motto, "Truth is my Maxim," nar- 
 rowly escaped being arrested on suspicion of having 
 robbed the Argyles ! 1 To Paris, then, Marx went, 
 and there met, among others, P. J. Proudhon, Michael 
 Bakunin, Arnold Ruge, Heinrich Heine, and, above 
 all, the man destined to be his very alter ego, Friedrich 
 Engels, with whom he had already had some corre- 
 spondence. 2 
 
 The attainments of Engels have been somewhat 
 overshadowed by those of his friend. Born at 
 Barmen, in the province of the Rhine, November 
 28, 1820, he was educated in the Gymnasium of that 
 city, and, after serving his period of military ser- 
 vice, from 1837 to 1841, was sent, in the early part of 
 1842, to Manchester, England, to look after a cotton- 
 
 1 Memoirs of Marx, page 164. 
 
 * Karl Kautsky, article on F. Engels, Austrian Labor Almanac, 
 1887.
 
 58 SOCIALISM 
 
 spinning business of which his father was principal 
 owner. Here he seems to have at once begun a 
 thorough investigation of social and industrial con- 
 ditions, the results of which are contained in his 
 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England 
 in 1844, which remains to this day a classic presenta- 
 tion of the social and industrial life of the period. 
 From the very first, already predisposed as we know, 
 he sympathized with the views of the Chartists and 
 the Owenite Socialists. He became friendly with 
 the Chartist leaders, notably with Feargus O'Connor, 
 to whose paper, The Northern Star, he became a 
 contributor. He also became friendly with Robert 
 Owen and wrote for his New Moral World. 1 His 
 linguistic abilities were great; it is said that he had 
 thoroughly mastered no less than ten languages a 
 gift which helped him immensely in his literary and 
 political association with Marx. 
 
 When the two men met for the first time, in 1844, 
 they were drawn together by an irresistible impulse. 
 They were kindred spirits. Marx, during his stay in 
 Paris, already regarded as a leader of radical thought, 
 had fallen under the influence of the Saint-Simonians 
 and become definitely a Socialist. At first this seems 
 difficult to explain, so great is the chasm which yawns 
 between the "New Christianity" of Saint-Simon and 
 
 1 E. Belfort Bax, article on Friedrich Engels in Justice (London), 
 No. 606, Vol. XII, August 24, 1895.
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" 59 
 
 the materialism of Marx. Assuredly there could be 
 no sympathy for the religio-mysticism of the French 
 dreamer on the part of the German. But Marx, 
 with his usual penetration, saw in Saint-Simonism 
 the hidden germ of a great truth, the embryo of a 
 profound theory. Saint-Simon, as we have seen, had 
 vaguely indicated the two ideas which were after- 
 ward to be cardinal doctrines of the Marx-Engels 
 Manifesto the antagonism of classes, and the 
 economic basis of political institutions. Not only 
 so, but Saint-Simon's grasp of political questions, 
 instanced by his advocacy, in 1815, of a triple alliance 
 between England, France, and Germany, 1 appealed 
 to Marx, and impressed him alike by its fine per- 
 spicacity and its splendid courage. Engels, in whom, 
 as stated, the working-class spirit of Chartism and the 
 ideals of Owenism were blended, found in Marx a 
 twin spirit. They were, indeed, 
 
 "Two souls with but a single thought, 
 Two hearts that beat as one." 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Communist Manifesto is the first declaration 
 of an International Workingmen's Party. Its fine 
 peroration is a call to the workers to transcend the 
 
 1 See F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, page 16 (Lon- 
 don edition, 1892).
 
 60 SOCIALISM 
 
 petty divisions of nationalism and sectarianism. 
 "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their 
 chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen 
 of all countries unite!" These concluding phrases 
 of the Manifesto have become the shibboleths of 
 millions. They are repeated with fervor by the dis- 
 inherited workers of all the lands. Even in China, 
 lately so rudely awakened from the slumbering peace 
 of the centuries, they are cried. No sentences ever 
 coined in the mint of human speech have held such 
 magic power over such large numbers of men and 
 women of so many diverse races. As a literary 
 production, the Manifesto bears the unmistakable 
 stamp of genius. 
 
 But it is not as literature that we are to consider 
 the historic document. Its importance for us lies, 
 not in its form, but in its fundamental principle. 
 And the fundamental principle, the essence or soul 
 of the declaration, is contained in this pregnant 
 summary by Engels : 
 
 "In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of 
 economic production and exchange, and the social 
 organization necessarily following from it, form the 
 basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can 
 be explained, the political and intellectual history of 
 that epoch, that consequently the whole history of 
 mankind (since primitive tribal society holding land 
 in common ownership) has been a history of class
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" 61 
 
 struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, 
 ruling and oppressed classes." l 
 
 Thus Engels summarizes the philosophy as 
 apart from its proposals of immediate ameliorative 
 measures to constitute the political programme of the 
 party of the Manifesto, and the basis upon which 
 the whole superstructure of modern, scientific Social- 
 ism rests. This is the materialistic, or economic, 
 conception of history which distinguishes scientific 
 Socialism from all the Utopian Socialisms which 
 preceded it. Socialism is henceforth a theory of 
 social evolution, not a scheme of world-building; a 
 spirit, not a thing. Thus twelve years before the 
 appearance of The Origin of Species, nearly twenty 
 years after the death of Lamarck, the authors of 
 the Communist Manifesto had formulated a great 
 theory of evolution, and based upon it the mightiest 
 proletarian movement of history. Socialism had 
 become a science instead of a dream. 
 
 IV 
 
 Naturally, in view of its historic role, the joint 
 authorship of the Manifesto has been much discussed. 
 What was the respective share of each of its creators ? 
 What did Marx contribute, and what Engels? It 
 may be, as Liebknecht says, an idle question, but it 
 
 1 F. Engels, Introduction to the Communist Manifesto (English 
 translation, 1888). The italics are mine. J. 8.
 
 62 SOCIALISM 
 
 is a perfectly natural one. The pamphlet itself does 
 not assist us; there are no internal signs pointing 
 now to the hand of the one, now to the hand of the 
 other. We may hazard a guess that most of the 
 programme of ameliorative measures was the work of 
 Engels, and perhaps the final section. For it was ever 
 his task to deal with present political problems in the 
 light of the fundamental theories, to the systematiza- 
 tion and elucidation of which Marx was devoted. 
 
 Beyond this mere, and perhaps rash, conjecture, 
 we have Engels' word with regard to the basal prin- 
 ciple which he has summarized in the passage already 
 quoted. "The Manifesto, being our joint produc- 
 tion," he says, "I consider myself bound to state that 
 the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus 
 belongs to Marx. . . . This proposition, which, in 
 my opinion, is destined to do for history what Dar- 
 win's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had 
 been gradually approaching for some years before 
 1845. How far I had progressed toward it is best 
 shown by my Condition of the Working Class in Eng- 
 land. 1 But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in 
 the spring 1845, he had it ready worked out, and 
 put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in 
 which I have stated it here." 2 
 
 1 F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. 
 See, for instance, pages 79, 80, 82, etc. 
 
 2 Introduction to the Communist Manifesto (English edition, 
 1888).
 
 THE "COMMUNIST MANIFESTO" 63 
 
 Engels has lifted the veil so far, but the rest is hid- 
 den. Perhaps it is well that it should be; well that 
 no man should be able to say which passages came 
 from the spirit of Marx, and which from the spirit of 
 Engels. In life they were inseparable, and so they 
 must be in the Valhalla of history. The greatest 
 political pamphlet of all time must forever bear, with 
 equal honor, the names of both. Their noble friend- 
 ship unites them even beyond the tomb. 
 
 " Twin Titans ! Whom defeat ne'er bowed, 
 Scarce breathing from the fray, 
 Again they sound the war cry loud, 
 Again is riven Labor's shroud, 
 And life breathed in the clay. 
 Their work ? Look round see Freedom proud 
 And confident to-day." 1 
 
 1 From Friedrich Engels, & poem by " J. L." (John Leslie), Justice 
 (London), August 17, 1895.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 
 
 I 
 
 SOCIALISM, then, in the modern, scientific sense, 
 is a theory of social evolution. Its hopes for the 
 future rest, not upon the genius of some Utopia- 
 builder, but upon the forces of historical develop- 
 ment. The Socialist state will never be realized 
 except as the result of economic necessity, the cul- 
 mination of successive epochs of industrial evolution. 
 Thus the present social system appears to the Socialist 
 of to-day, not as it appeared to the Utopians, and as 
 it still must appear to mere ideologist reformers, as a 
 triumph of ignorance or wickedness, the reign of false 
 ideas, but as a result of an age-long evolutionary 
 process determined, not wholly indeed, but mainly, 
 by certain methods of producing the necessities of 
 life in the first place, and secondly, of effecting their 
 exchange. 
 
 Not, let it be understood, that Socialism in becoming 
 scientific has become a mere mechanical theory of 
 economic fatalism. The historical development, the 
 social evolution, upon the laws of which the theories 
 
 64
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 65 
 
 of Socialism are based, is a human progress, involv- 
 ing all the complex feelings, emotions, interests, 
 aspirations, hopes, and fears, common to man. 1 To 
 ignore this fundamental fact, as they must who 
 interpret the Marx-Engels theory of history as an 
 economic fatalism, is to miss the profoundest sig- 
 nificance of the theory. While it is true that the 
 scientific spirit destroys the idea of romantic, magic 
 transformations of the social system, and the belief 
 that the world may at will be re-created, re-built 
 upon the plans of some Utopian architect, it still, as 
 we shall see, leaves room for the human factor. They 
 who accept the theory that the production of the 
 material necessities of life is the main impelling force, 
 the geist, of human evolution, may rightly protest 
 against social injustice and wrong just as vehemently 
 as any of the ideologists, and aspire just as fervently 
 toward a nobler and better state. The Materialistic 
 Conception of History does not involve the fatalist 
 resignation summed up hi the phrase, "Whatever 
 is, is natural, and, therefore, right." 
 
 II 
 
 The idea of social evolution is admirably expressed 
 in the fine phrase of Leibnitz: "The present is the 
 
 1 For a discussion of this point, see Enrico Fern's Socialism and 
 Modern Science. Translated by R. Rives La Monte, New York, 
 1900. 
 
 F
 
 66 SOCIALISM 
 
 child of the past, but it is the parent of the future." * 
 The great seventeenth-century philosopher was not 
 indeed the first to postulate and apply to society 
 that doctrine of flux, of continuity and unity, which 
 we call evolution. In all ages of which record has 
 been preserved to us, it has been sporadically, and 
 more or less vaguely expressed. Even savages seem 
 to have dimly perceived it. The saying of the 
 Bechuana chief, recorded by the missionary, Casalis, 
 was probably, from its epigramatic character, a 
 proverb of his people. "One event is always the son 
 of another," he said, a saying strikingly like that 
 of Leibnitz. 
 
 Since the work of Lyell, Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, 
 Huxley, and their numerous followers, a brilliant 
 school embracing the foremost historians and sociolo- 
 gists of Europe and America, the idea of evolution 
 as a universal law has made rapid and certain progress. 
 Every thing changes ; nothing is immutable or eternal. 
 Whatever is, whether in geology, astronomy, biology, 
 or sociology, is the result of numberless, inevitable, 
 related changes. The present is a phase only of a 
 great transition process from what was, through what 
 is, to what will be. 
 
 The Marx-Engels theory is an exploration of the 
 laws governing this process of evolution in the domain 
 of human relations : an attempt to provide a key to 
 
 1 Edward Clodd, Pioneers of Evolution from Tholes to Huxley, 
 page 1.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 67 
 
 the hitherto mysterious succession of changes in the 
 political, juridical, and social relations and institu- 
 tions. Whence, for instance, arose the institution of 
 chattel slavery, so repugnant to our modern ideas of 
 right and wrong ; and how shall we explain its defense 
 and justification in the name of religion and morality ? 
 How account for the fact that what at one period of 
 the world's history is regarded as perfectly natural 
 and right the practice of polygamy, for example 
 becomes abhorent at another period ; or that what is 
 regarded with horror and disgust in one part of the 
 world is sanctioned by the ethical codes and freely 
 practiced elsewhere? Ferri gives two examples of 
 this kind : the cannibalism of Central African tribes, 
 and the killing of parents, as a religious duty, in 
 Sumatra. 1 To reply "custom" is to beg the whole 
 issue ; for customs do not exist without reason, how- 
 ever difficult it may be for us to discern the reasons 
 for any particular custom. To reply that these 
 things are mysteries, as the old theologians did when 
 the doctrine of the Trinity was questioned, is to leave 
 the question unanswered and to challenge doubt and 
 investigation ; the human mind abhors a mystery as 
 nature abhors a vacuum. Despite Spencer's dog- 
 matism, the human mind has never admitted the 
 existence of the Unknowable. To explore the Un- 
 known is man's universal impulse; and with each 
 
 1 Ferri, Socialism and Modern Science, page 96.
 
 68 SOCIALISM 
 
 fresh discovery the Unknown is narrowed by the 
 expansion of the Known. 
 
 The theory that ideas determine progress, that, in 
 the words of Professor Richard T. Ely, 1 "all that is 
 significant in human history may be traced back to 
 ideas," is only true hi the sense that a half truth is 
 true. It is truth, nothing but the truth, but it is 
 not the whole truth. For ideas have histories, too, 
 and the causation of an idea must be understood 
 before the idea itself can serve to explain anything. 
 We must go back of the idea to the causes which 
 gave it birth if we would interpret anything by it. 
 We may trace the American Revolution, for example, 
 back to the revolutionary ideas of the colonists, but 
 that will not materially assist us to understand the 
 Revolution. For that, it is necessary to trace the 
 ideas themselves to then* source, the economic dis- 
 content of a sadly exploited people. This is the 
 new spirit which illumines the works of historians 
 like Green, McMaster, Morse Stephens, and others, 
 who emphasize social rather than individual forces, 
 and find the geist of history in social experiences and 
 institutions. WTiat has been called the "Great Man 
 theory," the theory which regarded Luther as the 
 creator of the Protestant Reformation, to quote only 
 one example, and ignored the great economic changes 
 consequent upon the break-up of feudalism and the 
 
 1 Ely, Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society, page 3.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 69 
 
 rise of a new industrial order, long dominated our 
 histories. The student, who seeks in the bulk of the 
 histories written prior to, say, 1860, what he has a 
 legitimate reason for seeking, a picture of the actual 
 life of the people at any period, will be sadly dis- 
 appointed. He will find records of wars and treaties 
 of peace, royal genealogies and gossip, wildernesses 
 of unrelated dates. But he will not find such careful 
 accounts of the jurisprudence of the period, nor any 
 hint of the economical conditions of its develop- 
 ment. He will find splendid accounts of court life, 
 with its ceremonials, scandals, intrigues, and follies; 
 but no such pictures of the lives of the people, their 
 social conditions, and the methods of labor and 
 commerce which obtained. The new spirit, in the 
 development of which the materialistic conception 
 of Marx and Engels has been an important creative 
 influence, is concerned less with the chronicle of 
 notable events and dates than with their underlying 
 causes and the manner of life of the people. Had it 
 no other bearing, the Marx-Engels theory, con- 
 sidered solely as a contribution to the science of his- 
 tory, would have been one of the greatest philosophical 
 achievements of the nineteenth century. By em- 
 phasizing the importance of the economic factors in 
 social evolution, it has done much for economics and 
 more for history. 1 
 
 1 Cf. Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History.
 
 70 SOCIALISM 
 
 III 
 
 While the Materialistic Conception of History 
 bears the names of Marx and Engels, as the theory of 
 organic evolution bears the names of Darwin and 
 Wallace, it is not claimed that the idea had never 
 before been expressed. Just as thousands of years 
 before Darwin and Wallace the theory which bears 
 their names had been dimly perceived, so the idea 
 that economic motives dominate historical develop- 
 ments had its foreshadowings. The famous dictum 
 of Aristotle, that only by the introduction of machines 
 would the abolition of slavery ever be possible, is a 
 conspicuous example of many anticipations of the 
 theory. It is true that " In dealing with speculations 
 so remote, we have to guard against reading modern 
 meanings into writings produced in ages whose limita- 
 tions of knowledge were serious, whose temper and 
 standpoint are wholly alien to our own," l but the 
 Aristotelian saying admits of no other interpretation. 
 It is clearly a recognition of the fact that the supreme 
 politico-social institution of the time depended upon 
 hand labor. In later times, the idea of a direct con- 
 nection between economic causes and legal and 
 political institutions reappears hi the works of various 
 writers. Professor Seligman 2 quotes from Harring- 
 
 1 Clodd, Pioneers of Evolution from Tholes to Huxley, page 8. 
 
 2 Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History, page 50.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 71 
 
 ton's Oceana the argument that the prevailing form 
 of government depends upon the conditions of land 
 tenure, and the extent of its monopolization. Saint- 
 Simon, too, as already stated, 1 taught that political 
 institutions depend upon economic conditions. But 
 it is to Marx and Engels that we owe the first formu- 
 lation of what had hitherto been but a suggestion 
 into a definite theory, and the beginnings of a litera- 
 ture, now of considerable proportions, dealing with 
 history from its standpoint. 
 
 A word as to the designation of the theory. Its 
 authors gave it the name of "historical materialism," 
 and it has been said that the name is for various 
 reasons unfortunately chosen. The two leading 
 American exponents of the theory, Professor Selig- 
 man and Mr. Ghent, have expressed that conviction 
 in very definite terms. The last-named writer 
 bases his objection to the name on the ground that 
 it is repellent to many persons who associate the 
 word "materialism" with the philosophy "that mat- 
 ter is the only substance, and that matter and its 
 motions constitute the universe." 2 That is an old 
 objection, and undoubtedly contains much truth; it 
 is interesting in connection therewith to read Engels' 
 sarcastic comment upon it in the Introduction to his 
 Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. The objection of 
 
 1 See page 43. 
 
 1 W. J. Ghent, Mass and Class, page 9.
 
 72 SOCIALISM 
 
 Professor Seligman is based upon another ground 
 entirely. He impugns its accuracy. "The theory 
 which ascribes all changes in society to the influence 
 of climate, or to the character of the fauna and flora, 
 is materialistic," he says, "and yet has little in com- 
 mon with the doctrine here discussed. The doctrine 
 we have to deal with is not only materialistic, but 
 also economic in character ; and the better phrase 
 is ... the 'economic interpretation' of history." 1 
 For this reason he discards the name given to the 
 theory by its authors and adopts the luminous phrase 
 of Thorold Rogers. 2 By French and Italian writers 
 the term "economic determinism" has long been used 
 and it has been adopted to some extent in this country 
 by Socialist writers. But this term also Professor 
 Seligman rejects, for the perfectly valid reason that it 
 exaggerates the theory, and gives it, by implication, 
 a fatalistic character, conveying, as it does, the idea 
 that economic influence is the sole determining factor 
 a view which its authors specifically repudiated. 
 
 Many persons have doubtless been deceived into 
 believing that the theory involves the denial of all 
 influence to idealistic or spiritual factors; and the 
 assumption that economic forces alone determine the 
 course of historical development. That is due 
 partly, no doubt, to the overemphasis placed upon 
 
 1 Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History, page 4. 
 3 Without credit, by the way.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 73 
 
 it by its founders a common experience of new 
 doctrines and, above all, the exaggerations of too 
 zealous, unrestrained disciples. There is a wise say- 
 ing of Schiller's which suggests the spirit in which 
 these exaggerations of a great truth exaggerations 
 by which it becomes falsehood should be regarded : 
 "Rarely do we reach truth, except through ex- 
 tremes we must have foolishness . . . even to 
 exhaustion, before we arrive at the beautiful goal of 
 calm wisdom." l When it is contended that the 
 "Civil War was at the bottom a struggle between 
 two economic principles," 2 we have the presentation 
 of an important truth, the key to the proper under- 
 standing of a great event. But when that important 
 fact is exaggerated and torn from its legitimate place 
 to suit the propaganda of a theory, and we are asked 
 to believe that Garrison, Love joy, and other abo- 
 litionists, were inspired solely by economic motives, 
 that the urge of human freedom did not enter their 
 souls, we are forced to reject it. But let it be clearly 
 understood that it forms no part of the theory, that 
 it is even expressly denied hi the very terms of the 
 theory, and that its founders took every chance of 
 repudiating such monstrous perversions of their 
 statements. 
 In one of the very earliest of his writings upon the 
 
 1 Schiller, Philosophical Letters, Preamble. 
 
 * Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History, page 86.
 
 74 SOCIALISM 
 
 subject, some comments upon the philosophy of 
 Ludwig Feuerbach, written in 1845, and intended to 
 form the basis of a work upon the subject, we find 
 Marx insisting that man is not a mere automaton, 
 driven irresistibly by blind economic forces. He says : 
 "The materialistic doctrine, that men are the products 
 of conditions and education, different men, there- 
 fore, the products of other conditions and changed 
 education, forgets that circumstances may be altered 
 by men, and that the educator has himself to be edu- 
 cated." l Thus early we see the master taking a 
 position entirely at variance with those of his dis- 
 ciples who would claim that the human factor has no 
 place hi historical development. Marx recognizes the 
 human character of the problem and the futility of 
 attempting to reduce all the processes of history and 
 human progress to one sole basic cause. And in no 
 instance, so far as I am aware, has Marx or his col- 
 league attempted to do this. In another place, 
 Marx contends that "men make their own history, 
 but they make it not of their own accord or under 
 self-chosen conditions, but under given and trans- 
 mitted conditions. The tradition of all dead genera- 
 tions weighs like a mountain upon the brain of the 
 living." 2 Here, again, the influence of the human 
 
 1 Appendix to F. Engels' Feuerbach, the Roots of the Socialist 
 Philosophy, translated by Austin Lewis, 1903. 
 
 * Quoted from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Marx, by Seligman, 
 page 42.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 75 
 
 will is not denied, though its limitations are indicated. 
 This is the application to social man of the theory 
 of limitations of the will commonly accepted as 
 applying to individuals. Man is only a freewill 
 agent within certain bounds. In a given contingency, 
 I may be "free" to act in a certain manner, or to 
 refrain from so acting. I may take my choice, in 
 the one direction or the other, entirely free, to all 
 appearances, from restraining or compelling in- 
 fluences; thus, I have acted upon my "will." But 
 what factors formed my will? What circumstances 
 determined my decision? Perhaps fear, or shame, 
 or pride, perhaps tendencies inherited from the past. 
 Engels admits that the economic factor in evolu- 
 tion has been unduly emphasized. He says: "Marx 
 and I are partly responsible for the fact that the 
 younger men have sometimes laid more stress on 
 the economic side than it deserves. In meeting the 
 attacks of our opponents, it was necessary for us to 
 emphasize the dominant principle denied by them; 
 and we did not always have the tune, place, or 
 opportunity to let the other factors which were con- 
 cerned in the mutual action and reaction get their 
 deserts." 1 In another letter, 2 he says: "According 
 to the materialistic view of history, the factor which 
 
 1 Quoted from The Sozialiatische Akodemiker, 1895, by Scligman : 
 The Economic Interpretation of History, page 142. 
 3 Idem, page 143.
 
 76 SOCIALISM 
 
 is in last instance decisive in history is the production 
 and reproduction of actual life. More than this 
 neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. But when 
 any one distorts this so as to read that the economic 
 factor is the sole element, he converts the state- 
 ment into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. 
 The economic condition is the basis; but the various 
 elements of the superstructure the political forms 
 of the class contests, and then* results, the constitu- 
 tions the legal forms, and also all the reflexes of 
 these actual contests in the brains of the participants, 
 the political, legal, philosophical theories, the re- 
 ligious views . . . all these exert an influence on 
 the development of the historical struggles, and, hi 
 many instances, determine their form." 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that the doctrine does not 
 imply economic fatalism. It does not deny that 
 ideals influence historical developments and in- 
 dividual conduct. It does not deny that men may, 
 and often do, act in accordance with the promptings 
 of noble impulses, when their material interests 
 would lead them to act otherwise. We have a con- 
 spicuous example of this in Marx's own life, his 
 splendid devotion to the cause of the workers through 
 years of terrible poverty and hardship when he 
 might have chosen wealth and fame. Thus we are 
 to understand the materialistic theory as teaching, 
 not that history is determined by economic forces
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 77 
 
 only, but that in human evolution the chief factors 
 are social factors, and that these factors in turn are 
 mainly molded by economic circumstances. 1 
 
 This, then, is the basis of the Socialist philosophy, 
 which Engels regards as "destined to do for history 
 what Darwin's theory has done for biology." Marx 
 himself made a similar comparison. 2 Marx was, so 
 Liebknecht tells us, one of the first to recognize the 
 importance of Darwin's investigations from a socio- 
 logical point of view. His first elaborate treat- 
 ment of the materialistic theory, in A Contribution 
 to the Critique of Political Economy, appeared hi 1859, 
 the year in which The Origin of Species appeared. 
 "We spoke for months of nothing else but Darwin, 
 and the revolutionizing power of his scientific con- 
 quests," 8 says Liebknecht. Darwin, however, had 
 little knowledge of political economy, as he acknowl- 
 edged in a letter to Marx, thanking the latter for a 
 copy of his Das Capital. "I heartily wish that I 
 possessed a greater knowledge of the deep and impor- 
 tant subject of economic questions, which would make 
 me a more worthy recipient of your gift," he wrote. 4 
 
 1 I have not attempted to give here a history of the development 
 of the theory, and only in a general way have I attempted to explain 
 it. For a more minute study of the theory, I must refer the reader 
 to the writings of Engels, Seligman, Ghent, Ferri, Bax, and others 
 quoted in these pages. 
 
 Capital, Vol. I, page 367 n. 
 
 1 Liebknecht, Memoirs of Karl Marx, page 91. 
 
 4 Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, A Comparison, by Edward 
 Aveling, London, 1897.
 
 78 SOCIALISM 
 
 IV 
 
 The test of such a theory must lie in its application. 
 Let us, then, apply the materialistic principle, first 
 to a specific event, and then to the great sweep of the 
 historic drama. Perhaps no single event has more 
 profoundly impressed the imaginations of men, or 
 filled a more important place in our histories, than the 
 discovery of America by Columbus. In the school- 
 books for generations, this great event figures as a 
 splendid adventure, arising out of a romantic dream. 
 But the facts are, as we know, far otherwise. 1 In the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries there were numerous 
 and well-frequented routes from Hindustan, that 
 vast storehouse of treasure from which Europe drew 
 its riches. Along these .routes cities flourished. 
 There were the great ports, Licia in the Levant, 
 Trebizond on the Black Sea, and Alexandria. From 
 these ports, Venetian and Genoese traders bore the 
 produce over the passes of the Alps to the Upper 
 Danube and the Rhine. Here it was a source of 
 wealth to the cities along the waterways, from 
 Ratisbon and Nuremburg, to Bruges and Antwerp. 
 Even the slightest acquaintance with the history of 
 the Middle Ages must show the importance of these 
 cities. 
 
 1 See Thorold Rogers, The Economic Interpretation of History, 
 second edition, 1891, pages 10-12.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 79 
 
 When all these routes save the Egyptian were 
 closed by the hordes of savages which infested Central 
 Asia, it became an easy matter for the Moors in Africa, 
 and the Turks in Europe, to exact immense revenues 
 from the Eastern trade, solely through their monopoly 
 of the route of transit. The Turks were securely 
 seated at Constantinople, threatening to advance into 
 the heart of Europe, and building up an immense 
 military system out of the taxes imposed upon the 
 trade of Europe with the East a military power, 
 which, hi less than a quarter of a century, enabled 
 Selim I to conquer Mesopotamia and the holy towns 
 of Arabia, and to annex Egypt. 1 It became neces- 
 sary, then, to find a new route to India; and it was 
 this great economic necessity which first set Colum- 
 bus thinking of a pathway to India over the Western 
 Sea. It was this great economic necessity which 
 induced Ferdinand and Isabella to support his 
 adventurous plan, hi a word, without detracting 
 in any manner from the splendid genius of Columbus, 
 or from the romance of his great voyage of discovery, 
 we see that, fundamentally, it was the economic 
 interest of Europe which gave birth to the one and 
 made the other possible. The same explanation 
 applies to the voyage of Vasco da Gama, six years 
 
 1 I do not attempt to develop here the serious consequences of 
 these events to Europe. See The Economic Interpretation of His- 
 tory, by Thorold Rogers, Chapter I, page 8, for a brief account of this.
 
 80 SOCIALISM 
 
 later, which resulted in finding a way to India over 
 
 the southeast course by way of the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 Kipling asks in his ballad "The British Flag" : 
 
 "And what should they know of England, who only England 
 know?" 
 
 There is a profound truth in the defiant line, a truth 
 which applies equally to America or any other country. 
 The present is inseparable from the past. We cannot 
 understand one epoch without reference to its prede- 
 cessors; we cannot understand the history of the 
 United States unless we first seek the key in the his- 
 tory of Europe ; of England and France, in particular. 
 At the very threshold, to understand how the heroic 
 navigator came to discover the vast continent of which 
 the United States is part, we must pause to study the 
 economic conditions of Europe which impelled the 
 adventurous voyage, and led to the finding of a great 
 continent stretching across the ocean path. Such a 
 view of history does not rob it of its romance, but 
 rather adds to it. Surely, the wonderful linking of 
 circumstances, the demand for spices and silks to 
 minister to the fine tastes of aristocratic Europe, 
 the growth of the trade with the East Indies, the 
 grasping greed of Moor and Turk, all playing a r61e 
 in the great drama of which the discovery of America 
 is but a scene, is infinitely more fascinating than the 
 latter event detached from its historic setting!
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 81 
 
 It is not easy in the compass of a few pages to give 
 an intelligent view of the main currents of history. 
 The sketch here introduced not without hesitation 
 is an endeavor to state the Socialist concept of the 
 course of evolution in brief outline; to indicate the 
 principal economic causes which have determined 
 that course, and to direct the inquiring reader to 
 some of the more important sources of information 
 accessible to the average reader knowing no language 
 but English. 
 
 It is now generally admitted that primitive man 
 lived under Communism. Lewis H. Morgan 1 has 
 calculated that if the life of the human race be assumed 
 to have covered one hundred thousand years, at least 
 ninety-five thousand years were spent in a crude, 
 tribal Communism, in which private property was 
 practically unknown, and in which the only ethic was 
 devotion to tribal interests, and the only crime an- 
 tagonism to tribal interests. Under this social system 
 the means of making wealth was in the hands of the 
 tribes, or gens, and the distribution was likewise 
 socially arranged. Between the different tribes war- 
 fare was constant; but in the tribe itself there was 
 cooperation and not struggle. This fact is of tre- 
 mendous importance in view of the criticisms which 
 have been directed to the Socialist philosophy from 
 the so-called Darwinian point of view the theory 
 
 1 Quoted by Ilyndman, Economics of Socialism, page 5. 
 O
 
 82 SOCIALISM 
 
 that competition and struggle is the law of life ; that 
 what Professor Huxley calls "the Hobbesial war of 
 each against all," is the normal state of existence. 
 I say the " so-called Darwinian theory" advisedly, for 
 the struggle for existence as the law of evolution has 
 been exaggerated out of all likeness to the conception 
 of Darwin himself. In The Descent of Man, for in- 
 stance, Darwin raises the point under review^ and 
 shows how, in many animal societies, the struggle for 
 existence is replaced by cooperation for existence, and 
 how that substitution results in the development of 
 faculties which secure to the species the best condi- 
 tions for survival. "Those communities," he says, 
 "which included the greatest number of the most 
 sympathetic members, would flourish best and rear 
 the greatest number of offspring." * Despite these 
 instances, and the warning of Darwin himself that the 
 term struggle for existence should not be too narrowly 
 interpreted or overrated, his followers, instead of 
 broadening it according to the master's suggestions, 
 narrowed it still more. This is almost invariably 
 the fate of theories which deal with human relations, 
 perhaps it would be equally true to say of all theories. 
 The exaggerations of Malthus' law of population is 
 a case in point. The Marx-Engels materialistic con- 
 ception of history, is, we have seen, another. 
 Kropotkin, among others, has developed the theory 
 
 1 Darwin, The Descent of Man, second edition, page 163.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 83 
 
 that "though there is an immense amount of warfare 
 and extermination going on amidst various species, 
 and especially amidst various classes of animals, 
 there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even 
 more, of mutual support, mutual aid, mutual defense 
 amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at 
 least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a 
 law of nature as mutual struggle. ... If we resort 
 to an indirect test, and ask nature: 'Who are the 
 fittest: those who are continually at war with each 
 other, or those who support one another?' we at 
 once see that those animals which acquire habits of 
 mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have 
 more chances to survive, and they attain, in their 
 respective classes, the highest development of in- 
 telligence and bodily organization. If the number- 
 less facts which can be brought forward to support 
 this view are taken into account, we may safely say 
 that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as 
 mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it 
 most probably has a far greater importance, inas- 
 much as it favors the development of such habits 
 and characters as insure the maintenance and further 
 development of the species, together with the greatest 
 amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the in- 
 dividual, with the least waste of energy." * 
 From the lowest forms of animal life up to the 
 
 1 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, pages 5-6.
 
 84 SOCIALISM 
 
 highest, man, this law proves to be operative. It is 
 not denied that there is competition for food, for life, 
 within the species, human and other. But that com- 
 petition is not usual; it arises out of unusual and 
 special conditions. There are instances of hunger- 
 maddened mothers tearing food away from their 
 children; men drifting at sea have fought for water 
 and food, as beasts fight; but these are not normal 
 conditions of life. "Happily enough," says Kropot- 
 kin again, " competition is not the rule either in the 
 animal world or in mankind. It is limited among 
 animals to exceptional periods. . . . Better con- 
 ditions are created by the elimination of competition 
 by means of mutual aid and mutual support." * 
 This is the voice of science now that we have passed 
 through the extremes and arrived at the "beautiful 
 goal of calm wisdom." Competition is not, in the 
 verdict of modern science, the law of life, but of death. 
 Strife is not nature's law of progress. 
 
 Anything more important for the purposes of our 
 present inquiry than this verdict of science it would 
 be difficult to imagine. Men have for so long be- 
 lieved and declared struggle and competition to be 
 the "law of nature," and opposed Socialism on the 
 ground of its supposed antagonism to that law, that 
 this new conception of the law comes as a vindica- 
 tion of the Socialist position. The naturalist testifies 
 
 1 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, page 74.
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 85 
 
 to the universality of the principle of cooperation 
 throughout the animal world, and the historian to its 
 universality over the greatest period of man's his- 
 tory. Thus the present tendencies toward combina- 
 tion and away from competition in industry and 
 commerce appear as the fulfilling of a great universal 
 law and the vain efforts of men to stop that process, 
 by legislation, boycotts, and divers other methods, 
 appear as efforts to set aside nature's immutable law. 
 Like so many Canutes, they bid the tides halt, and, 
 like Canute's, their commands are vain and mocked 
 by the unheeding tides. 
 
 Under Communism, then, man lived for many 
 thousands oT years. As far back as we can go into 
 the paleo-ethnology of mankind, we find evidences 
 of this. All the great authorities, Morgan, Maine, 
 Lubbock, Taylor, Bachofen, and many others, agree 
 in this. And under this Communism all the great 
 fundamental inventions were evolved, as Morgan 
 and others have shown. The wheel, the potter's 
 wheel, the lever, the stencil plate, the sail, the rudder, 
 the loom, were all evolved under Communism hi its 
 various stages. So, too, the cultivation of cereals 
 for food, the smelting of metals, the domestication of 
 animals, to which we owe so much, and on which 
 we still so largely depend, were all introduced under 
 Communism. Even in our own day there have been 
 found abundant survivals of this Communism among
 
 86 SOCIALISM 
 
 primitive peoples. I need only mention here the 
 Bantu tribes of Africa, whose splendid organization 
 astonished the British, and the Eskimos. It is now 
 possible to trace with a fair amount of certainty the 
 progress of man through various stages of Communism, 
 from the unconscious Communism of the nomad to 
 the consciously organized and directed Communism 
 of the most developed tribes, right up to the threshold 
 of civilization, when private property takes the place 
 of common, tribal property, and economic classes 
 appear. 1 
 
 Private property, other than that personal owner- 
 ship and use of things, such as weapons and tools, 
 which involves no class or caste domination, and is 
 an integral feature of all forms of Communism, first 
 appears in the ownership of man by man. Slavery, 
 strange as it may seem, is directly traceable to tribal 
 Communism, and first appears as a tribal institution. 
 When one tribe made war upon another, its efforts 
 were directed to the killing of as many of its enemies 
 as possible. Cannibal tribes killed their foes for food, 
 rarely or never killing their fellow-tribesmen for that 
 purpose. Non-cannibalistic tribes killed their foes 
 
 1 Cf. Ancient Society, by Lewis H. Morgan, and The Origin of the 
 Family, Private Property, and the State, by Friedrich Engels.
 
 THE MATEEIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 87 
 
 merely to get rid of them. But when the power of 
 man over the forces of external nature had reached 
 that point in its development where it became rela- 
 tively easy for a man to produce more than was neces- 
 sary for his own maintenance, the custom arose of 
 making captives of enemies and setting them to work. 
 A foe captured had thus an economic value to the 
 tribe; either he could be set to work directly, his 
 surplus product going into the tribal treasury, or he 
 could be used to relieve some of his captors from 
 other necessary duties, thus enabling them to pro- 
 duce more than would otherwise be possible, the effect 
 being the same in the end. The property of the tribe 
 at first, slaves become at a later stage private property 
 probably through the institution of tribal distribu- 
 tion of wealth. Cruel, revolting, and vile as slavery 
 appears to our modern sense especially the earlier 
 forms of slavery, before the body of legislation, and, 
 not less important, sentiment, which surrounded it 
 later arose it still was a step forward, a distinct 
 advance upon the older customs of cannibalism or 
 wholesale slaughter. 
 
 Nor was it a progressive step only on the humani- 
 tarian side. It had other, profounder consequences 
 from the evolutionary point of view. It made a 
 leisured class possible, and provided the only condi- 
 tions under which art, philosophy, and jurisprudence 
 could be evolved. The secret of Aristotle's saying,
 
 88 SOCIALISM 
 
 that only by the invention of machines would the 
 abolition of slavery ever be possible, lies in his recog- 
 nition of the fact that the labor of slaves alone made 
 possible the devotion of a class of men to the pursuit 
 of knowledge instead of to the production of the 
 primal necessities of life. The Athens of Pericles, 
 for example, with all its varied forms of culture, its art 
 and its philosophy, was a semi-communism of a caste 
 above, resting upon a basis of slave labor underneath. 
 And that is true of all the so-called ancient democ- 
 racies of civilization. 
 
 The private ownership of wealth producers and 
 their products made private exchange inevitable; 
 individual ownership of land took the place of com- 
 munal ownership, and a monetary system was in- 
 vented. Here, then, in the private ownership of 
 land and laborer, private production and exchange 
 for profit, we have the economic factors which caused 
 the great revolts of antiquity, and led to that con- 
 centration of wealth into few hands with its result- 
 ing mad luxury and widespread proletarian misery, 
 which conspired to the overthrow of Greek and 
 Roman civilization. The study of those relentless 
 economic forces which led to the break-up of Roman 
 civilization is important as showing how chattel 
 slavery became modified and the slave to be regarded 
 as a serf, a servant tied to the soil. The lack of 
 adequate production, the crippling of commerce by
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 89 
 
 the hordes of corrupt officials, the overburdening of 
 the agricultural estates with slaves so that agricul- 
 ture became profitless, the crushing out of free labor 
 by slave labor, and the rise of a class of wretched free- 
 men proletarians, these, and other kindred causes, 
 led to the breaking up of the great estates; the dis- 
 missal of superfluous slaves, in many cases, and the 
 partial enfranchisement of others by making them 
 hereditary tenants, paying a fixed rent in shares of 
 their product here we have the embryo of the later 
 feudal system. It was a revolution, this transforma- 
 tion of the social system of Rome, of infinitely greater 
 importance than the sporadic risings of a few thousand 
 slaves. Yet, such is the lack of perspective which 
 historians have shown, it is given a far less important 
 place in the histories than the risings in question. 
 Slavery, chattel slavery, died because it had ceased 
 to be profitable ; serf labor arose because it was more 
 profitable. Slave labor was economically impossible, 
 and the labor of free men was morally impossible; 
 it had, thanks to the slave system, become regarded 
 as a degradation. In the words of Engels: "This 
 brought the Roman world into a blind ally from 
 which it could not escape. . . . There was no other 
 help but a complete revolution." * 
 The invading barbarians made the revolution 
 
 1 F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the 
 State, translated by Ernest Untermann, page 182.
 
 90 SOCIALISM 
 
 complete. By the poor freeman proletarians who 
 had been selling their children into slavery, the bar- 
 barians were welcomed. Misery is like opulence in 
 that it has no patriotism. Many of the proletarian 
 freemen had fled to the districts of the barbarians, 
 and feared nothing so much as a return to Roman 
 rule; what, then, should the proletariat care for the 
 overthrow of the Roman state ? And how much less 
 the slaves, whose condition, generally speaking, could 
 not possibly change for the worse? The proletariat 
 and the slave could join in saying, as men have 
 said thousands of times in circumstances of despera- 
 tion : 
 
 "Our fortunes may be better; they can be no worse." 
 
 VI 
 
 Feudalism is the essential politico-economic system 
 of the Middle Ages. Obscure as its origin is, and in- 
 definite as the date of its first appearances, there can 
 be no doubt whatever that the break-up of the Roman 
 system, and the modification of the existing form of 
 slavery, constituted the most important of its sources. 
 Whether, as some writers have contended, the feudal 
 system of land tenure and serfdom is traceable to 
 Asiatic origins, being adopted by the ruling class of 
 Rome in the days of the economic disintegration of the 
 empire, or whether it rose spontaneously out of the
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 91 
 
 Roman conditions, matters little to us. Whatever 
 its archaeological interest, it does not affect the 
 narrower scope of our present inquiry whether 
 economic necessity caused the adoption of an alien 
 system of land tenure and agricultural production, or 
 whether economic necessity caused the creation of a 
 new system. The central fact is the same in either 
 case. That period of history which we call the Mid- 
 dle Ages covers a span of well-nigh a thousand years. 
 If we arbitrarily date its beginning from the success- 
 ful invasion of Rome by the barbarians hi the early 
 part of the fifth century, and its ending with the final 
 development of the craft guilds in the middle of the 
 fourteenth century, we have a sufficiently exact 
 measure of the time during which feudalism developed, 
 flourished, and declined. There are few things more 
 difficult than the bounding of historical epochs by 
 exact dates; just as the ripening of the wheat fields 
 comes almost imperceptibly, so that the farmer can 
 say when the wheat is ripe yet cannot tell when the 
 ripening occurred, so with the epochs into which his- 
 tory divides itself. There is the unripe state and the 
 ripe, but no chasm yawns between them; they are 
 merged together. We speak of the "end" of chattel 
 slavery, and the "rise" of feudalism, therefore, in 
 this wide, general sense. As a matter of fact, chattel 
 slavery survived to some extent for centuries, exist- 
 ing alongside of the new form of servitude; and its
 
 92 SOCIALISM 
 
 disappearance took place, not simultaneously through- 
 out the civilized world, but at varying intervals. 
 Likewise, too, there is a vast difference between the 
 first, crude, ill-defined forms of feudalism and its sub- 
 sequent development. 
 
 The theory of feudalism is "the divine right of 
 kings." God is the Supreme Lord of all the earth, 
 the kings are His vice regents, devolving their au- 
 thority in turn upon whomsoever they will. At the 
 base of the whole superstructure was the serf, his 
 relation to his master differing only in degree, though 
 in material degree, from that of the chattel slave. 
 He might be, and often was, as brutally ill-treated 
 as the slave before him had been ; he might be ill fed 
 and ill housed ; his wife or daughters might be rav- 
 ished by his master or his master's sons. Yet, withal, 
 his condition was better than that of the slave. He 
 could maintain his family life in an independent 
 household; he possessed some rights, chief of which 
 perhaps was the right to labor for himself. Having 
 his own allotment of land, he was hi a much larger 
 sense a human being. Compelled to render so many 
 days' service to his lord, tilling the soil, clearing the 
 forest, quarrying stone, and doing domestic work, 
 he was permitted to devote a certain, sometimes an 
 equal, number of days to work for his own benefit. 
 Not only so, but the service the lord rendered him, 
 in protecting him and his family from the lawless and
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 93 
 
 violent robber hordes which infested the country, 
 was considerable. 
 
 The feudal estate, or manor, was an industrial 
 whole, self-dependent, and having few essential ties 
 with the outside world. While the barons and their 
 retainers, the lords, thanes, and freemen, enjoyed a 
 certain rude plenty, some of the richer barons and 
 lords enjoying a considerable amount of luxury and 
 splendor, the villein and his sons tilled the soil, reaped 
 the harvests, felled trees for fuel, built the houses, 
 raised the necessary domestic animals, and killed the 
 wild animals; his wife and daughters spun the flax, 
 carded the wool, made the homespun clothing, 
 brewed the mead, and gathered the grapes which they 
 made into wine. There was little real dependence 
 upon the outside world except for articles of luxury. 
 
 Such was the basic economic institution of feudal- 
 ism. But alongside of the feudal estate with its serf 
 labor, there were the free laborers, no longer regarding 
 labor as shameful and degrading. These free labor- 
 ers were the handicraftsmen and free peasants 
 the former soon organizing themselves into guilds. 
 There was a specialization of labor, but, as yet, little 
 division. Each man worked at a particular craft 
 and exchanged his individual products. The free 
 craftsman would exchange his product with the free 
 peasant, and sometimes his trade extended to the 
 feudal manor. The guild was at once his master and
 
 94 SOCIALISM 
 
 protector; rigid in its rules, strict in its surveillance 
 of its members, it was strong and effective as a 
 protector against the impositions and invasions of 
 feudal barons and their retainers. Division of labor 
 first appears in its simplest form, the association of 
 independent individual workers for mutual advantage, 
 sharing their products on an equal basis. This simple 
 cooperation involved no social change; that came 
 later with the development of the workshop system, 
 and the division of labor upon a definite, predetermined 
 plan. Men specialized now in the making of parts of 
 things; no man could say of a finished product, "This 
 is mine, for I have made it." Production bad be- 
 come a social function. 
 
 VII 
 
 At first, in its simple beginnings, the cooperation 
 of various producers in one great workshop did not 
 involve any general or far-reaching changes in the 
 system of exchange. But as the new methods spread, 
 and it became the custom for one or two wealthy 
 individuals to provide the workshop and necessary 
 tools of production, the product of the combined 
 labor of the workers being appropriated in its en- 
 tirety by the owners of the agencies of production, 
 who paid the workers a money wage representing less 
 than the actual value of their product, and based
 
 THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 95 
 
 upon the cost of their subsistence, the whole economic 
 system was once more revolutionized. The custom 
 of working for wages, hitherto rare and exceptional, 
 became general and customary; individual produc- 
 tion for use, either directly or through the medium 
 of personal exchange, was superseded by social pro- 
 duction for private profit. The wholesale exchange 
 of social products for private gain took the place of 
 the personal exchange of commodities. The differ- 
 ence between the total cost of the production of com- 
 modities, including the wages of the producers, and 
 their exchange value determined at this stage 
 by the cost of producing similar commodities by in- 
 dividual labor constituted the share of the capital- 
 ist, his profit, and the objective of production. The 
 new system did not spring up spontaneously and full- 
 fledged; like feudalism, it was a growth, a develop- 
 ment of existing forms. And just as chattel slavery 
 lingered on after the rise of the feudal regime, so the 
 old methods of individual production and direct 
 exchange of commodities for personal use lingered 
 on in places and isolated industries long after the 
 rise of the system of wage-paid labor and production 
 for profit. But the old methods of production and 
 exchange gradually became rare and well-nigh obso- 
 lete. In accordance with the stern economic law 
 that Marx afterward developed so clearly, the man 
 whose methods of production, including his tools,
 
 96 SOCIALISM 
 
 are less efficient and economical than those of his 
 fellows, thereby making his labor more expensive, 
 must either adapt himself to the new conditions or 
 fall in the struggle which ensues. The triumph of 
 the new system of capitalist production, with its far 
 greater efficiency arising from associated production 
 upon a plan of specialized division of labor, was, 
 therefore, but a question of time. The class of wage- 
 workers thus gradually increased in numbers; as 
 men found that they were unable to compete with 
 the new methods, they accepted the inevitable 
 and adapted themselves to the new conditions.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 CAPITALISM AND THE LAW OP CONCENTRATION 
 
 SUCH was the mode of the first stage of capitalistic 
 production, in which a permanent wage-working class 
 was formed, new and larger markets were developed, 
 and production for sale and profit became the rule, 
 instead of the exception as formerly when men pro- 
 duced primarily for use and sold only their surplus 
 products. A new form of class division arose out of 
 this economic soil. Instead of being bound to the 
 land as the serfs had been, the wage-workers were 
 bound to then* tools. They were not bound to a 
 single master, they were not branded on the cheek, 
 but they were dependent upon the industrial lords. 
 Thus it was that economic mastery gradually shifted 
 from the land-owning class to the class of manufac- 
 turers. The political and social history of the Middle 
 Ages is largely the record of the struggle for supremacy 
 between these two classes. That is the central fact 
 of the Protestant Reformation and of the Cromwellian 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 H 97
 
 98 SOCIALISM 
 
 The second stage of capitalism begins with the 
 birth of the machine age; the great mechanical in- 
 ventions of the latter half of the seventeenth century, 
 and the resulting industrial revolution, the salient 
 features of which we have already traced. That revo- 
 lution centered in England, whose proud but, from 
 all other points of view than the commercial, foolish 
 boast for a full century it was to be the "workshop 
 of the world." The new methods of production, and 
 the development of trade with India and the colonies 
 and the United States of America, providing a vast 
 and apparently almost unlimited market, a tre- 
 mendous rivalry was created among the people of 
 England, tauntingly, but with less originality than 
 bitterness, designated "a nation of shopkeepers" by 
 Napoleon the First. Competition flourished, and 
 commerce grew under its mighty urge. Quite natur- 
 ally, therefore, competition came to be universally 
 regarded as the "life of trade" and the one supreme 
 law of progress by British economists and statesmen. 
 The economic conditions of the time fostered a sturdy 
 individualism on the one hand, which, on the other 
 hand, they as surely destroyed; resulting in the 
 paradox of a nation of theoretical individualists 
 becoming, through its poor laws, and more especially 
 its vast body of industrial legislation, a nation of 
 practical collectivists. 
 
 The third and last stage of capitalism is charac-
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 99 
 
 terized by new forms of industrial administration and 
 control. Concentration of industry, and the elimi- 
 nation of competition, are the distinguishing features 
 of this stage. When, half a century ago, the Socialists 
 predicted an era of industrial concentration and 
 monopoly as the outcome of the competitive struggles 
 of the time, their prophecies were mocked and de- 
 rided. Yet, at this distance, it is easy to see what the 
 Socialists were foresighted enough to foresee, that 
 competition carried in its bosom the germs of its 
 own inevitable destruction. In words which, as 
 Professor Ely justly says, 1 seem to many, even non- 
 Socialists, like a prophecy, Karl Marx argued more 
 than half a century ago that the business units in 
 production would continuously increase in magni- 
 tude, until at last monopoly emerged from the com- 
 petitive struggle. This monopoly becoming a shackle 
 upon the system under which it has grown up, and 
 thus becoming incompatible with capitalist con- 
 ditions, socialization must, according to Marx, 
 naturally follow. 2 
 
 II 
 
 With the last-named phase of the great Socialist's 
 prediction we are not for the moment concerned. 
 
 1 Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society, by R. T. Ely, page 
 05. 
 
 * See Capital, English edition, page 789.
 
 100 SOCIALISM 
 
 That the predicted growth of monopoly out of the 
 competitive struggle has been abundantly realized 
 is the important point for our present study. Not- 
 withstanding the many controversies which have 
 arisen, both within and without the ranks of the 
 followers of Marx, it is generally conceded that the 
 control of the means of production is being rapidly 
 concentrated into the hands of small and smaller 
 groups of capitalists. In recent years the increase 
 in the number of industrial establishments has not 
 kept pace with the increase in the number of workers 
 employed, the increase of capital, or the value of the 
 products manufactured. Not only do we find small 
 groups of men controlling certain industries, but a 
 selective process can be observed at work, giving to 
 the same groups of men control of various industries 
 otherwise utterly unrelated. 
 
 In the earlier stages of the movement toward con- 
 centration and trustification, it was possible to classify 
 the leading capitalists according to the industries 
 with which they were identified. One set of capital- 
 ists, "Oil Kings," controlled the oil industry; another 
 set, "Steel Kings," controlled the iron and steel in- 
 dustry; another set, "Coal Barons," controlled the 
 coal industry, and so on throughout the industrial 
 and commercial life of the nation. To-day, all this 
 has been changed. An examination of the Directory 
 of Directors shows that the same men control varied
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 101 
 
 enterprises. The Oil King is at the same time a 
 Steel King, a Coal Baron, a Railway Magnate, and so 
 on. The men who comprise the Standard Oil group 
 are found to control hundreds of other companies. 
 They include in the scope of their directorate, bank- 
 ing, insurance, mining, real estate, railroad and 
 steamship lines, gas companies, sugar, coffee, cotton, 
 and tobacco companies, and a heterogeneous host of 
 other concerns. Not only so, but these same men 
 are large holders of foreign investments. In all the 
 great European countries, as well as India, Australia, 
 Africa, Asia, and the South American countries, they 
 hold large investments, while foreign capitalists 
 similarly, but to a much less extent, hold large in- 
 vestments in American companies. Thus, the con- 
 centration of industrial control, through its finance, 
 has become interindustrial and is rapidly becoming 
 international. In this way the predictions of the 
 Socialists are becoming fulfilled. 
 
 Ill 
 
 During the last few years there have been many 
 criticisms of the Marxian theory, aiming to show that 
 this concentration has been, and is, much more 
 apparent than real. Some of the most important of 
 these criticisms have come from within the ranks 
 of the Socialists themselves, and have been widely
 
 102 SOCIALISM 
 
 exploited as portending the disintegration of the 
 Socialist movement. Inter alia it may be remarked 
 here that a certain fretfulness of temper characterizes 
 most of the critics of the Socialist movement. Ad- 
 herence to the teachings of Marx is pronounced by 
 them to be a sign of the bondage of the movement and 
 its intellectual leaders to the Marxian "fetish," and 
 every recognition of the human fallibility of Marx 
 by a Socialist thinker is hailed as a sure portent of 
 a split among the Socialists. Yet the most serious 
 criticisms of Marx have come from the ranks of his 
 followers. It is perhaps only another sign of the 
 intellectual bankruptcy of the academic opposition 
 to Socialism that this should be so. 
 
 Of course, Marx was human and fallible. If 
 Capital had never been written, there would still 
 have been a Socialist movement; and if it could be 
 destroyed by criticism, the Socialist movement would 
 remain. Socialism is a product of economic con- 
 ditions, not of a theory or a book. Capital is the 
 intellectual explanation of Socialism, not its cause. 
 Much more than then* opponents, Socialists have 
 recognized this, and it can be said with absolute con- 
 fidence that they have been much more independent 
 in their attitude toward the great work of Marx than 
 most of their critics have been. 
 
 It cannot be fairly said that the sum of criticism 
 has seriously affected the general Marxian theory.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 103 
 
 So far as that criticism has touched the subject we 
 are discussing, it has been almost pitifully weak, and 
 the furore it has created seems almost pathetic. The 
 main results of this criticism may be briefly summarized 
 as follows: First, in industry, the persistence, and 
 even increase, of petty industries; second, in agri- 
 culture, the failure of large-scale farming, and the 
 decrease of the average farm acreage ; third, in retail 
 trade, the persistence of the small stores, despite the 
 growth in size and number of the great department 
 stores. At first sight, and stated in this manner, it 
 would seem as if these conclusions, if justified by 
 facts, involved a serious and far-reaching criticism of 
 the Socialist theory of a universal tendency toward 
 the concentration of industry and commerce into 
 units of ever increasing magnitude. 
 
 Upon closer examination, however, these conclu- 
 sions, their accuracy admitted, are seen to involve 
 no very serious or damaging criticism of the Socialist 
 theory. To the superficial observer, the mere in- 
 crease in the number of industrial establishments 
 appears a much more important matter than to the 
 careful student, who is not easily deceived by ap- 
 pearances. The student sees that while petty in- 
 dustries undoubtedly do increase, the increase of 
 large industries employing many more workers and 
 much larger capitals is vastly greater. Furthermore, 
 he sees what the superficial observer constantly over-
 
 104 SOCIALISM 
 
 looks, that these petty industries are unstable and 
 transient, being constantly absorbed by the larger 
 industrial combinations, or crushed out of existence, 
 as soon as they have obtained sufficient vitality to 
 make them worthy of notice, either as tributaries to 
 be desired or potential competitors to be feared. 
 Petty industries in a very large number of cases 
 represent a stage in social descent, the wreckage of 
 larger industries whose owners are economically as 
 poor as the ordinary wage-workers, or even poorer 
 and more to be pitied. Where, on the contrary, it is 
 a stage in social ascent, the petty industry is, para- 
 doxical as the idea may appear, part of the process of 
 industrial concentration. By independent gleaning, 
 it endeavors to find sufficient business to maintain its 
 existence. If it fails in this, its owner falls down to 
 the proletarian level from which, in most instances, 
 he arose. If it succeeds only to a degree sufficient to 
 maintain its owner at or near the average wage- 
 earner's level of comfort, it may pass unnoticed and 
 unmolested. If, on the other hand, it gleans sufficient 
 business to make it desirable as a tributary, or poten- 
 tially dangerous as a competitor, the petty business 
 is pounced upon by its mightier rival and either ab- 
 sorbed or crushed, according to the temper or need 
 of the latter. Critics of the Marxian system have for 
 the most part completely failed to recognize this sig- 
 nificant aspect of the subject, and attached far too much 
 importance to the continuance of petty industries.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 105 
 
 IV 
 
 What is true of petty industry is true in even 
 greater measure of retail trade. Nothing could well 
 be further from the truth than the hasty generaliza- 
 tions of some critics, that an increase in the number 
 of retail business establishments invalidates the 
 Socialist theory of the concentration of capital. In 
 the first place, many of these establishments have no 
 independence whatsoever, but are merely agencies of 
 larger enterprises. Mr. Macrosty 1 has shown that in 
 London the cheap restaurants are in the hands of 
 four or five firms, while much the same conditions 
 exist in connection with the trade in milk and bread. 
 Similar conditions prevail in almost all the large cities 
 in this and most other countries. Single companies 
 are known to control hundreds of saloons ; restaurants, 
 cigar stores, shoe stores, bake shops, coal depots, and 
 a multitude of other businesses, are subject to like 
 conditions, and it is doubtful whether, after all, there 
 has been the real increase of individual ownership 
 which Mr. Ghent concedes. 2 However that may be, 
 it is certain that a very large number of the business 
 establishments which figure as statistical units in 
 the argument against the Socialist theory of the 
 
 1 The Growth of Monopoly in English Industry (Fabian Tract), by 
 H. W. Macrosty. 
 
 2 Our Benevolent Feudalism, by W. J. Ghent, pages 17-21.
 
 106 SOCIALISM 
 
 concentration of capital should be regarded as so 
 many evidences in its favor. 
 
 A very large number, moreover, are really held 
 by speculators, and serve only as a means of divest- 
 ing prudent and thrifty artisans and others of their 
 little savings. Whoever has lived in the poorer 
 quarters of a great city, where small stores are most 
 numerous, and has watched the changes constantly 
 occurring in the stores of the neighborhood, will 
 realize the significance of this observation. The 
 present writer has known stores on the upper East 
 Side of New York, where he for several years re- 
 sided, change hands as many as six or seven times 
 in a single year. What happened was generally 
 this: A workingman having been thrown out of 
 work, or forced to give up his work by reason of age, 
 sickness, or accident, decided to attempt to make a 
 living in "business." In a few weeks, or a few 
 months at most, his small savings were swallowed 
 up, and he had to leave the store, making way for 
 the next victim. An acquaintance of the writer 
 owns six tenement houses in different parts of New 
 York City, the ground floors of which are occupied 
 by small stores. These stores are rented out by the 
 month just as other portions of the buildings are, 
 and the owner, on going over his books for five years 
 in response to an inquiry, found that the average 
 duration of tenancy in them had been less than eight
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 107 
 
 months. Still, small stores do exist; they have 
 not been put out of existence by the big department 
 stores as was confidently expected at one time. 
 They serve a real social need by supplying the minor 
 commodities of everyday use in small quantities. 
 Many of them are conducted by married women to 
 supplement the earnings of their husbands, or by 
 widows; others by men unable to work whose in- 
 come from them is less than the wages of artisans. 
 These, probably, constitute a majority of the small 
 retail establishments which show any tendency to 
 increase. 
 
 Thus reduced, the increase of small industries 
 and retail establishments affects the contention 
 that there is a general tendency to concentration 
 exceedingly little. The effect is still further lessened 
 when it is remembered that, except by ill-informed 
 persons, the Marxian theory has never been under- 
 stood to mean that all petty industry and business 
 must disappear, that all the little industries and 
 retail businesses must be concentrated into large 
 ones, to make Socialism possible. Many of these 
 would doubtless continue to exist under a Socialist 
 regime. Kautsky, perhaps the ablest living expo- 
 nent of the Marxian theories, admits this. He has 
 very ably argued that the ripeness of society for 
 social production and control depends, not upon 
 the number of little industries that still remain,
 
 108 SOCIALISM 
 
 but upon the number of great industries which al- 
 ready exist. 1 The ripeness of society for Socialism 
 is not disproved by the number of ruins and relics 
 abounding. "Without a developed great industry, 
 Socialism is impossible," says this writer. "Where, 
 however, a great industry exists to a considerable 
 degree, it is easy for a Socialist society to concentrate 
 production, and to quickly rid itself of the little indus- 
 try." 2 It is the increase of large industries, then, 
 which Socialists regard as the essential preliminary 
 condition of Socialism. 
 
 When we turn to agriculture, the criticisms of 
 the Socialist theory of concentration appear more 
 substantial and important. A few years ago we 
 witnessed the rise and rapid growth of the great 
 bonanza farms in this country. It was shown that 
 the advantages of large capital and the consolida- 
 tion of productive forces resulted, in farming as 
 in manufacture, in greatly cheapened production. 3 
 The end of the small farm was declared to be immi- 
 nent, and it seemed for a while that concentration 
 in agriculture would even outrun concentration in 
 manufacture. This predicted absorption of the small 
 
 1 The Social Revolution, by Karl Kautsky, Part I, page 144. 
 
 Idem. 
 
 * The cost of raising wheat in California, where large fanning has 
 been most scientifically developed, is said to vary from 92.5 cents 
 per 100 pounds on farms of 1000 acres to 40 cents on farms of 60,000
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 109 
 
 farms by the larger, and the average increase of 
 farm acreage, has not, however, been fulfilled to any 
 great degree. An increase in the number of small 
 farms, and a decrease in the average acreage, is 
 shown in almost all the states. The increase of 
 great estates shown by the census figures probably 
 bears little or no relation to real farming, consisting 
 mainly of great stock grazing ranches in the West, 
 and unproductive gentlemen's estates in the East. 
 
 Apparently then, the Socialist theory of "the 
 big fish eat up the little ones," is not applicable to 
 agriculture. On the contrary, it seems that the 
 great wheat ranch cannot compete with the smaller 
 farm. It is therefore not surprising that writers 
 so sympathetic to Socialism as Professor Werner 
 Sombart, and Professor Richard T. Ely, should pro- 
 claim that the Marxian system breaks down when 
 it reaches the sphere of agricultural industry, and 
 that it appears to be applicable only to manufacture. 
 That is the position which has been taken by a not 
 inconsiderable body of Socialists in recent years. 
 Nothing is more delusive than statistical argument 
 of this kind, and while these conclusions should be 
 given due weipM, they should not be too hastily 
 accepted. An examination of the statistical basis 
 of the argument may not confirm the argument. 
 
 In the first place, small agricultural holdings do 
 not necessarily imply economic independence any
 
 110 SOCIALISM 
 
 more than do petty industries or businesses. When 
 we examine the census figures carefully, the first 
 important fact which challenges attention is the 
 decrease of independent farm ownership, and a cor- 
 responding increase in tenantry. Of the 5,739,657 
 farms in the United States in the census year, 2,026,286 
 were operated by tenants. In 1880, 71.6 per cent 
 of the farms in the United States were operated by 
 their owners, while in 1900 the proportion had 
 fallen to 64.7 per cent. Concerning the ownership 
 of these rented farms little investigation has been 
 made, and it is probable that careful inquiry into 
 the subject would elicit the fact that this forms a 
 not unimportant aspect of agricultural concentra- 
 tion, though it is not revealed by the census figures. 
 So, too, with the mortgaged farm holdings. In 
 1890, the mortgaged indebtedness of the farmers 
 of the United States amounted to the immense sum 
 of $1,085,995,960. Concerning the ownership of 
 these mortgages also little accurate data has been 
 gathered. It is well known that the great insurance, 
 banking, and trust companies have many millions 
 invested in them. Mr. A. M. Simons, to whose not- 
 able little book, The American Farme" 1 1 am indebted 
 for much material, rightly regards this as "a form 
 of concentration beside which that of the bonanza 
 farms sinks into insignificance." 
 
 1 The American Farmer, by A. M. Simons, page 120.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 111 
 
 The truth is that industrial concentration may 
 take other forms than the diminution of small in- 
 dustrial units, and then- absorption or supercession 
 by larger units. The sweated trades are a familiar 
 example of this fact. Over and over it has been 
 shown that while small establishments remain a 
 necessary condition of sweated industry, there is 
 generally a concentration of ownership and control. 
 This is true in a large measure of the retail trades, 
 and in even larger measure of agriculture. Mani- 
 festly, therefore, we need a more accurate defini- 
 tion of concentration than the one generally accepted. 
 Mr. Simons, hi the work already quoted, defines con- 
 centration as "a movement tending to give a con- 
 tinually diminishing minority of the persons engaged 
 in any industry, a constantly increasing control 
 over the essentials, and a continually increasing 
 share of the total value of the returns of the indus- 
 try." * It is no part of the purpose of this chapter 
 to discuss the several conditions which Mr. Simons 
 lays down in his definition of concentration, but to 
 emphasize the fact that there are other forms of 
 concentration than the physical one, the amalga- 
 mation of smaller units to form larger ones; and 
 that concentration goes on often unperceived and 
 unsuspected. There can be no doubt that there 
 is a considerable tendency to the concentration of 
 
 1 The American Farmer, page 97.
 
 112 SOCIALISM 
 
 ownership and effective control in agricultural 
 industry. 
 
 There is also a vast amount of concentration in 
 agricultural production which is not generally recog- 
 nized. Many branches of farming industry, as it 
 was carried on by our fathers and their fathers be- 
 fore them, have been transferred from the farm- 
 house to the factory. Butter and cheese making, 
 for example, have largely passed out of the farm 
 kitchen into the factory. Not long ago, the writer 
 stayed for some days at a large farm in the Middle 
 West. The sound of a churn is never heard there, 
 notwithstanding that it is a "dairy farm," and all 
 the butter and cheese consumed hi that household 
 is bought at the village store. The invention of 
 labor-saving machinery and its application to agri- 
 culture leads to the division of the industry and the 
 absorption of the parts most influenced by the new 
 processes by the factory. When we remember the 
 tremendous r61e which complex mechanical agen- 
 cies play in modern agricultural industry, the grain 
 elevators, cold-storage houses, and even railroads, 
 being part of the necessary equipment of produc- 
 tion, we see the subject of concentration hi agri- 
 culture in a new light. There is much concentration 
 of production in agriculture though it may take the 
 form of the absorption of some of its processes by 
 factories instead of by other farms.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 113 
 
 We must distinguish between the concentration 
 of industry and the concentration of wealth. While 
 there is a natural relation between these two phe- 
 nomena, they are by no means identical. Trustifi- 
 cation of a given industry may bring together a score 
 of industrial units in one gigantic concern, so con- 
 centrating capital and production; but it is conceiv- 
 able that every one of the owners of the units which 
 compose the trust may have a share in it equal to 
 the capital value of his particular unit, and far more 
 profitable. In that case, there can obviously be 
 no concentration of wealth. It may even happen 
 that a larger number of persons participate, as 
 shareholders, hi the amalgamation than previously. 
 Concentration of wealth may be very ultimately 
 and inextricably associated with concentration of 
 capital, but it is not by any means the same thing. 
 As Professor Ely says: "If the stock of the United 
 States Steel Corporation were owned by individuals 
 holding one share each, the concentration in industry 
 would be just as great as it is now, but there would 
 be a wide diffusion in the ownership of the wealth 
 of the corporation." 1 
 
 Obvious as this distinction may seem, it is very 
 
 1 Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society, by Richard T. Ely, 
 page 255. 
 
 I
 
 114 SOCIALISM 
 
 often lost sight of, and when recognized, it presents 
 difficulties which seem almost insurmountable. It 
 is well-nigh impossible to present statistically the 
 relation of the concentration of capital to the con- 
 centration or diffusion of wealth, important as the 
 point is in its bearings upon modern Socialist theory. 
 While the distinction does not affect the argument 
 that the concentration of capital and industry 
 makes their socialization possible, it is nevertheless 
 an important fact. If, as some writers, notably 
 Bernstein, 1 the Socialist, have argued, the concen- 
 tration of capital and industry really leads to the 
 decentralization of wealth, and the diffusion of the 
 advantages of concentration among the great mass 
 of the people, then, instead of creating a class of 
 expropriators, ever becoming less numerous, and a 
 class of proletarians, ever growing in numbers, the 
 tendency of modern capitalism is to distribute the 
 gains of industry over a widening area, a process 
 of democratization, hi fact. Obviously, if this con- 
 tention is a correct one, there must be a softening 
 rather than an intensifying of class antagonisms: 
 a tendency away from class divisions, and to greater 
 satisfaction with present conditions, rather than 
 increasing discontent. If this theory can be sus- 
 tained, the advocates of Socialism will be obliged 
 
 1 Die V orausseizungen des Sozialismu-s, by Edward Bernstein, 
 page 47.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 115 
 
 to change the nature of their propaganda, and cease 
 appealing to the class interest of the proletariat 
 because it has no existence in fact. There can be 
 no validity in the theory of an increasing antagonism 
 of classes, if the tendency of modern capitalism is 
 to democratize the life of the world and diffuse its 
 wealth over larger social areas than ever before. 
 
 The exponents of this theory have for the most 
 part based their arguments upon statistical data 
 relating to: (1) The number of taxable incomes in 
 countries where incomes are taxed; (2) the number 
 of investors in industrial and commercial com- 
 panies; (3) the number of savings bank deposits. 
 As often happens when reliance is placed upon the 
 direct statistical method, the result of all the dis- 
 cussion and controversy upon this subject is ex- 
 tremely disappointing and confusing. The same 
 figures are used to support both sides in the dispute 
 with equal plausibility. The difficulty lies in the 
 fact that the available statistics do not include all 
 the facts essential to a scientific and conclusive result. 
 
 It is not my purpose in this little volume to add 
 to the Babel of voices in this discussion, but to pre- 
 sent the conclusions of two or three of the most 
 careful investigators in this field. Professor Rich- 
 ard T. Ely l quotes a table of incomes in the Grand 
 
 1 Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society, by Richard T. Ely, 
 pages 261-262.
 
 116 SOCIALISM 
 
 Duchy of Baden, based on the income tax returns 
 of that country, which has formed the theme of 
 much dispute. The table shows that in the two 
 years, 1886 and 1896, less than one per cent of the 
 incomes assessed were over 10,000 marks a year, 
 and from that fact it has been argued that wealth 
 in that country has not been concentrated to any 
 very great extent. In like manner, the French 
 economist, Leroy Beaulieu, has argued that the 
 fact that in 1896 only 2750 persons in Paris had 
 incomes of over 100,000 francs a year betokens a 
 wide diffusion of wealth and an absence of concen- 
 tration. 1 But the important point of the discus- 
 sion, the proportion of total wealth owned by these 
 classes, is entirely lost sight of by those who argue in 
 this way. In the figures for the Grand Duchy of 
 Baden we have no particulars concerning the num- 
 ber and amount of incomes below 500 marks, but 
 of the persons assessed upon incomes of 500 marks 
 and over, in 1886, the poorest two thirds had about 
 one third of the total assessed income, and the rich- 
 est .69 of one per cent had 12.78 per cent of the total 
 income. So far, the figures show a much greater 
 concentration of wealth than appears from the simple 
 fact that less than one per cent of the incomes as- 
 sessed were over 10,000 marks a year. When we 
 
 1 Essai 8ur la repartition des richesses et sur la tendance a unt 
 moindre inegaliM des conditions, par Leroy Beaulieu, page 564.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 117 
 
 compare the two years, we find that this concentra- 
 tion increased during ten years as follows: In 1886, 
 there were 2212 incomes of more than 10,000 marks 
 assessed, being .69 of one per cent of the total num- 
 ber. In 1896, there were 3099 incomes of more than 
 10,000 marks assessed, being .78 of one per cent of 
 the total number. In 1886, .69 of one per cent of 
 the incomes assessed amounted to 51,403,000 marks, 
 representing 12.77 per cent of the total incomes 
 assessed, while in 1896, .78 of one per cent of the 
 incomes assessed amounted to 81,986,000 marks, 
 representing 15.02 per cent of the total incomes 
 assessed. In 1886, there were 18 incomes of over 
 200,000 marks a year, aggregating 6,864,000 marks, 
 1.70 per cent of the total value of all incomes as- 
 sessed; in 1896, there were 28 such incomes, aggre- 
 gating 12,481,000 marks, or 2.29 per cent of the 
 total value of all incomes assessed. The increase 
 of concentration is not disputable. 
 
 According to the late Professor Richmond Mayo- 
 Smith, 1 70 per cent of the population of Prussia 
 have incomes below the income tax standard, their 
 total income representing only one third of the total 
 income of the population. An additional one 
 fourth of the population enjoys one third of the 
 total income, while the remaining one third goes 
 
 1 Statistics and Economics, by Richmond Mayo-Smith, Book III, 
 Distribution.
 
 118 SOCIALISM 
 
 to about 4 per cent of the people. The significance 
 of these figures is clearly shown by the following 
 diagram: 
 
 DIAGRAM 
 SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME BY CLASSES IN PRUSSIA. 
 
 SHARE OF EACH 
 CLASS IN THE 
 POPULATION BY CLASSES NATIONAL INCOME) 
 
 In Saxony the statistics show that "two thirds 
 of the population possess less than one third of the 
 income; and that 3.5 per cent of the upper incomes 
 receive more than 66 per cent at the lower end." 
 From a table prepared by Sir Robert GirTen, a no- 
 toriously optimistic statistician, always the expo- 
 nent of an ultra-roseate view of social conditions, 
 Professor Mayo-Smith l concludes that in England, 
 "about 10 per cent of the people receive nearly one 
 half of the total income." 
 
 In this country the absence of income tax figures 
 makes it impossible to get direct statistical evidence 
 as to the distribution of incomes. The most care- 
 ful estimate of the distribution of wealth in the United 
 
 1 Statistics and Economics, by Richmond Mayo-Smith, Book III, 
 Distribution.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 119 
 
 States yet made is that made by the late Dr. Charles 
 B. Spahr. 1 In quoting Dr. Spahr's figures, however, 
 I do not wish to be understood as accepting them 
 as authoritative and conclusive. They are quoted 
 simply as the conclusions reached by the most pa- 
 tient, conscientious, and scientific examination of 
 the distribution of wealth in this country yet made. 
 Dr. Spahr's conclusion is that less than one half 
 of the families in the United States are property- 
 less; but that, nevertheless, seven eighths of the 
 families own only one eighth of the national wealth, 
 while 1 per cent of the families own more than the 
 remaining 99 per cent. Professor Ely accepts the 
 logic of the statistical data gathered in Europe and 
 the United States, and says "such statistics as we 
 have ... all indicate a marked concentration of 
 wealth, both in this country and Europe." 2 
 
 The growth of immense private fortunes is an 
 indisputable evidence of the concentration of wealth. 
 In 1855, according to a list published in the New 
 York Sun, a there were only twenty-eight millionaires 
 in the whole country, and a pamphlet published in 
 Philadelphia ten years before that, in 1845, gave only 
 ten estates valued at a million dollars or more. The 
 richest of these estates was that of Stephen Girard, 
 
 1 The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States, by Charles 
 B. Spahr (1896). 
 
 2 Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society, page 265. 
 8 Quoted by Cleveland Moffett in Success, January, 1906.
 
 120 SOCIALISM 
 
 whose fortune was said to be $7,000,000. To-day 
 it is estimated that there are more than five thou- 
 sand millionaires in the United States, New York 
 City alone claiming upward of two thousand. Not 
 only has the number of these immense fortunes 
 grown, but the size of individual fortunes has enor- 
 mously increased. Mr. John D. Rockefeller is cred- 
 ited by some of the most conservative financial 
 experts in the country with the possession of a for- 
 tune amounting to a billion dollars, a sum too vast 
 to be comprehended. Mr. Waldron estimates that 
 one twentieth of the families in the United States 
 are receiving "one-third of the nation's annual 
 income, and are able to absorb nearly two thirds 
 of the annual increase made in the wealth of the 
 nation." l To the unbiased observer, nothing is 
 more strikingly evident than the concentration of 
 wealth in the United States during the past few years. 
 
 VI 
 
 Summing up, we may state the argument of this 
 chapter very briefly as follows: The Socialist theory 
 is that competition is self-destructive, and that the 
 inevitable result of the competitive process is to 
 produce monoply, either through the crushing of 
 the weak by the strong, or the combination of units 
 
 1 Currency and Wealth, by George S. Waldron, page 102.
 
 CAPITALISM AND LAW OF CONCENTRATION 121 
 
 as a result of a conscious recognition of the wastes 
 of competition and the advantages of cooperation. 
 The law of capitalist development, therefore, is from 
 competition and division to combination and con- 
 centration. As this concentration proceeds, a large 
 class of proletarians is formed on the one hand and 
 a small class of capitalist lords on the other, an es- 
 sential antagonism of interests existing between 
 the two classes. While Socialism does not preclude 
 the continued existence of small private industry 
 or business, it does require and depend upon the 
 development of a large body of concentrated industry ; 
 monopolies which can be consciously transformed 
 into social monopolies, whenever the people so 
 decide. 
 
 The interindustrial and international trustifica- 
 tion of industry and commerce shows a remarkable 
 fulfillment of the law of capitalist concentration 
 which the Socialists were the first to formulate; 
 the existence of petty industries and businesses, 
 or their increase even, being a relatively insignifi- 
 cant matter compared with the enormous increase 
 in large industries and businesses. In agriculture, 
 concentration, while it does not proceed so rapidly 
 or directly as in manufacture and commerce, and 
 while it takes directions unforeseen by the Social- 
 ists, proceeds surely nevertheless. Along with 
 this concentration of capital and industry proceeds
 
 122 SOCIALISM 
 
 the concentration of wealth into proportionately 
 fewer hands. While a certain diffusion of wealth 
 takes place through the mechanism of industrial 
 concentration which affords numerous small invest- 
 ors an opportunity to own shares in great indus- 
 trial and commercial corporations, it is not sufficient 
 to balance the expropriation which goes on hi the 
 competitive struggle, and it is true that a larger 
 proportion of the national wealth is owned by a minor- 
 ity of the population than ever before, that minor- 
 ity being proportionately less numerous than ever 
 before. 
 
 Whatever defects there may be in the Marxian 
 theory, and whatever modifications of it may be 
 rendered necessary by changed conditions, it is per- 
 fectly certain that in its main and essential features 
 it has successfully withstood all the criticisms which 
 have been directed against it. Economic literature 
 is full of prophecies, but hi its whole range there is 
 not an instance of prophecy more literally fulfilled 
 than that which Marx made concerning the mode 
 of capitalist development. And Karl Marx was 
 not a prophet he but read clearly the meaning of 
 certain facts which others could not read ; the law of 
 social dynamics. That is not prophecy, but science.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 
 
 I 
 
 THERE is probably no part of the theory of modern 
 Socialism which has called forth so much criticism 
 and opposition as the doctrine of the class struggle. 
 Many who are otherwise sympathetic to Socialism 
 denounce this doctrine as narrow, brutal, and pro- 
 ductive of antisocialistic feelings of class hatred. 
 Upon all hands the doctrine is denounced as an 
 un-American appeal to passion, and a wild exag- 
 geration of social conditions. The insistence of 
 Socialists upon this aspect of their propaganda is 
 probably responsible for keeping as many people out- 
 side their ranks as are at the present time identified 
 with their movement. In other words, if the Social- 
 ists would repudiate the doctrine that Socialism is a 
 class movement, and make their appeal to the intelli- 
 gence and conscience of all, instead of to the inter- 
 ests of a class, they could probably double their 
 numerical strength at once. To many, therefore, it 
 
 123
 
 124 SOCIALISM 
 
 seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such 
 a doctrine, and it is very commonly ascribed to the 
 peculiar intellectual and moral myopia of fanati- 
 cism. 
 
 Before accepting such a conclusion, the reader is 
 in duty bound to consider the Socialist side of the 
 argument. There is no greater fanaticism, after 
 all, than that which condemns what it does not 
 take the trouble to understand. The Socialists 
 claim that the doctrine is misrepresented; that it 
 does not produce class hatred ; and that it is a pivo- 
 tal and vital point of Socialist philosophy. The 
 class struggle is a law, they say, of social develop- 
 ment. We only recognize the law, and are no more 
 responsible for its existence than Newton was re- 
 sponsible for the law of gravitation. We know 
 that there were class struggles thousands of years 
 before there was a Socialist movement, and it is 
 therefore absurd to charge us with the creation of 
 class antagonisms and class hatred. We realize 
 perfectly well that if we would ignore this law in 
 our propaganda, and make our appeal to a univer- 
 sal sense of abstract justice and truth, many who 
 now hold aloof from us would join our movement. 
 But we should not gain strength as a result of their 
 accession to our ranks. We should be obliged to 
 emasculate Socialism, to dilute it, in order to win a 
 support of questionable value. And history teems
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 125 
 
 with examples of the disaster which inevitably at- 
 tends such a course. We should be quixotic and 
 fatuous indeed if we attempted anything of the 
 kind. 
 
 The class struggle theory is part of the economic 
 interpretation of history. Since the dissolution of 
 primitive tribal society, the modes of economic 
 production and exchange have inevitably grouped 
 men into economic classes. The theory is thus 
 stated by Engels in the Introduction to the Com- 
 munist Manifesto: 
 
 "In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode 
 of economic production and exchange, and the social 
 organization necessarily following from it, form the 
 basis upon which is built up, and from which alone 
 can be explained, the political and intellectual his- 
 tory of that epoch; and, consequently, the whole 
 history of mankind (since the dissolution of primi- 
 tive society, holding land in common ownership) 
 has been a history of class struggles, contests be- 
 tween exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed 
 classes ; that the history of these class struggles forms 
 a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage 
 has been reached, where the exploited and oppressed 
 class the proletariat cannot attain its eman- 
 cipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling 
 class the bourgeoisie without, at the same 
 time, and once for all, emancipating society at large
 
 126 SOCIALISM 
 
 from all exploitation, oppression, class distinction, 
 and class struggles." * 
 
 In this classic statement of the theory, there are 
 several fundamental propositions. First, that class 
 divisions and class struggles arise out of the eco- 
 nomic foundations of society. Second, that since the 
 dissolution of primitive tribal society, which was 
 communistic in character, mankind has been divided 
 into economic groups or classes, and all its history 
 has been a history of struggles between these classes, 
 ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited, being 
 forever at war with each other. Third, that the 
 different epochs in human history, stages in the 
 evolution of society, have been characterized by 
 the interests of the ruling class. Fourth, that a 
 stage has now been reached in the evolution of so- 
 ciety, where the struggle assumes a form which 
 makes it impossible for class distinctions and class 
 struggles to continue if the exploited and oppressed 
 class, the proletariat, succeeds in emancipating it- 
 self. In other words, the cycle of class struggles 
 which began with the dissolution of rude, tribal 
 communism, and the rise of private property, ends 
 with the passing of private property in the means 
 of social existence and the rise of Socialism. The 
 proletariat hi emancipating itself destroys all the 
 conditions of class rule. 
 
 1 The Communist Manifesto, Kerr edition, page 8.
 
 THE CLASS STEUGGLE THEORY 127 
 
 II 
 
 As we have already seen, slavery is historically 
 the first system of class division which presents it- 
 self. Some ingenious writers have endeavored to 
 trace the origin of slavery to the institution of the 
 family, the children being the slaves. It is fairly 
 certain, however, that slavery originated in con- 
 quest. When a tribe was conquered and enslaved 
 by some more powerful tribe, all the members of 
 the vanquished tribe sunk to one common level of 
 degradation and servility. Their exploitation as 
 laborers was the principal object of their enslave- 
 ment, and their labor admitted of little gradation. 
 It is easy to see the fundamental class antagonisms 
 which characterized slavery. Had there been no 
 uprisings of the slaves, no active and conscious 
 struggle against their masters, the antagonism of 
 interests between them and their masters would be 
 none the less apparent. But the overthrow of 
 slavery was not the result of the rebellions and 
 struggles of the slaves. While these undoubtedly 
 helped, the principal factors in the overthrow of 
 chattel slavery as the economic foundation of society 
 were the disintegration of the system to the point 
 of bankruptcy, and the rise of a new, and sometimes, 
 as in the case of Rome, alien ruling class. 
 
 The class divisions of feudal society are not less
 
 128 SOCIALISM 
 
 obvious than those of chattel slavery. The main 
 division, the widest gulf, divided the feudal 
 lord and the serf. Often as brutally ill-treated as 
 their slave-chattel forefathers had been, the feudal 
 serfs from time to time made abortive struggles. 
 The class distinctions of feudalism were constant, 
 but the struggles between the lords and the 
 serfs were sporadic, and of little moment, just 
 as the risings of then* slave forefathers had been. 
 But alongside of the feudal estate there existed 
 another class, the free handicraftsmen and peasants, 
 the former organized into powerful guilds. It was 
 this class which was to challenge the rule of the 
 feudal nobility, and wage war upon it. As the feudal 
 ruling class was a landed class, so the class represented 
 by the guilds became a moneyed and commercial 
 class, the pioneers of our modern capitalist class. 
 As Mr. Brooks Adams 1 has shown very clearly, it 
 was this moneyed, commercial class, which gave 
 to the king the instrument for weakening and 
 finally overthrowing feudalism. It was this class 
 which built up the cities and towns from which was 
 drawn the revenue for the maintenance of a stand- 
 ing army The capitalist class triumphed over the 
 feudal nobility and its interests became the domi- 
 nant interests in society. Capitalism effectually de- 
 
 1 In Centralization and the Law : Scientific Legal Education. An 
 Illustration. Edited by Melville M. Bigelow.
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 129 
 
 stroyed all the institutions of feudalism which ob- 
 structed its progress, leaving only those which were 
 innocuous and to be safely ignored. 
 
 In capitalist society, the main class division is 
 that which separates the employing, wage-paying 
 class from the employed, wage-receiving class. 
 Notwithstanding all the elaborate arguments made 
 to prove the contrary, the frequently heard myth 
 that the interests of Capital and Labor are identical, 
 and the existence of pacificatory associations based 
 upon that myth, there is no fact in the whole range 
 of social phenomena more self-evident than the 
 existence of an inherent, fundamental antagonism 
 in the relationship of employer and employee. As 
 individuals, in all other relations, they may have 
 a commonality of interests, but as employer and 
 employee they are fundamentally and necessarily 
 opposed. They may belong to the same church, 
 and so have religious interests in common ; they 
 may have common racial interests, as, for instance, 
 if negroes, in protecting themselves against the 
 attacks of the author of The Clansman, or, if Jews, 
 in opposing anti-Semitic movements; as citizens 
 they may have the same civic interests, be equally 
 opposed to graft in the city government, or equally 
 interested in the adoption of wise sanitary precau- 
 tions against epidemics. They may even have a 
 common industrial interest in the general sense that
 
 130 SOCIALISM 
 
 they may be equally interested in the development 
 of the industry in which they are engaged, and fear, 
 equally, the results of a depression in trade. But 
 in their special relations as employer and employee 
 they have antithetical interests. 
 
 The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, 
 is to receive the largest wage possible for the least 
 number of hours spent in labor. The interest of 
 the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is 
 to secure from the worker as many hours of service, 
 as much labor power, as possible for the lowest 
 wage which the worker can be induced to accept. 
 The workers employed in a factory may be divided 
 by a hundred different forces. They may be divided 
 by racial differences, for instance; but while pre- 
 serving those differences in a large measure, they 
 will tend to unite upon the question of then* imme- 
 diate economic interest. Some of our great labor 
 unions, notably the United Mine Workers, 1 afford 
 remarkable illustrations of this fact. If the divi- 
 sion is caused by religious differences, the same 
 unanimity of economic interests will sooner or later 
 be developed. With the employers it is the same. 
 They, too, may be divided by a hundred forces; 
 the competition among them may be keen and fierce, 
 but common economic interest will tend to unite 
 
 1 See, for instance, The Coal Mine Workert, by Frank Julian 
 Warne, Ph.D. (1905).
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 131 
 
 them. Racial, religious, social, and other divisions 
 may be maintained as before, but they will, hi gen- 
 eral, unite for the protection and furtherance of their 
 common economic interests. 
 
 That individual workers and employers will be 
 found who do not recognize their class interests is 
 true, but that fact by no means invalidates the con- 
 tention that, in general, men will recognize and unite 
 upon a basis of common class interests. In both 
 classes are to be found individuals who attach greater 
 importance to the preservation of racial, religious, 
 or social, rather than economic, interests. But 
 because the economic interest is fundamental, in- 
 volving the very basis of life, the question of food, 
 clothing, shelter, and comfort, these individuals 
 are and must be exceptions to the general rule. 
 Workers sink their racial and religious differences 
 and unite to secure better wages, a reduction of the 
 hours of labor, and better conditions in general. 
 Employers, similarly, unite to oppose whatever 
 may threaten their class interests, without regard 
 to other relationships. The Gentile employer who 
 is himself an anti-Semite has no qualms of conscience 
 about employing Jewish workmen, at low wages, 
 to compete with Gentile workers; he does not ob- 
 ject to joining with Jewish employers in an Employ- 
 ers' Association, if thereby his economic interests 
 may be safeguarded. And the Jewish employer,
 
 132 SOCIALISM 
 
 likewise, has no objection to joining with the Gentile 
 employer for mutual protection, or to the employ- 
 ment of Gentile workers to fill the places of his em- 
 ployees, members of his own race, who have gone 
 out on strike for higher wages. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in 
 the present stage of social development as a conflict 
 between the wage-paying and the wage-paid classes. 
 That is the dominating and all-absorbing conflict 
 of the age hi which we live. True, there are other 
 class interests more or less involved. There are the 
 indefinite, inchoate, vague, and uncertain interests 
 of that large, so-called middle class, composed of 
 farmers, retailers, professional men, and so on. The 
 interests of this large class are not, and cannot be, 
 as definitely defined. They vacillate, conforming 
 now to the interests of the wage-workers, now to 
 the interests of the employers. The farmer, for 
 instance, may oppose an increase in the wages of 
 farm laborers, because that touches him directly 
 as an employer. His attitude is that of the capi- 
 talist class as a whole upon that question. At the 
 same tune, he may be heartily in favor of an in- 
 crease of wages to miners, carpenters, bricklayers, 
 shoemakers, printers, painters, factory workers, and
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 133 
 
 non-agricultural workers in general, for the reason 
 that while a general rise of wages, resulting in a 
 general rise in prices, will affect him slightly as a 
 consumer, it will benefit him much more as a seller 
 of the products of his farm. In short, consciously 
 sometimes, but unconsciously oftener still, personal 
 or class interests control our thoughts, opinions, 
 beliefs, and actions. 
 
 This does not mean that men are never actuated 
 by other than selfish motives ; that a sordid mate- 
 rialism is the only motive force at work in the world. 
 In general, class interests and personal interests 
 coincide, but there are certainly occasions when they 
 conflict. Many an employer, having no quarrel 
 with his employees, and confident that he personally 
 will be the loser thereby, joins in a fight upon labor 
 unions because he is conscious that the interests of 
 his class are involved. In a similar way, working- 
 men enter upon sympathetic strikes, consciously, 
 at an immediate loss to themselves, because they 
 place class loyalty before personal gam. It is sig- 
 nificant of class feeling and temper that when em- 
 ployers act in this manner, and lock out employees 
 with whom they have no trouble, simply to help 
 other employers to win their battles, they are be- 
 lauded by the very newspapers which denounce the 
 workers whenever they adopt a like policy. It is 
 also true that there are individuals in both classes
 
 134 SOCIALISM 
 
 who never become conscious of their class interests, 
 and steadfastly refuse to join with their fellows. 
 The workingman who refuses to join a union, or 
 who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on 
 strike, may act from ignorance or from sheer self- 
 ishness and greed. His action may be due to his 
 placing personal interest before the larger interest 
 of his class, or from being too short-sighted to see 
 that ultimately his own interests must merge in 
 those of his class. Many an employer, on the other 
 hand, may refuse to join in any concerted action of 
 his class for either of these reasons, or he may even 
 rise superior to his personal and class interests and 
 support the workers because he believes in the just- 
 ness of their cause, realizing perfectly well that 
 their gain means loss to him or to his class. 1 
 
 The influence of class environment upon men's 
 beliefs and ideals is a subject which our most volu- 
 minous ethicists have scarcely touched upon as yet. 
 It is a commonplace saying that each age has its 
 own standards of right and wrong, but little effort 
 has been made, if we except the Socialists, 2 to trace 
 this fact to its source, to the economic conditions 
 
 1 This ought to be a sufficient answer to those shallow critics who 
 think that they dispose of the class struggle theory of modern 
 Socialism by enumerating those of its leading exponents who do not 
 belong to the proletariat. 
 
 * Mr. Ghent's excellent work, Mass and Class, is perhaps the best 
 work extant on the subject from the Socialist viewpoint.
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 135 
 
 prevailing in the different ages. Still less effort 
 has been made to account for the different standards 
 held by the different social classes at the same time, 
 and by which each class judges the other. In our 
 own day the idea of slavery is generally held in 
 abhorrence. There was a time, however, when it 
 was universally looked upon as a divine institution, 
 alike by slaveholder and slave. It is simply impos- 
 sible to account for this complete revolution of feel- 
 ing upon any other hypothesis than that slave 
 labor then seemed absolutely essential to the life 
 of the world. The slave lords of antiquity, the 
 feudal lords of mediaeval times, and, more recently, 
 the Southern slaveholders in our own country, all 
 believed that slavery was eternally right. When 
 the slaves took an opposite view and rebelled, they 
 were believed to be in rebellion against God and 
 nature. The Church represented the same view 
 just as vigorously as it now opposes it. The slave 
 owners who held slavery to be a divine institution, 
 and the priests and ministers who supported them, 
 were just as honest and sincere in their belief as we 
 are in holding antagonistic beliefs to-day. 
 
 What was accounted a virtue in the slave, was 
 accounted a vice in the slaveholder. Cowardice 
 and a cringing humility were not regarded as faults 
 in a slave. On the contrary, they were the stock 
 virtues of the pattern slave, and added to the esti-
 
 136 SOCIALISM 
 
 mation in which he was held, just as similar traits 
 are valued in personal servants butlers, valets, 
 footmen, and similar flunkeys in our own day. 
 But similar traits in the feudal baron, the Southern 
 slaveholder, or the "gentleman" of to-day, would 
 be regarded as terrible faults. As Mr. Algernon 
 Lee very tersely puts it, "The slave was not a slave 
 because of his slavish ideals and beliefs; the slave 
 was slavish in his ideals and beliefs because he lived 
 the life of a slave." * 
 
 IV 
 
 To-day we find a similar divergence of ethical 
 standards. What the laborers regard as wrong, 
 the employers regard as absolutely and immutably 
 right. The actions of the workers in forming unions 
 and compelling unwilling members of their own 
 class to join them, even resorting to the bitter expe- 
 dient of striking against them with a view to starv- 
 ing them into submission, seem terribly oppressive 
 and unjust to the employers and the class to which 
 the employers belong. To the workers themselves, 
 on the other hand, such actions have all the sanc- 
 tions of conscience. Similarly, many actions of 
 the employers, hi which they themselves see no 
 
 1 The Worker, March 25, 1905.
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 137 
 
 wrong, seem almost incomprehensibly wicked to 
 the workers. 
 
 Leaving aside the wholesale fraud of our ordi- 
 nary commercial advertisements, the shameful adul- 
 teration of goods, and a multitude of other such 
 nefarious practices, it is at once interesting and in- 
 structive to compare the employers' denunciations 
 of the "outrageous infringement of personal liberty," 
 when the "oppressor" is a labor union, with some 
 of their everyday practices. The same employers 
 who loudly, and quite sincerely, condemn the mem- 
 bers of a union who endeavor to bring about the 
 discharge of a fellow-worker because he declines to 
 join their organization, have no scruples of conscience 
 about discharging a worker simply because he be- 
 longs to a union, and effectually "blacklisting" him 
 so that it becomes almost or quite impossible for 
 him to obtain employment at his trade elsewhere. 
 While loudly declaiming against the "conspiracy" 
 of the workers to raise wages, they see no wrong in 
 an "agreement" of manufacturers or mine owners 
 to reduce wages. If the members of a labor union 
 should break the law, especially if they should com- 
 mit an act of violence during a strike, the organs 
 of capitalist opinion teem with denunciation, but 
 there is no breath of condemnation for the outrages 
 committed by employers or their agents against 
 union men.
 
 138 SOCIALISM 
 
 During the great anthracite coal strike of 1903, 
 and again during the disturbances in Colorado in 
 1904, it was evident to every fair-minded observer 
 that the mine owners were at least quite as lawless 
 and violent as the strikers. But there was hardly 
 a scintilla of adverse comment upon the mine owners' 
 lawlessness in the organs of capitalist opinion, while 
 they poured forth torrents of righteous indignation 
 at the lawlessness of the miners. When labor 
 leaders, like the late Sam Parks, for example, are 
 accused of extortion and receiving bribes, the em- 
 ployers and their retainers, through pulpit, press, 
 and every other avenue of public opinion, denounce 
 the culprit, the bribe taker, in unmeasured terms 
 but the bribe giver is excused, or, at worst, lightly 
 criticised. These are but a few common illustra- 
 tions of class conscience. Any careful observer will 
 be able to add almost indefinitely to the number. 
 
 It would be perfectly easy to compile a large cata- 
 logue of such examples as these from the actual 
 happenings of the past few years sufficient to 
 convince the most skeptical that class interests do 
 produce a class conscience. Mr. Ghent aptly ex- 
 presses a profound truth when he says: "There is a 
 spiritual alchemy which transmutes the base metal 
 of self-interest into the gold of conscience ; the trans- 
 mutation is real, and the resulting frame of mind 
 is not hypocrisy, but conscience. It is a class con-
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 139 
 
 science, and therefore partial and imperfect, having 
 little to do with absolute ethics. But partial and 
 imperfect as it is, it is generally sincere." * No 
 better test of the truth of this can be made than by 
 reading carefully for a few weeks the comments of 
 half a dozen representative newspapers, and of an 
 equal number of representative labor papers, upon 
 current events. The antithetical nature of their 
 judgments of men and events demonstrates the 
 existence of a distinct class conscience. It cannot 
 be interpreted in any other way. 
 
 A great many people, while admitting the impor- 
 tant r61e class struggles have played in the progres- 
 sive development of the race, strenuously deny the 
 existence of classes in the United States. They 
 freely admit the class divisions and struggles of the 
 Old World, but they deny that a similar class antag- 
 onism exists in this country; they fondly believe 
 the United States to be a glorious exception to the 
 rule, and regard the claim that classes exist here as 
 falsehood and treason. The Socialists are forever 
 being accused of seeking to apply to American life 
 judgments based upon European facts and condi- 
 tions. It is easy to visualize the class divisions 
 
 1 Mass and Class, page 101.
 
 140 SOCIALISM 
 
 existing in monarchical countries, where there are 
 hereditary ruling classes even though these are 
 only nominal ruling classes in most cases fixed 
 by law. But it is not so easy to recognize the fact 
 that, even in these countries, the power is held by 
 the financial and industrial lords, and not by the 
 kings and then* titular nobility. The absence of 
 a hereditary, titular ruling class serves to hide the 
 real class divisions existing in this country from many 
 people. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is a perceptible growth of 
 uneasiness and unrest; a widening and deepening 
 conviction that while we may retain the outward 
 forms of democracy, and shout its shibboleths with 
 patriotic fervor, its essentials are lacking. The 
 feeling spreads, even in the most conservative circles, 
 that we are developing, or have already developed, 
 a distinct ruling class. The anomaly of a ruling 
 class without legal sanction or titular prestige has 
 seized upon the popular mind; titles have been 
 created for our great "untitled nobility" mock 
 titles, which have speedily assumed a serious im- 
 port and meaning. Our financial "Kings," indus- 
 trial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received 
 then* crowns and patents of nobility from the popu- 
 lace. President Roosevelt gives expression to the 
 feelings of a great mass of our most conservative 
 citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most dire-
 
 THE CLASS STEUGGLE THEORY 141 
 
 ful among the influences which have brought about 
 the downfall of republics has ever been the growth 
 of the class spirit. ... If such a spirit grows up 
 in this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, 
 as in the past it has proven fatal to every community 
 in which it has become dominant." l 
 
 With the exception of the chattel slaves, we have 
 had no hereditary class in this country with a legally 
 fixed status. But 
 
 "Man is more than constitutions," 
 
 and there are other laws than those formulated in 
 senates and recorded in statute books. The vast 
 concentration of industry and wealth, resulting in 
 immense fortunes on the one hand, and terrible 
 poverty on the other, has separated the two classes 
 by a chasm as deep and wide as ever yawned between 
 czar and moujik, kaiser and vagrant, prince and 
 pauper, feudal baron and serf. The immensity of 
 the power and wealth thus concentrated into the 
 hands of the few, to be inherited by their sons and 
 daughters, tends to establish this class division heredi- 
 tarily. Heretofore, passage from the lower class to 
 the class above has been easy, and it has blinded 
 people to the existing class antagonisms, though, as 
 Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be 
 taken to disprove the existence of classes than the 
 
 1 Menage to Congress, January, 1906.
 
 142 SOCIALISM 
 
 fact that so many thousands of Germans come to 
 this country to settle is taken to disprove the exis- 
 tence of the German Empire. 1 
 
 But passage from the lower class to the upper 
 tends to become, if not absolutely impossible and 
 unthinkable, as difficult and rare as the transition 
 from pauperism to princedom in the Old World is. 
 A romantic European princess may marry a penu- 
 rious coachman, and so provide the world with a 
 nine days' sensation, but such instances are no rarer 
 hi the royal circles of Europe than in our own pluto- 
 aristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a 
 king in modern times with anything like the power 
 of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of royal recog- 
 nition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad 
 in state, an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned 
 but envious fellow-kings? The existence of classes 
 in America to-day is as evident as the existence of 
 America itself. 
 
 VI 
 
 Antagonisms of class interests have always ex- 
 isted, even though not clearly recognized. It is 
 only the consciousness of their existence, and the 
 struggle produced by that consciousness, that are 
 new. As we suddenly become aware of the pain and 
 
 1 Mass and Class, page 53.
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 143 
 
 ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded 
 its premonitory symptoms, so, having neglected 
 the fundamental class divisions of society, the bit- 
 terness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and 
 alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger 
 and more ambitious members of an inferior class to 
 rise out of that class and join the ranks of the supe- 
 rior class, so long will the struggle which ensues as 
 the natural outgrowth of opposing interests be post- 
 poned. 
 
 Until quite recently, in the United States, this 
 has been possible. Transition from the status of 
 worker to that of capitalist has been easy. But 
 with the era of concentration and the immense capi- 
 tals required for industrial enterprise these transi- 
 tions become fewer and more difficult, and class lines 
 thus tend to become permanently fixed. The stronger 
 and more ambitious members of the lower class, 
 finding it impossible to rise into the class above, 
 thus become impressed with a consciousness of their 
 class status. The average worker no longer dreams 
 of himself becoming an employer after a few years 
 of industry and thrift. The ambitious and aggres- 
 sive few no longer look with the contempt of the 
 strong for the weak upon their less aggressive fellow- 
 workers, but become leaders, preachers of a sig- 
 nificant and admittedly dangerous gospel of class 
 consciousness.
 
 144 SOCIALISM 
 
 When the preachers are wise and sufficiently edu- 
 cated to see their position in its historical perspec- 
 tive, there is no class hatred engendered in the sense 
 of a personal hatred for the capitalist on the part of 
 the worker. But when that wisdom and education 
 are lacking, personal hate and bitterness naturally 
 result. The Socialists, accused as they are of seek- 
 ing to stir up hatred and strife, by placing the class 
 struggle in its proper place as one of the great social 
 dynamic forces, have done and are doing more to 
 allay hatred and bitterness of feeling, to save the 
 world from the red curse of anarchistic vengeance, 
 than any other body of people in the world. The 
 Socialist movement is vastly more powerful as a 
 force against the peril of Anarchism than all the 
 religious agencies of the world combined. Wherever, 
 as in Germany, for example, the Socialist movement 
 is strong, Anarchism is impotent and weak. The 
 reason for this is the very obvious one here given. 
 
 VII 
 
 Nowhere in the world, at any time in its history, 
 has the alignment of classes been more evident than 
 it is in the United States at the present time. With 
 an average of over a thousand strikes a year, 1 some 
 
 1 Vide War of the Classes, by Jack London, page 17.
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 145 
 
 of them involving, directly, tens of thousands of 
 producers, a few capitalists, and millions of non- 
 combatants, consumers; with strikes, boycotts, 
 lockouts, injunctions, and all the other incidents of 
 organized class strife reported daily by the news- 
 papers, denials of the existence of classes, or of the 
 struggle between them, are manifestly absurd. We 
 have, on the one hand, organizations of workers, 
 labor unions, with a membership of something over 
 2,000,000 in the United States; one organization 
 alone, the American Federation of Labor, having 
 an affiliated membership of 1,700,000. On the 
 other hand, we have organizations of employers, 
 formed for the expressed purpose of fighting the 
 labor unions, of which the National Association of 
 Manufacturers is the most perfect type yet evolved. 
 While the leaders on both sides frequently deny 
 that their organizations betoken the existence of a 
 far-reaching fundamental class conflict, and, through 
 ostensibly pacificatory organizations like the Na- 
 tional Civic Federation, proclaim the "essential iden- 
 tity of interests between capital and labor"; while 
 an intelligent and earnest labor leader like Mr. John 
 Mitchell joins with an astute capitalist leader like 
 the late Senator Marcus A. Hanna in declaring 
 that "there is no necessary hostility between labor 
 and capital," that there is no "necessary, fundamen- 
 tal antagonism between the laborer and the capi-
 
 146 SOCIALISM 
 
 talist," * a brief study of the constitutions of these 
 class organizations and their published reports, in 
 conjunction with the history of the labor struggle in 
 the United States, in which the names of Coeur de 
 Alene, Homestead, Hazelton, and Cripple Creek 
 appear in bloody letters, will show these denials 
 to be the offspring of hypocrisy or delusion. If this 
 much-talked-of unity of interests is anything but a 
 stupid fiction, the great and ever increasing strife 
 is only a question of mutual misunderstanding. 
 All that is necessary to secure permanent peace is 
 to remove that misunderstanding. If we believe 
 this, it is a sad commentary upon human limita- 
 tions, upon man's failure to understand his own 
 life, that not a single person on either side has arisen 
 with sufficient intelligence and breadth of view to 
 state the relations of the two classes with clarity 
 and force enough to accomplish that end. 
 
 Let us get down to fundamentals, to bottom prin- 
 ciples. 2 Why do men organize? Why was the 
 first union started? Why do men pay out of their 
 hard-earned wages to support unions now? The 
 first union was not started because the men who 
 started it did not understand then- employers, or 
 because they were misunderstood by their employers. 
 
 1 Organized Labor, by John Mitchell, page ix. 
 
 * The remainder of this chapter is largely reproduced from my 
 little pamphlet, Shall the Unions go into Politics f
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 147 
 
 The explanation involves a deeper insight into things 
 than that. The facts were somewhat as follows: 
 When the individual workingman, feeling that out 
 of his labor, and the labor of his fellows, came the 
 wealth and luxury of his employer, demanded higher 
 wages, a reduction of his hours of labor, or better 
 conditions in general, he was met with a reply from 
 his employer who understood the workingman's 
 position very well, much better, in fact, than the 
 workingman himself did something like this, 
 "If you don't like this job, and my terms, you can 
 quit ; there are plenty of others outside ready to take 
 your place." The workingman and the employer, 
 then, understood each other perfectly. The em- 
 ployer understood the position of the worker, that 
 he was dependent upon him, the employer, for oppor- 
 tunity to earn his bread. The worker understood that 
 so long as the employer could discharge him and fill 
 his place with another, he was powerless. The com- 
 bat between the workers and the masters of their 
 bread has from the first been an unequal one. 
 
 Nothing remained for the individual workingman 
 but to join his fellows in a collective and united effort. 
 So organizations of workers appeared, and the 
 employers could not treat the matter as lightly as 
 before when the workers demanded higher wages 
 or other improvements in their conditions. The 
 workers, when they organized, could take advantage
 
 148 SOCIALISM 
 
 of the fact that there were no organizations of the 
 employers. Every strike added to the ordinary 
 terrors of the competitive struggle for the employers. 
 The manufacturer whose men threatened to strike 
 often surrendered because he feared most of all that 
 his trade, in the event of a suspension of work, would 
 be snatched by his rival in business, and so, by playing 
 upon the inherent weakness of the competitive sys- 
 tem as it affected the employers, the workers gained 
 many substantial advantages. There is no doubt 
 whatsoever that under these conditions the wage- 
 workers got better wages, better working conditions, 
 and a reduction of the hours of labor. It was, in many 
 ways, the golden age of organized labor. But there 
 was an important limitation of the workers' power 
 the unions could not absorb the man outside; they 
 could not provide all the workers with employment. 
 That is the essential condition of capitalist industry, 
 there is always the "reserve army of the unemployed," 
 to use the expressive phrase of Friedrich Engels. 
 Rare indeed are the times when all the available 
 workers in any given industry are employed, and 
 the time has probably never yet been when all the 
 available workers in all industries were employed. 
 Notwithstanding this important limitation of power, 
 it is incontrovertible that the workers were benefited 
 by their organization to no small extent. But only 
 for a tune. There came a time when the employers
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 149 
 
 began to organize unions also. That they called 
 their organizations by other and high-sounding names 
 does not alter the fact that they were in reality unions 
 formed to combat the unions which the workers had 
 formed. Every employers' association is, in reality, 
 a union of the men who employ labor against the 
 unions of the men they employ. When the organized 
 workers went to individual, unorganized employers, 
 who feared their rivals more than they feared the 
 workers, or, rather, who feared the workers most 
 of all because rivals waited to snatch their trade, be- 
 cause a strike made then- employees allies with their 
 competitors, the employers were afraid, naturally, 
 to resist. The workers could play one employer 
 against the other with constant success. But when 
 the employers also organized, it was different. Then 
 the individual employer, freed from the worst of his 
 terrors, could say, "Do your worst. I, too, am in 
 an organization." Then it became a battle betwixt 
 organized capital and organized labor. When the 
 workers went on strike hi one shop or factory, de- 
 pending for support upon their brother unionists 
 employed in other shops or factories, the employers 
 of these latter locked them out, thus cutting off 
 the financial supplies of the strikers. In other cases, 
 when the workers in one place went out on strike, 
 the employer got his work done through other 
 employers by the very fellow-members upon whom
 
 150 SOCIALISM 
 
 the strikers were depending for support. Thus the 
 workers were compelled to face this dilemma, either 
 to withdraw these men, thus cutting off their means 
 of support, or to be beaten by their fellow-members. 
 
 Under these changed conditions, the workers were 
 beaten time after tune. It was a case of the worker's 
 cupboard against the master's warehouse, purse 
 against bank account, poverty against wealth. How 
 slight the workers' chances are in such a combat! 
 A strike means that the workers on one side, and 
 the employers on the other, seek to tire each other 
 out by waiting. More truthfully, perhaps, it might be 
 said that they seek to force each other by wait- 
 ing patiently to see who first feels the pinch of 
 hardship and poverty. Employers and employees 
 determine to play the waiting game. Each waits 
 patiently in the hope that the other will weaken. At 
 last one most often the workers' side weakens 
 and gives up the struggle. When the workers are 
 thus beaten in a strike, they are not convinced that 
 their demands are unreasonable or unjust; they are 
 simply beaten at the waiting game because their 
 resources are too small to enable them to withstand 
 the struggle. 
 
 When the master class, the masters of jobs and 
 bread, organized their forces, they set narrow and 
 sharp boundaries to the power of labor organizations. 
 Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelm-
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 151 
 
 ingly on the side of the employers. The workers 
 have since learned by bitter and costly experience 
 that they are unable to play the individual employer's 
 interests against other employers' interests. And 
 the employers own the means of life. Meantime, 
 too, they have learned that they are not only ex- 
 ploited as producers, but also as buyers, as consumers. 
 Because they are consumers, almost to the last penny 
 of their incomes, having to spend almost every penny 
 earned, that form of exploitation becomes a serious 
 matter. But against this exploitation the unions 
 have ever been absolutely powerless. Working- 
 men have never made any very serious attempt to 
 protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, 
 notwithstanding its tremendous importance. The 
 result has been that not a few of the "victories" so 
 dearly won by trade union action have turned out 
 to be hollow mockeries. When they have succeeded 
 in getting a little better wages, prices have often 
 gone up, most often in point of fact, so that the net 
 result has been little to their advantage. In many 
 cases, where the advance in wages applied only to 
 a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices 
 becoming general, the total result has been against 
 the working class as a whole, and little or nothing to 
 the advantage of the few who received the advance 
 in immediate wages. At this point, the need of a 
 social revolution is felt, which shall give to the workers
 
 152 SOCIALISM 
 
 the control of the implements of labor, and also the 
 full control of the product of their labor. In other 
 words, the demand arises for independent, working- 
 class action, aiming at the socialization of the means 
 of production and the things produced. 
 
 VIII 
 
 A line of cleavage thus presents itself between 
 those, on the one hand, who would continue the old 
 methods of economic warfare, together with the ad- 
 vocates of a revolution of physical force, and, on 
 the other hand, the advocates of united political 
 action on the part of the working class, consciously 
 directed toward the socialization of industry and its 
 products. The 400,000 odd Socialist votes in the 
 United States, in 1904, represented the measure of 
 the crystallization of this latter force, and whoever 
 has studied the labor movement during the past few 
 years must have realized that there is a tremendous 
 drift of sentiment in that direction in the labor unions 
 of the country. The clamor for political action in 
 the labor unions presages an enormous advance 
 of the political Socialist movement during the next 
 few years 
 
 The struggle between capital and labor thus 
 promises to resolve itself into a political issue, the 
 greatest political issue of history. This will not be
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 153 
 
 due so much to the propaganda of the Socialists, it 
 is safe to say, as to the action of the employers them- 
 selves. They have taken the struggle into the politi- 
 cal arena to suit their own immediate advantages, 
 and when the workers realize the issue and accept 
 it, the capitalists will not be able to thwart them. 
 One is reminded of the saying of Marx that capital- 
 ism produces its own gravediggers. In taking the 
 industrial issue into the political arena, the capital- 
 ists were destined to reveal to the workers, sooner 
 or later, their power and duty. 
 
 Realizing that all the forces of government are 
 on their side, the legislative, judicial, and executive 
 powers being controlled by their own class, the em- 
 ployers have made the fight against labor political 
 as well as economic in its character. When the 
 workers have gone on strike and the employers have 
 not cared to play the "waiting game," choosing 
 rather to avail themselves of the great reserve army of 
 the unemployed workers outside, the natural resent- 
 ment of the strikers, finding themselves in danger of 
 being beaten by members of their own class, has led 
 to violence which has been remorselessly suppressed by 
 all the police and military forces at the command of 
 the government. In many instances, the employers 
 have themselves purposely provoked striking work- 
 men to violence, and then called upon the govern- 
 ment to crush the revolt thus made. Workers
 
 154 SOCIALISM 
 
 have thus been shot down at the shambles in almost 
 every state of the Union, no matter which politi- 
 cal party has been in power. Nor have these forces 
 of our class government been used merely to punish 
 lawless union men and women on strike, to "uphold 
 the sacred majesty of the law," as the hypocritical 
 phrase goes. As a matter of fact, they have been 
 used to deny strikers the rights which belonged to 
 them, and to protect capitalists and their agents in 
 breaking the laws. No one can read with anything 
 like an impartial spirit the records of the miners' 
 strike in the Coeur de Alene mine, Idaho, or the 
 Senate Report on the Labor Disturbances in Colorado 
 from 1880 to 1904, and dispute this assertion. 
 
 More important still, the workers have had to face 
 the powerful opposition of the makers and inter- 
 preters of the law. A body of class legislation, in 
 the interests of the employing class, has been created, 
 while the workers have begged in vain for protective 
 legislation. There is no country in the world in 
 which the interests of the workers have been so 
 neglected as in the United States. There is practi- 
 cally no such thing as employers' liability for ac- 
 cidents to the workers ; there is no legislation worthy 
 of mention relating to the occupations which have 
 been classified as "dangerous" in most industrially 
 developed countries; women workers are sadly neg- 
 lected. Whenever a law is passed of distinct advan-
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 155 
 
 tage to the workers, a servile judiciary has been ready 
 to render it null and void by declaring it to be uncon- 
 stitutional. No more powerful blows have ever 
 been directed against the workers than those which 
 have been directed by the judiciary. Injunction 
 upon injunction has been issued, robbing the workers 
 of the most elemental rights of manhood and citizen- 
 ship. They have forbidden what the Constitution 
 and statute law declare to be legal. 
 
 Mr. John Mitchell refers in his Organized Labor 
 to this subject, in strong but not too strong terms. 
 "No weapon," he says, "has been used with such 
 disastrous effect against trade unions as the inj unc- 
 tion in labor disputes. By means of it, trade union- 
 ists have been prohibited under severe penalties from 
 doing what they had a legal right to do, and have 
 been specifically directed to do what they had a legal 
 right not to do. It is difficult to speak in measured 
 tones or moderate language of the savagery and 
 venom with which unions have been assailed by the 
 injunction, and to the working classes, as to all fair- 
 minded men, it seems little less than a crime to con- 
 done or tolerate it." l This is strong language, but 
 who shall say that it is too strong when we remem- 
 ber the many injunctions which have been hurled at 
 organized labor since the famous Debs case brought 
 this new and terrible weapon into requisition? 
 
 1 Organized Labor, by John Mitchell, page 324.
 
 156 SOCIALISM 
 
 Members of the International Cigarmakers' Union, 
 in New York City, were enjoined some six years ago, 
 by Justice Freeman, from approaching the employers 
 against whom they were striking, even with a view 
 to arranging a peaceable settlement. There was 
 no breach of the peace, actual or threatened, to 
 justify such a monstrous use of judicial power. The 
 cigar makers were also enjoined from publishing 
 their grievances, notwithstanding that all the time 
 the employers were publishing their side of the 
 controversy. In the great steel strike, five years 
 ago, the members of the Amalgamated Association 
 of Iron and Steel Workers were enjoined from peace- 
 ably discussing the merits of their claim with the 
 men who were at work, even though the latter might 
 raise no objection. In the strike of the Interna- 
 tional Typographical Union against the Buffalo Ex- 
 press, the strikers were enjoined from discussing the 
 strike or talking about the paper in any way which 
 might be construed as being against the paper. 
 If one of the strikers advised a friend, or requested 
 him, not to buy a "scab" paper, he was liable under 
 the terms of that injunction. The members of the 
 same union were, by Justice Bookstaver, on the 
 application of the New York Sun, enjoined from 
 publishing their side of the controversy as an argu- 
 ment why persons friendly to organized labor should 
 not advertise in a paper hostile to it. To-day, as
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 157 
 
 these lines are being written/ the New York daily 
 papers contain the text of an injunction, issued by Su- 
 preme Court Justice Gildersleeve, enjoining members 
 of the same union from "making any requests, giving 
 any advice, or resorting to any persuasion ... to 
 overcome the exercise of the free will of any person 
 connected with the plaintiff [a notorious anti-union- 
 ist publishing company] or its customers as em- 
 ployees or otherwise." These are only a few of 
 thousands of hi junctions, hundreds of them equally 
 monstrous and subversive of all sound principles of 
 popular government. There is not another country 
 in the world where such judicial tyranny would be 
 tolerated. It is not without significance that hi West 
 Virginia, where, in 1898, the legislature passed a 
 law limiting the right to issue injunctions, the Su- 
 preme Court decided that the law was unconstitu- 
 tional, on the ground that the legislature had no 
 right to attempt to restrain the courts which were 
 coordinate with itself. 
 
 Even more dangerous to organized labor than the 
 hi junction is what is popularly known as "Taff Vale 
 law." Our judges have not been slow to follow the 
 lines laid down by English judges in the famous case 
 of the Taff Vale Railway Company against the of- 
 ficers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Ser- 
 
 1 January 31, 1906.
 
 158 SOCIALISM 
 
 vants, a powerful labor organization. The decision 
 in that case was most revolutionary. It compelled 
 the workers to pay damages, to the extent of $115,000, 
 to the railroad company for losses sustained by the 
 company through a strike of its employees, members 
 of the defendant union. That decision struck terror 
 and consternation into the hearts of British trade 
 unionists. At last they had to face a mode of attack 
 almost, if not altogether, as dangerous as that of the 
 injunction which their transatlantic brethren had so 
 long been facing. 
 
 Taff Vale law could not for long be confined to 
 England. Ever on the alert, our American capitalists 
 decided to follow the example set by the English 
 railroad company. A suit was instituted against 
 members of a lodge of the Machinists' Union in Rut- 
 land, Vermont, and the defendants were ordered to pay 
 $2500. A writ was served upon every other man in 
 the lodge, and the property of every one of them 
 attached. Since that time, numerous other deci- 
 sions of a like nature have been rendered in various 
 parts of the country. Thus the unions have been 
 assailed in a vital place, their treasuries. It is 
 manifestly quite useless for the members of a union 
 to strike against an employer for any purpose what- 
 ever, if the employer is to be able to recover damages 
 from the union. Taff Vale judge-made law renders 
 unionism hors de combat at a stroke.
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THEORY 159 
 
 IX 
 
 The immediate effect produced upon the minds 
 of the workers of England by the revolutionary 
 decision manifested itself in a cry for independent 
 political action by the unions. There is a con- 
 census of opinion that the tremendous increase in 
 the labor and Socialist vote at the recent elections 
 was due, largely, to the attack made upon the funds 
 of the unions. The aim of the workers there is to 
 get legislation enacted for the protection of the 
 funds of their unions. A similar process is going 
 on in this country. Colorado "bull pens," anti- 
 democratic, anti-American, anti-everything-decent 
 injunctions, and transplanted Taff Vale decisions, 
 are educating the workers to the acceptance of po- 
 litical Socialism. Underneath the thin veneer of 
 party differences, the worker sees the class identity 
 of the great political parties, and cries out, "A 
 plague on both your houses!" The Socialist argu- 
 ment comes to the workingman with twofold force; 
 he has it in his power to control that government, 
 to make it what he will; he can put an end to gov- 
 ernment by injunctions, to bull pens, and to the 
 sequestration of union funds, whenever he makes 
 up his mind to do it. He can make the government 
 what he will; if he so decides, he can own and con- 
 trol the government, and, through the government,
 
 160 SOCIALISM 
 
 own and control the essentials of life: be master of 
 his own labor, his own bread, his own life. 
 
 If we take for granted that the universal increase 
 of Socialist sentiment, and the growth of political 
 Socialism, presage this great triumph of the working 
 class; that the heretofore despised and oppressed 
 proletariat is, in a not far-off future, to rule instead 
 of being ruled, the question arises, will the last state 
 be better than the first? Will society be bettered 
 by the change of masters? To regard this struggle 
 of the classes as one of revenge, of exploited masses 
 ready to overturn the social structure that they may 
 become exploiters instead of exploited, is to mis- 
 read the whole movement. The political and eco- 
 nomic conquest of society by the working class means 
 the end of class divisions, once and forever. A so- 
 cial democracy, a society in which all the means of 
 the common life are owned and controlled by the 
 people in common, democratically organized, pre- 
 cludes the existence of class divisions in our present- 
 day economic and political sense. Profit, through 
 human exploitation, alone has made class divisions 
 possible; and the Socialist regime will abolish profit. 
 The working class in emancipating itself, at the same 
 tune makes liberty possible for the whole race of 
 man.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 KARL MARX AND THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 THE first approach to a comprehensive treatment 
 of the materialistic conception of history appeared 
 in 1847, several months before the publication of the 
 Manifesto, in La Misere de la Philosophic, 1 the fa- 
 mous polemic with which Marx assailed Proudhon's 
 La Philosophic de la Misere. Marx had worked out 
 his theory at least two years before, so Engels tells 
 us, and in his writings of that period there are many 
 evidences of the fact. In La Misere de la Philo- 
 sophic the theory is fundamental to the work, and 
 not merely the subject of incidental allusion. This 
 little book, all too little known in England and 
 America, is therefore important from this historical 
 point of view. In it, Marx for the first time shows 
 his complete confidence in the theory. It needed 
 confidence little short of sublime to challenge Prou- 
 dhon in the audacious manner of this scintillating 
 
 1 An English edition of this work, translated by H. Quelch, was 
 published in 1900 with the title The Poverty of Philosophy. 
 M 161
 
 162 SOCIALISM 
 
 critique. The torrential eloquence, the scornful sa- 
 tire, and fierce invective of the attack upon Proudhon, 
 have rather tended to obscure for readers of a 
 later generation the real merit of the book, the im- 
 portance of the fundamental idea that history must 
 be interpreted in the light of economic development, 
 that economic evolution determines social life. The 
 book is important also for two other reasons. First, 
 it was the author's first serious essay in economic 
 science in the Preface he boldly calls himself an 
 economist and, second, in it appears a full and 
 generous recognition of that brilliant coterie of 
 English Socialist writers of the Ricardian school 
 from whom Marx has been unjustly, and almost 
 spitefully, charged with "pillaging" his principal 
 ideas. 
 
 What led Marx to launch out upon the troubled 
 sea of economic science, when all his predilections 
 were for the study of pure philosophy, was the fact 
 that his philosophical studies had led him to a point 
 where further progress was impossible, except by 
 way of economics. The Introduction to A Contri- 
 bution to the Critique of Political Economy makes this 
 perfectly clear. Having decided that "The method 
 of production in material existence conditions social, 
 political, and mental evolution in general," a study 
 of economics, and especially an analysis of modern 
 industrial society, became inevitable. During the
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 163 
 
 year 1845, when the theory of the economic inter- 
 pretation of history was absorbing his attention, 
 Marx spent six weeks in England with his friend 
 Engels, and became acquainted with the work of 
 the English Ricardian Socialists referred to. 1 Engels 
 had been living hi England about three years at this 
 tune, and had made an exhaustive investigation of 
 industrial conditions there, and become intimately 
 acquainted with the leaders of the Chartist move- 
 ment. His fine library contained most of the works 
 of contemporary writers, and it was thus that Marx 
 came to know them. 
 
 Foremost of this school of Socialists which had 
 arisen, naturally enough, in the land where capi- 
 talism flourished at its best, were William Godwin, 
 Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas 
 Hodgskin, and John Francis Bray. With the 
 exception of Hall, of whose privately printed book, 
 The Effects of Civilisation on the People of the Euro- 
 pean States, 1805, he seems not to have known, 
 Marx was familiar with the writings of all the fore- 
 going, and his obligations to Thompson, Hodgskin, 
 and Bray were not slight. While the charge, made 
 by Dr. Anton Menger, 3 among others, that Marx 
 took his theory of surplus value from Thompson 
 
 1 Cf. F. Engels' Preface to La Misere de la Philosophic, English 
 translation, The Poverty of Philosophy, page iv. 
 
 a Menger, The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, 1899.
 
 164 SOCIALISM 
 
 is absurd, and rests, as Bernstein has pointed out, 1 
 upon nothing but the fact that Thompson used the 
 words "surplus value" frequently, but not in the 
 same sense that Marx uses them, we need not at- 
 tempt to dispute the fact that Marx gleaned much 
 of value from Thompson and the other two writers 
 named. While criticising them, and pointing out 
 their shortcomings, Marx himself frequently pays 
 tributes of respect to each of them. His indebted- 
 ness to either of them, or to all of them, consists sim- 
 ply in the fact that he recognized the germ of truth in 
 their writings, and saw what they failed to perceive. 
 Godwin's most important work, An Inquiry 
 Concerning Political Justice, appeared in 1793, 
 and contains the germ of much that is called Marx- 
 ian Socialism. In it may be found the broad lines 
 of the thought which marks much of our present-day 
 Socialist teaching, especially the criticism of capi- 
 talist society. Marx, however, does not appear 
 to have been directly influenced by it. That he was 
 influenced by it indirectly, through William Thomp- 
 son, Godwin's most illustrious disciple, is, however, 
 quite certain. Thompson wrote several works of 
 a Socialist character, of which An Inquiry into the 
 Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most Con- 
 ducive to Human Happiness, applied to the newly 
 
 1 Edward Bernstein, Ferdinand Lassalle aa a Social Reformer, 
 page ix.
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 165 
 
 proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth, 
 1824, and Labour Rewarded. The Claims of Labour 
 and Capital Conciliated, or how to secure to Labour 
 the Whole Products of its Exertions, 1827, are the 
 most important and best known. Thompson must 
 be regarded as one of the greatest precursors of 
 Marx in the development of modern Socialist theory. 
 A Ricardian of the Ricardians, he states the law of 
 wages in language that is almost as emphatic as 
 Lassalle's famous Ehemes Lohngesetz. Accepting 
 the view of Ricardo, and indeed, of Adam Smith 
 and other English economists that labor is the 
 sole source of exchange value, 1 he shows the exploi- 
 tation of the laborer, and uses the term "surplus 
 value," not, however, hi the sense in which Marx 
 uses it. 
 
 John Gray's A Lecture on Human Happiness, 
 published in 1825, has been described by Professor 
 Foxwell 3 as being "certainly one of the most re- 
 markable of Socialist writings," and the summary of 
 the rare little work which he gives amply justifies 
 the description. Gray published other works of 
 note, two of which, The Social System, a Treatise 
 
 1 It should be pointed out here, I think, that Ricardo hedged this 
 doctrine about with important qualifications till it no longer remained 
 the simple proposition stated above. See Dr. A. C. Whitaker's 
 History and Criticism of the Labour Theory of Value in English 
 Political Economy, page 57, for a suggestive treatment of this point. 
 
 2 Introduction to Monger's The Right to the Whole Produce o) 
 Labour.
 
 166 SOCIALISM 
 
 on the Principle of Exchange, 1831, and Lectures on 
 the Nature and Use of Money, 1848, Marx subjects 
 to a rigorous criticism in A Contribution to the Cri- 
 tique of Political Economy. Thomas Hodgskin's 
 best-known works are Labour Defended against the 
 Claims of Capital, 1825, and The Natural and Arti- 
 ficial Right of Property Contrasted, 1832. The former, 
 which Marx calls "an admirable work," is only a 
 small tract of thirty-four pages, but its influence in 
 England and in America was very great. Hodgskin 
 was a man of great culture and erudition, with a genius 
 for popular writing upon difficult topics. It is in- 
 teresting to know that in a letter to his friend, Fran- 
 cis Place, he sketched a book which he proposed 
 writing, "curiously like Marx's Capital" according 
 to Place's biographer, Mr. Wallas, 1 and which the 
 conservative old reformer dissuaded him from 
 writing. John Francis Bray was a journeyman 
 printer about whom very little is known. His 
 Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy published 
 in Leeds in 1839, Marx calls a "remarkable work," 
 and in his attack upon Proudhon he quotes from it 
 extensively to show that Bray had anticipated the 
 French writer's theories. 2 
 
 1 The Life of Francis Place, by Graham Wallas, M.A., London, 
 1898, page 268. 
 
 * For this brief sketch of the works of these writers I have drawn 
 freely upon Dr. Anton Menger's The Right to the Whole Produce of 
 Labour, and Professor Foxwell's Introduction thereto.
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 167 
 
 The justification for this lengthy digression from 
 the main theme of the present chapter lies in the 
 fact that many critics have sought to fasten the 
 charge of dishonesty upon Marx, and claimed that 
 the ideas with which his name is associated were 
 taken by him, without acknowledgment, from these 
 English Ricardian Socialists. As a matter of fact, 
 no economist of note ever quoted his authorities 
 with more generous frankness than Marx, and it 
 is exceedingly doubtful whether the names of the 
 precursors whose ideas he is accused of stealing 
 would be even known to his critics but for his frank 
 recognition of them. No candid reader of Marx 
 can fail to notice that he is most careful to show 
 how nearly these writers approached the truth as he 
 conceived it. 
 
 n 
 
 When the February revolution of 1848 broke out, 
 Marx was in Brussels. The authorities there com- 
 pelling him to leave Belgian soil, he returned to 
 France, but not for a long stay. The revolutionary 
 struggle hi Germany stirred his blood, and with 
 Engels, Wilhelm Wolf, 1 and Ferdinand Freiligrath, 
 the poet of the movement, he started the New 
 
 1 An intimate friend, to whom Marx dedicated the first volume of 
 Capital.
 
 168 SOCIALISM 
 
 Rhenish Gazette. Unlike the first Rhenish Gazette, the 
 new journal was absolutely free. Twice Marx was 
 summoned to appear at the Cologne Assizes, upon 
 charges of inciting the people to rebellion, and each 
 tune he defended himself with superb skill and 
 audacity and was acquitted. But in June, 1849, 
 the authorities suppressed the paper, because of the 
 support it gave to the risings hi Dresden and the 
 Rhine Province. Marx was expelled from Prussia 
 and once more sought refuge hi Paris, which he was 
 allowed to enjoy only for a very brief time. For- 
 bidden by the French government to stay in Paris, 
 or any other part of France except Bretagne, which, 
 says Liebknecht, was considered fireproof, Marx 
 turned to London, the mecca of all political exiles, 
 arriving there toward the end of June, 1849. 
 
 His removal to London was one of the crucial 
 events of the life of Marx. It became possible for 
 hmi, hi the classic land of capitalism, to pursue his 
 economic studies hi a way that was not possible 
 anywhere else in the world. As Liebknecht says: 
 "Here in London, the metropolis (mother city) 
 and the center of the world, and of the world of 
 trade the watch tower of the world whence the 
 trade of the world and the political and economical 
 bustle of the world may be observed, in a way im- 
 possible in any other part of the globe here, 
 Marx found what he sought and needed, the bricks
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 169 
 
 and mortar for his work. Capital could be created 
 in London only." * 
 
 Already much more familiar with English political 
 economy than most English writers, and with the 
 fine library of the British Museum at his command, 
 Marx felt that the time had at last arrived when he 
 could devote himself to his long-cherished plan of 
 writing a great treatise upon political economy 
 upon which the theoretical structure of the Social- 
 ist movement could be safely and securely based. 
 With this object hi view, he resumed his economic 
 studies hi 1850, soon after his arrival in London. 
 The work proceeded slowly, however, principally 
 owing to the long and bitter struggle with poverty 
 which encompassed Marx and his gentle wife. For 
 years they suffered all the miseries of acute poverty, 
 and even afterward, when the worst was past, the 
 principal source of income, almost the only source in 
 fact, was the five dollars a week received from the 
 New York Tribune, for which Marx acted as special 
 correspondent, and to which he contributed some of 
 his finest work. 2 There are few pictures more 
 pathetic, albeit also heroic, than that which we 
 
 1 Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs, by Wilhelm Liebknecht, 
 translated by E. Untermann, 1901, page 32. 
 
 a Much of this work has been collated and edited by Marx's 
 daughter, the late Mre. Eleanor Marx Aveling, and her husband, Dr. 
 Edward Aveling, and published in two volumes, The Eastern Ques- 
 tion and Revolution and Counter-Revolution.
 
 170 SOCIALISM 
 
 have of the great thinker and his devoted wife strug- 
 gling against poverty during the first few years of 
 their stay in London. Often the little family suf- 
 fered the pangs of hunger, and Marx and his fellow- 
 exiles used to resort to the reading room of the Brit- 
 ish Museum, weak from lack of food very often, 
 but grateful for the warmth of that hospitable spot. 
 The family lived hi two small rooms in a cheap 
 lodging house on Dean Street, for some years, the 
 front room serving as reception room and study, 
 and the back room serving for everything else. In 
 a diary note, Mrs. Marx has herself left us an im- 
 pressive picture of the suffering of those early 
 years in London. Early hi 1852, death entered 
 the little household for the first tune, taking away 
 a little daughter. Only a few weeks later an- 
 other little daughter died, and Mrs. Marx wrote 
 concerning this event: 
 
 " On Easter of the same year 1852 our poor 
 little Francisca died of severe bronchitis. Three 
 days the poor child was struggling with death. It 
 suffered so much. Its little lifeless body rested in 
 the small back room; we all moved together into 
 the front room, and when night approached, we 
 made our beds on the floor. There the three living 
 children were lying at our side, and we cried about 
 the little angel, who rested cold and lifeless near us. 
 The death of the dear child fell into the time of the
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 171 
 
 most bitter poverty . . . (the money for the burial 
 of the child was missing). I went to a French 
 refugee living in the vicinity, who had visited us 
 shortly before. 
 
 "He at once gave me two pounds sterling, with 
 the friendliest sympathy. With this money, the 
 little coffin was purchased in which my poor child 
 now slumbers peacefully. It had no cradle when it 
 entered the world, and the last little abode also was 
 for a long time denied it. What did we suffer, when 
 it was carried away to its last place of rest!" * 
 
 The poverty, of which we have here such a graphic 
 view, lasted for several years beyond the publication 
 of the Critique, on to the publication of the first 
 volume of Capital. When this struggle is remem- 
 bered and understood, it becomes easier to appre- 
 ciate the life work of the great Socialist thinker. 
 As this is the last place in which the personality of 
 Marx, or his personal affairs, will be discussed at 
 any length in the present work, a further word con- 
 cerning his family life may not be out of place. Those 
 persons who regard Socialism as being antagonistic 
 to the marriage relation, and fear it in consequence, 
 will find no suggestion of support for that view in 
 the life of Marx. The love of Marx and his wife 
 for one another was beautiful and idylic; a true 
 account of their love and devotion would rank with 
 
 1 Quoted by Liebknecht, Memoirs, page 177.
 
 172 SOCIALISM 
 
 the most beautiful love stories in literature. Their 
 friends understood that, too, and there is a world 
 of significance in the one brief sentence spoken by 
 Engels, when told of the death of his friend's wife, 
 who was likewise his own dear friend; "Mohr 
 [Negro, a nickname given to Marx by his friends] 
 is dead too," he said simply. It was indeed true. 
 Though he lingered on for about three months after 
 her death, the life of Marx really ended when the 
 playmate of his boyhood, and the lover and com- 
 panion of his later years, died with the name of her 
 dear "Karl" upon her lips. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The studious years spent in the reading room of 
 the British Museum completed the anglicization of 
 Marx. Capital is essentially an English work, the 
 fact of its being written in German, by a German 
 writer, being merely incidental. No more distinc- 
 tively English treatise on political economy was ever 
 written, not even the Wealth of Nations. Even the 
 method and style of the book are, contrary to gen- 
 eral opinion, much more distinctly English than 
 German. Capital was the child of English nidus- 
 trial conditions and English thought, born by chance 
 upon German soil. 
 
 Toward the middle of the nineteenth century,
 
 KAEL MAEX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 173 
 
 English economic thought was entirely dominated 
 by the ideas and method of Ricardo, who has been 
 described by Senior, not without justice, as "the 
 most incorrect writer who ever attained philosoph- 
 ical eminence." 1 So far as looseness in the use 
 of terms can justify such a sweeping criticism, it 
 is justified by Ricardo's failing in this respect. That 
 he should have attained the eminence he did, domi- 
 nating English economic thought for many years, 
 in spite of the confusion which his loose and uncer- 
 tain use of words occasioned, is not less a tribute to 
 Ricardo's genius than evidence of the poverty of 
 political economy in England at that tune. In 
 view of the constant and tiresome reiteration of the 
 charge that Marx pillaged his labor-value theory 
 from Thompson, Hodgskin, Bray, or some other 
 more or less obscure writer of the Ricardian Social- 
 ist school, it is well to remember that there is noth- 
 ing to be found hi the works of any of these writers 
 connected with the theory of value which is not to 
 be found in the earlier work of Ricardo himself. 
 In like manner, the theory can be traced back from 
 Ricardo to the master he honored, Adam Smith. 
 Furthermore, almost a century before the appear- 
 ance of the Wealth of Nations, Sir William Petty 
 had anticipated the so-called Ricardian labor-value 
 theory of Smith and his followers. 
 
 1 Political Economy, page 115.
 
 174 SOCIALISM 
 
 Petty, rather than Smith, is entitled to be regarded 
 as the founder of the classical school of political 
 economy, and Cossa justly calls him, "one of the 
 most illustrious forerunners of the science of sta- 
 tistical research." l He may indeed fairly be called 
 the father of statistical science, and was the first 
 to apply statistics, or "political arithmetick," as 
 he called it, to the elucidation of political economy. 
 He boasts that "instead of using only comparative 
 and superlative Words, and intellectual Arguments," 
 his method is to speak " in Terms of Number, Weight, 
 or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense; and 
 to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foun- 
 dations in Nature; leaving those that depend upon 
 the mutable Minds, Opinions, Appetites, and Pas- 
 sions of particular Men, to the Consideration of 
 others." 3 The celebrated saying of this sagacious 
 thinker that, "labor is the father and active prin- 
 ciple of wealth; lands are the mother," is quite 
 Ricardian. Petty divided the population into two 
 classes, the productive and non-productive, and 
 insisted that the value of all things depends upon 
 the labor it costs to produce or obtain them. These 
 are the ideas Marx is accused of taking, with- 
 out acknowledgment, from comparatively obscure 
 
 1 Luigi Cossa, Guide to the Study of Political Economy, English 
 translation, 1880. 
 
 * The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, edited by Charlea 
 Henry Hull, Vol. I, page 244.
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 175 
 
 followers of Ricardo, in spite of the fact that he 
 gives abundant credit to the earlier writer. It 
 has been asked with ample justification whether 
 these critics of Marx have ever read the works of 
 Marx or his predecessors. 
 
 Adam Smith, who accepted the foregoing prin- 
 ciples laid down by Petty, followed his example of 
 basing his opinions upon observed facts instead of 
 abstractions. It is not the least of Smith's merits 
 that, despite his many digressions, looseness of 
 phraseology, and other admitted defects, his love 
 for the concrete kept his feet upon the solid ground 
 of fact. With his successors, notably Ricardo and 
 J. S. Mill, it was far otherwise. They made political 
 economy an isolated study of abstract doctrines. 
 Instead of a study of the meaning and relation of 
 facts, it became a cult of abstractions, and the ami 
 of its teachers seemed to be to render the science 
 as little scientific, and as dull, as possible. They 
 set up an abstraction, an "economic man," and 
 created for it a world of economic abstractions. 
 It is impossible to read either Ricardo or John Stuart 
 Mill, but especially the latter, without feeling the 
 artificiality of the superstructures they created, 
 and the justice of Carlyle's description of such 
 political economy as the "dismal science." With 
 a realism greater even than Adam Smith's, and a 
 more logical method than John Stuart Mill's, Marx
 
 176 SOCIALISM 
 
 restored the science of political economy to its old 
 fact foundations. 
 
 IV 
 
 The superior insight of Marx is shown in the very 
 first sentence of his great work. The careful reader 
 at once perceives that the first paragraph of the book 
 strikes a keynote which distinguishes it from all 
 other economic works. Marx was a great master 
 of the art of luminous and exact definition and 
 nowhere is this more strikingly shown than in this 
 opening sentence of Capital: "The wealth of those 
 societies in which the capitalist mode of production 
 prevails presents itself as an immense accumula- 
 tion of commodities, its unit being a single commod- 
 ity." * In this simple, lucid sentence, the theory 
 of social evolution is clearly implied. The author 
 repudiates, by implication, the idea that it is possible 
 to lay down universal or eternal laws, and limits 
 himself to the exploration of the phenomena ap- 
 pearing in a certain stage of historical develop- 
 ment. We are not to have another abstract eco- 
 nomic man with a world of abstractions all his own ; 
 lone, shipwrecked mariners upon barren islands, 
 imaginary communities nicely adapted for demon- 
 stration purposes in college class rooms, and all 
 the other stage properties of the political econo- 
 
 1 The italics are mine. J. 8.
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 177 
 
 mists, are to be entirely discarded. Our author 
 does not propose to give us a code of principles by 
 which we shall be able to understand and explain 
 the phenomena of human society at all tunes and in 
 all places the Israel of the Mosaic Age, the no- 
 madic life of Arab tribes, Europe in the Middle Ages, 
 and England in the nineteenth century. 
 
 In effect, the passage under consideration says: 
 "Political economy is the study of the principles 
 and laws governing the production and distribution 
 of wealth. Because of the fact that in the progress 
 of society different systems of wealth production 
 and exchange, and different concepts of wealth, 
 prevail at different tunes, and in various places at 
 the same time, we cannot apply any laws, however 
 carefully formulated, to all times and to all places. 
 We must choose for study and examination a cer- 
 tain form of production, representing a particular 
 stage of historical development, and be careful not 
 to apply any of its laws to other forms of production, 
 representing other stages of development. We 
 might have chosen to investigate the laws which 
 governed the production of wealth in the ancient 
 Babylonian Empire, or in Mediaeval Europe, had 
 we so desired, but we have chosen instead the period 
 in which we live." 
 
 This that we call the capitalist epoch has grown 
 out of the geographical discoveries and the median-
 
 178 SOCIALISM 
 
 ical inventions of the past three hundred years, 
 especially the mechanical discoveries of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries. Its chief char- 
 acteristic, from an economic point of view, is that 
 of production for sale instead of direct use as in ear- 
 lier stages of social development. Of course, barter 
 and sale are much older than this epoch which we 
 are discussing. In all ages men have exchanged 
 their surplus products for other things more desirable 
 to them, either directly by barter or through some 
 medium of exchange. In the very nature of things, 
 however, such exchange as this must have been 
 incidental to the life of the people engaging hi it, 
 and not its principal aim. Under such conditions 
 of society wealth consists in the possession of useful 
 things. The naked savage, so long as he possessed 
 plenty of weapons, and could get an abundance of 
 fish or game, was, from the viewpoint of the society 
 in which he lived, a wealthy man. In other words, 
 the wealth of pre-capitalist society consisted in the 
 possession of use-values, and not of exchange values. 
 Robinson Crusoe, for whom the very possibility 
 of exchange did not exist, was, from this pre-capi- 
 talistic point of view, a very wealthy man. 
 
 In our present society, production is carried on 
 primarily for exchange, for sale. The first and essen- 
 tial characteristic feature of wealth in this stage of 
 social development is that it takes the form of accu-
 
 KAEL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 179 
 
 mulated exchange-values, or commodities. Men are 
 accounted rich or poor according to the exchange- 
 values they can command, and not according to the 
 use-values they can command. To use a favorite 
 example, the man who owns a ton of potatoes is 
 far richer in simple use-values than the man whose 
 only possession is a sack of diamonds, but, because 
 in present society a sack of diamonds will exchange 
 for an almost infinite quantity of potatoes, the 
 owner of the diamonds is much wealthier than the 
 owner of the potatoes. The criterion of wealth in 
 capitalist society is exchangeable value as opposed 
 to use-value, the criterion of wealth in primitive 
 society. The unit of wealth is therefore a commod- 
 ity, and we must begin our investigation with it. 
 If we can analyze the nature of a commodity so that 
 we can understand how and why it is produced, and 
 how and why it is exchanged, we shall be able to 
 understand the principle governing the production 
 and exchange of wealth in this and every other 
 society where similar conditions prevail, where, that 
 is to say, the unit of wealth is a commodity. 
 
 It has become fashionable in recent years to sneer 
 at the term "scientific" which has been commonly 
 applied to Marxian Socialism. Even some of the
 
 180 SOCIALISM 
 
 friendliest critics of Socialism have contended that 
 the use of the term is pretentious, bombastic, and 
 altogether unjustified. From a certain point of 
 view, this appears to be an exceedingly unimportant 
 matter, and the vigor with which Socialists defend 
 their use of the term seems exceedingly foolish, 
 and accountable for only as a result of enthusiastic 
 fetish worship the fetish, of course, being Marx. 
 Such a view is exceedingly crude and superficial. 
 It cannot be doubted that the Socialism represented 
 by Marx and the modern Socialist movement is 
 radically different from the earlier Socialism with 
 which the names of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, 
 Owen, and a host of other builders of "cloud palaces 
 for an ideal humanity," are associated. The need 
 of some word to distinguish between the two is ob- 
 vious, and the only question remaining is whether 
 or not the word "scientific" is the most suitable 
 and accurate one to make that distinction clear; 
 whether the words "scientific" and " Utopian" 
 express with reasonable accuracy the nature of the 
 difference. Here the followers and champions of 
 Marx feel that they have taken an impregnable 
 position. The method of Marx is scientific. From 
 the first sentence of his great work to the last, the 
 method pursued is that of a painstaking scientist. 
 It would be just as reasonable to complain of the use 
 of the term "scientific" in connection with the work
 
 KARL MARX AND ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 181 
 
 of Darwin and his followers, to distinguish it from 
 the guesswork of Anaximander, as to cavil at the 
 distinction made between the Socialism of Marx 
 and his followers, and that of visionaries like Owen 
 and Saint-Simon. 
 
 If to recognize a law of causation, to put exact 
 knowledge of facts above tradition or sentiment, to 
 gather facts patiently until sufficient have been 
 gathered together to make possible the formulation 
 of generalizations and laws which enable us to fore- 
 tell with tolerable certainty what the outcome of 
 certain conditions will be as Marx foretold the 
 culmination of competition in monoply consti- 
 tutes scientific method, then Karl Marx was a scien- 
 tist and modern Socialism is aptly named Scientific 
 Socialism.
 
 CHAPTER VIH 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 
 I 
 
 THE geist of social and political evolution is eco- 
 nomic, according to the Socialist philosophy. This 
 view of the importance of man's economic relations 
 involves a very radical change in the methods and 
 terminology of political economy. The philosoph- 
 ical view of social and political evolution as a 
 world-process, through revolutions formed in the 
 matrices of economic conditions, at once limits and 
 expands the scope of political economy. It destroys 
 on the one hand the idea of the eternality of eco- 
 nomic laws and limits them to particular epochs. On 
 the other hand, it enhances the importance of the 
 science of political economy as a study of the motive 
 force of social evolution. With Marx and his fol- 
 lowers, political economy is more than an analysis 
 of the production and distribution of wealth; it 
 is a study of the principal determinant factor in the 
 social and political progress of society, consciously 
 recognized as such. 
 
 182
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 183 
 
 The sociological viewpoint appears throughout 
 the whole structure of Marxian economic thought. 
 It appears, for instance, in the definition of a com- 
 modity as the unit of wealth in those Societies in 
 which the capitalist mode of production prevails. 1 
 Likewise wealth and capital connote special social 
 relations or categories. Wealth, which in certain 
 simpler forms of social organization consists in the 
 ownership of use-values, under the capitalist sys- 
 tem consists in the ownership of exchange-values. 
 Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between 
 persons established through the medium of things. 
 Robinson Crusoe's spade, the Indian's bow and 
 arrow, and all similar illustrations given by the "or- 
 thodox" economists, do not constitute capital any 
 more than an infant's spoon is capital. They do 
 not serve as the medium of the social relation which 
 characterizes the capitalist system of production. 
 The essential feature of capitalist society is the 
 production of wealth in the commodity form; that 
 is to say, in the form of objects that, instead of being 
 consumed by the producer, are destined to be ex- 
 changed or sold at a profit. Capital, therefore, is 
 wealth set apart for the production of other wealth 
 with a view to its exchange at a profit. A house 
 may consist of certain definite quantities of bricks, 
 timber, lime, iron, and other substances, but similar 
 
 1 Capital, English edition, page 1.
 
 184 SOCIALISM 
 
 quantities of these substances piled up without plan 
 will not constitute a house. Bricks, timber, lime, 
 and iron become a house only hi certain circum- 
 stances, when they bear a given ordered relation 
 to each other. "A negro is a negro; it is only under 
 certain conditions that he becomes a slave. A cer- 
 tain machine, for example, is a machine for spinning 
 cotton; it is only under certain defined conditions 
 that it becomes capital. Apart from these condi- 
 tions, it is no more capital than gold per se is money ; 
 capital is a social relation of production." 1 
 
 This sociological principle pervades the whole of 
 Socialist economics. It appears in every economic 
 definition, and the terminology of the orthodox 
 political economists is thereby often given a radi- 
 cally different meaning from that originally given 
 to it and commonly understood. The student of 
 Socialism whn f.i1g tr> 
 
 frequently land in a moraag^L-fionfuaon and dif- 
 
 ficulty; but the careful student who fully under- 
 
 ""* *~^^^cp >- * - !!t*T?* 1 **'*' - ****^ "*^"*"**WWM**"^" 
 
 stands it will find it of immense assistance. 
 
 n 
 
 We must begin our analysis of capitalist society 
 with an analysis of a commodity. "A commodity 
 is," says Marx, "hi the first place, an object outside 
 
 The People's Marx, by Gabriel Deville, page 288.
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 185 
 
 us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human 
 wants of some sort or another. The nature of such 
 wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the 
 stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither 
 are we here concerned to know how the object satis- 
 fies these wants, whether directly as means of sub- 
 sistence, or indirectly as means of production." 1 
 But a commodity must be something more than an 
 object satisfying human wants. The manna upon 
 which the pilgrim exiles of the Bible story were fed, 
 for instance, was not a commodity, though it ful- 
 filled the conditions of this first part of our defini- 
 tion. In addition, then, to use-value, a commodity 
 must possess exchange-value. In other words, it 
 must possess a social use-value, a use-value to others, 
 and not merely to the producer. 
 
 Use-values may, and often do, exist without eco- 
 nomic value, value, that is to say, in exchange. Air, 
 for instance, is absolutely indispensable to life, yet 
 it is not except in special, abnormal conditions 
 subject to sale or exchange. With a use-value that 
 is beyond computation, it has no exchange-value. 
 Similarly, water is ordinarily plentiful, and has no 
 economic value; it is not a commodity. A seeming 
 contradiction exists in the case of the water supply 
 of cities where water for domestic use is commercially 
 supplied, but a moment's reflection will show that it 
 
 1 Capital, English edition, pages 1-2.
 
 186 SOCIALISM 
 
 is not the water, but the social service of bringing it 
 to a desired location for the consumer's convenience, 
 that represents economic value. Under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, water, like light, is plentiful; its utility 
 to man is not due to man's labor, and it has, there- 
 fore, no economic value. But in exceptional cir- 
 cumstances, in the arid desert, for instance, or in a 
 besieged fortress, a millionaire might be willing to 
 give all his wealth for a little water, thus making the 
 value of what is ordinarily valueless almost infinite. 
 Use-value may exist as the result of human labor, but 
 unless that use-value is social, if the object produced 
 is of no use to any person other than the producer, it 
 will have no value in the economic sense. 1 
 
 A commodity must therefore possess two funda- 
 mental qualities. It must have a use-value, must 
 satisfy some human want or desire; it must also 
 have an exchange-value arising from the fact that the 
 use-value contained in it is social in its nature and 
 exchangeable for other exchange-values. With the 
 unit of wealth thus defined, the subsequent study of 
 economics is immensely simplified. 
 
 The trade of capitalist society is the exchange of 
 commodities against each other through the medium 
 of money. Commodities utterly unlike each other 
 
 1 Professor J. 8. Nicholson, a rather pretentious critic of Marx, 
 has called sunshine a commodity because of its utility, Elements of 
 Political Economy, page 24. Upon the same ground, the song of the 
 skylark and the sound of ocean waves might be called commodities.
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 187 
 
 in all apparent physical properties, such as size, shape, 
 color, weight, substance, use, and so on, are found to 
 exchange equally, to have equal value. The question 
 immediately arises: What is it that determines the 
 relative value of commodities so exchanged ? A dress 
 suit and a kitchen range, for example, are very dif- 
 ferent commodities possessing no outward semblance 
 to each other, yet they may, and actually do, exchange 
 upon an equality in the market. To understand the 
 reason for this similarity of value of dissimilar com- 
 modities, is to understand an important part of the 
 mechanism of modern capitalist society. 
 
 Ill 
 
 When all their differences have been carefully 
 noted, all commodities have at least one quality in 
 common. The dress suit and the kitchen range, 
 tooth-picks and snowshoes, pink parasols and sewing 
 machines, are unlike each other in every particular 
 save one they are all products of human labor, 
 crystallizations of human labor power. Here, then, 
 we have the secret of the mechanism of exchange hi 
 capitalist society. The amount of labor power em- 
 bodied in their production in some way is associated 
 with the measure of the exchangeable value of the 
 commodities. Their relative value to one another 
 is determined by the relative amounts of human
 
 188 SOCIALISM 
 
 labor-power embodied in them, and this is ascer- 
 tained by competition and the higgling of the market. 
 
 Stated hi this form, that the quantity of human 
 labor is the basis and measure of the value of com- 
 modities when exchanged against one another, the 
 labor theory of value is beautifully simple. At the 
 same time, it is open to certain very obvious criti- 
 cisms. It would be absurd to contend that the day's 
 labor of a coolie laborer is of equal value to the 
 day's labor of a highly skilled mechanic, or that the 
 day's labor of an incompetent workman is of equal 
 value to that of the most proficient. To refute such 
 a theory is as beaut ifully simple as the theory itself. 
 In all seriousness, arguments such as these are con- 
 stantly used against the Marxian theory of value, 
 notwithstanding that they do not possess the slightest 
 relation to it. Marxism is very frequently "refuted" 
 by those who do not trouble themselves to under- 
 stand it. 
 
 The idea that the quantity of labor embodied in 
 them is the determinant of the value of commodities 
 did not originate with Karl Marx. On the contrary, 
 it is one of the great fundamental principles upon 
 which all the classical economists are agreed. Sir 
 William Petty, for example, in a celebrated passage 
 says of the exchange-value of corn: "If a man can 
 bring to London an ounce of silver out of the earth 
 in Peru in the same time that he can produce a
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 189 
 
 bushel of corn, then one is the natural price of the 
 other ; now, if by reason of new and more easy mines 
 a man can get two ounces of silver as easily as for- 
 merly he did one, then the corn will be as cheap at 
 ten shillings a bushel as it was before at five shillings 
 a bushel, cceteris paribus." l 
 
 Adam Smith, in a well-known passage, says: "The 
 real price of everything, what everything really costs 
 to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and 
 trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really 
 worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants 
 to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is 
 the toil and trouble which it can impose on other 
 people. Labor was the first price, the original pur- 
 chase money, that was paid for all things. ... If 
 among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually 
 costs twice the labor to kill a beaver which it does to 
 kill a deer, one beaver would naturally be worth or 
 exchange for two deer. It is natural that what is 
 usually the produce of two days' or two hours' 
 labor, should be worth double of what is usually the 
 produce of one day's or one hour's labor." 3 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, whose merit as an economist 
 Marx recognized, takes this view and regards trade 
 as being "nothing but the exchange of labor for 
 
 1 William Petty, A Treatise on Taxes and Constitutions (1662), 
 page 32. 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, second Thorold Rogers edition, pages 
 31-32.
 
 190 SOCIALISM 
 
 labor, the value of all things being most justly 
 measured by labor." * From the writings of almost 
 all the great economists of the classical school it 
 would be easy to compile a formidable and con- 
 vincing volume of similar quotations, equally em- 
 phatic, showing that they all took the same view 
 that the quantity of human labor embodied in 
 commodities determines then* exchange-value. One 
 further quotation, from Ricardo, must, however, 
 suffice : 
 
 "To convince ourselves that this (quantity of labor) 
 is the real foundation of exchangeable value, let us 
 suppose any improvement to be made in the means 
 of abridging labor in any one of the various processes 
 through which the raw cotton must pass before the 
 manufactured stockings come to the market to be 
 exchanged for other things; and observe the effects 
 which will follow. If fewer men were required to 
 
 1 Benjamin Franklin, Remarks and Facts Relative to the American 
 Paper Money, 1764, page 267. 
 
 Marx thus speaks of Franklin as an economist : "The first sensible 
 analysis of exchange-value as labor time, made so clear as to seem 
 almost commonplace, is to be found in the work of a man of the New 
 World, where the bourgeois relations of production imported, together 
 with their representatives, sprouted rapidly in a soil which made up 
 its lack of historical traditions with a surplus of humus. That man 
 was Benjamin Franklin, who formulated the fundamental law of 
 modern political economy in his first work, which he wrote when a 
 mere youth (A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a 
 Paper Currency), and published in 1721." A Contribution to the 
 Critique of Political Economy, English translation by N. I. Stone, 
 1904, page 62.
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 191 
 
 cultivate the raw cotton, or if fewer sailors were 
 employed in navigating, or shipwrights in construct- 
 ing, the ship in which it was conveyed to us ; if fewer 
 hands were employed in raising the buildings and 
 machinery, or if these, when raised, were rendered 
 more efficient; the stockings would inevitably fall 
 in value, and command less of other things. They 
 would fall because a less quantity of labor was neces- 
 sary to their production, and would therefore ex- 
 change for a smaller quantity of those things in which 
 no such abridgment of labor had been made." l 
 
 It is evident from the foregoing quotations that 
 these great writers regarded the quantity of human 
 labor spent as the basis of value. It is equally cer- 
 tain that they do not sufficiently explain what is 
 meant by quantity of human labor. They speak of 
 labor as that of individuals, or sets of individuals, 
 and, with the exception of Ricardo, do not appear to 
 conceive of social labor. It is because they fail to 
 comprehend social labor that they fail to satisfac- 
 torily solve the problem of the nature and source of 
 value. The difficulties arising from the variations in 
 human capacity and productiveness are solved by 
 Smith and Ricardo and their followers by insisting 
 upon the law of averages. It is the average amount 
 of labor expended in killing the beaver which counts, 
 not the actual individual labor in a specified case. 
 
 1 David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.
 
 192 SOCIALISM 
 
 Nor did these writers overlook the important dif- 
 ferentiation between simple, unskilled labor and 
 labor that is highly skilled. If A in ten hours' 
 labor produces exactly double the amount of exchange- 
 value which B produces in the same time devoted to 
 labor of another kind, it is obvious that the labor of 
 B is not equal in value to that of A. Quantity of 
 labor must, therefore, be measured by some other 
 standard than time units. Despite a hundred pas- 
 sages which seem to imply the contrary, Adam Smith 
 recognized this very clearly, and attempted to solve 
 the riddle by a differentiation of skilled and unskilled 
 labor in which he likens skilled labor to a machine; 
 and insists that the labor and time spent in acquiring 
 the skill which distinguishes skilled labor must be 
 reckoned. 1 
 
 IV 
 
 Marx saw the soul of truth in the labor-value 
 theory, as propounded by his predecessors, and de- 
 voted his wonderful genius to its development and 
 systematization. Labor, he pointed out, has two 
 sides: the qualitative and the quantitative. The 
 qualitative side, the difference in quality l^frween 
 specially skilled and sip]p|fi 
 
 recognised, though the rehliJYP Qli m, flf lihf, Oflff 
 
 1 Wealth of Nations, second Thorold Rogers edition, page 106.
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 193 
 
 the other-may be somewhat obscure. The secret of 
 that obscurity lies Hddenjin^the quantitative" side 
 oT labor." "Jkere we must enter upon an abstract 
 inquiry, that part of the Marxian theory of value 
 which is most difficult to comprehend. Yet it is 
 not very difficult after all to understand that the 
 years devoted to learning his trade by a mechanical 
 engineer, for instance, during all of which years he 
 must be provided with the necessities of life, must be 
 reckoned somewhere and somehow; and that when 
 they are so reckoned, his day's labor may be found 
 to contain an amount of labor time, equivalent to 
 two or even several days' simple unskilled labor. 
 
 Marx has been accused of plagiarizing his labor- 
 value theory from the Ricardians, but it is surely 
 not plagiarism when a thinker sees the germ of truth 
 in a theory, and, separating it from the mass of 
 confusion and error which envelops it, restates it in 
 scientific fashion with all its necessary qualifications. 
 Marx developed the idea of social labor which Ricardo 
 jiad propounded. He disregarded individual labor 
 entirely, and dealt only with social Jabor cost. Fur- 
 thermore, he recognized the absurdity of the con- 
 tention that the value of commodities is determined 
 by the amount of labor, individual or social, actually 
 embodied in them. If two workers are producing 
 precisely similar commodities, say, coats, and one of 
 them expends twice as much labor as the other and
 
 194 SOCIALISM 
 
 uses tools and methods representing twice the social 
 labor, it is clearly foolish to suppose that the exchange 
 value of his coat will be twice as great as that of the 
 other worker, regardless of the fact that their utility 
 is equal. The real law of value, then, is that the. 
 
 Of CO^Ipflflfljif AAa^^f Ijy flm ft 
 
 of abstract labor embodied in them, or in other 
 words by the amount of social human labor necessary, 
 
 f\r\ f hp &VPT*fl.f?f i TO1* f.rLAir 2^CAiU^lOn 
 
 UIl L-IJ.V- O, V ^1 <*tj^j A^ 1 Ulil^U. p* \S\AU\sfcAU 11. ^ 
 
 We may conveniently illustrate this theory by a 
 single concrete example. Two workmen set to work 
 each to make a table. When finished, the tables 
 are hi all respects alike so that it is impossible to 
 distinguish between them. One of the workmen, 
 however, takes twice as long as the other to make 
 his table. He works with clumsy, old-fashioned 
 tools and methods, sawing his boards by hand from 
 heavy lumber, and so on. The other workman uses 
 superior modern tools and methods, his boards are 
 sawn and planed by machinery and all the economies 
 of production are used. The amount of labor, not 
 only individual labor, but social labor, expended hi 
 the production of one table, is twice as great as hi 
 the other. Now, always assuming that then* use- 
 values are equal, no one will be willing to pay twice 
 as much for one table as for the other. If the more 
 economical methods of production are those usually 
 adopted in the manufacture of tables, then the average
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 195 
 
 value of tables will be determined thereby, and tables 
 produced by the slower, less economical process, will 
 naturally command only the same price in the mar- 
 ket, though embodying twice the amount of actual 
 labor. If we reverse the order of this proposition, 
 and suppose the slower, less economical methods to 
 be those generally prevailing in the manufacture of 
 tables, and the quicker, more economical methods to 
 be exceptional, then, all other things being equal, 
 the exchange-value of tables will be determined by 
 the amount of labor commonly consumed, and the 
 fortunate producer who adopts the exceptional, 
 economical methods will, for a tune, reap a golden 
 harvest. Only for a tune, however. As the new 
 methods prevail, competition being the impelling 
 force, they become less exceptional, and finally, the 
 regular, normal methods of production and the 
 standard of value. 
 
 It is this important qualification which is most 
 often lost sight of by the critics of the labor theory 
 of value. They persist in applying to individual 
 commodities the test of the amount of labor-power 
 actually consumed in then* production, and so con- 
 found the Marxian theory with its crude progenitors. 
 In refuting this crude theory, they are utterly ob- 
 livious of the fact that Marx himself accomplished 
 that by no means difficult task. To state the Marxian 
 theory accurately, we must qualify the bald state-
 
 196 SOCIALISM 
 
 ment that the exchange value of commodities is 
 determined by the amount of labor embodied in them, 
 and state it in the following manner: The exchange 
 value of commoditiefl is detennftne<} bv^^/ta amount of 
 
 dveraoe labor at the time sociallu neccssaru for their 
 
 i>MlbM^MHM<MaMMMNMiiiSM*wMMlWrMM -J MMRMfBnMtAw"-' 
 
 production. This is determined, not absolutely in 
 
 ^^^^^j^Mt^a^^F^aam" mtuit****<**msmmm n u***n*nv**i'*~*' I mt*mv*ai4kftft**' 
 
 individual cases. but aiiroimitt<l in 
 
 the bargaining and higgling of the market, to adopt 
 Adam Smith's well-known phrase. 
 
 Most writers do not distinguish between price and 
 value with sufficient clearness, using the terms as if 
 they were synonymous and interchangeable. Where 
 commodities are exchanged directly one for another, 
 as in the barter of primitive society, there is no need 
 of a price-form to express value. In highly developed 
 societies, however, where the very magnitude of pro- 
 duction and exchange makes direct barter impossible, 
 and where the objects to be exchanged are not com- 
 monly the product of individual labor, a medium of 
 exchange becomes necessary; a something which is 
 generally recognized as a safe and stable commodity 
 which can be used to express hi terms of its own 
 weight, size, shape, or color, the value of other com- 
 modities to be exchanged. This is the function of 
 money. In various times and places wheat, shells,
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 197 
 
 skins of animals, beads, powder, and a multitude of 
 other things, have served as money, but for various 
 obvious reasons the precious metals, gold and silver, 
 have been most favored. 
 
 In all commercial countries to-day, one or other of 
 these metals, or both of them, serves as the recognized 
 medium of exchange. They are commodities, also, 
 and when we say that the value of a commodity is a 
 certain amount of gold, we equally express the value 
 of that amount of gold in terms of the commodity in 
 question. As commodities, the precious metals are 
 subject to the same laws as other commodities. If 
 gold should be discovered hi such abundance that it 
 became as plentiful and easy to obtain as coal, its 
 value would be no greater than that of coal. It 
 might, conceivably, though it is not probable, still 
 be used as the medium of exchange, but it would be 
 equal to coal in exchange-value, a ton of the one being 
 equal to a ton of the other provided its utility-value 
 remained. Since the scarcity of gold is an important 
 element in its utility-value, creating and fostering 
 the desire for its possession, that utility-value might 
 largely disappear if gold became as plentiful as coal, 
 hi which case it would not have the same value as 
 coal, and might cease to be a commodity at all. 
 
 Price, then, is the expression of value in terms of 
 
 ^^^ MM "^^* M MH || M |I WMW>M | I'MW^'P"'"'^' 
 
 some other commodity, which, generally used for 
 that purpoee of expresainfj; the vajue of other com-
 
 198 SOCIALISM 
 
 modities, we call money. It is only an approxima- 
 tion of value, ana subject to fluctuation to a much 
 greater extent than value itself. It may, for a time, 
 fall below value or rise above it, but in a free market 
 the only condition in which the operation of any 
 economic law may be judged sooner or later the 
 equilibrium will be regained. Where monopoly ex- 
 
 B^lBBtfBfltfMfllABVHHttaihM 
 
 ists. the free mari^_cgnditiQn_Jpaiig 
 
 price may r^se far above value. Monopoly-price is 
 an artificial elevation of price above value and must 
 
 ^^ > ^^ M ^^ w ^^^ MM ^^^^^^ Mt ^^ ta gfK H|>M| ^g|^M^'**A<MVKriM | >* l ' | MM4tfMWBMttVMMfffi'^^^V'^^Mi^^^^^^ 
 
 be considered independently. 
 
 Failure io discriminate between value and ifas 
 has led to 
 
 lies at the bottom of the naive theory that value 
 depends upon the relation of supply and demand. 
 Lord Lauderdale's famous theory has found much 
 support among later economists, though it is now 
 rather unpopular when stated in its old, simple form. 
 Disguised in the so-called Austrian theory of final 
 utility, it has attained considerable vogue. 1 The 
 
 1 See "The Final Futility of Final Utility " in Hyndman's Econom- 
 ic* of Socialism, for a remarkable criticism of the "final utility" 
 theory, showing its identity with the doctrine of supply and demand 
 as the basis of value. 
 
 I refer to the theory of final or marginal utility as the "so-called 
 Austrian theory " for the purpose of calling attention to the fact that, 
 as Professor Seligman has ably and clearly demonstrated, it was con- 
 ceived and excellently stated by W. F. Lloyd, Professor of Political 
 Economy at Oxford, in 1833. (See the paper, On Some Neglected 
 British Economists, in the Economic Journal, V, xiii, pages, 357-363.) 
 This was two decades before Gossen and a generation earlier than
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 199 
 
 theory is plausible and convincing to the ordinary 
 mind. Every day we see illustrations of its working ; 
 prices are depressed when there is an oversupply, 
 and elevated when the demand of would-be consumers 
 exceeds the supply of the commodities they desire to 
 buy. It is not so easy to see that these effects are 
 temporary, and that there is an automatic adjust- 
 ment at work. Increased demand raises prices for a 
 tune, but it also calls forth an increase hi supply 
 which tends to restore the old price level, or may 
 even force prices below it. In the latter case, the 
 supply falls off and prices find their real level. The 
 relation of supply to demand . cauajM a 
 
 prices, but it is not the detenninanLoLxahlg. When 
 prices rise above a certain level, demand slackens or 
 ceases, and prices are inevitably lowered. Prices 
 may fall with a decreased demand, but it is clear 
 that unless the producers can get a price approxi- 
 mately equal to the value of their commodities, they 
 will cease to produce them, and the supply will dimin- 
 ish or cease altogether. Ultimately, therefore, the 
 fluctuations of price through the lack of equilibrium 
 between supply and demand adjust themselves, and 
 prices must roughly represent values except under 
 artificial conditions. Monopoly-price is, of course, 
 
 Menger and Jevons. In view of this fact, the criticisms of Marx for 
 his lack of originality by members of the "Austrian" school, is rather 
 naive and amusing.
 
 200 SOCIALISM 
 
 an artificial price only in the sense that the laws of 
 free market exchange do not apply to it. 
 
 VI 
 
 Labor, the source and determinant of value, has, 
 per se, no value. Only when it is embodied in certain 
 forms has it any value. If a man labors hard digging 
 holes and refilling them, the result is quite valueless. 
 What the capitalist 
 
 labor-power, tne L abiliiy' and wjUtcnabox, An excep- 
 tSont^nffiiBiflseeii in tne case of piecework, where 
 the employer undertakes to pay for a given amount 
 of labor embodied in a certain form, instead of for 
 a given amount of labor-time, or labor-power. But 
 here, again, it is not labor per se that is bought, but 
 labor in a certain form and relation, embodied hi a 
 commodity. Wages in general is a form of payment 
 for certain amounts of labor-power, measured by 
 duration and skill. The power and will to labor 
 assume the twofold commodity character of ..use- 
 value ftnf ^ fiffl^yffle-Yalue. Lfthqr-powpr is ft fftf"- 
 jnodfry ftffl w Mff)a iff jfB BTJ Cft - 
 
 Nnw | as a pnmmodity labor-power is subject Jo 
 the same fo^B M R U other commodities. Its price, 
 wagel^nuctuates just as the price ofall other com- 
 modities do, and bears the same relation to its value. 
 It may be temporarily affected by the preponderance
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 201 
 
 of supply over demand, or of demand over supply; 
 it may be made the subject of monopoly. There is, 
 therefore, no such thing as an "iron law" of wages, 
 any more than there is an "iron law" ol prices for 
 
 ^ j -- "' " '""* "* 'UIHIIIII H'--|TlilijaFrr'"* "" 
 
 other commodities than labor-power. There is, how- 
 ever, this element of truth in Lassalle's famous law 
 
 **~imann nni iinnii<iMirimyniUaiMiMim|)iaunmMBMMM>lff*^ 
 
 of wages : as the price of all other commodities tends, 
 under normal conditions, t" aptffQBIBfftt ip Vfl ^ip so 
 the price 01 iabor-^power, wages, tends to approxi- 
 mate its value. And just as the value of other com- 
 modities is determined by the amount of labor 
 necessary on an average for their reproduction, so 
 the value of labor-power is likewise determined. 
 Wages tend to a point at which they will cover the 
 
 ^^M>MB*MMM>MMMMMM|MMp49 MHH ___ T >^>Bw MM JM|i|Mrt**BM' | W*MIMMM^ 
 
 average cost of the necessary means of subsistence 
 for the workers and their families, in any given time 
 jBcTplace, under the conditions and"aecording to the 
 Standard of' living generally prevailing. Trade union 
 action may force wages above that point, or undue 
 stress in the competitive labor market force wages 
 below it. While, however, a trade union may bring 
 about what is virtually a monopoly-price for the 
 labor-power of its members, there is always a counter 
 tendency in the other direction, and even toward 
 lowering the standard of subsistence itself till it 
 reaches an irreducible minimum. 
 
 To class human labor-power with pig iron or bad 
 butter as a commodity, subject to the same laws,
 
 202 SOCIALISM 
 
 may at first seem fantastic to the reader, but a 
 careful survey of the facts will fully justify the classi- 
 fication. The capacity of the worker to labor de- 
 pends upon his securing certain things; his labor- 
 power has to be reproduced from day to day, for 
 which a certain supply of food, clothing, and other 
 necessities of life is essential. Even with these sup- 
 plied constantly, the worker sooner or later wears 
 out and dies. If the race is not to be extinguished, 
 a certain supply of the necessities of life must be pro- 
 vided for the children during the years of their de- 
 velopment to the point where their labor-power 
 becomes marketable. The average cost of production 
 / in the case of labor-power includes, therefore, the 
 \ ^ftecaBttitt itf A We*aSa lamfly as well as for the 
 | individual worker. 
 
 Jhis living commodity, labor-power, differs ina 
 material way from ail otner commo<fltiee, in tnat 
 when it is used up in the process of the production 
 of other commodities in which it is embodied, unlike 
 machinery and raw materials, it creates new value 
 m the process of bong uaed up, and empooies tnat 
 *' new value in ttJ6 commcKliiy it assisTsToproduce. 
 I OOB m file central idea of the famous and much- 
 misunderstood Marxian theory of surplus-value by 
 which the method of capitalism, the exploitation of 
 the wage-workers, and the resulting class antagon- 
 isms of the system are explained.
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 203 
 VII 
 
 Earlier writers than Marx, such as Thompson and 
 the famous Chartist leader, Bronterre O'Brien, had 
 used the term "Surplus Value" to connote profit, 
 and it is probable that Marx adopted the term be- 
 cause of its wide currency at the tune he wrote. 
 With these writers, however, surplus-value was simply 
 another name for profit ; it did not represent a theory 
 of the nature and origin of capitalist income as it did 
 later in the hands 01 Marx, who snowed ihat appro- 
 priation oFunpald labor is the real source of profit j 
 that even if the capitalist buys the laborer's labor- 
 power at its full value as a commoditY 1 be extracte 
 from it more*v^IuTTna!nTe paid for, and that thug 
 jhe pronto ot the capitalist class are derived. The 
 surohiihvaiue theory thus "becomes the scientific 
 groundwork of all{n^*8OCiaTtne5Se8 and movements, 
 
 '^^^^M^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^.l^^BM^flllVflffHBMVyBMHfBM^ 
 
 protesting against and seeking to end the exploitation 
 of the laboring masses. It is the foundation principle 
 of the modern political Socialist movement, and to 
 understand it is a matter of paramount importance. 
 
 One of the ablest and best-known American So- 
 cialist writers briefly and clearly explains the theory 
 as follows : l 
 
 "It is possible for the workers, according to methods 
 and under conditions now prevailing, to produce the 
 
 1 Algernon Lee, in The Worker, January 29, 1905.
 
 204 SOCIALISM 
 
 equivalent of their own day's subsistence in less than 
 a full labor day by less than the full amount of 
 labor that they can do in a day. Six hours' labor, 
 probably four hours' labor, is sufficient to produce the 
 values of a day's subsistence that is, to reproduce 
 the amount of the daily wages, the value of the labor- 
 power expended in a day. But the wage-worker 
 does not work four or six hours, producing the 
 equivalent of his own subsistence, and then go home 
 and enjoy himself. On the contrary, he works eight 
 or nine or ten hours, and sometimes considerably 
 more. He must do this, or he gets no chance to work 
 at all. The capitalist owns the factory, and controls 
 the opportunities of employment; and the capitalist 
 is not in business simply for the purpose of allowing 
 his employees to get their living. His motive in 
 allowing production to go on is not the workers' 
 maintenance by their own labor, but his own main- 
 tenance by their labor. His motive is profit. 
 
 "Let us say the average cost of a day's subsistence 
 for the workers, according to the existing standard 
 of living, is the product of five hours' social labor, 
 and that this is represented in money by $1. Wages, 
 then, are $1 a day. But the workers perform ten 
 hours of labor daily. Here are 1000 such workers 
 in a factory. They use up daily $1000 worth of raw 
 material. They wear out the plant to the extent of 
 $100 a day in so doing. They use up $1000 worth
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 205 
 
 of labor-power in the process, and get that value 
 back in wages, $1000. According to our suppositions, 
 the gross value of the day's product will be $3100. 
 Selling the product at its value, the employer will 
 get $3100 for it. 
 
 "Now the whole of this product belongs to the 
 capitalist, for the very good reason that all the 
 elements that entered into its production materials, 
 machinery, labor-power belonged to him, he having 
 paid for them. 
 
 "Out of that gross product of $3100, the capitalist 
 must pay $1000 for the materials used up, $100 for 
 repairs and replacement of the machinery, and $1000 
 for wages, for labor-power bought and used up 
 $2100 in all. There remains to him $1000, the excess 
 of the normal product of 1000 days of labor over the 
 value of 1000 days of labor-power, the excess of the 
 amount of value produced by 1000 men in 10 hours 
 over the amount of value necessary for their suste- 
 nance for a day." 
 
 From the surplus of the laborers' 
 
 their necessary cost of subsistence, the capitalists 
 
 i i i i~>" -f'-inii mMMiinMMM|in<irr>JMnril1T*Tlr*~]T^^ 
 
 derive their income. This is the Marxian theory of 
 surplus-value in a nutshell. Rent, interest, and 
 
 ... .L ..,-- . ^r^ i 
 
 profit, the three great divisions of capitalist income 
 into which jihis ( : surplus-value is divided~ are thus 
 
 traced back to the fundamental exploitation of labor. 
 
 PT-U-J- unirir- -- pi^g 1 ^<|MMMMMnr~~*~T fc ~~~ir--nTtr--**"" a 
 
 Other economists, both before and since Marx, have
 
 206 SOCIALISM 
 
 tried to explain the source of capitalist income in 
 very different ways. An early theory was that profit 
 originates in exchange, through " buying cheap and 
 selling dear." That this is so in the case of indi- 
 vidual traders is obvious. If A sells to B commodities 
 above then* value, or buys commodities from him 
 below then- value, it is plain that he gams by it. But 
 it is equally plain that B loses. If one group of 
 capitalists loses and another group gains, the gams 
 and losses must balance each other; there can be no 
 gain to the capitalist class as a whole. Yet that is 
 precisely what occurs the capitalist class as a 
 whole does gain, and gam enormously, despite the 
 losses of individual members of that class. It is 
 that gain to the great body of capitalists, that general 
 increase in their wealth, which must be accounted 
 for, and which exchange cannot explain. j3nly when 
 
 labor-power 
 la. generally at its natural 
 
 from outaide its own rala 
 
 vaue, and nainpr i^ * p-nem sove ie com- 
 
 modity, 1 * hn *1OTfi !r i wmcQ ti* capitalist buys 
 
 creates a value greater than its own in being used u$. 
 
 The theory that praffvT toe wages of risk uTan- 
 
 swerable in substantially the same way. It does not 
 in any way explain the increase in the aggregate 
 wealth of the capitalist class to say that the indi- 
 vidual capitalist must have a chance to receive interest 
 upon his money in order to induce him to turn it into
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 207 
 
 capital, to hazard losing it wholly or in part. While 
 the theory of risk helps to explain some features of 
 capitalism, the changes in the flow of capital into 
 certain forms of investment, and, to a small extent, 
 the commercial crises incidental thereto, it does not 
 explain the vital problem of ttte source of capitalist 
 Income. The chances of gain as a premium for the 
 risks involved, explain satisfactorily enough the action of 
 the gambler when he enters into a game of roulette 
 or faro. It cannot be said, however, that the aggre- 
 gate wealth of the gamblers is increased by playing 
 roulette or faro. Then, too, the risks of the laborers 
 are vastly more vital than those of the capitalist. Yet 
 the premium for their risks of health and life itself 
 does not appear, unless, indeed, it be in their wages, 
 in which case the most superficial glance at our in- 
 dustrial statistics will show that wages are by no 
 means highest in those occupations where the risks 
 are greatest. Further, the wages of the risks for 
 capitalists and laborers alike are3rawn from* Ihe 
 game source, the TTTByTBPBfH^^ 
 
 To consider, even brieflyTdTtiievSHedtlieories of 
 
 surplus-value other than that which arises out of the 
 labor theory of value, would be a prolonged, dull, 
 and profitless task. The theory of the reward of 
 abstinence, that profit is the due and just reward of 
 the capitalist for saving part of his wealth and using 
 it as a means of production, is answerable by a priori
 
 208 SOCIALISM 
 
 arguments and by a vast volume of facts. Absti- 
 nence obviously produces nothing; it can only save 
 the wealth already produced by labor, and no auto- 
 matic increase of that stored wealth is possible. If 
 saved-up wealth is to increase without the labor of 
 its owner, it can only be through the exploitation of 
 the labor of others, so that the abstinence theory 
 ultimately proves the Marxist position. On the other 
 hand, we see that those whose wealth increases most 
 rapidly are not given to frugality or abstinence by 
 any means. It is certainly possible for an individual 
 by practicing frugality and abstinence to save enough 
 to enable him to invest in some profitable enterprise, 
 but the origin of his profit is not his abstinence. That 
 comes from the value created by human labor-power 
 over and above its cost of production. 
 
 Still less satisfactory is the idea that surplus-value 
 is nothing more than the "wages of superintendence," 
 or the "rent of ability." This theory has been ad- 
 vocated with much specious argument. Essentially 
 it involves the contention that there is no distinction 
 between wages and profits, or between capitalists and 
 laborers; that the capitalist is a worker, and his 
 profits simply wages for his useful and highly im- 
 portant work of directing industry. It is a bold 
 theory with a very small basis of fact. Whoever 
 honestly considers it, must see that it is absurd and 
 untrue. Not only is the larger part of industry
 
 OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM 209 
 
 managed to-day by salaried employees who have no 
 part, or only a small part, in the ownership of the 
 concerns they manage, but the profits are distributed 
 among shareholders who have never contributed 
 service of any kind to the industries in which they 
 are shareholders. Whatever services are performed 
 even by the figurehead, "dummy" directors of 
 companies, are paid for before profits are considered 
 at all. As Mr. Algernon Lee says: 
 
 "The profits produced in many American mills, 
 factories, mines, and railway systems go in part to 
 Englishmen or Belgians or Germans who never set 
 foot in America and who obviously can have no share 
 in even the mental labor of direction. A certificate 
 of stock may belong to a child, to a maniac, to an 
 imbecile, to a prisoner behind the bars, and it draws 
 profit for its owner just the same. Stocks and bonds 
 may lie for months or years hi a safe-deposit vault, 
 while an estate is being disputed, before their owner- 
 ship is determined; but whoever is declared to be 
 the owner gets the dividends and interest "earned" 
 during all that time." l 
 
 Finally, it is not claimed that the whole of the 
 
 r --^-^xj*JMa^*^*M**i tfHf'Lj ~ ** k * 
 
 surplus-value produced in any._enterprise is appro- 
 
 MTated bv iKe direct employer. This happens but 
 
 "~" y i nituif>* i " tl * t t m>mmmM1 ^^^^^ 
 
 rarely/wnen the individual employer is the owner 
 
 of all the capital used in the enterprise. As a rule, 
 
 1 The Worker, February 5, 1905. 
 
 r
 
 210 SOCIALISM 
 
 the employer has to pay rent for the buildings and the 
 land he uses, and interest upon borrowed money, 
 mortgages, and so on. These payments must come 
 gut <rf ihe surplus-value extracted from the labor 
 of the wage-workers employed. How the surplus- 
 vakue wliicn they produce is divided among land- 
 lords, moneylenders, creditors, speculators, and actual 
 employers is a matter of absolutely no moment or 
 interest to the workers as a class. That is why such 
 movements as the followers of Mr. Henry George 
 represent fail to vitally interest the working class. 1 
 The division of the surplus-value wrqpg_from the 
 workers 7 toil gives "^ *" much quarrel and strife 
 within the capitalist class, but the working class 
 recognizes, and vaguely feels where it does not clear!] 
 
 "recognize^, that A has _ m --^^^^ 
 
 All that interests it vitally is how to lessen the ex- 
 tent of the exploitation to which it is subjected, and 
 how ultimately to end that exploitation altogether. 
 Organization along lines of trade unionism can do 
 something, but very little, to lessen the extent of 
 the exploitation; the socialization of the means of 
 production and exchange alone can end it. 
 
 1 It is worthy of note that the taxation of land values, commonly 
 associated with the name of Henry George, was advocated in the 
 Communist Manifesto.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 
 
 IT would be absurd, and contrary to Socialist 
 principles, to attempt to give detailed specifications 
 of the Socialist state. There are, however, certain 
 fundamental principles which are essential to its 
 existence. Without them, Socialist society is impos- 
 sible. If we can take these principles and correlate 
 them, we shall obtain a suggestive outline of the 
 Socialist state. So far we may safely proceed with 
 full scientific sanction; beyond are the realms of 
 fancy and dreams, the Elysian fields of Utopia. 
 
 Society consists of an aggregation of individuals, 
 but it is something more than that ; it is an organism, 
 though as yet an imperfectly developed one. While 
 the units of which it is composed have distinct and 
 independent lives within certain limits, they are, 
 outside of those limits, interdependent and inter- 
 related. Man is governed by two great forces. On 
 the one hand, he is essentially an egoist, ever striving 
 
 211
 
 212 SOCIALISM 
 
 to individual freedom; on the other hand, he is a 
 social animal, ever seeking association and avoiding 
 isolation. This duality expresses itself in the com- 
 position of society. There is a struggle between its 
 members motived by the desire for individual ex- 
 pansion; and, alongside of it, a sense of solidarity, 
 a movement to mutual, reciprocal relations, motived 
 by the gregarian instinct. All social life is necessarily 
 an oscillation between these two motives. The social 
 problem in its last analysis is nothing more than the 
 problem of combining and harmonizing social and 
 individual interests and actions springing there- 
 from. 
 
 In dealing with this social problem, the problem 
 of how to secure harmony of social and individual 
 interests and actions, it is necessary first of all to 
 recognize that both the motives named are equally 
 important and necessary agents of human progress. 
 The idea largely prevails that Socialists ignore the 
 individual motive and consider only the social motive, 
 just as the ultra-individualists have erred in an oppo- 
 site discrimination. The Socialist state has been 
 conceived as a great bureaucracy. Mr. Anstey gave 
 humorous and vivid expression to this idea hi Punch 
 some years ago, when he represented the citizens of 
 the Socialist state as being all clothed alike, known 
 only by numbers, living in barracks, strangers to all 
 the joys of family life, plodding through their allotted
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 213 
 
 tasks under a race of hated bureaucrats, and having 
 the solace of chewing gum in their leisure time as a 
 specially paternal provision. Some such mental pic- 
 ture must have inspired Herbert Spencer's Coming 
 Slavery, and it must be confessed that the early forms 
 of Socialist propaganda by pictures of imaginary 
 cooperative commonwealths afforded some excuse 
 for the idea. Most intelligent Socialists, if called 
 upon to choose between them, would probably prefer 
 to live in Thibet under a personal despotism, rather 
 than under the rule of the hierarchies of some of these 
 imaginary commonwealths which Utopian Socialists 
 have depicted. 
 
 The Socialist ideal may be said to be a form of 
 social organization hi which every individual will 
 enjoy the greatest possible amount of freedom for 
 self-development and expression ; and in which social 
 authority will be reduced to the minimum necessary 
 for the preservation and insurance of that right to 
 all individuals. There is an incontestable right of 
 the individual to full and free self-development and 
 expression. It is not, however, an absolute right, but 
 is subject to such restrictions as may be necessary to 
 safeguard the like right of another individual, or of 
 society as a whole. Absolute personal liberty is not 
 possible: to grant it to one individual would be 
 equivalent to denying it to others. If, in a certain 
 community, a need is commonly felt for a system of
 
 214 SOCIALISM 
 
 drainage to save the citizens from the perils of a pos- 
 sible outbreak of typhoid or some other epidemic 
 disease, and all the citizens agree upon a scheme 
 except two or three, who, in the name of personal 
 liberty, declare that their property must not be 
 touched, what is to be done? If the citizens, out of 
 solicitude for the personal liberty of the objecting 
 individuals, abandon or modify their plans, is it not 
 clear that the liberty of the many has been sacrificed 
 to the liberty of the few, which is the essence of 
 tyranny ? Absolute individual liberty is incompatible 
 with social liberty. The liberty of each must, in 
 Mill's phrase, be bounded by the like liberty of all. 
 Absolute personal liberty is a chimera, a delusion. 
 
 The dual forces which serve as the motives of 
 individual and collective action, spring, unquestion- 
 ably, from the fact that individuals are at once alike 
 and unlike, equal and unequal. Alike in our needs 
 of certain fundamental necessities, such as food, 
 clothing, shelter, cooperation for producing these 
 necessities, for protection from foes, human and 
 other, we are unlike in tastes, temperament, character, 
 will, and so on, till our diversity becomes as great and 
 as general as our likeness. Now, the problem is to 
 insure equal opportunities of full development to all 
 these diversely constituted and endowed individuals, 
 and, at the same tune, to maintain the principle of 
 equal obligations to society on the part of every in-
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 215 
 
 dividual. This is the problem of social justice: to 
 insure to each the same social opportunities, to secure 
 from each a recognition of the same obligations toward 
 all. The basic principle of the Socialist state must 
 be justice ; no privileges or favors can be extended to 
 any individuals or groups of individuals. 
 
 II 
 
 Politically, the organization of the Socialist state 
 must be democratic. Socialism without democracy 
 is as impossible as a shadow without light. The word 
 " Socialism " is a monstrous misnomer when applied 
 to schemes of paternalism or government ownership 
 which lack the essential, vital principle of democracy. 
 Justice requires that the legislative power of society 
 rest upon universal suffrage and the political equality 
 of all men and women, except lunatics and criminals. 
 It is manifestly unjust to exact obedience to the laws 
 from those who have had no share hi making them 
 and can have no share in altering them. The only 
 exceptions to this principle are (1) minors, children 
 not yet arrived at the age of responsibility agreed 
 upon by the citizens ; (2) lunatics and certain classes 
 of criminals; (3) ah" ens, non-citizens temporarily 
 resident in the state. 
 
 Democracy in the sense of popular self-govern- 
 ment, the "government of the people, by the people, 
 and for the people," of which political rhetoricians
 
 216 SOCIALISM 
 
 boast, is only approximately attainable. While all 
 can equally participate in the legislative power, all 
 cannot participate directly in the administrative 
 power, and it becomes necessary, therefore, to adopt 
 the principle of delegated authority, representative 
 government. Direct legislation by the people might 
 be realized through the adoption of the principles of 
 popular initiative and referendum, proportional repre- 
 sentation, and the right of recall. Indeed, there is 
 no apparent reason why aU legislation, except tempo- 
 rary legislation as hi war time, famine, plague, and 
 such abnormal conditions, should not be directly 
 initiated and enacted, leaving only the just and 
 proper enforcement of the law to delegated authority. 
 In all the programmes of Socialist parties through- 
 out the world, the principles of popular initiative 
 and referendum, proportional representation, and the 
 right of recalling representatives are included at the 
 present time ; not merely as means to secure a greater 
 degree of real democracy within the existing social 
 system, but also, and primarily, to prepare the re- 
 quired political framework of democracy for the 
 industrial commonwealth of the future. 
 
 The great political problem for such a society con- 
 sists in choosing wisely the trustees of this important 
 social function and authority, and seeing that they 
 rightly use it for the common good, without abuse, 
 either for the profit of themselves or then* friends, and
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 217 
 
 without prejudice to any portion of society. There 
 is no such thing as an "automatic democracy," and 
 eternal vigilance will be the price of liberty under 
 Socialism as it has ever been. There can be no other 
 safeguard against the usurpation of power than the 
 popular will and conscience ever alert upon the 
 watch-towers. 
 
 m 
 
 With these general principles prevised, we may 
 consider, briefly, what are the respective rights of 
 the individual and of society. The rights of the 
 individual may be summarized as follows: There 
 must be perfect freedom of movement, including the 
 right to withdraw from the domain of the government, 
 to migrate at will to other territories ; immunity from 
 arrest, except from inf ringing others' rights, with 
 compensation for improper arrest; respect of the 
 privacy of domicile and correspondence ; full liberty 
 of dress, subject to decency; freedom of utterance, 
 whether by speech or publication, subject only to 
 the protection of others from insult, injury, or inter- 
 ference with their equal liberties. Absolute freedom 
 of the individual in all that pertains to art, science, 
 philosophy, and religion, and their teaching, or prop- 
 aganda, is essential. The state can rightly have 
 nothing to do with these matters; they belong to 
 the personal life alone. Art, science, philosophy,
 
 218 SOCIALISM 
 
 and religion cannot be protected by any authority, 
 nor is such protection needed. 
 
 In this summary only certainties, imperative, 
 essential conditions, have been included. Doubt- 
 less many Socialists would considerably extend the 
 list of things to be totally exempted from collective 
 authority and control. Some, for instance, would 
 include the right of the individual to possess and 
 bear arms for the defense of person and property. 
 On the other hand, it might be objected with good 
 show of reason by other Socialists that such a right 
 must always be liable to abuses imperiling the peace 
 of society, and that the same ends would be served 
 more surely if individual armament were made im- 
 possible. Other Socialists would include in the 
 category of private acts outside the sphere of law 
 the union of the sexes. They would do away with 
 legal intervention hi marriage and make it exclu- 
 sively a private concern. On the other hand, again, 
 many Socialists, probably an overwhelming ma- 
 jority, would object. They would insist that the 
 state must, in the interest of the children and for 
 its own self-preservation, assume certain respon- 
 sibilities for, and exercise a certain control over, 
 all marriages. While believing that under Social- 
 ism marriage would no longer be subject to economic 
 motives matrimonial markets for titles and for- 
 tunes no longer existing and that the maximum
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 219 
 
 of personal freedom together with the minimum of 
 social authority would be possible in the union of 
 the sexes, they would still insist upon the necessity 
 of that minimum of legal control. While, there- 
 fore, our hasty summary by no means exhausts the 
 category of personal liberties, it is sufficiently com- 
 prehensive to show that individual freedom would 
 by no means be crushed out of existence by the 
 Socialist state. The intolerable bureaucracy of col- 
 lectivism is wholly an imaginary evil. 
 
 In the same general manner, we may summarize 
 the principal functions of the state 1 as follows : 
 the state has the right and the power to organize 
 and control the economic system, comprehending 
 in that term the production and distribution of all 
 social wealth wherever private enterprise is danger- 
 ous to the social well-being, or is inefficient; the 
 defense of the community from invasion, from fire, 
 flood, famine, or disease; the relations with other 
 states, such as trade agreements, boundary treaties, 
 and the like; the maintenance of order, including 
 the juridical and police systems in all their branches ; 
 and public education in all its departments. It 
 will be found that these five groups of functions 
 include all the services which the state may properly 
 undertake, and that not one of them can be safely 
 
 1 I use the word "state " throughout in ite largest, most compre- 
 hensive sense as meaning the whole political organization of society.
 
 220 SOCIALISM 
 
 intrusted to private enterprise. On the other hand, 
 it is not necessary to assume that the state must 
 have an absolute monopoly of any one of these groups 
 of functions to be performed in the social organism. 
 It would not be necessary, for example, for the state 
 to prohibit its citizens from entering into voluntary 
 relations with the citizens of other countries for the 
 promotion of friendly international relations, for 
 trade reciprocity, and so on. Likewise the juridical 
 functions being in the hands of the state would not 
 prevent voluntary arbitration. Our study becomes, 
 therefore, a study of social physiology. 
 
 The principle already postulated, that the state 
 must undertake the production and distribution of 
 social wealth wherever private enterprise is danger- 
 ous, or less efficient than public enterprise, clarifies 
 somewhat the problem of the industrial organiza- 
 tion of the Socialist regime, which is a vastly more 
 difficult problem than that of its political organiza- 
 tion. Socialism by no means involves the suppres- 
 sion of all private property and industry ; only when 
 these fail in efficiency or result in injustice and in- 
 equality of benefits does socialization present itself. 
 There are many petty, subordinate industries, es- 
 pecially the making of articles of luxury, which might 
 be allowed to remain in private hands, subject only 
 to such general regulation as might be found neces- 
 sary for the protection of health and the public
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 221 
 
 order. On the other hand, there are things, natural 
 monopolies, which cannot be justly or efficiently 
 used by private enterprise. Land ownership and 
 all that depends thereon, such as mining, transpor- 
 tation, and the like, must of necessity be collective 
 and universal. 1 
 
 In the Socialist state, then, certain forms of pri- 
 vate industry will be tolerated, and perhaps even 
 definitely encouraged, but the great fundamental 
 economic activities will be socialized. The Socialist 
 state will not be static and, consequently, what at 
 first may be regarded as being properly the subject 
 of private enterprise may develop to an extent or 
 in directions which necessitate its transformation to 
 the category of essentially social properties. Hence, 
 when the Socialist state is here spoken of, it is not 
 by any means intended to describe the full limits 
 of socialization, the fully developed collectivist 
 commonwealth, but rather the opposite limits, the 
 minimum of socialization; the conditions essential 
 to that stage of social evolution at which it will be 
 possible to speak of capitalism as a past and out- 
 grown stage, and of the present as the new era of 
 Socialism. 
 
 Socialists, naturally, differ upon this point very 
 materially. To the present writer, however, it 
 
 1 Of course this does not mean that there must not be private use 
 of land.
 
 222 SOCIALISM 
 
 would seem sufficiently comprehensive to say that 
 the economic structure of the new society must 
 include at least the folio whig: (1) Ownership of all 
 natural resources, such as land, mines, forests, oil 
 wells, and so on; (2) operation of all the means of 
 transportation and communication other than those 
 of purely personal service; (3) operation of all 
 industrial production involving large capital and 
 associated labor, except where carried on by vol- 
 untary, democratic cooperation; (4) organization 
 of all labor essential to the public service, such as 
 the building of schools, hospitals, docks, roads, 
 bridges, sewers, and the like; the construction of 
 all the machinery and plant requisite to the social 
 production and distribution, and of things necessary 
 for the maintenance of those engaged in such public 
 services as the national defense and all who are 
 wards of the state ; (5) a monopoly of the monetary 
 and credit functions, including coinage, banking, 
 mortgaging, and the extension of credit to private 
 enterprise. With these economic activities under- 
 taken by the state, a pure democracy differing vi- 
 tally from all the class-dominated states of history, 
 private enterprise would by no means be excluded, 
 but limited to an extent making the exploitation of 
 public interests and needs for private gain impossible. 
 Socialism thus becomes the defender of individual 
 liberty, not its enemy.
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 223 
 
 IV 
 
 As owner of the earth and all the major instru- 
 ments of production and exchange, society would 
 occupy a position enabling it to see that the physical 
 and mental benefits derived from its wealth, its 
 natural resources, its collective experience, genius, 
 and labor, were universalized as befits a democ- 
 racy. It would be able to guarantee the right to 
 live by labor to all its citizens through preventing 
 the monopolization of the land and instruments 
 and social opportunities in general. It would be 
 in a position to make every development from 
 competition to monopoly the occasion for further 
 socialization. Thus there would be no danger to 
 the state in permitting, or even fostering, private 
 industry within the limits suggested. As the organ- 
 izer of the vast body of labor essential to the 
 operation of the main productive and distributive 
 functions of society, and to the other public services, 
 the state would be able to set the standard of living, 
 alike with regard to income and leisure, which pri- 
 vate industry would be compelled, by competitive 
 force, to observe. The regulation of production, 
 too, would be possible, and as a result the crises 
 arising from glutted markets would disappear. 
 Finally, hi the control of all the functions of credit, 
 the state would effectually prevent the exploitation
 
 224 SOCIALISM 
 
 of the mass of the people through financial agencies, 
 which is perhaps the greatest evil of our present 
 social system. 
 
 The application of the principles of democracy 
 to the organization and administration of these 
 great economic services of production, exchange, 
 and credit is a problem full of alluring possibilities 
 of speculation. "This that they call the Organiza- 
 tion of Labor," said Carlyle, "is the Universal 
 Vital Problem of the World." It is the great cen- 
 tral problem of the socialization of industry and 
 the state, before which all other problems pale into 
 insignificance. It is comparatively easy to picture 
 an ideal political democracy, and the main structural 
 economic organization of the Socialist regime, with 
 its private and public functions more or less clearly 
 defined, is not very difficult of conception. These 
 are foreshadowed with varying degrees of distinct- 
 ness in present society, and the light of experience 
 illumines the pathway before us. It is when we come 
 to the question of the spirit of the economic organi- 
 zation of the future, the methods of direction and 
 management, that the light fails and we must grope 
 our way into the great unknown with imagination 
 and our sense of justice for guides. 
 
 Most Socialist writers who have attempted to deal 
 with this subject have simply regarded the state as 
 the greatest employer of labor, carrying on its busi-
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 225 
 
 ness upon methods not materially different from 
 those adopted by the great industrial corporations 
 of to-day. Boards of experts, chosen by civil ser- 
 vice methods, directing all the economic activities 
 of the state, such is then- general conception of the 
 industrial democracy of the Socialist regime. They 
 believe, in other words, that the methods now em- 
 ployed by the capitalist state, and by individuals 
 within the capitalist state, would simply be extended 
 under the Socialist regime. If this be so, a psycho- 
 logical anomaly appears in the practical abandon- 
 ment of the claim that, as a result of the class con- 
 flict in society, the public ownership evolved within 
 the capitalist state is essentially inferior to the pub- 
 lic ownership of the Socialist ideal. It is perfectly 
 clear that if the industrial organization under Social- 
 ism is to be such that the workers employed in any 
 industry have no more voice in its management than 
 the postal employees in this country have at the 
 present time, it cannot be otherwise than absurd 
 to speak of it as an industrial democracy. 
 
 Here, in truth, lies the crux of the greatest prob- 
 lem of all. We must face the fact that, hi anything 
 worthy of the name of an industrial democracy, the 
 terms and conditions of employment cannot be 
 decided wholly without regard to the will of the 
 workers themselves on the one hand, nor, on the 
 other hand, by the workers alone without reference
 
 226 SOCIALISM 
 
 to the general body of the citizenry. If the former 
 method fails to satisfy the requirements of democ- 
 racy by ignoring the will of the workers in the organi- 
 zation of industry, the alternative method involves 
 a hierarchical government, equally incompatible 
 with democracy. Some way must be found by 
 which the industrial government of society, the 
 organization of production and distribution, may be 
 securely based upon the dual basis of common civic 
 rights and the rights of the workers in their special 
 relations as such. 
 
 In actual practice to-day, in those industries in 
 which the organization of the workers into unions 
 has been most successful, the workers, through their 
 organizations, do exercise a certain amount of con- 
 trol over the conditions of then* employment. They 
 make trade agreements, for instance, in which such 
 matters as wages, hours of labor, apprenticeship, 
 output, engagement and discharge of workers, and 
 numerous other matters of a like nature, are made 
 subject to the joint control of the employers and the 
 workers. Of course, this share in the control of the 
 industry in which they are employed is a right 
 enjoyed only as the fruit of conquest, won by war 
 and maintained only by ceaseless vigilance and armed 
 strength. It is not inconceivable, however, that in 
 the Socialist state there might be a frank extension 
 of this principle. The workers in the main groups
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 227 
 
 of industries might form autonomous organizations 
 for the administration of their special interests, 
 subject only to certain fundamental laws of society 
 and its government. Thus, the trades unions would 
 become administrative politico-economic organiza- 
 tions, after the manner of the mediaeval guilds, in- 
 stead of mere agencies of class warfare as at present. 
 The economic organization of the Socialist state 
 would consist, then, of three distinct forms, as fol- 
 lows: (1) Private production and exchange, subject 
 only to such general supervision and control by the 
 state as the interests of society demand, such as 
 protection against monopolization, sanitary laws, 
 and the like; (2) voluntary cooperation, subject to 
 similar supervision and control; (3) production and 
 exchange by the state, the administration to be by 
 the autonomous organizations of the workers in 
 industrial groups, subject to the fundamental laws 
 and government of society as a whole. 
 
 Two other functions of the economic organization 
 of society remain to be considered, the distribution of 
 labor and its remuneration. In the organization 
 of industry society will have to achieve a twofold 
 result, a maximum of general, social efficiency, on 
 the one hand, and of personal liberty and comfort 
 to the workers on the other. The state would not
 
 228 SOCIALISM 
 
 only guarantee the right to labor, but, as a corol- 
 lary, it would impose the duty of labor upon every 
 competent person. The Pauline injunction, "If 
 any man will not work, neither shall he eat," would 
 be applied hi the Socialist state to all except the 
 incompetent to labor. The immature child, the 
 aged, the sick and infirm members of society, would 
 alone be exempted from labor. The result of this 
 would be that instead of a large unemployed army, 
 vainly seeking the right to work, on the one hand, 
 accompanied by the excessive overwork of the great 
 mass of the workers fortunate enough to be em- 
 ployed, a vast increase in the number of producers 
 from this one cause alone would make possible much 
 greater leisure for the whole body of workers. Ben- 
 jamin Franklin estimated that hi his day four hours' 
 labor from every adult male able to work would be 
 more than sufficient to provide wealth enough for 
 all human wants; and it is certain that, without 
 resorting to any standards of Spartan simplicity, or 
 denying luxury and beauty to any individual, Frank- 
 lin's estimate could be easily realized with anything 
 approaching a scientific organization of labor. 
 
 Not only would the productive forces be enor- 
 mously increased by the absorption of those workers 
 who under the present system are unemployed, and 
 those who do not labor or seek labor; in addition to 
 these, there would be a tremendous transference of
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 229 
 
 potential' productive energy from occupations ren- 
 dered obsolete and unnecessary by the socialization 
 of society. Thus, there are to-day tens of thou- 
 sands of lawyers, bankers, traders, middlemen, 
 speculators, and others, whose functions, necessary 
 to the capitalist system, would, hi most cases, cease 
 to have any value. They would be compelled be- 
 cause of this to enter the producing class. The 
 possibilities of the scientific organization of industry 
 are almost unlimited. Every gain made by the state 
 in the direction of economy of production would 
 test the private enterprise existing and urge it on in 
 the same direction. Likewise, every gain made by 
 the private producers would test the social produc- 
 tion and urge it onward. Whether socialized pro- 
 duction extended its sphere, or remained confined 
 to its minimum limitations, would depend upon the 
 comparative success or failure resulting. The state 
 would not be able to arbitrarily extend its functions. 
 The decision would rest with the people, who would, 
 naturally, resort to social effort wherever it demon- 
 strated its ability to perform any function more 
 efficiently than private enterprise, with greater 
 advantages of comfort and liberty to the community 
 and to the individual. 
 
 While in the Socialist re'gime labor would be 
 compulsory, it is inconceivable that a free people 
 would tolerate a bureaucratic rule assigning to each
 
 230 SOCIALISM 
 
 individual his or her proper task, no matter how 
 ingenious the system of assignment might be. Just 
 as it is necessary to insist that all must be secured 
 in their right to labor, and required to labor, it is 
 necessary also that the choice of one's occupation 
 should be as far as possible personal and free, sub- 
 ject only to the laws of supply and demand. The 
 greatest amount of personal freedom compatible 
 with the requisite efficiency would be secured to the 
 workers hi their chosen occupations through their 
 craft organizations. 
 
 But, it will be objected, all occupations are not 
 equally desirable. There are certain forms of work 
 which, disagreeable in themselves, are just as essen- 
 tial to the well-being of society as the most artistic 
 and pleasing. Who will do the dirty work, the 
 hard work, the dangerous work, under Socialism? 
 Will these occupations also be left to choice, and, 
 if so, will there not be an insurmountable difficulty 
 arising from the natural reluctance of men to choose 
 such work? 
 
 VI 
 
 In affirming the principle of free choice the Social- 
 ist is called upon to show that the absence of com- 
 pulsion would not involve the neglect of these dis- 
 agreeable, but highly important, social services; 
 that it would be compatible with social safety to
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 231 
 
 leave them to personal choice. In the first place, 
 much of this kind of work that is now performed 
 by human labor could be more efficiently done by 
 mechanical means. Much of the work done by 
 sweated women and children in our cities is in fact 
 done in competition with machines. Machinery 
 has been invented, and is now available, to do thou- 
 sands of the disagreeable and hurtful things now 
 being done by human beings. Professor Franklin 
 H. Giddings is perfectly right when he says: "Mod- 
 ern civilization does not require, it does not need, 
 the drudgery of needlewomen or the crushing toil 
 of men in a score of life-destroying occupations. 
 If these wretched beings should drop out of exis- 
 tence and no others take their places, the economic 
 activities of the world would not greatly suffer. A 
 thousand devices latent in inventive brains would 
 quickly make good any momentary loss." 1 
 
 When, in England, a law was passed forbidding 
 the practice of forcing little boys through chimneys, 
 to clean them, chimneys did not cease to be swept. 
 Other, less disagreeable and less dangerous, means 
 were quickly invented. When the woolen manu- 
 facturers were prevented from employing little boys 
 and girls, they invented the piecing machine. 3 Thou- 
 
 1 "Ethics of Social Progress," by Professor Franklin H. Giddings 
 in Philanthropy and Social Progress (1893), page 226. 
 
 8 "The Economics of Factory Legislation," in The Case for the 
 Factory Acts, edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb, page 50.
 
 232 SOCIALISM 
 
 sands of instances might be compiled to support 
 the contention of Professor Giddings, equally as 
 pertinent as these. Another important point is 
 that the amount of such disagreeable and danger- 
 ous work to be done would be very much less than 
 now. That would certainly result from the scien- 
 tific organization of industry. I suspect that, if 
 the subject could be properly investigated, it could 
 be shown that the amount of such labor involved 
 in wasteful and unnecessary advertising alone is 
 enormous. 
 
 Still, with all possible reduction of the quantity 
 of such work to be done, and with all the mechanical 
 genius possible, it may be freely conceded that there 
 would be some work quite dangerous, altogether 
 disagreeable and repellent, and a great difference in 
 the degree of attractiveness hi some occupations as 
 compared with others. But an occupation repel- 
 lent in itself might be made attractive, if the hours 
 of labor were relatively few as compared with other 
 occupations. If six hours be regarded as the normal 
 working day, it is quite easy to believe that, for 
 sake of the larger leisure, with its opportunities 
 for the pursuit of special interests, many a man 
 would gladly accept a disagreeable position for three 
 hours a day. The same holds true of superior re- 
 muneration. Under the Socialist regime, just as 
 to-day, many a man would gladly exchange his work
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 233 
 
 for less pleasant work, if the remuneration offered 
 were higher. To the old Utopian ideas of absolute 
 equality and uniformity these methods would be 
 fatal, but they are not at all incompatible with 
 modern, scientific Socialism. Finally, we must not 
 forget that there is a natural inequality of talent, 
 of power. In any state of society most men will 
 prefer to do the things they are best fitted for, the 
 things they can do easiest and best. And the man 
 who feels himself best fitted to be a hewer of wood 
 or drawer of water will choose that rather than some 
 loftier task. There is no reason at all to suppose 
 that leaving the choice of occupation to the individ- 
 ual would involve the slightest risk to society. 
 
 That equality of remuneration is not an essential 
 condition of the Socialist regime, we have already 
 seen. It may be freely admitted, however, that 
 the ideal to be aimed at, ultimately, must be approx- 
 imate equality of income. Otherwise, class forma- 
 tions must take place and the old problems incidental 
 to economic inequality reappear. With such an 
 industrial democracy as I have suggested as being 
 essential to the Socialist state, there is little doubt 
 that this result would be gradually attained. Let 
 us consider briefly now the method of the remunera- 
 tion of labor. 
 
 Socialists are too often judged by then- shibboleths 
 rather than by the principles which those shibbo-
 
 234 SOCIALISM 
 
 leths imperfectly express, or seek to express. De- 
 claiming, rightly, against the wages system as a form 
 of slave labor, the "abolition of wage slavery" 
 forever inscribed on their banners, the average man 
 is forced to the conclusion that the Socialists are 
 working for a system in which the workers will divide 
 then* actual products and then barter the surplus 
 for the surplus products of other workers. Either 
 that, or the most rigid system of governmental 
 production and a method of distributing rations 
 and uniforms similar to that which obtains in the 
 military organization of present-day governments. 
 It is easily seen, however, that such plans do not, 
 on the one hand, conform to the democratic ideal of 
 the Socialists, nor would either of them, on the other 
 hand, be compatible with the wide personal liberty 
 herein put forward as characteristic of the Socialist 
 state. 
 
 The earlier Utopian Socialists did propose to do 
 away with wages; in fact, they proposed to abolish 
 money altogether, and invented various forms of 
 "Labor Notes" as a means of giving equality of 
 remuneration for given quantities of labor, and 
 providing a medium for the exchange of wealth. 
 But when the Socialists of to-day speak of the "abo- 
 lition of wages," or of the wages system, they use 
 the words in the same sense as they speak of the 
 abolition of capital ; they would abolish only the social
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 235 
 
 relations implied in the terms. Just as they do not 
 mean by the abolition of capital the destruction of 
 the machinery and implements of production, but 
 the social relation in which they are used to create 
 profit for the few ; so, when they speak of the aboli- 
 tion of the wages system, they mean only the use 
 of wages to exploit the producers for the gam of the 
 owners of the means of production and exchange. 
 Though the name "wages" might not be changed, a 
 money payment for labor in a democratic arrange- 
 ment of industry, representing an approximation 
 to the full value of the labor, minus only its share 
 of the cost of maintaining the social services, and 
 the weaker, dependent members of society, is vastly 
 different from a money payment for labor by one 
 individual to other individuals, representing an 
 approximation to their cost of living, bearing no 
 relation to the value of the labor products, and paid 
 in lieu of those products with a view to the gathering 
 of a rich surplus by the payer. 
 
 Karl Kautsky, perhaps the greatest living ex- 
 ponent of the theories of modern Socialism, has made 
 this point perfectly clear. He accepts without 
 reserve the belief that wages, unequal and paid in 
 money, will be the method of remuneration for labor 
 in the Socialist re'gime. When too many laborers 
 rush into certain branches of industry, the natural way 
 to lessen their number and to increase the number
 
 236 SOCIALISM 
 
 of laborers in other branches where there is need 
 for them, will be to reduce wages in the one and to 
 increase them in the other. Socialism, instead of being 
 defined as an attempt to make men equal, might per- 
 haps be more justly and accurately defined as a social 
 system based upon the natural inequalities of man- 
 kind. Not human equality, but equality of oppor- 
 tunity to prevent the creation of artificial inequalities 
 by privilege is the essence of Socialism. 
 
 What, it may be asked, will society do to prevent 
 the hoarding of wealth on the one hand, and the 
 exploitation of the spendthrift by the abstinent? 
 Here, as throughout this discussion, we must be care- 
 ful to avoid the appearance of laying down dogmatic 
 rules, giving categorical replies to questions which 
 the future will answer in its own way. At best we 
 can only speculate as to what possible answers to 
 such questions are compatible with the fundamental 
 principles of Socialism. Thus we may safely answer 
 that in the Socialist regime society will not attempt 
 to dictate to the individual how he shall spend his 
 income. If Jones prefers objects d'art and Smith 
 prefers fast horses or a steam yacht, each will be 
 free to follow his inclinations so far as his resources 
 will permit. If, on the contrary, one should prefer 
 to hoard his wealth, he would be free to do so. The 
 inheritance of such accumulated property would, 
 however, necessarily be denied, society being the
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 237 
 
 only possible inheritor of property. In this way, full 
 play for individual liberty would be coupled with full 
 security for society. There would be no danger of a 
 ruling class as a result of natural inequalities. 
 
 With such conditions as these, it is not difficult 
 to suppose that the tendency to hoard wealth would 
 largely disappear. In the same way, we must re- 
 gard the possibilities of the exploitation of man by 
 man developing in the Socialist state, through the 
 wastefulness and improvidence of the one and the 
 frugality, abstinence, and cunning of the other, as 
 slight. With the credit functions entirely in the 
 hands of the state, the improvident man would be 
 able to obtain credit upon the same securities as 
 from a private creditor, without undue exploitation. 
 Society would further secure itself against the weak- 
 ness and failure of the improvident by insuring all its 
 members against sickness, accident, and old age. 
 
 VII 
 
 The administration of justice is necessarily a social 
 function in a democratic society. All juridical func- 
 tions should be socialized in the strict sense of being 
 maintained at the social expense for the free service 
 of the citizens. Court fees, advocates' charges, 
 and other like expenses incidental to the admin- 
 istration of justice in present society, are all anti- 
 democratic and subversive of justice.
 
 238 SOCIALISM 
 
 Finally, education is likewise a social necessity 
 which society itself must assume responsibility for. 
 We have discovered that for self-protection society 
 must insist upon a certain minimum of education 
 for every child able to receive it; that it is too vital 
 a matter to be left to the option of parents or the 
 desires of the immature child. We have made a 
 certain minimum of education compulsory and free; 
 the Socialist state would make a minimum prob- 
 ably larger than our present minimum compul- 
 sory, but it would also make all education free. 
 From the first stages, in the kindergartens, to the 
 last, in the universities, education must be wholly 
 free. So long as a single bar exists to prevent any 
 child from receiving all the education it is capable of 
 profiting by, democracy is unattained. 
 
 Whether the Socialist regime could tolerate the 
 existence of elementary schools other than its own, 
 such as privately conducted kindergartens and 
 schools, religious schools, and so on, is questionable. 
 Probably not. It would probably not content itself 
 with refusing to permit religious doctrines or ideas 
 to be taught in its schools, but would go further, 
 and, as the natural protector of the child, guard its 
 independence of thought in later life as far as pos- 
 sible by forbidding religious teaching of any kind 
 in schools for children up to a certain age. Beyond 
 that age, religious education, in all other than the
 
 OUTLINES OF THE SOCIALIST STATE 239 
 
 public schools, would be freely permitted. This 
 restriction of religious education to the years of 
 judgment and discretion implies no hostility to reli- 
 gion on the part of the state, but neutrality. Not 
 the least important of the rights of the child is the 
 right to be protected from influences which bias the 
 mind and destroy the possibilities of independent 
 judgment in later life, or make it attainable only as 
 a result of bitter, needless, tragic experience. 
 
 In this brief suggested outline of the Socialist 
 state, the aim has been to show that the Socialist ideal 
 is far from being the network of laws commonly 
 imagined, or the mechanical arrangement of human 
 relations devised by Utopian romancers. If the 
 Socialist propaganda of to-day largely consists of 
 the advocacy of laws, it must be remembered that 
 these are to ameliorate conditions in the existing social 
 system. The Socialist ideal of the state of the future 
 is not a life completely enmeshed in a network of 
 government, but a life controlled by government as 
 little as possible a maximum of personal freedom 
 with a minimum of restraint. 
 
 " These things shall be ! A loftier race 
 Than e'er the world hath known shall rise 
 With flower of freedom in their souls 
 And light of science in their eyes." * 
 
 1 J. Addington Symonds.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 NATIONAL PLATFORM OF THE SOCIALIST 
 PARTY OF AMERICA 
 
 THE Socialist Party, in convention assembled, 
 makes its appeal to the American people as the de- 
 fender and preserver of the idea of liberty and self- 
 government in which the nation was born; as the 
 only political movement standing for the programme 
 and principles by which the liberty of the individual 
 may become a fact; as the only political organiza- 
 tion that is democratic, and that has for its purpose 
 the democratizing of the whole of society. 
 
 To this idea of liberty the Republican and Demo- 
 cratic parties are equally false. They alike struggle 
 for power to maintain and profit by an industrial 
 system which can be preserved only by the complete 
 overthrow of such liberties as we already have, and 
 by the still further enslavement and degradation of 
 labor. 
 
 R 241
 
 242 SOCIALISM 
 
 Our American institutions came into the world in 
 the name of freedom. They have been seized upon 
 by the capitalist class as the means of rooting out 
 the idea of freedom from among the people. Our 
 state and national legislatures have become the mere 
 agencies of great propertied interests. These in- 
 terests control the appointments and decisions of 
 the judges of our courts. They have come into what 
 is practically a private ownership of all the functions 
 and forces of government. They are using these to 
 betray and conquer foreign and weaker peoples, in 
 order to establish new markets for the surplus goods 
 which the people make, but are too poor to buy. 
 They are gradually so invading and restricting the 
 right of suffrage as to take away unawares the right 
 of the worker to a vote or voice in public affairs. By 
 enacting new and misinterpreting old laws, they are 
 preparing to attack the liberty of the individual even 
 to speak or think for himself, or for the common good. 
 
 By controlling all the sources of social revenue, the 
 possessing class is able to silence what might be the 
 voice of protest against the passing of liberty and 
 the coming of tyranny. It completely controls the 
 university and public school, the pulpit and the press, 
 and the arts and literatures. By making these eco- 
 nomically dependent upon itself, it has brought all 
 the forms of public teaching into servile submission 
 to its own interests.
 
 THE SOCIALIST PAHTY OF AMERICA 243 
 
 Our political institutions are also being used as 
 the destroyers of that individual property upon which 
 all liberty and opportunity depend. The promise 
 of economic independence to each man was one of 
 the faiths upon which our institutions were founded. 
 But, under the guise of defending private property, 
 capitalism is using our political institutions to make 
 it impossible for the vast majority of human beings 
 ever to become possessors of private property in the 
 means of life. 
 
 Capitalism is the enemy and destroyer of essential 
 private property. Its development is through the 
 legalized confiscation of all that the labor of the work- 
 ing class produces, above its subsistence-wage. The 
 private ownership of the means of employment 
 grounds society in an economic slavery which ren- 
 ders intellectual and political tyranny inevitable. 
 
 Socialism comes so to organize industry and society 
 that every individual shall be secure in that private 
 property in the means of life upon which his liberty 
 of being, thought, and action depends. It comes to 
 rescue the people from the fast-increasing and suc- 
 cessful assault of capitalism upon the liberty of the 
 individual. 
 
 II 
 
 As an American Socialist Party, we pledge our 
 fidelity to the principles of international Socialism,
 
 244 SOCIALISM 
 
 as embodied in the united thought and action of 
 the Socialists of all nations. In the industrial de- 
 velopment already accomplished, the interests of 
 the world's workers are separated by no national 
 boundaries. The condition of the most exploited 
 and oppressed workers, in the most remote places of 
 the earth, inevitably tends to drag down all the 
 workers of the world to the same level. The tendency 
 of the competitive wage system is to make labor's 
 lowest condition the measure or rule of its universal 
 condition. Industry and finance are no longer 
 national but international, in both organization and 
 results. The chief significance of national boundaries, 
 and of the so-called patriotisms which the ruling 
 class of each nation is seeking to revive, is the power 
 which these give to capitalism to keep the workers 
 of the world from uniting, and to throw them against 
 each other in the struggles of contending capitalist 
 interests for the control of the yet unexploited 
 markets of the world, or the remaining sources of 
 profit. 
 
 The Socialist movement, therefore, is a world- 
 movement. It knows of no conflicts of interests 
 between the workers of one nation and the workers 
 of another. It stands for the freedom of the workers 
 of all nations; and, in so standing, it makes for the 
 full freedom of all humanity.
 
 THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA 245 
 
 III 
 
 The Socialist movement owes its birth and growth 
 to that economic development or world-process 
 which is rapidly separating a working or producing 
 class from a possessing or capitalist class. The class 
 that produces nothing possesses labor's fruits, and 
 the opportunities and enjoyments these fruits afford, 
 while the class that does the world's real work has 
 increasing economic uncertainty, and physical and 
 intellectual misery, for its portion. 
 
 The fact that these two classes have not yet become 
 fully conscious of their distinction from each other, 
 the fact that the lines of division and interest may 
 not yet be clearly drawn, does not change the fact 
 of the class conflict. 
 
 This class struggle is due to the private ownership 
 of the means of employment, or the tools of pro- 
 duction. Wherever and whenever man owned his 
 own land and tools, and by them produced only the 
 things which he used, economic independence was 
 possible. But production, or the making of goods, 
 has long ceased to be individual. The labor of scores, 
 or even thousands, enters into almost every article 
 produced. Production is now social or collective. 
 Practically everything is made or done by many 
 men sometimes separated by seas or continents 
 -working together for the same end. But this
 
 246 SOCIALISM 
 
 cooperation in production is not for the direct use of 
 the things made by the workers who make them, 
 but for the profit of the owners of the tools and means 
 of production ; and to this is due the present division 
 of society into two classes ; and from it have sprung 
 all the miseries, inharmonies, and contradictions of 
 our civilization. 
 
 Between these two classes there can be no possible 
 compromise or identity of interests, any more than 
 there can be peace in the midst of war, or light in the 
 midst of darkness. A society based upon this class 
 division carries in itself the seeds of its own destruc- 
 tion. Such a society is founded in fundamental in- 
 justice. There can be no possible basis for social 
 peace, for individual freedom, for mental and moral 
 harmony, except in the conscious and complete 
 triumph of the working class as the only class that 
 has the right or power to be. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Socialist programme is not a theory imposed 
 upon society for its acceptance or rejection. It is but 
 the interpretation of what is, sooner or later, inevitable. 
 Capitalism is already struggling to its destruction. 
 It is no longer competent to organize or administer 
 the work of the world, or even to preserve itself. 
 The captains of industry are appalled at their own 
 inability to control or direct the rapidly socializing
 
 THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA 247 
 
 forces of industry. The so-called trust is but a sign 
 and form of the developing socialization of the world's 
 work. The universal increase of the uncertainty of 
 employment, the universal capitalist determination 
 to break down the unity of labor in the trades unions, 
 the widespread apprehensions of impending change, 
 reveal that the institutions of capitalist society are 
 passing under the power of inhering forces that will 
 soon destroy them. 
 
 Into the midst of the strain and crisis of civiliza- 
 tion, the Socialist movement comes as the only con- 
 servative force. If the world is to be saved from 
 chaos, from universal disorder and misery, it must 
 be by the union of the workers of all nations in the 
 Socialist movement. The Socialist Party comes with 
 the only proposition or programme for intelligently 
 and deliberately organizing the nation for the common 
 good of all its citizens. It is the first tune that the 
 mind of man has ever been directed toward the con- 
 scious organization of society. 
 
 Socialism means that all those things upon which 
 the people in common depend shall by the people in 
 common be owned and administered. It means that 
 the tools of employment shall belong to their creators 
 and users; that all production shall be for the direct 
 use of the producers ; that the making of goods for 
 profit shall come to an end ; that we shall all be 
 workers together ; and that all opportunities shall 
 be open and equal to all men.
 
 248 SOCIALISM 
 
 To the end that the workers may seize every pos- 
 sible advantage that may strengthen them to gain 
 complete control of the powers of government, and 
 thereby the sooner establish the cooperative com- 
 monwealth, the Socialist Party pledges itself to watch 
 and work, in both the economic and the political 
 struggle, for each successive immediate interest of 
 the working class ; for shortened days of labor and 
 increases of wages ; for the insurance of the workers 
 against accident, sickness, and lack of employment ; 
 for pensions for aged and exhausted workers; for 
 the public ownership of the means of transportation, 
 communication, and exchange; for the graduated 
 taxation of incomes, inheritances, franchises, and 
 land values, the proceeds to be applied to the public 
 employment and improvement of the conditions of 
 the workers; for the complete education of children, 
 and their freedom from the workshop ; for the pre- 
 vention of the use of the military against labor in 
 the settlement of strikes ; for the free administration 
 of justice ; for popular government, including in- 
 itiative, referendum, proportional representation, 
 equal suffrage of men and women, municipal home 
 rule, and the recall of officers by their constituents; 
 and for every gain or advantage for the workers that 
 may be wrested from the capitalist system, and that
 
 THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA 249 
 
 may relieve the suffering and strengthen the hands 
 of labor. We lay upon every man elected to any 
 executive or legislative office the first duty of striv- 
 ing to procure whatever is for the workers' most 
 immediate interest, and for whatever will lessen the 
 economic and political powers of the capitalist, and 
 increase the like powers of the worker. 
 
 But, in so doing, we are using these remedial 
 measures as means to the one great end, of the co- 
 operative commonwealth. Such measures of relief 
 as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a 
 preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers 
 of government, in order that they may thereby lay 
 hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come 
 into their rightful inheritance. 
 
 To this end we pledge ourselves, as the party of 
 the working class, to use all political power, as fast 
 as it shall be intrusted to us by our fellow-workers, 
 both for their immediate interests and for their 
 ultimate and complete emancipation. To this end 
 we appeal to all the workers of America, and to all 
 who will lend their lives to the service of the workers 
 in their struggle to gain their own, and to all who will 
 nobly and disinterestedly give their days and ener- 
 gies unto the workers' cause, to cast in their lot and 
 faith with the Socialist Party. Our appeal for the 
 trust and suffrages of our fellow-workers is at once 
 an appeal for their common good and freedom, and
 
 250 SOCIALISM 
 
 for the freedom and blossoming of our common hu- 
 manity. In pledging ourselves, and those we repre- 
 sent, to be faithful to the appeal which we make, 
 we believe that we are but preparing the soil of that 
 economic freedom from which will spring the free- 
 dom of the whole man.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abb6 Lancellotti, quoted, 26. 
 
 A Contribution to the Critique of 
 Political Economy, 77, 162, 166, 
 171, 190. 
 
 Adams, Brooks, 128. 
 
 AFRICA : American investments 
 in, 101 ; cannibalism in, 67 ; 
 Moors in, 79 ; slavery in, 24. 
 
 Agriculture, concentration in, 103, 
 108-112, 121. 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, conference of 
 sovereigns at, 14- 15. 
 
 A Lecture on Human Happi- 
 ness, 165. 
 
 "Alfred" (Samuel Kydd) quoted, 
 21. 
 
 Amalgamated Association of Iron 
 and Steel Workers, 156. 
 
 Amalgamated Society of Railway 
 Servants, 157-158. 
 
 AMERICA : class divisions and 
 struggles in, 139-146; discov- 
 ery of, 78-80 ; first cotton from 
 used in England, 29; foreign 
 capital invested in, 101. See 
 also UNITED STATES. 
 
 American Farmer, The, 110, 111. 
 
 American Federationist, The, 11 n. 
 
 American Federation of Labor, 
 the, 145. 
 
 American Revolution, the, 68. 
 
 A Modest Inquiry into the Nature 
 and Necessity of a Paper Cur- 
 rency, 190 n. 
 
 ANARCHISM : Socialism and, 1 ; 
 Socialism opposed to, 144. 
 
 Anaximander, 181. 
 
 Ancient Society, 86 n. 
 
 An Inquiry Concerning Political 
 Justice, 164. 
 
 An Inquiry into the Principles of 
 the Distribution of Wealth, 164. 
 
 Anstey, Mr., satire on the Socialist 
 regime, 212. 
 
 Anthracite coal strike of 1903, 
 the, 138. 
 
 Aristotle, 70, 87. 
 
 Arkwright, English inventor, 17. 
 
 ASIA : American capital invested 
 in, 101 ; savages in Central, 79 ; 
 supposed origin of feudalism 
 in, 90. 
 
 Athens, 88. 
 
 A Treatise on Taxes and Consti- 
 tutions, 32 n. 
 
 Australia, American capital in- 
 vested in, 101. 
 
 Austrian Labor Almanac, the, 
 57 n. 
 
 "Austrian School" of economists, 
 the, 198. 
 
 Aveling, Edward, 77 n., 169 n. ; 
 Eleanor Marx, 169 n. 
 
 Bachofen, 85. 
 
 Baden, concentration of wealth 
 
 in, 116. 
 
 Bakunin, Michael, 57. 
 Bantu tribes of Africa, 86. 
 Bax, E. Belfort, 53 n., 58 n., 77n. 
 Beaulieu, Leroy, 116. 
 Bellamy, Edward, 7. 
 Bernstein, Edward, 114, 164. 
 Bigelow, Melville, M., 128 n. 
 Blanc, Louis, 9. 
 Bookstaver, Justice, 156. 
 Bray, John Francis, 163, 166, 173. 
 Brisbane, Albert, 48. 
 British Museum, Marx and the, 
 
 169-170. 
 
 251
 
 252 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Brook Farm, 46. 
 
 Buffalo Express strike, 156. 
 
 "Bull pens, "159. 
 
 Cabet, Etienne, 47, 50-52, 180. 
 
 California, cost of raising wheat 
 in, 108 n. 
 
 Campanella, 7. 
 
 Cannabalism, 67, 86-87. 
 
 Capital: dedication of, 167; 
 English character of, 172; 
 Liebknecht on, 168-169; not 
 the cause, but the explanation 
 of Socialism, 102; quoted, 26- 
 27, 77, 99, 183, 185. 
 
 CAPITAL: nature of, 183, 184; So- 
 cialists advocate abolition of, 
 234-235. 
 
 Capitalist income, the source of, 
 203-210. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 175, 224. 
 
 Cartwright, English inventor, 17- 
 18. 
 
 Cassalis, African missionary, 
 quoted, 66. 
 
 Centralization and the Law : Scien- 
 tific Legal Education, 128. 
 
 Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, 
 A Comparison, 77. 
 
 Chartism and Chartists, 46, 58, 
 59, 203. 
 
 Child Labor in England, 19-25, 
 37. 
 
 Civil War, the, 73. 
 
 Claims of Labour and Capital 
 Conciliated, The, 165. 
 
 Clansman, The, 129. 
 
 Clarion, The, 5 n. 
 
 Class consciousness, 142-143. 
 
 CLASS DIVISIONS : of capitalism, 
 97, 129-134 ; of feudalism, 127- 
 129; of slavery, 127-134; the 
 United States, 139-146, 152- 
 158; ultimate end of all, 126, 
 160. 
 
 Class environment, influence on 
 beliefs, etc., 134-139. 
 
 Class struggle theory, the, 123- 
 
 126. 
 
 Clodd, Edward, quoted, 66, 70. 
 Cksur de Alene, 146, 154. 
 Colorado, labor troubles in, 138, 
 
 154. 
 Columbus and the discovery of 
 
 America, 78-80. 
 Coming Slavery, The, 4, 213. 
 Commercial crisis in England, 
 
 1815, 34-39. 
 COMMODITY : definition of a, 
 
 184-187; money as a, 196- 
 
 200 ; labor-power as a, 200-202 ; 
 
 sunshine called a, 186; value 
 
 of, determined by labor, 187- 
 
 196. 
 COMMUNISM: political, 11, 12, 47, 
 
 52-54; primitive, 81, 85-86. 
 Communist League, the, 53. 
 Communist Manifesto, the : 
 
 Birth-cry of modern Socialism, 
 
 46 ; joint authorship of 54, 61- 
 
 62 ; publication of, 54 ; quoted, 
 
 11, 60, 125-126; summary of, 
 
 by Engels, 60-61 ; taxation 
 
 of land values advocated in, 
 
 210. 
 Competition, 82-S5, 98, 99, 120- 
 
 121. 
 
 Comrade, The, 8. 
 Concentration of- capital and 
 
 wealth, the, 100-122. 
 Condition of the Working Class in 
 
 England in 1844, The, 58, 62. 
 Cooke-Taylor, R. W., 21. 
 COOPERATION : among animals, 
 
 82-84; Robert Owen and, 41, 
 
 47; under Socialism, 222, 227. 
 Corn Law Rhymes, the, 1. 
 Cossa, Luigi, quoted, 174. 
 Cotton manufacture in England, 
 
 18 et seq.; Friedrich Engels 
 
 and, 57-58. 
 Credit functions in Socialist r6- 
 
 gime, 222, 223-224, 237. 
 Cripple Creek, 146. 
 Crompton, English inventor, 17. 
 Currency and Wealth, 102.
 
 INDEX 
 
 253 
 
 D 
 
 Dale, David, 22. 
 
 Darwin, Charles : appreciation of 
 work of, by Marx and his asso- 
 ciates, 77 ; compared to Marx, 
 77; letter from, to Marx, 77; 
 quoted, 82. 
 
 Davenay, letter from Herbert 
 Spencer to, 4. 
 
 Dawson, W. H., 55 n. 
 
 Debs, Eugene V., 155. 
 
 DEMOCRACY : application of prin- 
 ciples of, to industry under 
 Socialism, 224-227 ; essential to 
 Socialism, 215 ; only approxi- 
 mately attainable, 215-216 ; 
 Socialists' advocacy of, 216. 
 
 Descent of Man, The, 82. 
 
 Deville, Gabriel, quoted, 184. 
 
 Diary of Mrs. Marx, quoted, 170- 
 171. 
 
 Die Voraussetzungen des Social- 
 izmus, 114. 
 
 Direct legislation, 216. 
 
 Directory of Directors, the, 100. 
 
 Disclosures About the Commu- 
 nists' Process, 54 n. 
 
 Drinkwater, partner of Robert 
 Owen, 28-29. 
 
 E 
 
 Eastern Question, The, 169 n. 
 
 Economics of Socialism, 36, 81 n., 
 198 n. 
 
 Effects of Civilisation on the People 
 of the European States, 163. 
 
 Elements of Political Economy 
 (Nicholson), 186 n. 
 
 Elliott, Ebenezer, quoted, 1. 
 
 Ely, Professor R. T., quoted, 68, 
 99, 113, 116, 119. 
 
 ENOELS, FRIEDRICH : birth and 
 early training, 57 ; collabo- 
 rates with Marx in authorship 
 of Communist Manifesto, 54 ; 
 first meeting with Marx, 55, 57, 
 68; friendship with O'Connor 
 
 and Owen, 58 ; his Condition of 
 the Working Class in England, 
 58 ; joins International Alliance 
 with Marx, 53 ; life in England, 
 57-58; linguistic abilities, 58; 
 journalistic work, 58 ; poem on, 
 63; quoted, 14, 15, 42, 43, 47, 
 60, 62, 75-76, 77, 89, 125, 148; 
 share in authorship of Mani- 
 festo, 61-62. 
 
 Essai sur la repartition des ri- 
 chesses et sur la tendance a une 
 moindre intgalitt des condi- 
 tions, 116. 
 
 Essays on the Formation of Hu- 
 man Character, 52. 
 
 Everet's wool-dressing machine, 
 25. 
 
 F 
 
 Factory System and the Factory 
 Acts, The, 21 n. 
 
 Farmers, conflicting class in- 
 terests of, 132-133. 
 
 Ferdinand and Isabella, 79. 
 
 Ferri, Enrico, 65 n., 67. 
 
 FEUDALISM : duration of, 91 ; 
 nature of, 92-94 ; origin of, 90, 
 91 ; theory of, 92. 
 
 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 74. 
 
 Feuerbach, the Roots of the Social- 
 ist Philosophy, 74 n. 
 
 Figaro, the, 4. 
 
 "Final Utility" theory of value, 
 198. 
 
 Fourier, Charles, 41, 44, 48, 180. 
 
 Foxwell, Professor, 166 n. ; 
 quoted, 165. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, estimate of, 
 by Marx, 190 ; quoted, 189-190. 
 
 Freeman, Justice, 156. 
 
 Freiligrath, F., 167. 
 
 French and German Socialism, 42. 
 
 O 
 
 Garrison, W. Lloyd, 73. 
 Garwood, John, poem by, quoted, 
 33.
 
 254 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gentr, M., 44-45. 
 
 George, Henry, 210. 
 
 German Socialism and Ferdinand 
 
 Lassalle, 55 n. 
 GERMANY : Anarchism weak in, 
 
 144; ribbon loom invented in, 
 
 26; use of loom in forbidden, 
 
 26. 
 Ghent, W. J., 31, 71, 134 n. ; 
 
 quoted, 138, 139, 140. 
 Gibbins, H. de B., quoted, 19-20, 
 
 24, 25. 
 Giddings, Professor Franklin H., 
 
 quoted, 231. 
 Giffen, Sir Robert, 118. 
 Gildersleeve, Justice, 157. 
 Glasgow, conference of cotton 
 
 manufacturers in, 36-39. 
 Godwin, William, 163, 164. 
 Gompers, Samuel, quoted, 11 n. 
 Gossen, 198 n. 
 Gray, John, 163, 165. 
 Green, John Richard, 68. 
 Growth of Monopoly in English 
 
 Industry, The, 105. 
 Guaranties of Harmony and Free- 
 dom, The, 48. 
 Guide to the Study of Political 
 
 Economy, 174 n. 
 
 Hall, Charles, 163. 
 Hanna, Marcus A., 145. 
 Hargreaves, English inventor, 
 
 17. 
 
 Hazelton and Homestead, 146. 
 Heath, Frederic, 48 n. 
 Heine, Heinrich, 57. 
 Herr Vogt, 54 n. 
 Hillquit, Morris, quoted, 48-50. 
 History and Criticism of the 
 
 Labour Theory of Value, 165 n. 
 History of Socialism, 55 n. 
 History of Socialism in the United 
 
 States, 42, 48. 
 
 History of the Factory System, 21. 
 Hodgskin, Thomas, 163, 166, 173. 
 Huxley, Professor, 66, 82. 
 
 Hyndman, H. M., 36 n., 81 n., 
 198 n. 
 
 Ibsen, 13. 
 
 Icaria, 5152. 
 
 Idaho, 154. 
 
 Industrial History of England, 19, 
 
 20,24. 
 
 Injunctions, 155-157. 
 International Cigarmakers ' Union, 
 
 156. 
 International Socialist Review, The, 
 
 8n. 
 International Typographical 
 
 Union, 156. 
 
 Jevons, W. S., 199 n. 
 
 Jones, Lloyd, biographer of Owen, 
 
 16. 
 Jones, Owen's first partner, 28. 
 
 Karl Marx: Biographical Me- 
 moirs, 55, 169, 171. 
 
 Kautsky, Karl, 57 n,, 107,235; 
 quoted, 108. 
 
 Kipling, Rudyard, quoted, 80. 
 
 Kirkup, Thomas, 55 n. 
 
 Kropotkin, Peter, 82, 83, 84. 
 
 Labor-power, a commodity, 200- 
 202; determines value, 187- 
 196. 
 
 Labour Defended against the 
 Claims of Capital, 166. 
 
 Labour's Wrongs and Labour's 
 Remedy, 166. 
 
 Lamarck, 61. 
 
 La Misere de la Philosophie, 161, 
 163. 
 
 Land, ownership of, under Social- 
 ism, 221 ; under tribal com- 
 munism, 125. 
 
 La Philosophie de la Misere, 161.
 
 INDEX 
 
 255 
 
 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 55 n., 164 n., 
 
 201. 
 
 Lauderdale, Lord, 45, 198. 
 Lectures on the Nature and Use of 
 
 Money, 166. 
 Lee, Algernon, quoted, 136, 203- 
 
 205, 209. 
 
 Leibnitz, quoted, 65-66. 
 Leslie, John ("J. L."), 63. 
 Liebknecht, W., 55, 57; quoted, 
 
 77, 168-169, 170-171. 
 Life of Francis Place, The, 166 n. 
 Lloyd, W. F., 198 n. 
 Lockwood, George B., 37, 39, 40. 
 London, Jack, 144 n. 
 Lovejoy, 73. 
 Lubbock, Sir John, 85. 
 Luddites, the, 25. 
 Luther, Martin, 68. 
 Lyell, 66. 
 
 Machinery, introduction of, 17- 
 18, 25-27. 
 
 Machinists' Union sued, 158. 
 
 Macrosty, H. W., 105. 
 
 Maine, Sir Henry, 85. 
 
 Malthus, 82. 
 
 Marx, Eleanor, 55 n. 
 
 MARX, KARL : Birth and early life, 
 5556 ; Capital written in Lon- 
 don, 168-169 ; collaborates with 
 Engels in authorship of Com- 
 munist Manifesto, 54 ; conver- 
 sion to Socialism, 58; corre- 
 spondent for New York Tribune 
 169; death, 55, 172; domestic 
 felicity, 171-172; edits Rhenish 
 Gazette, 56; expelled from dif- 
 ferent European countries, 167- 
 168; finds refuge in England, 
 168 ; first meeting with Engels, 
 55, 57, 58 ; his attack on Prou- 
 dhon, 161-162; his obligations 
 to the Ricardian Socialists, 163- 
 164; his surplus-value theory, 
 163, 164, 202, 203-206 ; in Ger- 
 man revolution of 1848, 167; 
 
 Jewish ancestry, 5556; mar- 
 riage, 57; mastery of art of 
 definition, 176 ; poverty, 169- 
 171; quoted, 26-27, 74, 99, 
 153, 176, 183, 184-185, 190 n. ; 
 related to Argyles by mar- 
 riage, 57; scientific methods 
 of, 179-181 ; starts New Rhen- 
 ish Gazette, 167-168. 
 
 Mass and Class, 71, 134 n., 139, 
 142. 
 
 Mayo-Smith, Richmond, 117-118. 
 
 McMaster, 68. 
 
 Mehring, Franz, 55 n. 
 
 Menger, Dr. Anton, 163, 165 n., 
 166 n., 199 n. 
 
 Message to Congress, 141. 
 
 Middle Ages, the, 91, 97. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 175. 
 
 Mitchell, John, quoted, 145-146. 
 155. 
 
 Moffett, Cleveland, 119n. 
 
 Money as a commodity, 196-198. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 7, 51. 
 
 Morgan, J. P., 142. 
 
 Morgan, Lewis H., 85, 86 n. 
 
 Morris, William, quoted, 5, 18. 
 
 Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, 
 83,84. 
 
 N 
 
 National Association of Manu- 
 facturers, the, 145. 
 
 National Civic Federation, the, 
 145. 
 
 Natural and Artificial Right of 
 Property Contrasted, The, 166. 
 
 "New Christianity" of Saint-Si- 
 mon, 5859. 
 
 New Harmony, 4041, 46. 
 
 New Harmony Communities, The, 
 37, 39, 40. 
 
 New Lanark, 30-34. 
 
 New Moral World, The, 9, 58. 
 
 Newton, 124. 
 
 New York Sun, the, 156. 
 
 Nicholson, Professor J. S., 186 n. 
 
 Northern Star, The, 58.
 
 256 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Oceana, 71. 
 
 Organized Labor, 146, 155. 
 
 Origin of Species, The, 61. 
 
 Origin of the Family, Private 
 Property, and the State, The, 86, 
 89. 
 
 Our Benevolent Feudalism, 105. 
 
 OWEN, ROBERT : as cotton manu- 
 facturer, 27 et seq. ; at Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, 44 ; Autobiography of, 
 22, 31, 45; becomes Socialist, 
 39; begins agitation for Fac- 
 tory Acts, 29 ; biography of, 16 ; 
 dying words, 45; established 
 infant schools, 30, 41 ; Engels' 
 estimate of, 14-15 ; first to use 
 word " Socialism, " 9 ; founder of 
 cooperative movement, 41 ; his 
 "failure," 41; improves spin- 
 ning machinery, 28 n. ; Lieb- 
 knecht on, 14; New Lanark, 
 30-32 ; on crisis of 1815, 34-39 ; 
 presides over first Trade Union 
 Congress, 41 n. ; proposes es- 
 tablishment of communistic 
 villages, 39; quoted, 22, 23, 
 31, 32-33, 33-34, 35-36, 37-39, 
 45; skepticism of, 16; speech 
 to cotton manufacturers, 37. 
 
 Owenism synonymous with So- 
 cialism, 9. 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 29. 
 
 Petty, Sir William, 173, 174, 175; 
 
 quoted, 188-189. 
 Pioneers of Evolution from Tholes 
 
 to Huxley, 66. 
 Place, Francis, 166. 
 Plato, 9. 
 
 Political Economy (Senior), 173. 
 Poverty of Philosophy, The, 161, 
 
 163. 
 Present Distribution of Wealth in 
 
 the United States, The, 119. 
 Price an approximation of value, 
 
 196-200. 
 
 Principles of Political Economy 
 
 and Taxation, 191. 
 Private property, origin of, 86; 
 
 under the Socialist regime, 220, 
 
 236. 
 Proudhon, P. J., 57, 161, 162, 166. 
 
 Q 
 Quelch, H., 161 n. 
 
 R 
 
 Refonnateurs Modemes, 9. 
 Remarks and Facts relative to the 
 
 American Paper Money, 190. 
 Republic, the, of Plato, 9. 
 Revolution and Counter-Revolu- 
 tion, 169. 
 Revolution in Mind and Practice, 
 
 The, 45 n. 
 Reybaud, L., 8, 9. 
 Ricardians, the, 162, 163, 165, 
 
 167, 193. 
 Ricardo, David, 165, 173, 175, 
 
 193; quoted, 190, 191. 
 Right to the Whole Produce of 
 
 Labour, The, 163, 165. 
 Rockefeller, John D., 120, 142. 
 Rogers, Thorold, 72, 78 n., 79 n., 
 
 189 n., 192 n. 
 Roosevelt, President, quoted, 141. 
 
 S 
 
 Sadler, Michael, 23. 
 Saint-Simon, 5, 7, 9, 41, 43, 44, 
 
 180, 181. 
 Salt, H. S., 24 n. 
 Schiller, quoted, 73. 
 Seligman, Professor E. R. S., 69, 
 
 70, 72, 74, 75. 
 
 Senior, Nassau, quoted, 173. 
 Shall the Unions go into Politics f 
 
 46 n. 
 
 Simons, A. M., quoted, 110, 111. 
 Smith, Adam, 165, 173, 174, 175, 
 
 191, 192; quoted, 189, 196. 
 Social Democracy Red Book, 48 n.
 
 INDEX 
 
 257 
 
 SOCIALISM : Anarchism, and, 1, 
 144; cooperation under, 222, 
 227; credit functions under, 
 222, 237; democracy essential 
 to, 215-217; education under, 
 238 ; first use of the word, 8-9 ; 
 freedom in religious, scientific, 
 and philosophical matters un- 
 der, 217 ; freedom of the in- 
 dividual under, 213, 217; in 
 Germany, 144 ; in United States, 
 3, 152 ; inheritance of wealth un- 
 der, 236-237; justice under, 
 237; labor and its reward un- 
 der, 227-237; monopolies and, 
 99, 100, 221, 223, 227; private 
 property and industry under, 
 220-221 ; relation of sexes un- 
 der, 218-219; religious train- 
 ing of children and, 238 ; scien- 
 tific character of, 179-181; 
 Utopian and scientific, com- 
 pared, 4243; wages under, 
 234-236; wealth under, 236- 
 237. 
 
 Socialism and Modern Science, 65, 
 67. 
 
 Socialism and Social Democracy, 
 8n. 
 
 Socialism, Utopian and Scien- 
 tific, 15, 34, 43, 44, 71. 
 
 Social Revolution, The, 108. 
 
 Sombart, Professor Werner, 109. 
 
 Songs of Freedom, 24 n. 
 
 Spahr, Charles B., 119. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 6, 66, 213; 
 quoted, 4, 5. 
 
 Statistics and Economics, 117, 118. 
 
 Studies in the Evolution of In- 
 dustrial Society, 99, 113, 115, 
 119. 
 
 Surplus-value theory, the, 163, 
 165, 202-210. 
 
 Symonds, J. Addington, 239 n. 
 
 "Taff Vale law" 157-158, 159. 
 The Economic Interpretation of 
 
 History (Rogers), 78, 79. 
 The Economic Interpretation of 
 
 History (Seligman), 69, 70, 72, 
 
 73, 75. 
 
 The People's Marx, 184. 
 The Social System, a Treatise on 
 
 the Principles of Exchange, 166. 
 Thompson, William, 163, 164, 173. 
 Tolstoy, 13. 
 
 U 
 
 United Mine Workers, the, 130. 
 
 UNITED STATES : classes in, 139- 
 146 ; concentration of wealth in, 
 119-120; farms and farm 
 mortgages in, 110; million- 
 aires in, 120; Socialism in, 3, 
 152; strikes in, 144. 
 
 United States Steel Corporation, 
 113. 
 
 W 
 
 Wallace, A. R., 66, 70. 
 War of the Classes, 144 n. 
 Warne, Frank Julian, 130 n. 
 Wealth of Nations, the, 172, 173, 
 
 189, 192. 
 
 Webb, Mrs. Sidney, 23. 
 Weitling, Wilhelm, 47, 48, 50, 52. 
 Whitaker, Dr. A. C., 165 n. 
 Wolf, Wilhelm, 167. 
 Worker, The, 136, 203, 209. 
 World as it la, and as it Might 
 
 Be, The, 47. 
 
 Zola, Euiile, 13.
 
 WAR OF THE CLASSES 
 
 By JACK LONDON 
 
 Cloth 1 2 mo $1.50 net 
 
 Paper tamo 25 cents net 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 
 
 THE TRAMP 
 
 THE SCAB 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE MAXIMUM : A REVIEW 
 
 WANTED : A NEW LAW OF DEVELOPMENT 
 
 HOW I BECAME A SOCIALIST 
 
 " Mr. London's book is thoroughly interesting, and Mr. London's point of 
 view is, as may be surmised, very different from that of the closet theorist." 
 Springfield Republican. 
 
 " His clear and incisive thinking arrests attention on many points carries 
 conviction and on the whole illuminates its subject." Chicago Record- 
 Herald. 
 
 "The book is worth thoughtful consideration." Congregationalist. 
 
 " The statements of this book are as bare and bold as the story of the ' Sea- 
 Wolf,' and present the socialists' and laborers' side of the economic situation 
 with vigor, clearness, and impressiveness." The Watchman. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
 MASS AND CLASS 
 
 A SURFET OF SOCIAL DIVISIONS 
 
 By W. J. GHENT 
 
 Author of " Our Benevolent feudalism" etc- 
 
 Cloth lamo $1.25 net 
 Paper 12 mo -5 cents net 
 
 " Mr. Ghent's book is a significant and important one. It is based 
 upon the noblest principles of socialism, is full of interest, and well 
 written." Indianapolis News. 
 
 "The book is direct, simple, clear, strong, honest, and judicial. . . . 
 The American reader who would get a glimpse of socialism from a 
 sympathetic but not unbalanced American pen, can hardly find at the 
 present time a better volume for his purpose." The Public, Chicago. 
 
 "The book is characterized by keen analysis and clear statement. It 
 is a distinct contribution to the literature of economics." 
 
 Medical Record. 
 
 "Observant of the signs of the times and conversant with best cur- 
 rent opinion on sociological and economic topics, a vigorous thinker, 
 and an able disputant, wielder of a trenchant pen, Mr. Ghent is a force 
 to be reckoned with." Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 " It is the work of a thoughtful and studious man, and is written in a 
 clear and engaging style. It cannot fail to provoke thought." 
 
 Detroit Tribune. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Studies in Labor and Socialist Movements 
 
 By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS 
 
 Prof. N. P. OILMAN 
 
 Cloth izmo $1.50 net 
 Paper 121110 25 cents net 
 
 " Mr. Brooks' volume has a worth and interest of a peculiar kind; a man of abounding 
 vitality - he sympathizes strongly with the trade-unionist and the socialist, and he 
 understands both much better than does the ordinary economist. The volume is 
 thoroughly readable from first to last, a rare union of warm feeling, good sense, 
 and large knowledge." 
 
 EDWARD CARY, in the New York Times' Saturday Re-view 
 
 " Hardly a page but bears evidence of his patience, industry, acuteness and fair- 
 mindedness . . . We wish it were possible that his book could be very generally 
 read on both sides. Its manifest fairness and sympathy as regards the workingmen 
 will tend to the accomplishment of this result; its equal candor and intelligence with 
 regard to the employers should have a like effect with them." 
 
 Rev. HENRY BLANCHARD, Portland, Maine 
 
 " I have just finished reading your admirable book, ' The Social Unrest.' Its facts, 
 its judicial spirit, its excellent arrangement, make me rejoice in it. I shall do all I 
 can, in public and in private, to get owners and readers of it. Oh! that capitalist and 
 worker and socialist and trade-unionist would all see the wisdom, the Christianity, of 
 your appeal." 
 
 H. W. FARNHAM, in The Yale Review 
 
 " The most characteristic feature of Dr. Brooks' book is its strong realism. He has not 
 gone to libraries for his information, but to life. . . . He does not start out with any 
 pet theory which his facts are marshalled to support; he simply tells us what he has 
 learned, frankly and honestly ; . . . the reader will seek in vain for a connected 
 account of even a single phase of the complicated movement with which the author 
 deals, but he will find a keen analysis of the spirit and motives of the actors, a 
 judicious weighing of evidence, and a clear insight into the tendencies of events." 
 
 Prof. C. R. HENDERSON, University of Chicago 
 
 " It is a strong work. People must read it. It lets daylight through the subject. 
 I do not know a wiser, saner, more practicable mode of meeting the situation." 
 
 Dr. CHARLES B. SPAHR, in The Outlook 
 
 " ' The Social Unrest ' has a depth of conviction, an earnestness of purpose, and a lovo 
 of truth which make it one of the most convincing and converting books of recent 
 years." 
 
 Prof. R. T. ELY, Editor of The Citizens' Library 
 
 " I have read your book from cover to cover, and read it with a great deal of care. My 
 favorable impression has grown as I have read, I do not see how it can fail to pro- 
 duce a very strong impression upon thoughtful persons." 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 THE BITTER CRY OF THE CHILDREN 
 
 By JOHN SPARGO 
 
 With an Introduction by Robert Hunter, Author of "Poverty" 
 WITH 32 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Cloth 1 2 mo $1.50 net 
 
 " One of the epoch-making books of the present day . . . the book is valu- 
 able both as a compendium of facts and for its suggestions of practical 
 helpfulness. The book is a very readable one and holds the interest 
 of the reader from start to finish. There is not a dull line in it." 
 
 Pittsburg Leader. 
 
 " It will be conceded, we think, that his book is a searching study, founded 
 upon fact and shaped by a trained investigator. No other writer has so 
 forcibly presented the case of underfed school children, and his study of child 
 labor is comprehensive, a book to be pondered." Boston Advertiser. 
 
 "The disclosures in this book of the employment of children, and the 
 manner of their treatment from Maine to California, enforced in many in- 
 stances by illustrations from photographs, should make decent citizens 
 ashamed of their country. This work was obviously prepared in a different 
 spirit from the sensational current literature of ' exposure.' It should arouse 
 the conscience of every community wherever it is circulated." 
 
 New York Globe. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New Tork
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 CAYLORD 
 
 A 001 073 751 8