Contemporary Socialism Part 8

3rd. The State ought to reduce the taxes and military burdens of the labouring cla.s.ses.

4th. The State ought to fetter the domination of the money power, and especially to check excesses of speculation, and control the operations of the Stock Exchange.

From this programme it appears that the Catholic movement goes a long way with the socialists in their cries of wrong, but only a short way in their plans of redress. Moufang's proposals may be wise or unwise, but they contemplate only corrections of the present industrial system, and not its reconstruction. Many Liberals are disposed to favour the idea of establis.h.i.+ng courts of conciliation with compulsory powers, and Bismarck himself once said, before the socialists showed themselves unpatriotic at the time of the French war, that he saw no reason why the State, which gave large sums for agricultural experiments, should not spend something in giving co-operative production a fair trial. The plans of labour courts and of State credit to approved co-operative undertakings are far from the socialist schemes of the abolition of private property in the instruments of production, and the systematic regulation of all industry by the State; and they afford no fair ground for the fear, which many persons of ability entertain, of "an alliance"--to use Bismarck's phrase--"between the black International and the red." Bishop Martensen holds Catholicism to be essentially socialistic, because it suppresses all individual rights and freedom in the intellectual sphere, as socialism does in the economic. But men may detest private judgment without taking the least offence at private property. A bigot need not be a socialist, any more than a socialist a bigot, though each stifles the principle of individuality in one department of things. If there is to be any alliance between the Church and socialism, it will be not because the former has been trained, under an iron organization, to cherish a horror of individuality and a pa.s.sion for an economic organization as rigid as its own ecclesiastical one, but it will be because the Church happens to have a distinct political interest at the time in cultivating good relations with a new political force. How far Moufang and his a.s.sociates have been influenced by this kind of consideration we cannot pretend to judge, but the sympathy they show is not so much with the socialists as with the labouring cla.s.ses generally, and their movement is meant so far to take the wind from socialism, whether with the mere view of filling their own sails with it or no.

No voice was raised in the Protestant Churches in Germany on the social question till 1878. They suffer from their absolute dependence on the State, and have become churches of doctors and professors, without effective practical interest or initiative, and without that strong popular sympathy of a certain kind which almost necessarily pervades the atmosphere of a Church like the Catholic, which pits itself against States, and knows that its power of doing so rests, in the last a.n.a.lysis, on its hold over the hearts of the people. The Home Missionary Society indeed discussed the question from time to time, but chiefly in connection with the effects of the socialist propaganda on the religious condition of the country; and it was this aspect of the subject that eventually stirred a section of the orthodox Evangelical clergy to take practical action. They asked themselves how it was that the working cla.s.ses were so largely adopting the desolate atheistic opinions which were found a.s.sociated with the socialist movement, when the Church offered to gather them under her wing, and brighten their life with the comforts and encouragements of Christian faith and hope. They felt strongly that they must take more interest in the temporal welfare of the working cla.s.ses than they had hitherto done, and must apply the ethical and social principles of Christianity to the solution of economic problems and the promotion of social reform. In short, they sought to present Christianity as the labourer's friend. The leaders of this movement were men of much inferior calibre to those of the corresponding Catholic movement. The princ.i.p.al of them were Rudolph Todt, a pastor at Barentheim in Old Preignitz, who published in 1878 a book on "Radical German Socialism and Christian Society," which created considerable sensation; and Dr. Stocker, then one of the Court preachers at Berlin, a member of the Prussian Diet, and an ardent promoter of reactionary policy in various directions. He is a warm advocate of denominational education, and of extending the power of the Crown, of the State, and of the landed cla.s.s; and he was a prime mover in the Jew-baiting movement which excited Germany a few years ago. This antipathy to the Jews has been for many years a cardinal tendency of the "Agrarians," a small political group mainly of n.o.bles and great landed proprietors, with whom Stocker frequently allies himself, and who profess to treat all political questions from a strictly Christian standpoint, but work almost exclusively to a.s.sert the interests of the landowners against the growing ascendancy of the commercial and financial cla.s.ses, among whom Jews occupy an eminent place. We mention this anti-Jewish agitation here to point out that, while no doubt fed by other pa.s.sions also, one of its chief ingredients is that same antagonism to the _bourgeoisie_--compounded of envy of their success, contempt for their money-seeking spirit, and anger at their supposed expropriation of the rest of society--which animates all forms of continental socialism, and has already proved a very dangerous political force in the French Revolution of 1848.

Todt's work is designed to set forth the social principles and mission of Christianity on the basis of a critical investigation of the New Testament, which he believes to be an authoritative guide on economic as well as moral and dogmatic questions. He says that to solve the social problem, we must take political economy in the one hand, the scientific literature of socialism in the other, and keep the New Testament before us. As the result of his examination, he condemns the existing industrial _regime_ as being decidedly unchristian, and declares the general principles of socialism, and even its main concrete proposals, to be directly prescribed and countenanced by Holy Writ. Like all who a.s.sume the name of socialist, he cherishes a marked repugnance to the economic doctrines of modern Liberalism, the leaven of the _bourgeoisie_; and much of his work is devoted to show the inner affinity of Christianity and socialism, and the inner antagonism between Christianity and Manchesterdom. He goes so far as to say that every active Christian who makes conscience of his faith has a socialistic vein in him, and that every socialist, however hostile he may be to the Christian religion, has an unconscious Christianity in his heart; whereas, on the other hand, the merely nominal Christian, who has never really got out of his natural state, is always a spiritual Manchestrist, wors.h.i.+pping _laissez faire, laissez aller_, with his whole soul, and that a Manchestrist is never in reality a true and sound Christian, however much he may usurp the name. Christianity and socialism are engaged in a common work, trying to make the reality of things correspond better with an ideal state; and in doing their work they rely on the same ethical principle, the love of our neighbour, and they repudiate the Manchester idolatry of self-interest. The socialist ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity are part and parcel of the Christian system; and the socialist ideas of solidarity of interests, of co-operative production, and of democracy have all a direct Biblical foundation, in the const.i.tution and customs of the Church, and in the apostolic teaching regarding it.

Radical socialism, according to Todt, consists of three elements: first, in economics, communism; second, in politics, republicanism; third, in religion, atheism. Under the last head, of course, there is no a.n.a.logy, but direct contradiction, between Socialism and Christianity; but Todt deplores the atheism that prevails among the socialists as not merely an error, but a fatal inconsistency. If socialism would but base its demands on the Gospel, he says, it would be resistless, and all labourers would flow to it; but atheistic socialism can never fulfil its own promises, and issues a draft which Christianity alone has the power to meet. It is hopeless to think of founding an enduring democratic State on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, unless these principles are always sustained and reinvigorated by the Divine fraternal love that flows from faith in Jesus Christ.

As to the second principle of socialism, Todt says, that while Holy Scripture contains no direct prescription on the point, it may be inferentially established that a republic is the form of government that is most harmonious with the Christian ideal. His deduction of this is peculiar. The Divine government of the world, he owns, is monarchical, but then it is a government which cannot be copied by sinful men, and therefore cannot have been meant as a pattern for them. But G.o.d, he says, has established His Church on earth as a visible type of His own invisible providential government, and the Church is a "republic under an eternal President, sitting by free choice of the people, Jesus Christ." This is both fanciful and false, for Christ is an absolute ruler, and no mere minister of the popular will; and there is not the remotest ground for founding a system of Biblical politics on the const.i.tution of the Church. But it shows the length Todt is disposed to go to conciliate the favour of the socialists.

But the most important element of socialism is its third or economic principle--communism; and this he represents to be entirely in harmony with the economic ideal of the New Testament. He describes the communistic idea as consisting of two parts: first, the general principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which he finds directly involved in the Scriptural doctrines of moral responsibility, of men's common origin and redemption, and of the law of love; and second, the transformation of all private property in the instruments of production into common property, which includes three points: (_a_) the abolition of the present wages system; (_b_) giving the labourer the full product of his labour; and (_c_) a.s.sociated labour. As to the first two of these points, Todt p.r.o.nounces the present wages system to be thoroughly unjust, because it robs the labourer of the full product of his labour; and because unjust, it is unchristian. He accepts the ordinary socialist teaching about "the iron and cruel law." He accepts, too, Marx's theory of value, and declares it to be unanswerable; and he therefore finds no difficulty in saying that Christianity condemns a system which in his opinion grinds the faces of the labouring cla.s.ses with incessant toil, filches from them the just reward of their work, and leaves them to hover hopelessly on the margin of dest.i.tution. If there is any scheme that promises effectually to cure this condition of things, Christianity will also approve of that scheme; and such a scheme he discovers in the socialist proposal of collective property and a.s.sociated labour. This proposal, however, derives direct countenance, he maintains, from the New Testament. It is supported by the texts which describe the Church as an organism under the figure of a body with many members, by the example of the common bag of the twelve, and by the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem. But the texts about the Church as an organism have no real bearing on the subject at all; for the Church is not meant to be an authoritative pattern either for political or for economic organization; and besides, the figure of the body and its members would apply better to Bastiat's theory of the natural harmony of interests than to the socialist idea of the solidarity of interests. Then the common bag of the disciples did not prevent them from having boats and other instruments of production of their own individual property; and we know that the communism of the primitive Church of Jerusalem (which was a decided economic failure, for the poverty of that Church had to be repeatedly relieved by collections in other parts of Christendom) was not a community of property, but, what is a higher thing, a community of use, and that it was not compulsory but spontaneous.

Todt, however, after seeming thus to commit himself and Christianity without reserve to socialism, suddenly shrinks from his own boldness, and draws back. Collective property may be countenanced by Scripture, but he finds private property to be as much or even more so; and he cannot on any consideration consent to the abolition of private property by force. It was right enough to abolish slavery by force, for slavery is an unchristian inst.i.tution. But though private property is certainly founded on selfishness, there are so many examples of it presented before us in the New Testament without condemnation, that Todt shrinks from p.r.o.nouncing it to be an unchristian inst.i.tution. Collective property may be better, but private property will never disappear till selfishness is swallowed up of love; and a triumph of socialism at present, while its disciples are unbelievers and have not Christ, the fount of love, in their hearts, would involve society in much more serious evils than those which it seeks to remove. Todt's socialism, therefore, is not a thing of the present, but an ideal of the distant future, to be realized after Christian proprietors have come of their own accord to give up their estates, and socialists have all been converted to Christianity. For the present, in spite of his stern view of the great wrong and injustice the working cla.s.ses suffer, Todt has no remedy to suggest, except that things would be better if proprietors learnt more to regard their wealth as a trust of which they were only stewards, and if employers treated their workmen with the personal consideration due to Christian brothers; and he thinks the cultivation of this spirit ought to be more expressly aimed at in the work of the Church. This is probably, after all, the sum of what Christianity has to say on the subject; but it seems a poor result of so much figuring and flouris.h.i.+ng, to end in a general truth which can give no offence even in Manchester.

Soon after the publication of Todt's book, Stocker and some Evangelical friends founded two a.s.sociations, for the purpose of dealing with the social question from a Christian point of view, and established a newspaper, the _Staats-Socialist_, to advocate their opinions. Of the two a.s.sociations, one, the Central Union for Social Reform, was composed of persons belonging to the educated cla.s.ses--professors, manufacturers, landowners, and clergymen; and the other, the Christian Social Working Men's Party, consisted of working men alone. This movement was received on all sides with unqualified disapprobation. The press, Liberal and Conservative alike, spoke with contemptuous dislike of this _Mucker-Socialismus_, and said they preferred the socialists in blouse to the socialists in surplice. The Social Democrats rose against it with virulence, and held meetings, both of men and of women, at which they glorified atheism and bitterly attacked the clergy and religion. Even the higher dignitaries of the Church held coldly aloof or were even openly hostile. Stocker met all this opposition with unflinching spirit, convened public meetings in Berlin to promote his cause, and confronted the socialist leaders on the platform. The movement gave promise of fair success. In a few months seven hundred pastors, besides many from other professions, including Dr. Koegel, Court preacher, and Dr. Buchsel, a German Superintendent, had enrolled themselves in the Central Union for Social Reform; and the Christian Social Working Men's Party had seventeen hundred members in Berlin, and a considerable number throughout the provinces. But its progress was interrupted by the Anti-Socialist Law, pa.s.sed soon after the same year, which put an end to meetings of socialists; and since this measure was supported, though hesitatingly, by Stocker and his leading allies, that impaired their influence with the labouring cla.s.ses.

The principles of this party, as stated in their programme, may be said generally to be that a decided social question exists, in the increasing gulf between rich and poor, and the increasing want of economic security in the labourer's life; that this question cannot possibly be solved by social democracy, because social democracy is unpractical, unchristian, and unpatriotic; and that it can only be solved by means of an extensive intervention on the part of a strong and monarchical State, aided by the religious factors in the national life.

The State ought to provide by statute a regular organization of the working cla.s.ses according to their trades, authorizing the trades unions to represent the labourers as against their employers, rendering these unions legally liable for the contracts entered into by their members, a.s.suming a control of their funds, regulating the apprentice system, creating compulsory insurance funds, etc. Then it ought to protect the labourers by prohibiting Sunday labour, by fixing a normal day of labour, and by insisting on the sound sanitary condition of workshops.

Further, it ought to manage the State and communal property in a spirit favourable to the working cla.s.s, and to introduce high luxury taxes, a progressive income-tax, and a progressive legacy duty, both according to extent of bequest and distance of relations.h.i.+p. These very comprehensive reforms are, however, held to be inadequate without the spread of a Christian spirit of mutual consideration into the relations of master and workman, and of Christian faith, hope, and love into family life.

Moreover they are not to be expected from a parliamentary government in which the commercial cla.s.ses have excessive influence, and hence the Christian Socialists lay great stress on the monarchical element, and would give the monarch absolute power to introduce social reforms without parliamentary co-operation and even in face of parliamentary opposition. We have seen that Todt was disposed to favour a republican form of government, but probably, like the Czar Nicholas, he has no positive objection to any other save the const.i.tutional. His party has certainly adopted a very Radical social programme, but it is above all a Conservative group, seeking to resist the revolutionary and materialistic tendencies of socialism, and to rally the great German working cla.s.s once more round the standard of G.o.d, King, and Fatherland.

Dr. Stocker has during the past year resuscitated his Christian Socialist organization under the name of the Social Monarchical Union, but without any prospect of much success; for its founder, as the result of his twelve years' bustling in the troubled waters of politics, has fallen out of favour alike with court, Church, and people. He has lost his place as royal chaplain, he is bitterly distrusted by the working cla.s.ses, and his socialist opinions are a great rock of offence to his ecclesiastical brethren. A congress under Church auspices was held at Berlin on May 28th and 29th, 1890, and it was called the Evangelical Social Congress, as was explained by Professor A. Wagner, the economist, in his inaugural speech, to avoid being connected with the Christian Socialists. Dr. Stocker read a paper at it on social democracy, which raised a storm of dissension, mainly for its attack upon the Jews. This congress, it may be noted, asked nothing from Government but a little attention to the housing of the poor, and its chief recommendations were (1) that every parish be organized under the social-political as well as spiritual supervision of the clergy; (2) that Evangelical Working Men's Unions be established in all industrial centres; (3) that benevolent or friendly societies be organized for all trades, such as exist now in mining; (4) that since social democracy threatened the Divine and human order of society, and could only be successfully opposed by the power of the gospel, a responsible mission lay upon the Church to combat and counteract it. This mission was to be accomplished in two ways: first, by awakening in all Evangelical circles the conviction that the present social crisis was due to a universal national guilt, the guilt of materialistic learning and living; and, second, by awakening masters to a sense of their duty to their men, as morally their equals, and by awakening the men to a sense of the moral vocation of the masters. In other words, the social mission of the Church, according to the dominant opinion at this congress, was just to do its ordinary work of preaching repentance, faith, and love, and was much better represented by Dr.

Stocker's Home Missionary Society than by his Social Monarchical Union.

On this question of the duty of the Church with regard to the social amelioration of the people, there are everywhere two opposite tendencies of opinion. One says there is no specific Christian social politics, and that the Church can never have a specific social-political programme. Slavery is undoubtedly inconsistent with the moral spirit of the gospel, but St. Paul was not an emanc.i.p.ationist in practical life.

He neither raises the question of emanc.i.p.ation as a matter of political agitation, nor does he bid, or beg, his friend Philemon to set Onesimus at liberty, but to receive him as a brother beloved; just as any of St.

Paul's successors might enjoin a Christian master to treat his Christian servant. Christianity is an inspiration, and may be expected to change the character of social relations as it changes the character of men; but political programmes are always things of opportunity and temporary compromise, and it would be very unadvisable to run at any moment a Christian political party, because it would necessarily make Christianity responsible for imperfections incident to party politics, and lessen rather than help the weight of its testimony in the world.

Then, on the other hand, there are those who hold that there is a specific Christian social politics; that there is a distinct social and political system, either directly enjoined by Holy Writ, or inferentially resulting from it, so as to be truly a system of Divine right. That is the claim put forward by Dr. Stocker for his system of social monarchy, and it is the position of sundry other groups of socialists, who base their policy on the agrarian ordinances of Moses, or the communism of the primitive Churches, or the general spirit of the teaching of Jesus Christ. But Christian Socialism, in any of these forms, is evidently at a discount in the Evangelical Church in Germany; and the representative men in that Church, whatever they may do as private citizens, would seem to refrain, perhaps too jealously, from formulating in the name of religion any demands for the action of the State in the social question.

Indeed, among Protestants, what is called Christian Socialism is little more than a vagrant opinion in any country; but among Catholics it has grown into a considerable international movement, and has in several States--especially in Austria--left its mark on legislation. The movement was started in Austria by a Protestant, Herr Rudolph Meyer, the well-known author of the "Emanc.i.p.ationskampf des Arbeit" and other works; but he was influentially and effectively seconded by Prince von Liechtenstein, Counts Blome and Kuefstein, and Herr von Vogelsang, who is now editor of the special organ of the movement, the _Vaterland_, of Vienna. In France there had long been a school of Catholic social reformers, the disciples of the Economist Le Play, and they are still a.s.sociated in the Society of Social Peace, and advocate their views in the periodical _La Reforme Sociale_. They are believers in liberty, however, and would not be called socialists. But there are now two newer schools of Catholic social reformers, who declare their aim to be the re-establishment of Christian principles in the world of labour, but are divided on the point of State intervention.

The school who believe in State intervention are the more numerous; they are led by Count Albert de Mun and the Marquis de la Tour de Pin Chambly, have a separate organ, _L'a.s.sociation Catholique_, and are supported by a large organization of Catholic workmen's clubs, founded by Count de Mun. There were 450 of these clubs in 1880, and they combine the functions of a religious club, a co-operative store, and a friendly society. The school who uphold the principle of liberty also publish an organ, _L'Union Economique_, edited by the Franciscan Father le Ba.s.se, and their best known leaders are two Jesuit priests, Fathers Forbes and Caudron. There is likewise a Catholic Socialist movement in Switzerland and Belgium, in both cases strongly in favour of State intervention; and, indeed, Italy is the only Catholic country in which the Church holds aloof from the social movement, forgetting the unusual miseries of the people in an ign.o.ble sulk over the loss of the Pope's temporal power.

The friends of this movement have now held three international congresses at Liege. The third was held in September, 1890, under the presidency of the bishop of the diocese, and was attended by 1500 delegates, including eight or ten bishops and many Catholic statesmen and peers from all countries. Lord Ashburnham and the Bishops of Salford and Nottingham represented England, and there were representatives from Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, and France, but none from Italy. The Pope himself sent a special envoy with an address, and among letters from eminent Catholic leaders who were unable to be present in person was one from Cardinal Manning, which made a little sensation, but was received with decided sympathy, though the Pope afterwards disavowed it to some extent. The Cardinal expressed strong approval of trade unions, and of State intervention to fix the hours of labour to eight hours for miners and ten hours for less arduous trades, and he declared his conviction that no pacific solution of the conflict between capital and labour was possible till the State regulated profits and wages according to some fixed scale which should be subject to revision every three or four years, and by which all free contracts between employers and employed should be adjusted.

The Congress went over the whole gamut of social questions, and exhibited the usual conflict of opinion between the party of liberty and the party of authority; but the party of authority, the "Statolaters" as they are called, had evidently the great majority of the a.s.sembly. The party of liberty were chiefly Frenchmen and Belgians, men like Fathers Forbes and Caudron, already mentioned, or M. Woeste, the leader of the Catholic party in Belgium, who said he believed in moral suasion only, and that he feared the State and hated Caesarism. The party of authority were German and English. But whatever they thought of State intervention, all parties were one about the necessity of Church intervention. Without the Catholic Church there could be no solution of the social question. Cardinal Manning said, a few days before the Congress, that the labour question now raised everywhere must go on till it was solved somehow, and that the only universal influence that could guide it was the presence and prudence of the Catholic Church. The Congress pa.s.sed recommendations about technical education, better homes for working people, shorter hours, intemperance, strikes, prison labour, international factory legislation. It proposed the inst.i.tution of trade unions, comprising both employers and employed, as the best means of promoting working-cla.s.s improvement. In the towns these unions might have distinct sections for the different trades; but in the country this subdivision was not requisite. Every parish should have its trade union, and the whole should be united in a federation, like the Boerenbond, or Peasants' League, lately established in some parts of Belgium, and which the Congress recommended to the attention of Catholics. It recommended also the establishment of a pension fund for aged labourers under State guarantee, but without any compulsory exaction of premiums, and without any special State subsidy; and it received with favour a proposal by the Spanish divine, Professor Rodriguez de Cegrada, of Valencia, for papal arbitration in international labour questions.

This Catholic Socialist movement shows no disposition to coquet with revolutionary socialism; on the contrary, its leaders often say one of their express objects is to counteract that agitation--to produce the counter-revolution, as they sometimes put it. They are under no mistake about the nature or bearing of socialist doctrines. Our Christian Socialists in London accept the doctrines of Marx, and hold the labourer's right to the full product of his labour to be a requirement of Christian ethics, and the orators at English Church Congresses often speak of socialism as if it were a higher perfection of Christianity.

But Catholic Socialists understand their Christianity and their socialism better than to make any such identifications, and regard the doctrines and organizations of revolutionary socialism in the spirit of the firm judgment expressed in the Pope's encyclical of 28th December, 1878, which said that "so great is the difference between their (the socialists') wicked dogmas and the pure doctrine of Christ that there can be no greater; for what partic.i.p.ation has justice with injustice, or what communion has light with darkness?" This plain, gruff renunciation is on the whole much truer than the amiable patronage of a very distinguished Irish bishop at the Church Congress of 1887, who said socialism was only a product of Christian countries, (what of the socialism of savage tribes, or of the Mahdi, or of the Chinese?) that the sentiment and aspiration of socialism were distinctly Christian, and that every Christian is a bit of a socialist, and every socialist a bit of a Christian. Socialism may proceed from an aspiration after social justice, but a mistaken view of social justice is, I presume, really injustice; and, as the Pope says, what communion can there practically be between justice and injustice? Idolatry is a mistaken view of Divine things--a distortion of the religious sentiment; but who would on that account call it Christian? The socialist may be at heart a lover of justice; he may love it, if you will, above his fellows; but what matters the presence of the sentiment if the system he would realize it by is ruled essentially by a principle of injustice? Justice, the greatest and rarest of the virtues, is also the most difficult and the most easily perverted. It needs a balance of mind, and in its application to complicated and wide-reaching social arrangements, an exact.i.tude of knowledge and clearness of understanding which are ill replaced by sentimentalism, or even by honest feeling; and the fault of the current talk about Christian Socialism and the ident.i.ty of socialism with Christianity is that it does not conduce to this clearness of understanding, which is the first requisite for any useful dealing with such questions. If socialism is just, it is Christian--that seems the sum of the matter. But do socializing bishops believe it to be just? Do they believe, as all socialists believe, that it is unjust for one man to be paid five thousand pounds a year, while his neighbours, with far harder and more drudging work, cannot make forty pounds? or do they believe it wrong for a man to live on interest, or rents, or profits? or would they have the law lay its hands on property and manufactures, in order to correct this wrong and give every man the income to which he would be ent.i.tled on socialist principles? It is good, no doubt, to have more equality and simplicity and security of living; but these aspirations are neither peculiar to Christianity nor to socialism.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The bishop draws this conclusion from the principle that G.o.d has directed all men to nature to obtain from it the satisfaction of their necessary wants, and that this original right of the needy cannot be superseded by the subsequent inst.i.tution of private property. No doubt, he admits, that inst.i.tution is also of G.o.d. It is the appointed way by which man's dominion over nature is to be realized, because it is the way in which nature is best utilized for the higher civilization of man.

But this purpose is secondary and subordinate to the other. And, therefore, concludes the bishop, "firmly as theology upholds the right of private property, it a.s.serts at the same time that the higher right by which all men are directed to nature's supplies dare not be infringed, and that, consequently, any one who finds himself in extreme need is justified, when other means fail, in satisfying this extreme need where and how he may (wo und wie er es vermag)."--_Die Arbeiter-frage und das Christenthum_ (p. 78).

CHAPTER VIII.

ANARCHISM.

The latest offspring of revolutionary opinion--and the most misshapen--is anarchism. Seven or eight years ago the word was scarcely known; but then, as if on a sudden, rumours of the anarchists and their horrid "propaganda of deed" echoed in, one upon another, from almost every country in the old world and the new. To-day they were haranguing mobs of unemployed in Lyons and Brussels under a black flag--the black flag of hunger, which, they explained, knows no law. To-morrow they were goading the peasants of Lombardy or Naples to attack the country houses of the gentry, and lay the vineyards waste. Presently they were found attempting to a.s.sa.s.sinate the German Emperor at Niederwald, or laying dynamite against the Federal Palace at Bern; or a troop of them had set off over Europe on a quixotic expedition of miscellaneous revenge on powers that be, and were reported successively as having killed a _gendarme_ in Strasburg, a policeman in Vienna, and a head of the constabulary in Frankfort. Before these reports had time to die in our ears, fresh tales would arrive of anarchists pillaging the bakers' shops in Paris, or exulting over the murder of a mining manager at Decazeville, or flinging bombs among the police of Chicago; and it seemed as if a new party of disorder had broke loose upon the world, busier and more barbarous than any that went before it.

It is no new party, however; it is merely the extremer element in the modern socialist movement. Mr. Hyndman and other socialists would fain disclaim the anarchists altogether, and are fond of declaring that they are the very opposite of socialists--that they are individualists of the boldest stamp. But this contention will not stand. There are individualist anarchists, no doubt. The anarchists of Boston, in America, are individualists; one of the two groups of English anarchists in London is individualist; but these individualist anarchists are very few in number anywhere, and the ma.s.s of the party whose deeds made a stir on both sides of the Atlantic is undoubtedly more socialist than the socialists themselves. I have said in a previous chapter that the socialism of the present day may be correctly described in three words as Revolutionary Socialist Democracy, and in every one of these three characteristics the anarchists go beyond other socialists, instead of falling short of them. They are really more socialist, more democratic, and more revolutionary than the rest of their comrades. They are more socialist, because they are disposed to want not only common property and common production, but common enjoyment of products as well. They are more democratic, because they will have no government of any kind over the people except the people themselves--no king or committee, no representative inst.i.tutions, either imperial or local, but merely every little industrial group of people managing its public affairs as it will manage its industrial work. And they are more revolutionary, for they have no faith, even temporarily, in const.i.tutional procedure, and think making a little trouble is always the best way of bringing on a big revolution. Other socialists prepare the way for revolution by a propaganda of word; but the anarchists believe they can hasten the day best by the propaganda of deed. Like the violent sections of all other parties, they injure and discredit the party they belong to, and they often attack the more moderate section with greater bitterness than their common enemy; but they certainly belong to socialism, both in origin and in principle. There were anarchists among the Young Hegelian socialists of Germany fifty years ago. The Anti-socialist Laws bred a swarm of anarchists among the German socialists in 1880, who left under Most and Ha.s.selmann, and carried to America the seed which led to the outrages of Chicago. The Russian nihilists were anarchists from the beginning; they broke up the International with their anarchism twenty years ago, and they are among the chief disseminators of anarchism in England and France to-day, because to the Russians anarchism is only the socialism and the democracy of the rural communes in which they were born. Socialists themselves are often obliged to admit the embarra.s.sing affinity. Dr. and Mrs. Aveling complain, in their "Labour Movement in America," that while "the Chicago capitalist wanted us to be hanged after we had landed, Herr Most's paper, _Die Freiheit_, was for shooting us at sight"; that "anarchism ruined the International movement, threw back the Spanish, Italian, and French movements for many years, has proved a hindrance in America, and so much or so little of it as exists in England is found by the revolutionary socialist party a decided nuisance"; but they admit that "well nigh every word spoken by the chief defendants at the Chicago trial could be endorsed by socialists, for they then preached not anarchism, but socialism. Indeed," they add, "he that will compare the fine speech by Parsons in 1886 with that of Liebknecht at the high treason trial at Leipzig will find the two practically identical."

So far, then, as their socialism goes, there is admittedly no real difference between Parsons, the Chicago anarchist, and Liebknecht, the leader of the German socialists. Indeed, as I have said, the anarchists seem to show a tendency even to outbid the socialists in their socialism. Socialists generally say that, while committing all production to the public authority, they have no idea of interfering with liberty of consumption. Their opponents argue, in reply, that they would find an interference with consumption to be an inevitable result of their systematic regulation of production; but they themselves always repudiate that conclusion. They would make all the instruments of production common property, but leave all the materials of enjoyment individual property still. Ground rents, for example, would belong to the public; but every man would own his own house and furniture, at least for life, if he had built it by his own labour, or bought it from his own savings, because a dwelling house is not an instrument of production, but an article of enjoyment or consumption. But some of the more representative spokesmen of the anarchists would not leave this last remnant of private property standing, and strongly contend for the old primitive plan, still in use among savage tribes, of giving those who are in want of anything a claim--a right--to share the enjoyment of it with those who happen to have it. They would munic.i.p.alize the houses as well as the ground rents, and no one should be allowed a right to a spare bed or a disengaged sofa so long as one of the least of his brethren huddled on straw in a garret in the slums, or slept out on a bench in Trafalgar Square. In a recent number of _Freedom_, for example, Prince Krapotkin announces that "the first task of the Revolution will be to arrange things so as to share the accommodation of available houses according to the needs of the inhabitants of the city, to clear out the slums and fully occupy the villas and mansions." Anarchist opinions are no doubt capricious and variable. There are as many anarchisms as there are anarchists, it has been said. But this tendency to go further than other socialists, in superseding individual by common property, has repeatedly appeared in some of their most representative utterances.

The Jura.s.sian Federation of the International adopted a resolution at their Congress in 1880, in which they say: "We desire collectivism, with all its logical consequences, not only in the sense of the collective appropriation of instruments of production, but also of the collective enjoyment and consumption of products. Anarchist communism will in this way be the necessary and inevitable consequence of the social revolution, and the expression of the new civilization which that revolution will inaugurate."

Their princ.i.p.al difference with the other branch of the socialists, however,--and that from which they derive their name--is upon the government of the socialistic society. Anarchy as a principle of political philosophy was first advocated by Proudhon, and he meant by it, not of course a state of chaos or disorder, but merely a state without separate political or civil inst.i.tutions,--"a state of order without a set government." "The expression, anarchic government," he says, "implies a sort of contradiction. The thing seems impossible, and the idea absurd; but there is really nothing at fault here but the language. The idea of anarchy in politics is quite as rational and positive as any other. It consists in this,--that the political function be re-absorbed in the industrial, and in that case social order would ensue spontaneously out of the simple operation of transactions and exchanges. Every man might then be justly called autocrat of himself, which is the extreme reverse of monarchical absolutism" ("Die Princip Federatif," p. 29). He distinguishes anarchy from democracy and from communistic government, though his distinctions are not easy to apprehend exactly. Communism, he says, is the government of all by all; democracy, the government of all by each; and anarchy, the government of each by each. Anarchy is, in his opinion, the only real form of self-government. People would manage their own public affairs together like partners in a business, and no one would be subject to the authority of another. Government is considered a mere detail of industrial management; and the industrial management is considered to be in the hands of all who co-operate in the industry. The specific preference of anarchism, therefore, seems to be for some form of direct government by the people, in place of any form of central, superior, or representative government; and naturally its political communities must be small in size, though they may be left to league together, if they choose, in free and somewhat loose federations. The anarchists are accordingly more democratic in their political theory than the socialists more strictly so called, inasmuch as they would give the people more hand in the work of government, though of course they preposterously underrate the need and difficulty of that work.

On some minor points they contradict one another, and quite as often contradict themselves. Proudhon, for example, would still, even in anarchist society, retain the local policeman and magistrate; but anarchists of a stricter doctrine would either have every man carry his own pistol and provide for his own security, or, as the Boston anarchists prefer, apparently, would have public security supplied like any other commodity by an ordinary mercantile a.s.sociation--in Proudhon's words, "by the simple operation of transactions and exchanges." Emerson said the day was coming when the world would do without the paraphernalia of courts and parliaments, and a man who liked the profession would merely put a sign over his door, "John Smith, King."

This is too much division of function however for anarchists generally, and they would have every industrial group do its government as it did its business by general co-operation. Just as in Russia every rural commune has its own trade, and the inhabitants of one are all shoemakers, while the inhabitants of another are all tailors, so in anarchist society, according to the more advanced doctrine, every separate group would have its own separate industry, because, in fact, the separate industry makes it a separate group. And it would be managed by all its members together, not by anything in the nature of a board, for it is important to recollect that anarchists of the purest water entertain as much objection to the domination of a vestry or a town council as to that of a king or a cabinet. Some who side with them, especially old supporters of the French Revolutionary Commune, have still a certain belief in a munic.i.p.al council; but the Russian anarchists, at any rate, look upon this as a piece of faithless accommodation. Prince Krapotkin, I have already mentioned, thinks the first business of the contemplated revolution must be to redistribute the dwelling houses, so as to thin the slums and quarter their surplus population in the incompletely occupied villas or mansions of the West End. That is a very large task, which it will seem, to an ordinary mind, obviously impossible for the vast population of a great city like London to execute in their own proper persons at an enormous town meeting; yet, if I understand Prince Krapotkin, it is this preposterous proposal he is actually offering as a serious contribution to a more perfect system of government. "For," says he, "sixty elected persons sitting round a table and calling themselves a Munic.i.p.al Council cannot arrange the matter on paper. It must be arranged by the people themselves, freely uniting to settle the question for each block of houses, each street, and proceeding by agreement from the single to the compound, from the parts to the whole; all having their voice in the arrangements, and putting in their claims with those of their fellow-citizens; just as the Russian peasants settle the periodical repart.i.tion of the communal lands." And how do the Russian peasants settle the periodical repart.i.tion of the communal lands? Stepniak gives us a very interesting description of a meeting of a Russian _mir_ in his "Russia Under the Tsars" (vol. i. p.

2).

"The meetings of the village communes, like those of the _Landesgemeinde_ of the primitive Swiss cantons, are held under the vault of heaven, before the Starosta's house, before a tavern, or at any other convenient place. The thing that most strikes a person who is present for the first time at one of these meetings is the utter confusion which seems to characterize its proceedings. Chairman there is none. The debates are scenes of the wildest disorder. After the convener has explained his reasons for calling the meeting, everybody rushes in to express his opinion, and for a while the debate resembles a free fight of pugilists. The right of speaking belongs to him who can command attention. If an orator pleases his audience, interrupters are promptly silenced; but if he says nothing worth hearing, n.o.body heeds him, and he is shut up. When the question is somewhat of a burning one, and the meeting begins to grow warm, all speak at once, and none listen. On these occasions the a.s.sembly breaks up into groups, each of which discusses the subject on its own account. Everybody shouts his arguments at the top of his voice. Charges and objurgations, words of contumely and derision, are heard on every hand, and a wild uproar goes on from which it does not seem possible that any good can result.

"But this apparent confusion is of no moment. It is a necessary means to a certain end. In our village a.s.semblies voting is unknown.

Controversies are never decided by a majority of voices; every question must be settled unanimously. Hence the general debate, as well as private discussions, must be continued until a proposal is brought forward which conciliates all interests, and wins the suffrage of the entire _mir_. It is, moreover, evident that to reach this consummation the debates must be thorough and the subject well threshed out; and in order to overcome isolated opposition, it is essential for the advocates of conflicting views to be brought face to face, and compelled to fight out their differences in single combat."

But beneath all this tough and apparently acrimonious strife a singular spirit of forbearance reigns. The majority will not force on a premature decision. Debate may rage fast and furious day after day, but at last the din dies. A common understanding is somehow attained, and the _mir_ p.r.o.nounces its deliverance, which is accepted, in the rude belief of the peasants, as the decree of G.o.d Himself. In this way tens of thousands of Russian villages have been, no doubt, managing their own petty business with reasonable amity and success for centuries, and the political philosophy of Russian writers like Bakunin and Prince Krapotkin, who have propagated anarchism in the west of Europe, is merely the nave suggestion that the form of government which answers not intolerably for the few trivial concerns of a primitive Russian village would answer best for the whole complex business of a great developed modern society.

The anarchists carry their dislike to authority into other fields besides the political and industrial. They will have no invisible master or ruler any more than visible. They renounce both G.o.d and the devil, and generally with an energy beyond all other revolutionists. Some of the older socialists were believers; St. Simon, Fourier, Leroux and Louis Blanc were all theists; but it is rare to find one among the socialists of the present generation, and with the anarchists an aggressive atheism seems an essential part of their way of thinking.

They will own no superior power or authority of any kind--employer, ruler, deity, or law. The Anarchist Congress of Geneva in 1882 issued a manifesto, which began thus:--

"Our enemy, it is our master. Anarchists--that is to say, men without chiefs--we fight against all who are invested or wish to invest themselves with any kind of power whatsoever. Our enemy is the landlord who owns the soil and makes the peasant drudge for his profit. Our enemy is the employer who owns the workshop, and has filled it with wage-serfs. Our enemy is the State, monarchical, oligarchic, democratic, working cla.s.s, with its functionaries and its services of officers, magistrates, and police. Our enemy is every abstract authority, whether called Devil or Good G.o.d, in the name of which priests have so long governed good souls. Our enemy is the law, always made for the oppression of the weak by the strong, and for the justification and consecration of crime."

Among other restraints, they entertain often a speculative opposition to the restraint of the legal family, and sometimes advocate a return to aboriginal promiscuity and relations.h.i.+p by mothers; but this is only an occasional element in their agitation. It is plain, however, that when law is believed to be oppression, crime and lawlessness come to be humanity.

I have now shown that the anarchists, so far from representing an opposite movement to revolutionary social democracy, are really ultra-socialist and ultra-democratic, and it seems hardly necessary to show that they are ultra-revolutionary. All social democrats contemplate an eventual revolution, but some see no objection meanwhile to take part in current politics; while others, a more witnessing generation, practise an ostentatious abstention, and call themselves political abstentionists. Some, again, think and desire that the revolution will come by peaceful and lawful means; others trust to violence alone. The anarchists outrun all. They refuse to have anything to do with any politics but revolution, and with any revolution but a violent one, and they think the one means of producing revolution now or at any future time is simply to keep exciting disorder and cla.s.s hatred, a.s.sa.s.sinating State officers, setting fire to buildings, and paralyzing the _bourgeoisie_ with fear. All anarchists are not of this sanguinary mind, and it is interesting to remember that Proudhon himself wrote Karl Marx in 1846, warning him against "making a St. Bartholomew of the proprietors," and opposed resort to revolutionary action of any kind as a means of promoting social reform. "Perhaps," he says, "we think no reform is possible without a _coup de main_, without what used to be called a revolution, and which is only a shake. I understand that decision and excuse it, for I held it for a long time myself, but I confess my latest studies have completely taken it away from me. I believe we have no need of any such thing in order to succeed, and that consequently we ought not to postulate revolutionary action as a means of social reform, because that pretended means is nothing more nor less than an appeal to force, to arbitrary power, and is therefore a contradiction. I state the problem thus: to restore to society, by an economic combination, the wealth which has been taken from society by another economic combination." ("Proudhon's Correspondence," ii. 198.)

But whatever individual anarchists may hold or renounce, the general view of the party is as I have stated. A meeting of 600 anarchists--chiefly Germans and Austrians, but including also some Russians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen--was held at Paris on the 20th April, 1884, and pa.s.sed a resolution urgently recommending the extirpation of princes, capitalists, and parsons, by means of "the propaganda of deed."[2] The Congress held at London in 1881, which sought to re-establish the International on purely anarchist lines, adopted a declaration of principles, containing, among other things, the following: "It is matter of strict necessity to make all possible efforts to propagate by deeds the revolutionary idea and the spirit of revolt among that great section of the ma.s.s of the people which as yet takes no part in the movement, and entertains illusions about the morality and efficacy of legal means. In quitting the legal ground on which we have generally remained hitherto, in order to carry our action into the domain of illegality which is the only way leading to revolution, it is necessary to have recourse to means which are in conformity with that end.... The Congress recommends organizations and individuals const.i.tuting part of the International Working Men's a.s.sociation to give great weight to the study of the technical and chemical sciences as a means of defence and attack."[3] In the first French revolution Lavoisier and other seven and twenty chemists were put to the guillotine together, on the express pretence, "We have no need of _savants_"; but now "Technology" is a standing heading in the anarchist journals; a revolutionary organization has its chemical department as well as its press department; and anarchist tracts often end with the standing exhortation, "Learn the use of dynamite," as socialist tracts end with the old admonition of 1848, "Proletarians of all nations, unite."

The object of this policy of violence is partly, as we see from the above quotations, to inflame the spirit of revolt and disorder in the working cla.s.ses; and it is partly to terrorize the _bourgeoisie_, so that they may yield in pure panic all they possess. But for its expressly violent policy, anarchism would be the least formidable or offensive manifestation of contemporary socialism. For, in the first place, its specific doctrine is one which it is really difficult to get the most ordinary common sense puzzled into accepting. Men in their better mind may be ready enough to listen to specious, or even not very specious, schemes of reform that hold out a promise of extirpating misery, and in their worse mind they may be quite as p.r.o.ne to think that if everybody had his own, there would be fewer rich; but they are not likely to believe we can get on without law or government of any sort.

Even the vainest will feel that however superfluous these inst.i.tutions may be for themselves, they are still unhappily indispensable for some of their neighbours. Then in the next place this doctrine of the anarchists is as great a stumbling-block to themselves as it is to other people, for they carry their objection to government into their own movement, and can consequently never acquire that concentration and unity of organization which is necessary for any effectual conspiracy.

They are always found const.i.tuted in very small groups very loosely held together, and small as the several groups may be, they are always much more likely to subdivide than to consolidate. Even the few anarchist refugees in London who might be expected to be knit into indissoluble friends.h.i.+p by their common adversity have broken into separate clubs, and the "Autonomic" and the "Morgenrothe"--though they have hardly more than a hundred members between them, and all belong to the same socialist variety of anarchist doctrine--remain as the Jews and the Samaritans. It is said to be a subject of speculative discussion among anarchists whether two members are sufficient to const.i.tute an anarchist club. This laxity of organization is a natural result of the dislike to authority which the anarchists cultivate as a cardinal principle.

Subjection to an executive committee is as offensive to their feelings and as contrary to their principles as subjection to a monarch. The dread of subjection keeps them disunited and weak. As Machiavelli says, the many ruin a revolutionary society, and the few are not enough. A small group may concoct an isolated crime, but it can do little towards the social revolution.

The anarchist policy--the propaganda of deed--consists, however, exactly in this concoction of isolated crimes and outrages. Some of the continental powers are conferring at this moment on the propriety of taking international efforts against the anarchists, and the question may at least be reasonably raised before our own Government, whether a policy of promiscuous outrage like this should continue to be included among political offences, securing protection against extradition, and whether the propaganda of deed and the use of dynamite should not rather be declared outside the limits of fair and legitimate revolution, as, by the Geneva Convention, explosive bullets are put outside the limits of fair or legitimate war.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Much interesting information on this subject is given from official sources in a recent anonymous work, "Socialismus und Anarchismus in Europa und Nordamerika wahrend der Jahre 1883 bis 1886."