A Critical Examination of Socialism | Page 7

us take any country or any city we
please--for example, let us say Chicago, in which socialism is said to be
achieving its most hopeful or most formidable triumphs--and we shall
look in vain for a sign that the general productive process has been
modified by socialistic principles in any particular whatsoever.
Socialism has produced resolutions at endless public meetings; it has
produced discontent and strikes; it has hampered production constantly.
But socialism has never inaugurated an improved chemical process; it
has never bridged an estuary or built an ocean liner; it has never
produced or cheapened so much as a lamp or a frying-pan. It is a theory
that such things could be accomplished by the practical application of
its principles; but, except for the abortive experiments to which I have
referred already, it is thus far a theory only, and it is as a theory only
that we can examine it.
What, then, as a theory, are the distinctive features of socialism? Here
is a question which, if we address it indiscriminately to all the types of

people who now call themselves socialists, seems daily more
impossible to answer; for every day the number of those is increasing
who claim for their own opinions the title of socialistic, but whose
quarrel with the existing system is very far from apparent, while less
apparent still is the manner in which they propose to alter it. The
persons to whom I refer consist mainly of academic students,
professors, clergymen, and also of emotional ladies, who enjoy the
attention of footmen in faultless liveries, and say their prayers out of
prayer-books with jewelled clasps. All these persons unite in the
general assertion that, whatever may be amiss with the world, the
capitalistic system is responsible for it, and that somehow or other this
system ought to be altered. But when we ask them to specify the details
as to which alteration is necessary--what precisely are the parts of it
which they wish to abolish and what, if these were abolished, they
would introduce as a substitute--one of them says one thing, another of
them says another, and nobody says anything on which three of them
could act in concert.
Now, if socialism were confined to such persons as these, who are in
America spoken of as the "parlour socialists," it would not only be
impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was
not would be immaterial to any practical man. As a matter of fact,
however, between socialism of this negligible kind--this sheet-lightning
of sentiment reflected from a storm elsewhere--and the socialism which
is really a factor to be reckoned with in the life of nations, we can start
with drawing a line which, when once drawn, is unmistakable.
Socialism being avowedly a theory which, in the first instance at all
events, addresses itself to the many as distinct from and opposed to the
few, it is only or mainly the fact of its adoption by the many which
threatens to render it a practical force in politics. Its practical
importance accordingly depends upon two things--firstly, on its
possessing a form sufficiently definite to unite what would otherwise
be a mass of heterogeneous units, by developing in all of them a
common temper and purpose; and, secondly, on the number of those
who can be taught to adopt and welcome it. The theory of socialism is,
therefore, as a practical force, primarily that form of it which is
operative among the mass of socialists; and when once we realise this,

we shall have no further difficulty in discovering what the doctrines are
with which, at all events, we must begin our examination. We are
guided to our starting-point by the broad facts of history.
The rights of the many as opposed to the actual position of the few--a
society in which all should be equal, not only in political status, but
also in social circumstances; ideas such as these are as old as the days
of Plato, and they have, from time to time in the ancient and the
modern world, resulted in isolated and abortive attempts to realise them.
In Europe such ideas were rife during the sixty or seventy years which
followed the great political revolution in France. Schemes of society
were formulated which were to carry this revolution further, and
concentrate effort on industrial rather than political change. Pictures
were presented to the imagination, and the world was invited to realise
them, of societies in which all were workers on equal terms, and groups
of fraternal citizens, separated no longer by the egoisms of the private
home, dwelt together in palaces called "phalansteries," which appear to
have been imaginary anticipations of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Here
lapped in luxury, they were to feast at common tables;