A Critical Examination of Socialism | Page 8

and between
meals the men were to work in the fields singing, while a lady
accompanied their voices on a grand piano under a hedge. These
pictures, however, agreeable as they were to the fancy, failed to
produce any great effect on the multitudes; for the multitudes felt
instinctively that they were too good to be true. That such was the case
is admitted by socialistic historians themselves. Socialism during this
period was, they say, in its "Utopian stage." It was not even sufficiently
coherent to have acquired a distinctive name till the word "socialism"
was coined in connection with the views of Owen, which suffered
discredit from the failure of his attempts to put them into practice.
Socialism in those days was a dream, but it was not science; and in a
world which was rapidly coming to look upon science as supreme,
nothing could convince men generally--not even the most
ignorant--which had not, or was not supposed to have, the authority of
science at the back of it.
Such being the situation, as the socialists accurately describe it, an
eminent thinker arose who at last supplied what was wanting. He

provided the unorganised aspirations, which by this time were known
as socialism, with a formula which was at once definite, intelligible,
and comprehensive, and had all the air of being rigidly scientific also.
By this means thoughts and feelings, previously vague and fluid, like
salts held in solution, were crystallised into a clear-cut theory which
was absolutely the same for all; which all who accepted it could accept
with the same intellectual confidence; and which thus became a moral
and mental nucleus around which the efforts and hopes of a coherent
party could group themselves.
Such was the feat accomplished by Karl Marx, through his celebrated
treatise on Capital, which was published between fifty and sixty years
ago, and which has, since then, throughout all Europe and America,
been acclaimed as the Magna Charta, or the Bible, of "scientific
socialism."
Whatever may be the change which, as a theory, socialism has
subsequently undergone--and changes there have been which will
presently occupy our attention--it is with the theory of Marx, and the
temper of mind resulting from it, that socialism, regarded as a practical
force, begins; and among the majority of socialists this theory is
predominant still. In view, therefore, of the requirements of logic, of
history, and of contemporary facts, our own examination must begin
with the theory of Marx likewise.
CHAPTER II
THE THEORY OF MARX AND THE EARLIER SOCIALISTS
SUMMARISED
All radical revolutions which are advocated in the interests of the
people are commended to the people, and the people are invited to
accomplish them, on the ground that majorities are, if they would only
realise it, capable of moulding society in any manner they please. As
applied to matters of legislation and government, this theory is
sufficiently familiar to everybody. It has been elaborated in endless
detail, and has expressed itself in the constitutions of all modern

democracies. What Karl Marx did, and did for the first time, was to
invest this theory of the all-efficiency of the majority with a
definiteness, in respect of distribution of wealth, similar to that with
which it had been invested already in respect of the making of laws and
the dictation of national policies.
The practical outcome of the scientific reasoning of Marx is summed
up in the formula which has figured as the premise and conclusion of
every congress of his followers, of every book or manifesto published
by them, and of every propagandist oration uttered by them at
street-corners, namely, "All wealth is produced by labour, therefore to
the labourers all wealth is due"--a doctrine in itself not novel if taken as
a pious generality, but presented by Marx as the outcome of an
elaborate system of economics.
The efficiency of this doctrine as an instrument of agitation is obvious.
It appeals at once to two universal instincts: the instinct of cupidity and
the instinct of universal justice. It stimulates the labourers to demand
more than they receive already, and it stimulates to demand the more
on the ground that they themselves have produced it. It teaches them
that the wealth of every man who is not a manual labourer is something
stolen from themselves which ought to be and which can be restored to
them.
Now, whatever may be the value of such teaching as a contribution to
economic science, it illustrates by its success one cardinal truth, and by
implication it bears witness to another. The first truth is that, no matter
how desirable any object may be which is obtruded on the imagination
of anybody, nobody will bestir himself in a practical way to demand it
until he can be persuaded to believe that its