Socialism As It Is | Page 4

of April, 1910.
[5] "Recent Socialist Literature," by John Graham Brooks, Atlantic Monthly, 1910. Page 283.
[6] Collier's Weekly, July 30, 1910.
[7] H. G. Wells, "Socialism and the Family."
[8] H. G. Wells, "The New Macchiavelli."
SOCIALISM AS IT IS


PART I
"STATE SOCIALISM" AND AFTER

CHAPTER I
THE CAPITALIST REFORM PROGRAM
Only that statesman, writer, or sociologist has the hearing of the public to-day who can bind all his proposed reforms together into some large and far-sighted plan.
Mr. Roosevelt, in this new spirit, has spoken of the "social reorganization of the United States," while an article in one of the first numbers of La Follette's Weekly protested against any program of reform "which fails to deal with society as a whole, which proposes to remedy certain abuses but admits its incapacity to reach and remove the roots of the other perhaps more glaring social disorders."
Some of those who have best expressed the need of a general and complete social reorganization have done so in the name of Socialism. Mr. J. R. MacDonald, recently chairman of the British Labour Party, for example writes that the problem set up by the Socialists is that of "co-ordinating the forces making for a reconstruction of society and of giving them rational coherence and unity,"[9] while the organ of the middle-class Socialists of England says that their purpose is "to compel legislators to organize industry."[10]
Indeed, the necessity and practicability of an orderly and systematic reorganization in industrial society has been the central idea of British Socialists from the beginning, while they have been its chief exponents in the international Socialist movement. But the idea is equally widespread outside of Socialist circles. It will be hard for British Socialists to lay an exclusive claim to this conception when comrades of such international prominence as Edward Bernstein, who holds the British view of Socialism, assert that Socialism itself is nothing more than "organizing Liberalism."[11]
Whether Socialists were the first to promote the new political philosophy or not, it is undeniable that the Radicals and Liberals of Great Britain and other countries have now taken it up and are making it their own. Mr. Winston Churchill, while Chairman of the Board of Trade, and Mr. Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, members of the British Cabinet, leaders of the Liberal Party, recognize that the movement among governments towards a conscious reorganization of industry is general and demands that Great Britain should keep up with other countries.
"Look at our neighbor and friendly rival, Germany," said Mr. Churchill recently. "I see that great State organized for peace and organized for war, to a degree to which we cannot pretend.... A more scientific, a more elaborate, a more comprehensive social organization is indispensable to our country if we are to surmount the trials and stresses which the future years will bring. It is this organization that the policy of the Budget will create."[12]
Advanced and radical reformers of the new type all over the world, those who put forward a general plan of reform and wish to go to the common roots of our social evils, demand, first of all, reorganization. But how is such a reorganization to be worked out? The general programs have in every country many features in common. To see what this common basis is, let us look at the generalizations of some of the leading reformers.
One of the most scientific and "constructive" is Mr. Sidney Webb. No one has so thoroughly mastered the history of trade unionism, and no one has done more to promote "municipal Socialism" in England, both in theory and in practice, for he has been one of the leaders of the energetic and progressive London County council from the beginning of the present reform period. He has also been one of the chief organizers of the more or less Socialistic Fabian Society, which has done more towards popularizing social reform in England than any other single educative force, besides sending into all the corners of the world a new and rounded theory of social reform--the work for the most part of Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, and a few others.
Mr. Webb has given us several excellent phrases which will aid us to sum up the typical social reformers' philosophy in a few words. He insists that what every country requires, and especially Great Britain, is to center its attention on the promotion of the "national efficiency." This refers largely to securing a businesslike and economic administration of the existing government functions. But it requires also that all the industries and economic activities of the country should be considered the business of the nation, that the industrial functions of the government should be extended, and that, even from the business point of view, the chief purpose of government should be to supervise economic development.
To bring about the maximum of efficiency in production would require,