Socialism and Democracy in Europe

WHY DOES SOCI

han any attempted definition. The French Socialist program begins with the assertion,

e upper class is a remnant of the feudal days, of the manorial times, when land-holding brought with it social distinction and political prerogative. In this

riat and bourgeois. The proletariat are the wage-earning class, the poor, the underlings. The bourgeois[1] are roughly the middle class. The French divide them into petits bourgeois and g

has constantly been measured by the standard of bare existence. Socialism arises consciously out of the efforts of this class to win for itself a share of the powers of the other classes. It is necessary to understand that while this class distinction is historic in origin it is essentially economic in fact. It is not "social"; a middle-class millionaire may be congenial to the social circles of the high-born. It is not

n in property. The possessor of private wealth can become a capitalist by investing his money in productive enterprise. He then becomes the employer of labor. There are all grades of capital

product; and the power of hiring men to operate the machinery, and to convert the raw material into marketable wares. As long as this power was limited to hand industry the proletarian movement was abortive. When the

multiplied power of capital and the glorification of riches. The proletarians multiplied rapidly in number, and all the evils of sharp class distinction were

the workingman that he is contributing muscle and blood and sweat to the perfection of an article whose possession he does not share. This feeling is aroused by the contrasts of life that the worker constantly sees around him. He feels that his own life energy has contributed to the magnificent equipages and the palatial luxuries of his

. He ponders over the distinctions that are actual and contrasts them with his imagined utopia. To him the differences between employer and employee are not natural. He

gainst things as they are. And whatever may be the syllogisms of its logic, or the formularies of its philosophy, they all begin with a grievance,

becomes number so-and-so. In his union and in his party he asserts his individuality with a grim and impressive stubbornness. The gravitation of common ideals and common protests draws these forgotten particles of industrialism into a massed consciousness that is

ne industry. On the one hand is the business man pursuing with fevered energy the profits that are the goal of his activity; on the other hand are the w

icance.[3] Revisionists and progressive Socialists, who are throwing aside the Marxian dogmas, are also preaching the universalit

urrent newspapers and magazines, and has listened to their orators and talked with their leaders, confusion still remains in the mind. The movement is so all-embracing that it has no clearly defined limits. The S

of the secrets of its power that Socialism is not the energy of despair. It is the demand for the right to live fully, joyfully, and in comfort. The Soci

t of all evil." Gold is the symbol of this world of wrongs. "We have become as accustomed to our coppers as the devil to his hell." When the rule of gold shall cease, then "the teardrops which are the tokens of true brotherliness will return to the dry eyes of the selfish, the soul of the evildoer will be filled with noble and virtuous sentiments such as he had never known before, and the impious ones who have hitherto denied God will sing His praise." The humble tailor is assured that the reign of property will be terminated and the age of humanity begin, and he calls to the workingman, "Forward, brethren; with the cu

mental communist. His experiments have failed. But his hopefulness persists. In his address delivered at the dedication of New Lanark, 1816, he said that he had found plenty of unhappiness and plenty of misery. "But from this day a change must take place; a new era must commence; the human intellect, through the whole extent of the earth, hitherto enveloped by the grossest ignorance and superst

e is not diminished by the fact that it was spoken of

he was the great gloomy one. Even those who condemn modern society with the most sc

optimism. "Look up, my brother Christians, open y

w crusade was sung

shoulder ere the

naught but

us, the long ye

s more than

ts tarry and t

nurse their dr

living, our li

bright new wo

rliaments and in strikes, and all the warfare of politics and trade, have not blighted their rosy ho

t lifts some of their books out of the commonplace. The sincerity of these prophe

sentimental critic of things as they are. Both begin their attacks upon the social order at the same point-the vulnerable spot, poverty. Mill places it first in his category of existing evils. He asks, "What proportion of the population in the most civilized countries

in Edinburgh, York, and London. To both the exacting economist and the popular expositor of Socialism, poverty is the glaring fault of our soc

the curse, in private property the cause, of human misery, and in a r

uction; second, competition. It is private capitalistic production that enables the employer to pocket all the profits; it is competition that enables him to buy labor in an open market at the lowest p

tremendous change in society. All Socialists unhesitatingly and with boldness ar

iety is what it is through evolution. If this is true then it is only necessary to control by environment the factors of evolution and the product will be preordained. Third, that even if man is bad and has permitted pernicious institutions like private property to ex

ctive property in the care of the state or of society, instead of letting it remain under the domination of individuals. To aboli

ork. With glowing exultation all the expositors and exhorters of the proletarian movement dwell upon the blessedness of toil. They glori

r some even say two, hours a day will be sufficient to do all the drudgery and the essential things in a well-organized human be

under this regime of work and co-operation? Here unanimity ceases. As a criticism Socialism

te and industry. The evils in early industrialism were abhorrent. Small children and their mothers were forced into factories, pauperism was thriving, the ugly machine-fed towns were replacing the quaint and cheerful villages, rulers were forgetting their duties in their greed for gain, an

system is too full of iniquity, miser

nterested, whatever his position, rank, and for

olution, so necessary, is possible, ev

ll-fated revolutionary government of France in 1848. Not every one thought that the re

unists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ru

of all countries are uniting, as we shall see, not for bloody revolution nor for the violence of passion, but for the promulga

he earliest writers were cocksure of themselves; the latest ones bridge over the question with wide-arching generalities. I have asked many of their leade

ld be assu

It is the common possession of all, and it is the one power that can lay its hands upon property and compel its obedience. The power of th

e fault-finding and of dreaming, and has entered politics, entered the labor war through unions, and the business w

ducts of the antagonistic relations that these two classes at present occupy; that Socialism intends to eliminate this antagonism by eliminating the private employer. I have tried to show also that Socialism is a criticism of the pre

hilanthropic members of this society should raise their protest. Ruskin and Anatole France and Maeterlinck and Carlyle and Robert Morris and Emerson and Grierson are read with increasing satisfaction. It is natural that the participants in this death race should utt

ganized the largest body of human beings that the world has known. Its international Socialist movement has but one rival for homogene

er what the Socialist movement is doing in politics, how much of theory has been merged in political practice, w

o state briefly the history of the

TNO

s of wage-labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage-laborers, who, having no means of production of their own,

Social Movement, Introduction, fo

ialist Move

alism embraces every manifestation of life, because nothing human is alien to it, because it alone offers to-day to ou

onie und Freiheit, pp.

addressed to

ract

alism, p

ew Worlds fo

, Sociali

nc, The Right

tion of Labor