could scarcely claim to be the legitimate result of a scientific theory. I have pointed out, in dealing with the Railway Strike, that the danger implicit in its continuance would have been precisely such a lack of pre-considered plans for revolutionary change.

It was possible, last year, to make it a reproach against the Labour movement that, while in its legitimate struggle for better conditions it allowed situations to arise which threatened revolution, it was none the less unequipped with any plan or organisation for taking over the necessary administration and 'running' of the country. The events of August and September, 1920, have removed that reproach. The plans and organisations may be embryonic and inadequate, but they are there.

XIV

FORMS OF SOCIALISM

1. MARX AND 'MISERY'

Now, the foregoing brief re-statement of the most elementary economics and politics is necessary, even at this date, if we are to get a clear view of what the different forms of Socialist teaching offer. We may conveniently take first, since we can briefly dismiss, the Utopian form of Socialism. This does not indicate definite remedies; it simply, like the extremely important rhetoric of Ruskin, serves to bring home to people the startling evils and incongruities of modern life. It shows how terrible is the life of the poor, and how noble all life might be, but it does not bridge the gulf between the present and the future. Its assumptions are those of the imagination, not of the the intellect. Morris, in his News from Nowhere,1 planned a Socialist Utopia in which all human vices had disappeared, except those which he personally happened to think were rather laudable than otherwise.

Long before Morris, and long before Marx, forms of 'Utopian' Socialism existed; and it was against these 'Utopian' or 'sentimental' forms that Marx conceived himself to be in revolt. He claimed to have superseded them by scientific Socialism.

1 Not that Morris failed to make clear his general Marxist view of the transition period.

Marx rejected all fancy pictures of the future. He said, in effect: 'Things are in such-and-such a condition as the result of what they have been in the past, and they are working out inexorably to a different condition in the future. Capitalism is increasing its own evils to the point at which they will become intolerable; the rich will get richer, the accumulation of capital in a few hands will be intensified, the growth of capital values will be accelerated-whereas, on the other hand, every increase in the total wealth will be accompanied by greater hardship and greater exploitation of the poor. The gulf between the exploiters and the exploited will widen and widen. The process by which an enormous increase in the products of industry is secured by mechanical means, so far from providing everybody with plenty of those products, will lead to a glut and an economic crisis in which fewer people than ever will be able to purchase those products. This process will go on getting more and more obvious and violent, until at last it will become inevitable for the working-class to take over, practically speaking, in one solid lump, the capital which private capitalism itself has, in accordance with the laws of its own development, coagulated into that lump.'

This is necessarily an inadequate summary; and it represents, perhaps, what Marxism is generally by Marxists considered to be rather than what it actually is—for Marx himself hedged about his prophecies with any number of reservations and even of contradictions. He was an extremely practical politician. He never contemplated that exclusiveness which characterises some of his followers-for instance, in their eager desire to limit narrowly the 'Third International.' He said most definitely in the Communist Manifesto :—

'In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

'The Communists are no separate party distinct from other working-class parties.

'They have no interests separate from the interests of the proletariat in general. They set up no sectarian principles on which they wish to model the proletarian movement.' 1

And again :

'The Communists work everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.'

,2

And Engels, Marx's collaborator in the Manifesto, said in the preface to the 1890 edition that the object of the International had been: 'To gather the entire working-class of Europe and America into one great army.'

He added:

'It could not, therefore, depart from the principles laid down in the Manifesto. Its programme must not exclude English trade unions, French, Belgian, Italian, and Spanish Prudhonists, or German Lassalleans.' 3

As in international policy, so in domestic, Marx is full of reservations. He did not consistently teach the doctrine of a necessarily sudden and violent overthrow of the capitalist system. To quote once more from the Manifesto :

'The proletariat will use its political power to wrest

1 Manifesto of the Communist Labour Party, S.L.P. ed., p. 15. 2 p. 28.

3 p. 5.

by degrees all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class, and to increase as rapidly as possible the total mass of productive forces.' 1

This is very different from that prophecy of sudden and catastrophic change with which he is usually credited. Measures, he admits, will be different in different countries. 'Nevertheless,' the Manifesto

goes on:

'For the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable :

'(1) Abolition of property in land and confiscation of ground rents to the State.

‘(2) A heavily progressive income-tax.

'(3) Abolition of inheritance.

'(4) Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels.

'(5) Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. '(6) Centralisation of the means of transport in the hands of the State.

'(7) Extension of national factories and instruments of production, cultivation, and improvement of waste lands in accordance with a general social plan.

'(8) Obligation of all to labour; organisation of industrial armies,1 especially for agriculture. '(9) Combination of agricultural and industrial labour in order to remove the distinction between town and country.

1 p. 20. My italics.

As in Russia to-day.