SOCIALISM AND SOCIALISM.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1216, 26 August 1911, Page 14

SOCIALISM AND SOCIALISM.

Sir,—Some of the street scenes our Empire Citv has been inflicted with by the shoddy Socialist are too contemptible for words, and should bo suppiessed. Social 1 ism is primarily an economic doctrine, though it involves political, religious, and social changes. It proclaims the equal right of all subiects of a State to share tho material wealth of '(hat State, and the equal duty of all to share the labour necessary to develop that wealth, so as to maintain the necessaries and comforts of life. The.ro are two great classes of Socialists, however, who have very differ-, cnt opinions of the causes of poverty, tho great evil, and different remedies for it. One class consists of, the Anarchists, .who hold that society is'utterly bad, and must bo destroyed, so thai some new form of it may rise "naturally" on tho ruins of the old. Tlicy are the disciples of Rous.sean, and aro best represented by Baku:nin and .other Nihilists, who have demanded even the abolition of science, in order that all men might live together, sympathetically, in a stale of "holy and wliolesomo ignorance." Scientific Socialists havo nothing in common with such illegitimate and absurd and inanities, though ignorant people think and assert the opposite'. Scientific Socialists seem to really know what their ideal is, how they get it, and how they want to carry it out. They defino it as a state of things in which every soul in the nation shall have an equal chance of realising such perfection as it is naturally capable of realising—as a pot-boy or a Premier— without any reference to the lot into which, by fortune ct my misfortune, it has been born; and they assert, often with too little regard for tho feelings of the rich middle-class, that at present society does' not give the mass of men the "chance" of realising such perfection; education does not give them the "\yjll," and natural inheritance of brain and body—duo mainly to bad food—does not. give them the power. Further, they consider that this feverish scramble for material wealth is both unseemly and unscientific, because what one man gets another has to go without. The cure lies in their scheme of "Education," so far as to bring out the power of each individual character, and in the strengthening of • existing authorities, so that they may bo used vigorously for tho benefit of the poor and needy. The chief demands on the latter are for; (1) Taxation graduated so as to fully correct gross inequalities of fortune; (2) loans of public money at a very low rate to persons too poor to borrow In the open market; (3) strict enforcement of tho moral and social duties attaching to wealth, especially in land. Such proposals may be inexpedient, but they aro perfectly legitimate.

Tho English societies, representative of Socialism are the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, and tho Independent Labour Party. In Germany they form the strongest political party in tho H'holo empire, and the Social Democrats aro deadly foes to State Socialism, which they consider as a system of half measures dictated by i'cai and intended to undermine real Socialism by petty concessions; the leaders being Liebknecht, Bebcl, Vollmar, and Singer. In Austria, 100, they are strong, but split into two parties—one following Karl Marx under tho leadership of Dr. Adler, and tho other led by Herr Hanser. Both in Germany and in Austria tho political discontent is very much in favour of a wide spread of Socialism. Apologising to you for tho length of this .letter, and trusting that the same may appear in print in duo course, I am, etc.. DREADNOUGHT.