SOCIALISM

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1927, Page 7

SOCIALISM

DEAN INGE’S DEFINITION. There are as many definitions of Socialism as there are of Religion, and this is not strange, for there seem to be almost as many Socialisms, as Socialists, writes Dean Inge in the “Evening Standard.” As Dr. Shadwell says: “When Plato and Jack Jones, St. Paul and Trotsky, Sir Thomas More and Tom Mann are tucked up together under the same blanket, labelled Socialism, it is impossible to say -where such very elastic coverlet begins and ends.’ Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has composed a definition which he hopes will be acceptable to everybody. It is a good example of Resolution English. The essence of Resolution English is that each word shall convey the least meaning that it can carry. No better definition can be given than that. it aims at the organisation »of the material economic forces of society and their control of the human forces; no better criticism of Capitalism can be made than that it aims at the organisation of the human forces of society, and their control by the economic and material forces.” .... , . Presumably all Socialists . would agree in repudiating two definitions which J have heard. “What is a. Socialist? One who has yearnings To share equal profits from unequal earnings; Be he idler or bungler or both, he is willing To fork out his sixpence and pocket your shilling.” And this from America: “Socialism is an attempt to legislate unsuccessful men into success by legislating successful men out of it.” The word Socialism is about a hundred years old. Both the name and the thing arose as part of the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, just as a recrudexence of it appeared just after Great War. It has its prophet, Karl Marx (1881-1883), whose works are a sort of Bible to all Socialists. Marx, says Mr. F. R. Salter, began as a journalist who would have liked to be a don. He thought that his Jewish nationality was an unfair handicap, and soon developed a peculiar hatred “complex,” which never left him. When he finally settled down in London in 1849, he had been expelled from three European countries, and had seen three journalistic ventures perish. He was a fierce-looking man with glittering eyes and a bushy beard, a born agitator. In true German style he laid down certain “natural-scientific” laws of economic development, which he borrowed from other theorists. There is not one of his predictions which has not been falsified by events, and there is not one of his theories which has not been riddled by hostile criticism.

He makes great play with the two words “bourgeois” and “proletariat,” and a-classification which correspohds to nothing actual. They are both French words, which have no equivalents in other languages. The bourgeois in Moliere is the kind of citizen who often admires and apes his social superiors. The Revolution of 1789 put power into the hands of this class, which avoided the word for this reason, and adopted “citizen” instead. But the Saint-Simonian Socialists meant by “bourgeois” everyone who does not work with his hands.

Max adopted this absurd name, and to-day it is one of the/ catch-words which all Russian children are taught to repeat, unexplained, of course. “Proletarian” was a term of contempt in ancient Rome for the lowest class of citizens who did nothing for the State except produce children. For Socialists, on the contrary, the proletarian is the worker who produces all wealth, though much is taken from him. Latterly some of the Socialists have begun to hedge, and to claim that some brainworkers are “proletarians.” Both words, and the ideas connected with them, are ridiculous when applied to such a society as ours. The “natural-scientific” law that capital automatically concentrates itself in fewer and fewer hands, so that the rich become richer and the poor poorer, is the keystone of Marxism. Finally, he thought, the trick could be easily done by expropriating a few millionaire monopolists. No prophecy was ever more ludicrously falsified. There has been a growing diffusion of capital; the number of small propertyowners has enormously increased. There has been a vast levelling up and levelling down. No more large private houses are built. A house built a hundred years ago for £135,000 ■was lately sold to be broken up, for £3OOO. We can no longer distinguish classes by their clothes. There has, in fact, been a progressive equalisation of incomes. There has been concentration of management, but this is a very different thing from the concentration of capital. Max was also a student of Hegel, from whom he borrowed certain phrases. He proposed, he said, to make Hegel stand on his head and preach materialism instead of idealism. With this trifling exception, he stands forward as a Hegelian.

Nothing is now left of the Marxian theory of value. Political economy has finally disposed of it. But though Marx was a poor economist, a poor philosopher, and a very poor prophet, he brought into the political arena something more effective than argument. He is the apostle of classhatred, the founder of a Satanic antireligion, which resembles some religions in its cruelty, fanaticism, and irrationality. The chief cause of the entire failure of the Marxian, predictions was that the working-classes were unwilling to “sinK deeper and deeper into misery” in order to please Herr Marx. They saw opportunities for improving their condition, and they took them, with the good will, on the whole, of the employing class. The extreme Labour leaders still look with disfavour on any measures which make the working man more comfortable; they would prefer to see him driven to desperation. It is this amiable policy, which they can hardly avow, which makes them so bitterly opposed to the limitation of population, and to emigration. Every superfluous and unemployable man is a potential revolutionary. The Communists had and lost their chance in the years immediately after the war. The likelihood of a violent social revolution in Europe gets less every year, and the appalling objectlesson of Russia, where Bolshevism has produced the most complete hell upon earth that the world has ever seen, has not been thrown away. Nevertheless, the Labour vote on the whole grows in strength, and seems likely to grow still further. Why is this? There are two causes of revolutionary movements —desperation and aspiration, of which the latter is the more important. The movements achieve a temporary success when

those factors for a time combine, which they will do when the forces of law and order arc obviously weakened, as they were in France in 1789, and in Europe generally after the Great War. But a little study of French and of Russian history makes it clear that the position of the poor was improving rapidly in France in the generation before 1789, and in in the geenration before 1914. Hope, not despair, generates popular risings. “The growth of Socialism,” says Dr. Shadwell, “coincides with a rising standard of comfort.” The spontaneous movements of the wage-earners themselves are almost always of this kind. Class-hatred and class-warfare are preached, not by genuine workers, but by middle-class enrages, driven half mad by hatred and fury against a social system which has disappointed their ambitions.

The British Labour Party, which was once a pioneer and model for other countries, has lost all inspiration and independence, and has become a mere hanger-on of foreign organisations. It has practically dropped State Socialism, since our workers have some notion of liberty, and strongly desire to have “a share in the management,” which is contrary to the principles of State Socialism. The Parliamentary ' section cannot desire Syndicalism, which proposes to dispense with representative government. They have just sense enough to see that an alliance with Bolshevism would knock them out for ever. Finally, they know that attempts at Statemanagement of large enterprises, in various countries from Belgium to Queensland, have almost invariably resulted in very heavy losses to the State.

To sum up.. Collectivism has been tried and has failed. Communism has drowned itself in a river of blood. Syndicalism regularises a state of civil war. In a word, Socialism as a programme is quite discredited. The most prudent course for the Labour Party seems to be that which they are following—to throw over all theories; to prevent their Left Wing from provoking an overwhelming reaction; to bribe the electors by promising them the plunder of the minority; and to stir up hatred by wild charges of “mendacity” against honourable statesmen. Under universal suffrage these tactics can hardly fail. It is not Socialism, but a substitute for it, hiding behind a respectable name.