COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 9092, 1 May 1890, Page 6

COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM.

THEIR DREAMS, THEIR EXPERI MENTS, THEIR FAILURES, THEIR INFLUENCE. [By Pharos. ] V. BELLAMY’S “LOOKING BACKWARD.” “ Tho world's groat ago begins anew. The golden years return, Tho earth doth like a snake renew Its winter weed outworn. Hoavon smiles, and faitus and empires gleam Hike wrecks of a dissolving dream." “HEnnAs." If wo allot to each sold copy of ‘‘Looking Backward” three readers only —a moderate estimate—we must believe that, in the last two or three years, this book has been read by something approaching two million people in the United States and the British Empire. On the whole, this audience is probably somewhat above the average in culture and intelligence. A book which can put any creed into any form that will make millions read it eagerly is a great power. "Looking Backward” has done this. It has, too, great intrinsic merit. Pithy, clear, forcible, it possesses the true eloquence —that which springs from intense conviction, based on study and thought. Every page tells us how well Mr Bellamy has brooded over, mastered, and digested the creed of Socialism. He knows it so thoroughly that he can condense without being dull, and argue at a red heat without straying from or losing a single point. And when we remember that his subject, and almost the form of his book, are two thousand three hundred years old, and that he appeals not to the selfishness, but to the sympathy of what is supposed to be a cynical, hard-headed, and blase age, one cannot refuse to cry “well done” to so remarkable a feat by a writer hitherto unknown.

The story is put into the mouth of a young and wealthy Boston merchant who places its beginning in the year 1887. A constant sufferer from insomnia, he had to take refuge in an underground sleepingroom, “ a chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,” wherein he passed his nights. When even this utter isolation and silence failed to bestow rest, it was his custom to send, as a last resort, for a mesmerist, whose magnetic influence could alone procure the needful slumber. After one of these mesmeric sleeps the patient awoke weak, dazed, and in a strange room, amid strange faces. Gradually it was explained to him that he had been awakened in the year 1987 by some workmen digging deep in an old garden, which for generations had covered the site once occupied by his house. The building itself had been destroyed in a great fire on the night in which he had last fallen asleep. Motionless and undisturbed, he bad lain in his trance for a hundred years.

la a series of talks with, the Doctor in whose house he awakes, and whose guest and, ultimately, son-in-law he becomes, he learns by degrees the mighty change which has come over civilisation and has regenerated society. Individualism and competition are extinguished; money, private trade, want and riches are gone. War has ceased: “ the trumpet speaks not to the armed throng.” Each nation, it is true, is a disciplined army; but it is an army of industry only. All now honour work, and all work is honoured. The crimes which spring from poverty and greed, from ignorance and oppression, from class hatred, trade conflict, and social jealousy and ambition have vanished for want of a cause. There is but one producer—the State; one distributor —the State; one capitalist—the State; one landlord—the State; one merchant, one schoolmaster, one almsgiver, one arbitrator—the State. E veryone, man and woman, works for the commonwealth. In return the commonwealth, which sees that none are idle, sees that none are poor, afflicted, or forced to take thought for the morrow. Mr Bellamy's hero, in short, opens his eyes in the midst of a social millennium. At last the great dream has become a reality. The Individualist can no longer sneer at the idle visionaries who want “ to make things comfortable all round,” in a world doomed to be eternally uncomfort able. How has the great change been wrought ? Simply by an extension of the principle of union and co-operation. Society has at last been driven to see that if it pays capital to combine in syndicates, and labour to do the like in Trades Unions, it must pay both to combine in one vast national syndicate and union The world has been poor because one-half has always been employed in trying to ruin the other half. Competition has not only kept society in the condition of a pack of wolves, but involved a perpetual, wanton, and frightful waste. Bad as was the destruction wrought by public international war, what was it when compared with the ruin and loss caused by the unceasing, internecine war of man against man, business against business, company against company, master against servant ? This is how one of Mr Bellamy’s Twentieth Century Socialists looks upon the whole wretched business, and describes it : —“ The field of industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers wasted, in assailing one another, energies which, if expended in concerted effort, as to-day, would have enriched all. As for mercy or quarter in this warfare, there was absolutely no suggestion of it. To deliberately enter a field of business and destroy the enterprise of those who occupied it previously, in order to plant one’s own enterprise on their ruins, was an achievement which never failed to command popular admiration. Nor is there any stretch of fancy in comparing this sort of struggle with actual warfare, so far as concerns the mental agony and physical suffering which attended the struggle, and the misery which overwhelmed the defeated and those dependent on them. Now nothing about your age is, at first sight, more astounding to a man of modern times than the fact that men engaged in the same industry, instead of fraternising as comrades and co-labourers to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer madness, a scene from bedlam. But more closely regarded, it is seen to be no such thing. Tour contemporaries, with their mutual throatcutting, knew very well what they were at. The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community. If, in working to this end, he at the same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental. It was just as feasible and as common to increase one’s private hoards by practices injurious to the general welfare. One’s worst enemies were necessarily those of his own trade, for, uAget y.Qur, plan, ot making PSlyatS.

profit the motive of production, a scar city of the article he produced was what each particular producer desired. It was for his interest that no more of it should be produced than ho himself could produce. To secure this consummation as far as circumstances permitted, by killing off and discouraging those engaged in this line of industry, was bis constant effort. When he had killed off all he could, his policy was to combine with those he could not kill, and convert his general warfare into a warfare upon the public at large by cornering the market, as I believe you used to call it, and putting up prices to the highest point people would stand before going without the goods. The daydream of the nineteenth century producer was to gain absolute control of the supply of some necessity of life, so that he might keep the public at the verge of starvation, and always command famine prices for what he supplied. This, Mr West, is what was called in the nineteenth century a system of production. I will leave it to you if it does not seem, in some of its aspects, a great deal more like a system for preventing production.” At last mankind learned this lesson. So there arose a National Party, which demanded that all the sources and distributing agencies of wealth should be put into the common stock. And so thoroughly had education and experience taught people the need for combination of capital and a brotherhood of workers, that the mighty revolution came about quite peacefully and quietly. The United States became one huge community* Other nations did tho same.

Work was put on the footing of that obsolete European institution, compulsory military service. Tho family life was not interfered with, but a complete primary, secondary, and university education was freely provided for the youth of both sexes. Physical training and health were held of first importance. Moreover, since all marriages except love matches were things of the past, the free play of the law of sexual selection rapidly improved the race. Marriages of convenience, of course, became obsolete in a society where no man was poor and no woman need marry for a home. The schools, then, were filled with a healthy and intelligent race. At twenty-one all entered the industrial army, and spent the first three years of service at manual labour. No kind of work involved disgrace, but those who took to the more unpleasant and therefore unpopular kinds were more highly honoured and had their working hours shortened. If a task was specially dangerous or repulsive the State called for volunteers, as a general does now for the storming of a city or some other desperate service. Volunteers were always forthcoming, and were duly honoured.

At twenty-four the private chose his corps, and was drafted into it. In other words he made choice of an occupation. No one had to work at a trade specially repugnant to him. The free play for talent was one of the main objects of the system. All working corps were divided into grades of skilled workmen, with an awkward squad for apprentices. Promotion from one grade to another, and to the rank of officers was for merit. A system of marks distinguished good workers from bad, like boys at school. At the head of this great industrial army stood the President of the nation. All work ceased at forty-five, except in the case of Supreme Court Judges, in whom age and experience were considered indis pensable. After forty-five, men and women enjoyed complete leisure, their only duty being the election of the President, which lay in their hands alone. Daring the period of service in the army the working hours were short, and the health of the workmen zealously guarded. All officers from the President downwards, had gone up through successive ranks, and so knew every detail of the organisation. Churlishness and tyranny were severely punished. Any private might appeal to a Magistrate if he found his lot uncomfortable, and the Magistrate might order his transfer to another corps or company. Every man in a corps received equal pay, on the principle that all who do their best are equally deserving, whether that best be great or small. The weak and the strong, the skilful and inexpert, were therefore placed on a level —on the principle that one would not punish a goat for not drawing as much as a horse, or reward a horse for drawing more than a goat. All that was expected of man or woman was to do their best. Promotion, honour, emulation, the pressure of public opinion, and careful education were found sufficient inducements and stimulants. (To be continued.)