A Critical Examination of Socialism eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about A Critical Examination of Socialism.

A Critical Examination of Socialism eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about A Critical Examination of Socialism.

Now, if socialism were confined to such persons as these, who are in America spoken of as the “parlour socialists,” it would not only be impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was not would be immaterial to any practical man.  As a matter of fact, however, between socialism of this negligible kind—­this sheet-lightning of sentiment reflected from a storm elsewhere—­and the socialism which is really a factor to be reckoned with in the life of nations, we can start with drawing a line which, when once drawn, is unmistakable.  Socialism being avowedly a theory which, in the first instance at all events, addresses itself to the many as distinct from and opposed to the few, it is only or mainly the fact of its adoption by the many which threatens to render it a practical force in politics.  Its practical importance accordingly depends upon two things—­firstly, on its possessing a form sufficiently definite to unite what would otherwise be a mass of heterogeneous units, by developing in all of them a common temper and purpose; and, secondly, on the number of those who can be taught to adopt and welcome it.  The theory of socialism is, therefore, as a practical force, primarily that form of it which is operative among the mass of socialists; and when once we realise this, we shall have no further difficulty in discovering what the doctrines are with which, at all events, we must begin our examination.  We are guided to our starting-point by the broad facts of history.

The rights of the many as opposed to the actual position of the few—­a society in which all should be equal, not only in political status, but also in social circumstances; ideas such as these are as old as the days of Plato, and they have, from time to time in the ancient and the modern world, resulted in isolated and abortive attempts to realise them.  In Europe such ideas were rife during the sixty or seventy years which followed the great political revolution in France.  Schemes of society were formulated which were to carry this revolution further, and concentrate effort on industrial rather than political change.  Pictures were presented to the imagination, and the world was invited to realise them, of societies in which all were workers on equal terms, and groups of fraternal citizens, separated no longer by the egoisms of the private home, dwelt together in palaces called “phalansteries,” which appear to have been imaginary anticipations of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.  Here lapped in luxury, they were to feast at common tables; and between meals the men were to work in the fields singing, while a lady accompanied their voices on a grand piano under a hedge.  These pictures, however, agreeable as they were to the fancy, failed to produce any great effect on the multitudes; for the multitudes felt instinctively that they were too good to be true.  That such was the case is admitted by socialistic historians themselves.  Socialism during this period was, they say, in its

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A Critical Examination of Socialism from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.