The Socialist Movement/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
One of the greatest of the difficulties which beset the path of the Socialist is the refusal on the part of his opponents to give an accurate statement of what Socialism means and what the purpose of Socialism is. The main object of this book is to explain both. The Editors have asked a Conservative to explain Conservatism and a Liberal to interpret Liberalism, and have on the same principle turned to me to write about Socialism. It is, perhaps, best that doctrines which are the objects of fierce assault should be explained by writers who believe in them, for, whether a doctrine is or is not to have a lasting influence, depends not on the success with which clever critics attack some of its outworks, nor on the amount of error which creeps into its popular advocacy, but on the amount of truth which it really contains, and that is more familiar to friend than to foe.
The Socialist movement has suffered, as all great idealist and Utopian movements have suffered, by having attached to them proposals which do not really belong to them, but which happened to be born and cradled with them. Progress has a habit of bringing forth several babes at the same time. For instance, the earlier advocates of Socialism were found in the more extreme camps of liberal thought in their day. They heralded with unqualified enthusiasm the conquests of science on the field of faith. It was their nature to give no lukewarm welcome to anything that seemed to be a gleam of light on the horizon. Religion in their day was the creed of the rich; churches were built to keep the people quiet; an English reactionary majority in Parliament voted money to the Church to help it to stem the rising tide of Radical democracy. The Socialist pioneer went out boldly and challenged all this. He grouped all his enemies in one crowd, all their creeds and professions in one bundle, and he condemned them in the bulk. This happened in other directions, with the result that to-day the opponents of Socialism try to make Socialism itself responsible for every extravagance, every private opinion, every enthusiasm of every one of its advocates. The logic is this: Mr. Smith writes that the family is only a passing form of organisation; Mr. Smith is a Socialist; therefore all Socialists think that the family is only a passing form of organisation. This method of controversy may offer for itself a shamefaced justification when it is resorted to for the purpose of a raging and tearing political fight in which the aim of the rivals is not to arrive at truth but to catch votes, but it cannot be defended on any other or higher ground, and it requires only the slightest knowledge of the history of opinion in this country to see what havoc would be played with our critics if we were to apply such a perverted logic to them and their creeds.
Socialism is the creed of those who, recognising that the community exists for the improvement of the individual and for the maintenance of liberty, and that the control of the economic circumstances of life means the control of life itself, seek to build up a social organisation which will include in its activities the management of those economic instruments such as land and industrial capital that cannot be left safely in the hands of individuals. This is Socialism. It is an application of mutual aid to polities and economics. And the Socialist end is liberty, the liberty of which Kant thought when he proclaimed that every man should be regarded as an end in himself and not as a means to another man’s end. The means and the end cannot be separated. Socialism proposes a change in social mechanism, but justifies it as a means of extending human liberty. Social organisation is the condition, not the antithesis, of individual liberty.
Round this conception of the State and community, of mutual aid and of social evolution, many interests cluster. It is like a city towards which roads run from all points of the compass—a pilgrims' way for the devout, a trade route for the merchant, a bridle path for the philosopher; and so we have many aspects of Socialism. We have, for instance, the Independent Labour Party approaching it down political pathways, the Christian Socialist section, like the Church Socialist League, approaching from religious quarters, scientific Socialist groups, coming by way of biological or other scientific roads, and soon. As time goes on and our industrial experience gets fuller and more accurate some of the forecasts made by the earlier Socialists, and some of the forms in which they cast their theories, have had to be modified. Also, advance in one direction opens out other ways of advance hidden until then, and methods change in response. For instance, the Socialists of half a century ago lived when revolution was in the air in Europe and this coloured their statement of the Socialist position. The atmosphere has changed and so the colour has faded, but Socialism itself remains that conception of the social organisation which I have indicated above.
It may save some misunderstanding if I make it clear at the very outset that Socialists do not attack individuals. When they criticise capitalism or commercialism they do not condemn capitalists or business men. On the contrary, they consider that the capitalist is as much the victim of his system as the unemployed, and that he has to conform to its evil pressure in the same way as the poverty stricken have to do so. The results are not the same, but they are products of the same social mechanism. Socialism deals primarily with the evolution of economic relationships and not with the moral nature of man. Of course the problems of society can never be treated as though they were independent of the problems of the individual life, but man as a separate individual, and man in society, present well differentiated groups of problems, and Socialism arises in connection with the latter rather than with the former.