Part 1 (2/2)
In this connection it is worthy of note that Spencer continued to believe in the inevitability of Socialism. In October, 1905, a well-known Frenchman, M. G. Davenay, visited Mr. Spencer and had a long conversation with him on several subjects, Socialism among them. Soon after his return, he received a letter on the subject from Mr. Spencer, written in French, which was published in the Paris _Figaro_ a few days after Mr. Spencer's death in December, 1905, two months or thereabouts from the time of the interview which called it forth.[2] After some brief reference to his health, Mr. Spencer wrote: ”The opinions I have delivered here before you, and which you have the liberty to publish, are briefly these: (1) Socialism will triumph inevitably, in spite of all opposition; (2) its establishment will be the greatest disaster which the world has ever known; (3) sooner or later, it will be brought to an end by a military despotism.”
Anything more terrible than this black pessimism which clouded the latter part of the life of the great thinker, it would be difficult to imagine. After living his long life of splendid service to the cause of intellectual progress, and studying as few men have ever done the history of the race, he went down to his grave fully believing that the world was doomed to inevitable disaster. How different from the confidence of the poet,[3] foretelling:--
”A wonderful day a-coming when all shall be better than well.”
The last words of the great French Utopist, Saint-Simon, were, ”The future is ours!” And thousands of times his words have been echoed by those who, believing equally with Herbert Spencer that Socialism must come, have seen in the prospect only the fulfillment of the age-long dream of Human Brotherhood. Men as profound as Spencer, and as sincere, rejoice at the very thing which blanched his cheeks and filled his heart with fear.
There is, then, a widespread conviction that Socialism will come and, in coming, vitally affect for good or ill every life. Millions of earnest men and women have enlisted themselves beneath its banner in various lands, and their number is steadily growing. In this country, as in Europe, the spread of Socialism is one of the most evident facts of the age, and its study is therefore most important. What does it mean, and what does it promise or threaten, are questions which civic duty prompts. The day is not far distant when ignorance of Socialism will be regarded as a disgrace, and neglect of it a civic wrong. No man can faithfully discharge the responsibilities of his citizens.h.i.+p until he is able to give an answer to these questions, to meet intelligently the challenge of Socialism to the age.
II
The word ”Socialism” is admittedly one of the n.o.blest and most inspiring words ever born of human speech. Whatever may be thought of the principles for which it is the accepted name, or of the political parties which contend for those principles, no one can dispute the beauty and moral grandeur of the word itself. I refer not merely, of course, to its etymology, but rather to its spiritual import. Derived from the Latin word, _socius_, meaning a comrade, it is, like the word ”mother,” for instance, one of those great universal speech symbols which find their way into every language.
Signifying as it does faith in the comrades.h.i.+p of man as the basis of social existence, prefiguring a social state in which there shall be no strife of man against man, or nation against nation, it is a verbal expression of a great ideal, man's loftiest aspirations crystallized into a single word. The old Hebrew prophet's dream of a world-righteousness that shall give peace, when nations ”shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks,”[4]
and the Angel-song of Peace and Goodwill in the legend of the Nativity, mean no more than the word ”Socialism” in its best usage means. Plato, spiritual son of the Socrates who for truth's sake drained the hemlock cup to its dregs, dreamed of such social peace and unity, and the line of those who have seen the same vision of a love-welded world has never been broken: More and Campanella, Saint-Simon and Owen, Marx and Engels, Morris and Bellamy--and the end of the prophetic line is not yet.
But if the dream, the hope itself, is old, the word is comparatively new. It is hard to realize that the word which means so much to countless millions of human beings, and which plays such a part in the vital discussions of the world, in every civilized country, is no older than many of those whose lips speak it with reverence and hope. Yet such is the fact. Because it will help us to a clearer understanding of modern Socialism, and because, too, it is little known, notwithstanding its intensely interesting character, let us linger awhile over that page of history which records the origin of this n.o.ble word.
Some years ago, anxious to settle, if possible, the vexed question of the origin and first use of the word ”Socialism,” the present writer devoted a good deal of time to an investigation of the subject, spending much of it in a careful survey of all the early nineteenth-century radical literature. It soon appeared that the generally accepted account of its introduction, by the French writer, L. Reybaud, in 1840, was wrong. Indeed, when once fairly started on the investigation, it seemed rather surprising that the account should have been accepted, practically without challenge, for so long. Finally the conclusion was reached that an anonymous writer in an English paper was the first to use the word in print, the date being August 24, 1833.[5] Since that time an investigation of a commendably thorough nature has been made by three students of the University of Wisconsin,[6] with the result that they have been unable to find any earlier use of the word. It is somewhat disappointing that after thus tracing the word back to what may well be its first appearance in print, it should be impossible to identify its creator.
The letter in which the term is first used is signed ”A Socialist,” and it is quite evident that the writer uses it as a synonym for the commonly used term ”Owenite,” by which the disciples of Robert Owen were known. It is most probable that Owen himself had used the word, and, to some extent, made it popular; and that the writer of the letter had heard ”our dear social father,” as Owen was called, use it, either in some of his speeches or in conversation. This is the more likely as Owen was fond of inventing new words. At any rate, one of Owen's a.s.sociates, now dead, told the present writer that Owen often specifically claimed to have used the word at least ten years before it was adopted by any other writer.
The word gradually became more familiar in England. Throughout the years 1835-1836, in the pages of Owen's paper, _The New Moral World_, there are many instances of the word occurring. The French writer, Reybaud, in his ”Reformateurs Modernes,” published in 1840, made the term equally familiar to the reading public of Continental Europe. By him it was used to designate the teachings not merely of Owen and his followers, but those of all social reformers and visionaries--Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and others. By an easy transition, it soon came into general use as designating all altruistic visions, theories, and experiments, from the ”Republic” of Plato onward through the centuries.
In this way much confusion arose. The word became too vague and indefinite to be distinctive. It was applied--frequently as an epithet--indiscriminately to persons of widely differing, and often conflicting, views. Every one who complained of social inequalities, every dreamer of social Utopias, was called a Socialist. The enthusiastic Christian, pleading for a return to the faith and practices of primitive Christianity, and the aggressive atheist, proclaiming religion to be the bulwark of the world's wrongs; the State wors.h.i.+per, who would extol Law, and spread the net of government over the whole of life, and the iconoclastic Anarchist, who would destroy all forms of social authority, have all alike been dubbed Socialists, by their friends no less than by their opponents.
The confusion thus introduced has had the effect of seriously complicating the study of Socialism from the historical point of view.
Much that one finds bearing the name of Socialism in the literature of the middle of the nineteenth century, for example, is not at all related to Socialism as that term is understood to-day. Thus the Socialists of the present day, who do not advocate Communism, regard as a cla.s.sic presentation of their views the famous pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, _The Communist Manifesto_. They have circulated it by millions of copies in practically all the languages of the civilized world. Yet throughout it speaks of ”Socialists” with ill-concealed disdain, and always in favor of Communism and the Communist Party. The reason for this is clearly explained by Engels himself in the preface written by him for the English edition, but that has not prevented many an unscrupulous opponent of Socialism from quoting the _Communist Manifesto_ of Marx and Engels against the Socialists of the Marx-Engels school.[7] In like manner, the utterances and ideas of many of those who formerly called themselves Socialists have been quoted against the Socialists of to-day, notwithstanding that it was precisely on account of their desire to repudiate all connection with, and responsibility for, such ideas that the founders of the modern Socialist movement took the name ”Communists.”
Nothing could be clearer than the language in which Engels explains why the name Communist was chosen, and the name Socialist discarded. He says: ”Yet, when it (the _Manifesto_) was written, we could not have called it a _Socialist Manifesto_. By Socialists, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of these already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances; in both cases men outside of the working-cla.s.s movement, and looking rather to the 'educated' cla.s.ses for support. Whatever portion of the working cla.s.s had become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolution and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself Communist. It was a crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism; still, it touched the cardinal point and was powerful enough among the working cla.s.s to produce the Utopian Communism, in France, of Cabet, and in Germany, of Weitling. Thus Socialism was, in 1847, a middle-cla.s.s movement; Communism a working-cla.s.s movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, 'respectable'; Communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that the 'emanc.i.p.ation of the working cla.s.s must be the act of the working cla.s.s itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the names we must take.
Moreover, we have ever since been far from regretting it.”[8]
There is still, unfortunately, much misuse of the word ”Socialism,” even by some accredited Socialist exponents. Writers like Tolstoy, Ibsen, Zola, and many others, are constantly referred to as Socialists, when, in fact, they are nothing of the sort. Still, the word is now pretty generally understood as defined by the Socialists--not the ”Socialists”
of sixty years ago, who were mostly Communists, but the Socialists of to-day, whose principles find cla.s.sic expression in the _Communist Manifesto_, and to the attainment of which they have directed their political parties and programmes. In the words of Professor Thorstein Veblen: ”The Socialism that inspires hopes and fears to-day is of the school of Marx. No one is seriously apprehensive of any other so-called Socialistic movement, and no one is seriously concerned to criticise or refute the doctrines set forth by any other school of 'Socialists.'”[9]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Republican National Platform, 1908.
[2] I quote the English translation from the London _Clarion_, December 18, 1905.
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