values, and State powers to purchase any site at the price on the rate-book, a national system of insurance against accident and sickness, feeding and clothing poor children, free opening of secondary schools and universities." In giving prominence to this "anti-Socialist" speech the "Labour Leader" sarcastically remarked: "The items do not, of course, take us quite as far as we Socialists would go; but they are fairly good to be going on with. Ours is to once again cordially welcome Mr. Rutherford as champion against Socialism." 2 A further danger consists in this, that many Socialists in Parliament and out of it like to sail under a false flag, in accordance with the tactics usually employed by the Fabian Society (see ante, Chapter XXXIII). Socialist publications inform us: "Among Socialists who stood and were elected as official Liberals are P. Alden, Clement Edwards, and L. G. Chiozza Money." 3 Many Liberals, like Mr. Chiozza Money, Mr. Masterman, Mr. J. M. Robertson, not to speak of the Liberal-Labour group, are committed to Socialist or semi-Socialist legislation. Many Liberal newspapers, we cannot fairly deny, are avowedly on the side of Socialism. The Liberal rank and file are also in the majority of instances quite favourable to the general principles of municipalisation and Labour legislation. Above all, as has so often been predicted by us, the two political camps of landlordism and capitalism are bound to combine together against Socialism, and they can only do so effectively under the Imperialist, Tariff Reform, anti-Land Reform, and anti-Municipalisation flags. The Liberal party cannot attempt single-handed to withstand us."4 Socialism often poses as Liberalism and is accepted as such by the unwary. A further danger of British Socialism lies in the fact 1 Labour Leader, October 18, 1907. 2 Ibid. that it leads to the deterioration of the national character. "The strength of every community must finally depend on the character of the individuals who compose it. If they are self-reliant, energetic, and dutiful, the community will be strong; if, on the contrary, they have been taught to rely upon others rather than on themselves, to take life easily and to avoid unpleasant duties, then the community will be weak. Teach men that they owe no duty to their families, no duty to their country, and that their only responsibility is to humanity at large, and they will quickly begin to think and act as if they had no responsibility to anyone but themselves." 1 "Many workmen are being ruined morally and materially by Socialistic doctrines, because directly a man becomes imbued with the idea that he is not receiving full recompense for his labours he thinks himself justified in doing as little as he can for his employer. The consequence is that his labour, which is to him his stock-intrade, depreciates in value and when business slackens down he is one of the first to get the 'sack.' 1 Cox, Socialism, p. 20. 9992 2 Daw, Socialism Unmasked, p. 7. CHAPTER XXXV HOW THE PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM MAY BE CHECKED WHAT can be done to check the growth of Socialism? Some most interesting statistics supplied by the German Social-Democratic party will furnish the best reply to that question. An analysis of the electorate of Magdeburg and Bremen, two typical commercial and industrial towns, gave the following result: Commenting upon the foregoing table, a German Socialist periodical wrote: "An analytical comparison of Die Neue Gesellschaft, September 1907, p. 325. the electorate of Hamburg and Bremen reveals an extraordinary similarity in its social composition. It shows that the workers form hardly a majority of the population. They can be victorious only when they march hand in hand with professional men, the lower officials, and the newer middle-class. However, not all working men are Socialists. At the last election 3,000 working men in Magdeburg, and 2,500 working men in Bremen, voted against Social-Democracy. The patriotic anti-Socialist working-men's associations are rapidly increasing their membership. A thousand workmen, one-third of the whole occupied at the Krupp-Gruson Works in Magdeburg, have joined the anti-Socialist working-men's associations. The 'working-men's associations for fighting Social-Democracy' have grown in a surprising fashion." The lower middle-class forms the strongest bulwark against the progress of Socialism, and Socialists know it. The philosopher of British Socialism, for instance, wrote: "The proletariat proper, the class which bears the future Socialist world in its womb, by no means at present everywhere outweighs, numerically, all other classes. On the contrary, so far as I am aware, this is only the case in Great Britain and some of the North American States, and even in these countries the majority is not large. The bulk of the non-proletarian sections of the democracy are by no means proletarian or Social-Democratic, even in their instincts, let alone Socialistic in their convictions. The predominating, or at all events most influential, elements in the non-proletarian democracy are what, for brevity, I have rather loosely termed the clerk and the shopkeeping class in other words, they who are, or hope to become, small capitalists, the small middle-class. This last section of the 'people' or the democracy is, as such, the most formidable, because the most subtle, enemy 'Die Neue Gesellschaft, September 1907, pp. 325, 326. with which the Socialist movement has to contend. The aim of the small capitalist, and of him who hopes to become one, is security and free play under the most advantageous conditions for his small capital to operate. On this account the little bourgeois, the small middleclass in its various sections, is the great obstacle which will have to be suppressed before we can hope to see even the inauguration of a consciously Socialist policy. It must be destroyed or materially crippled as a class before real progress can be made.” 1 Whilst many Socialists wish to destroy the lower middle-class, others, especially the Fabians, endeavour to convert it to Socialism, and to set it on against the wealthy. They argue: "The commercial clerk with his reading, his writing, his arithmetic, and his shorthand is a proletarian, and a very miserable proletarian, only needing to be awakened from his poor little superstition of shabby gentility to take his vote from the Tories and hand it over to us. The small tradesmen and ratepayers who are now allying themselves with the Duke of Westminster in a desperate and unavailing struggle against the rising rates entailed by the eight hours day and standard wages for all public servants, besides great extensions of corporate activity in providing accommodation and education at the public expense, must sooner or later see that their interest lies in making common cause with the workers to throw the burden of taxation directly on to unearned incomes." 2 "It only needs one evening's intelligent discussion of this monstrous state of affairs to make a beginning of a really sensible and independent organisation of the middle classes for their own defence and for their escape from between the two millstones of organised Labour and organised Plutocracy, which are at present grinding the last penny in the pound out of 'Bax, Essays in Socialism, pp. 40, 41. Shaw, The Fabian Society, p. 26. |