Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/87

 SOCIALISM

65

SOCIALISM

parliamentary systems, favourable to violence, tend- ing towards destructive revolution. The Confedera- tion Gcnerale du Travail is rapidly absorbing the So- cialist movement in France, or at least robbing it of the ai-dent element that gives it life.

In the British Isles the Socialist movement has had a less stormy career. After the collapse of Owenism and the Chartist movement, the practical genius of the nation directed its chief reform energies towards the consoUdation of the trade unions and the building up of the great co-operative enterprise. Steadily, for some forty j-ears, the trade-union leaders worked at the strengthening of their respective organizations, which, with their dual character of friendly societies and professional associations, had no small part in training the w'orldng classes in habits of combination for common ends. And this lesson was emphasized and enlarged by the Co-operative movement, which, springing from the tiny efforts of the Rochdale Pio- neers, spread throughout the country, till it is now one of the mightiest business organizations in the world. In this movement many a labour leader learnt habits of business and of successful committee work that enabled him later on to deal on equal, or even on advantageous, terms with the representatives of the o^NTiing classes. But during all this period of training the Socialist movement proper lay dormant. It was not until 1SS4, with the foundation of the strictly Marxian Social Democratic Federation by H. M. Hyndman, that the Socialist propaganda took active form in England. It did not achieve any great immediate success, nor has it ever since shown signs of appealing widely to the English temperament. But it was a beginning, and it was followed by other, more inclusive, organizations. A few months after its foundation the Socialist League, led by William Morris, seceded from it and had a brief and stormy existence. In 1893, at Bradford, the "Independent Labour Party" was formed under the leadership of J. Keir Hardie, with the direct purpose of carrying Socialism into politics. Attached to it were two weekly papers, "The Clarion" and "The Labour Leader"; the former of which, by its sale of over a million copies of an able little manual, "Merrie England", had no small part in the diffusion of popular Socialism. All these three bodies were Marxian in doctrine and largely working class in membership.

But, as early as 1883, a group of middle-class stu- dents had joined together as The Fabian Society. This body, while calling itself Soeiahst, rejected the Mar.xian in favour of Jevonsian economics, and de- voted itself to the social education of the public by means of lectures, pamphlets and books, and to the spread of Collect ivist ideas by the "permeation" of

Eublic bodies and political parties. Immense as have een its achievements in this direction, its constant preoccupation with practical measures of reform and its contact with organized party politics have led it rather in the direction of the "Servile State" than of the Socialist Commonwealth. But the united efforts of the various Soeiahst bodies, in concert with trade unionism, resulted, in 1899, in the formation of the Labour Representation Committee which, seven years later, had developed into the Labour Party, with about thirty representatives in the Hou.se of Commons. Already, however, a few years' practical acquaint- ance with i)arty politics has diminished the Socialist orthodoxj' of the Labour Party, and it shows signs of becoming absorbed in the details of party contention. Significant commentaries appeared in the summer of 1911 and in the spring of 1912; industrial di.sturb- ances, singularly resembling French Syndicalism, oc- curred spontaneously in most commercial and min- ing centres, and the whole Labour movement in the British Lsles has reverted to the Revolutionary type that hust appeared in 1889. XIV .-^

In every European nation the Socialist movement has followed, more or less faithfully, one of the three preceding types. In Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Italy it is predominantly parhamentary: in Rus- sia, Spain, and Portugal it displays a more bitterly revolutionary character. But everywhere the two tendencies, parliamentary and revolutionary, struggle for the upper hand; now one, now the other becoming predominant. Nor is the movement in the United States any exception to the rule. It began about 1849, purely as a movement among the German and other immigrants and, in spite of the migration of the old International to New York in 1 872, had but little effect upon the native population till the Henry Georga movement of 1886. Even then jealousies and divi- sions restricted its action, till the reorganization of the Socialist Labour Party at Chicago in 1889. Since then the movement has spread rapidly. In 1897 appeared the Social Democracy of America, which, uniting with the majority of the Socialist La- bour Party in 1901, formed the present rapidly grow- ing Socialist Party. In the United States the move- ment is still strongly Marxian in character, though a Revisionist school is growing up, somewhat on the lines of the English Fabian movement, under the in- fluence of writers hke Edmond Kelly, Morris Hillquit, and Professors Ely and Zueblin. But the main body is still crudely Revolutionary, and is likely to remain so until the political democracy of the nation is more perfectly reflected in its economic conditions.

These main points in the history of Sociahsm lead up to an examination of its spirit and intention. The best idealism of earlier times was fixed upon the soul rather than upon the body: exactly the opposite is the case with Socialism. Social questions are almost entirely questions of the body — pubUc health, sanitation, housing, factory conditions, infant mor- tality, employment of women, hours of work, rates of wages, accidents, unemployment, pauperism, old-age pensions, sickness, infirmity, lunacy, feeble-minded- ness, intemperance, prostitution, physical deteriora- tion. All these are excellent ends for activity in themselves, but all of them are mainly concerned with the care or cure of the body. To use a Catholic phrase, they are opportunities for corpioral works of mercy, which may lack the spiritual intention that would make them Christian. The material may be made a means to the spiritual, but is not to be con- sidered an end in itself. This world is a place of probation, and the time is short. Man is here for a definite purpose, a purpose which transcends the limits of this mortal life, and his first business is to realize this purpose and carry it out with whatever help and guidance he may find. The purpose is a spiritual one, but he is free to choose or refuse the end for which he was created; he is free to neglect or to co-operate with the Divine assistance, which will give his life the stability and perfection of a spiritual rather than of a material nature. This being so, there must be a certain order in the nature of his development. He is not wholly spiritual nor wholly material; he has a soul, a mind, and a body; but the interests of the soul must be supreme, and the interests of mind and body must be brought into proper subservience to it. His movement towards perfection is by way of .lacent; it is not easy; it requires continual exercise of the will, continual discipHne, continual training — it is a war- fare and a pilgrimage, and in it are two elements, the spiritual and the material, which .are one in the unity of his daily life. As St. Paul pointed out, there must be a continual struggle between these two elements. If the individual life is to be a success, the spiritual desire must triumph, the material one must be sub- ordinate, and when this is so the whole individual life is lived with proper economy, spiritual things being sought after as an end, while material things are used merely as a means to that end.