Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/240

Rh 212 COMMUNISM entirely political ; it propounded no new economic theories. It arose from a joint effort of many sections of extreme politicians who w&re agreed in nothing but in demanding the establishment of (1) a democratic republic, and (2) the communal (or corporate) independence of Paris. Only .about seven out of the seventy members of the Communal Government were communists in the economic sense, and these seven were among the most thoughtful and least violent of the party to which they belonged. They never had an opportunity of giving any official sanction to their communistic views, and they were gradually thrust on one side by their more violent and unscrupulous comrades. This is therefore not the place to attempt anything like an account of the brief reign of the Commune, which indeed belongs to the history of Paris. It is sufficient to state that its doings were not even tinged with communism in the economic sense of the word. Communistic schemes have found advocates in almost every age and in many different countries. The foremost men both of thought and action have from time to time been attracted by them. They have been so various in ecope, and the amount of detail with which they are described by their authors is so considerable, that it is difficult to get at the underlying principle which is common to them all. It must be remembered that the philosophic communism of Plato and More has been adapted to the wants of actual daily life by rough German peasants and Lancashire operatives ; and though of course the actual has differed a good deal from the ideal commune, yet their resemblance is, under the circumstances, very much more striking than their divergence. The one thing that is shared by all communists, whether speculative or practical, is deep dissatisfaction with the economic conditions by which Plato s they are surrounded. In Plato s Republic the dissatisfac- Republic. ^[ on j g no t }i m ited to merely economic conditions. In his examination of the body politic there is hardly any part which he can pronounce to be healthy. He would alter the life of the citizens of his state from the very moment of birth, Children are to be taken away from their parents and nurtured under the supervision of the state. The old nursery tales, &quot; the blasphemous nonsense with which mothers fool the manhood out of their children,&quot; are to be suppressed. Dramatic and imitative poetry are not to be allowed. Education, marriage, the number of births, the occupations of the citizens are to be controlled by the guardians or heads of the state. The most perfect equality of conditions and careers is to be preserved ; the women are to have similar training with the men, no careers and no ambition are to be forbidden to them ; the inequalities and rivalries between rich and poor are to cease, because all will be provided for by the state. Other cities are divided against themselves. &quot; Any ordinary city, however small, is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, at war with one another &quot; (Republic, bk. iv. p. 249, Jowett s translation). But this ideal state is to be a perfect unit ; although the citizens are divided into classes according to their capacity and ability, there is none of the exclusiveness of birth, and no inequality is to break the accord which binds all the citizens, both male and female, together into one harmonious whole. The marvel lous comprehensiveness of the scheme for the government of this ideal state makes it belong as much to the modern as to the ancient world. Many of the social problems to which Plato draws attention are yet unsolved, and some are in process of solution in the direction indicated by him. He is not appalled by the immensity of the task which he has sketched out for himself and his followers. He admits that there are difficulties to be overcome, but he says in a sort of parenthesis, &quot; Nothing great is easy.&quot; He refuses to be satisfied with half measures and patchwork reforms. &quot; Enough, my friend ! but what is enough while anything remains wanting ] &quot; These sentences indicate the spirit in which philosophical as distinguished from practical com munists from the time of Plato till to-day have undertaken to reconstruct human society. Sir Thomas More s Utopia has very many of the Mo characteristics of The Republic. There is in it the same ^ wonderful power of shaking oft the prejudices of the place arid time in which it was written. The government of Utopia is described as founded on popular election ; com munity of goods prevailed, the magistrates distributed the instruments of production among the inhabitants, and the wealth resulting from their industry was shared by all. The use of money and all outward ostentation of wealth were forbidden. All meals were taken in common, and they were rendered attractive by the accompaniment of sweet strains of music, while the air was filled by the scent of the most delicate perfumes. More s ideal state differs in one important respect from Plato s. There was no community of wives in Utopia. The sacredness of the family relation and fidelity to the marriage contract were recognized by More as indispensable to the well- being of modern society. Plato, notwithstanding all the- extraordinary originality with which he advocated the emancipation of women, was not able to free himself from the theory and practice of regarding the wife as part and parcel of the property of her husband. The fact, therefore, that he advocated community of property led him also to advocate community of wives. He speaks of &quot; the possession and use of women and children,&quot; and proceeds to show how this possession and use must bo regulated in his ideal state. Monogamy was to him mere exclusive possession on the part of one man of a piece of property which ought to be for the benefit of the public. The circumstance that he could not think of wives other wise than as the property of their husbands only makes it the more remarkable that he claimed for woir.en absolute equality of training and careers. The circumstance that communists have so frequently wrecked their projects by attacking marriage and advocating promiscuous intercourse between the sexes may probably be traced to the notion which regards a wife as being a mere item among the goods and chattels of her husband. It is not difficult to find evidence of the survival of this ancient habit of mind. &quot; 1 will be master of what is mine own,&quot; says Petruchio. &quot; She is my goods, my chattels.&quot; The Perfectionists of Oneida, a well-known communistic society in the United States which has put into practice community of wives, or, as they call it, complex marriage, justify their extraordinary social system by affirming that there is &quot; no intrinsic difference between property in persons and property in things; and that the same spirit which abolished exclusiveness in regard to money would abolish, if circumstances allowed full scope to it, exclusiveness in regard to women and children &quot; (Nordhoffs Communistic Societies of the United States, pp. 271-2). It is this notion of a wife as property that is responsible for the wild opinions communists have often held in favour of a community of wives and the break-up of family relations. If they could shake off this notion and take hold of the conception of marriage as a contract, there is no reason why their views on the community of property should lead them to think that this contract should not include mutual fidelity and remain in force during the life of the contracting parties. It was probably not this conception of the marriage relation so much as the influence of Christianity which led More to discc untenance community of wives in Utopia. It is strange that the same influence did not make him include the absence of slavery as one of the characteristics of his ideal state. On the contrary, however, we find in Utopia