Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/103

Rh of a political character from without and those of an industrial character from within—are the foreshadowings of a new system of organisation. Commercialism lays its own cuckoo egg in its nest. Every epoch produces the thought and the ideals which end itself. Like a dissolving view on a screen, commercialism fades away and the image of Socialism comes out in clearer outline.

I have been detailing the Socialist criticism of the existing order, and I must now turn my attention to the constructive side of the movement. As a preliminary it is necessary to understand what the Socialist method is.

The Socialist movement, as conceived by the pre-Marxian Socialist, was not an incident in a social evolution in which the whole of society was to play a part; reason and moral affection were to bring the change as an act of individual will. Thus Fourier, Robert Owen and others had no idea of effecting a great Socialist transformation by organic change brought about, in the first instance at any rate, by political action, but they spent their energies in attempting to found ideal