Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/810

 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL by one who confesses to be ' a convinced Socialist' (presumably Collec- tivist Socialist) himself, because ' he felt that the scientific tone in which M. Naquet attempts the confutation of Collectivism deserves full consideration at the hands of English Socialists and of all those interested in the topics of which the book treats.' The compliment is honourable to both parties, and it is just, for M. Naquet, spite of having so long forsaken science for the camps of extreme poli- tics, certainly shows in this book an uncorrupted scientific temper, and examines every pretension of Collectivism with the most perfect fairness and impartiality. His verdict, however, is invariably hostile, and his little book is really an uncommonly concise, lucid, and handy answer to the new Socialism of Marx and Lassalle. He examines first their critical doctrines, their theory of value, of the iron law, of interest and profit, of the primitive accumulation, and then their more organic and constructive ideas, as far as he is able to deduce them, with the help of commentators like Schaeffie from the too exclu- sively critical works of Marx and Lassalle. He takes a much less favourable view than Schaeffie of the effects of a Socialist r.gime, showing by a few effective illustrations how, without liberty of produc- tion liberty of consumption is quite impossible, especially liberty of intellectual and moral consumption, as he calls it, i.e. education, study, printing. His own standpoint he describes as that of Liberal Socialism. He is, he says, 'profoundly a Socialist,' because he is shocked by the social injustice and misery that exist about him, but he is also pro- roundly a Liberal, and considers that the good of mankind can never be promoted by any State interference which has ' the effect of diminish- ing individual liberty, instead of protecting, guaranteeing, and develop- ing such liberty.' This last clause indicates the scope and limits of the social policy which he terms Liberal Socialism. The original title of the book, it may be mentioned, is Socialisne Collectivist et Socialisme Liberal; and Liberal Socialism would make use of law, he says, only in the manner of oil to lubricate the normal .machinery of society, the sum of its applications being these, viz., ' to facilitate private enterprises, to guarantee small people against deception and fraud, each day more and more to furnish the worker with the weapon of education in order to put him in a position to safeguard more efficaciously his interests; to cause the State to intervene in order to protect the liberty of the weak, to oppose that which injures the public health, to act by taxation in a coercive manner with a view to prevent the formation of too great individual fortunes, and also with a view to prevent the soil from being more parcelled up every day; to cause the obstacles to disappear which a series of bad governments have accumulated, and which the actual want of solidarity among the nations forces the governments to accumulate still more,' i.e., war expenses and national debts. JoN RAE