cialism finds a cover for its second retreat,—the defense of a partridge against a wild-cat.

REPUDIATING VIOLENCE

Times without number, Socialism has defined itself in platforms and programmes to mean: "The social ownership and control of all the means of production, distribution and exchange." In the first section of the Communist Manifesto, Herr Marx says:

"We have followed the more or less concealed civil war pervading in modern society up to that point, where it must break forth in open revolution, and then the Proletariate will arrive at supremacy through the forcible downfall of the Bourgeoisie.'

The Communist Manifesto, according to Mr. Spargo, is regarded as the birth-cry of Modern Socialism. It was written by Marx and Engels and adopted by the Communist League at the London meeting in 1847. It is the fundamental canon and doctrine of the present-day movement, so regarded by all "who speak with any authority whatever" in the councils of socialist propaganda.

But what has become of the imperative edict for Proletarians to attain supremacy by forcible downfall of Capitalism?

C. Derwent Smith, an English writer on the New Socialism and a student who has worked out a very ingenious indictment against what he calls "artificial monopoly," says:

"There is no danger in hords of accumulated wealth in the hands of individuals so long as a decent and comfortable subsistence is within the reach of everybody, * * * The advance to Socialism may very likely be by way of palliatives, but it will only be reached when its main idea, the public ownership of the means of production and distribution, safe-guarded by complete democracy, has been fully realized." *

In the socialist book entitled Merrie England, Robert Blatchford says:

"Socialism will not come by means of sudden coup. It will grow up naturally out of our surroundings and will develop gradually and by degrees." †

The same spirit runs through the scholastic and socialistic writings of H. G. Wells and the Fabian school of Socialism. American propagandists are even more pronounced than the English that the New Order will be inaugurated in a pacific manner. For instance Mr. Hunter says in a chapter entitled Socialism in the Parlia

ments:

*Natural Monopolies by C. Derwent Smith, London, 1909, pages 135 and 159.

†Merrie England by Robert Blatchford, American edition, page 86.

"Socialists have no desire to pursue the desperate methods of inciting workers to insurrection. They realize that violence is 2 sign of weakness. Increasing influence, and a growing assurance that Socialism will eventually attain complete power, have encouraged them to work with confidence toward the end of converting a majority of the nation to their views." *

Mr. Spargo says in a chapter on the Means of Realization:

"True there is still a good deal of alk about the Social Revolution, and there may be a few Socialists, here and there, who believe that Capitalism will come to a great crisis; that there will be a rising of millions in wrath, a night of fury, and agony, and then the sunrise of Brotherhood above the bloodstained valley and the corps-strewn plain. But most of us think only of the change that must come over society, transfering the control of its life from the few to the many. No considerable body of Socialists anywhere in the world to-day, and no Socialist whose words have any influence in the movement, believes that there will be a sudden, violent change from Capitalism to Socialism." +

* * *

President Woolsey says that the life of the International Workingmen's Association went out

*Socialists at Work.

†Socialism.

in the violence of the Paris Commune of 1871. The failure of this Commune and the ensuing death of the International may have had something to do with modifying the programme of organized and official Socialism.

This changed attitude from a programme of aggressive violence to one of democratic, parliamentary method is made all the more significant by the fact that European Socialists are divided into two branches and neither branch advocates the "open revolution," the "forcible downfall" of all existing social conditions as announced by Herr Marx. Both branches claim to be constitutional and parliamentary: One, the Marxite, proposing to promote its programme, as a whole; the other, the Revisionists or Opportunists, are piecemeal reformers: One proposes to overturn, the other to uplift, but up-lifters and over-turners alike agree in the end aimed at. Both branches are political, the first maintaining a party of its own and insisting on the dogma of Class-consciousness; the other seeks to accomplish its ends through existing political parties. Characteristic leaders of the first are Kautsky in Germany, Guesde in France, Ferri in Italy, and Hyndman in England; leaders of the second are Bernstein, Miller, and Turati, and the Fabianists.

The point is that neither party advocates the militant violence announced to come in the Com

munist Manifesto. Political Socialism has fallen back from the vital principle, the violent programme, of its founder.

CONCESSION TO ESTABLISHED ORDER

In my endeavor to answer the question: Is Political Socialism gaining or losing ground? is it still aggressive or gradually falling into a defensive position? I adduce one more particular and then content myself with a few minor but relevant observations.

The question now comes on the attitude of Socialism toward the individual,-that is the opportunity which the proposed New Order offers for self-realization, personal liberty, and private property.

In the communes of that "gentle, mystic dreamer," M. Saint-Simon, the entire population, all humanity, was to be organized into one family and the whole earth was to be made into one farm, the fruits apportioned in the family according to merit, the relative merits to be ascertained by scientific standards,-"From every man according to his ability, to every man according to his needs." Members of this universal family were to be divided into three classes; workers, artists, savants. Science was to be apotheosized. The functions of pope and