CHAPTER II.

POLITICAL SOCIALISM,-WHAT IS LEFT, A LOSING OR A SAVING REMNANT?

A RESUME.-CARL SCHURZ ON KARL MARX.-SOCIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF THE STATE. THE CLASS-WAR.-SURPLUSVALUE. SOCIALIST CONCEPTION OF SURPLUS-VALUE CORRECT, APPLICATION WRONG.-DOGMA ILLUSTRATED BY INDIANS MAKING SUN-DRIED BRICK.-MARX STOOD FOR GOLD MONEY.-ECONOMY OF TRUSTS, EXTRAVAGANCE OF GOVERNMENT.-MAYOR SEIDEL QUOTED.-ALDRICH AND SHAW QUOTED.-TYRANNY OF LAW.-TYRANNY OF THE STATE.-SHOPS DISMAL.-STORES TURNED INTO WAREHOUSES. NO FASHIONS.-NO ADVERTISING. THE SAVING REMNANT.

There have been two distinct schools of systematic Socialism; one speculative the other political, one persuasive the other compulsory, one passive the other dynamic, one Owenite the other Marxite; both schools have sought the same ends by exactly opposite methods. The Owenites developed into Utopia, tried out their methods in practice, and culminated their propaganda in Mr. Bellamy's Looking Backward, a book which is now condemned more bitterly by Socialists than by anybody else. Both practice and propaganda failed. So that the Owenites may be dismissed from other than incidental consideration.

CARL SCHURZ AND KARL MARX

Political Socialism is an off-shoot developed out of Utopian Socialism and for fifty years was concurrent with it; indeed the recruits of the former were mostly Utopians. The plan has not been tried out in concrete form since 1848, (the year in which the Communistic Manifesto was issued). In that year, Louis Blanc, an officer of the French government, under stress of Socialism, managed to induce the Republic to establish public workshops in Paris, in which the workmen elected their own foremen and all re

ceived the same wages. In these ateliers na

tionaux more than a hundred thousand men were employed and more than fifty thousand dollars were paid out daily in wages. In a short time there was an outbreak and a strike in which the workmen engaged. After much loss the experiment was declared to be a failure and abandoned. M. Blanc fled to England where he wrote an exhaustive history of the French Revolution. Robert Hunter, a well-known Socialist and American writer, says that Herr Marx was much indebted to M. Blanc and other French Socialists, for his philosophical and political conception of economic society, but that he looked with lofty contempt upon Utopians and their methods. No doubt that Hunter is right for Marx was an ar

bitrary man. Speaking of a political club meeting at Cologne, a very distinguished American publicist says:

"Among others, the leader of the Communists, Karl Marx was there. He could not have been much more than thirty years old at the time, but already was the recognized head of the advanced socialist school. The somewhat thick-set man, with his broad forehead, his very black hair and beard and his dark sparkling eyes at once attracted general attention. He enjoyed the reputation of having acquired great learning, and as I knew very little of his discoveries and theories, I was all the more eager to gather words of wisdom from the lips of that famous man. This expectation w's disappointed in a peculiar way. Marx's utterances were full of meaning, logical and clear, but I have never seen a man whose bearing was so provoking and intolerable, To no opinion, which differed from his, he accorded the honor of even a condescending consideration. Everyone who contradicted him he treated with abject contempt; every argument which he did not like he answered with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motive of him who had advanced it.

*

* * Of course the proposition advanced or advocated by Marx at that meeting was voted down." *

*Carl Schurz, Reminiscences, Vol. I, page 139.

The writer then goes on to tell how he took home the important lesson, that he who would be the leader and teacher of men must treat the opinions of others with respect. It might be interesting to inquire whether the time did not come when Mr. Schurz forgot this "important lesson."

As I sat in the gallery at the National Socialist convention in Brands's Hall, Chicago, May 10, 1908, and saw the demeanor of the delegates toward each other, and heard the debates, Schurz's words forced themselves upon me. Identically the same spirit and disposition manifest in Cologne, in 1848, was manifest in Chicago, in 1908, no less in the female than in the male delegates.

But coming back to our main theme: It is singularly worthy of notice that the very year, save one, in which State Socialism was declared to be a practical failure in Paris, it was declared. to be a theoretical success in London. In its escape from Utopia, political Socialism fell back to the theory of evolution where for a time it made great headway under the assumed sanction of that mighty philosophy; but in time, it here encountered the Marxian Contradiction involved in the Struggle for Existence, the Survival of the Fittest, a principle directly contrary to co-operation; it then fell back to the "Mutual Aid" theory of Prince Kropotkin; next it encountered

the overwhelming sentiment against a compulsory, industrial army and the charge that it forestalled personal liberty and circumvented the rights of personal property; it has now fallen back from this position and its leaders declare that neither personal liberty nor private property is repugnant to its spirit and policy,-indeed the wisest of these leaders proclaim themselves to be champions of both personal liberty and private property. Notwithstanding the writings of Herron, Patterson, Sinclair, Garland, and Wells, Socialism has greatly modified its attitude to wards the institution of marriage, the family, the sentiment of patriotism, and religious worship.

SOCIALIST CONCEPTION OF THE STATE

Before inquiring into what is left of Philosophic and Political Socialism, it may be well to investigate the underlying principle, the ultimate sanction, upon which it claims to rest and by which it seeks to justify itself.

After the manner of Auguste Comte,-to whom, as before remarked, it does not always give credit,-Philosophic Socialism conceives that the Man is made for the State and not the State for the Man. Humanity in the abstract becomes an entity. This entity is idealized. Not, perhaps, in concrete form as the spirit of the