But now, suppose you are an artist—and I use the word to cover all sorts of art, literary, dramatic and musical, as well as painting, sculpture, design and architecture—you want before all things freedom for personal expression, and you probably have an idea that this is the last thing you will get in the Socialist State. But, indeed, you will get far more than you do now. You will begin as a student, no doubt, in your local Municipal Art Schools, and there you will win prizes and scholarships and get some glorious years of youth and work in Italy or Paris, or Germany or London, or Boston or New York, or wherever the great teachers and workers of your art gather thickest; and then you will compete, perhaps, for some public work, and have something printed or published or reproduced and sold for you by your school or city; or get a loan from your home municipality for material—if your material costs money—and set to work making that into some saleable beautiful thing. If you are at all distinguished in quality, you will have a competition among public authorities from the beginning, to act as sponsors and dealers for your work; benevolent dealers they will be, and content with a commission. And if you make things that make many people interested and happy, you may by that fortunate gift of yours, grow to be as rich and magnificent a person as any one in the Socialist State. But if you do not please people at all, either the connoisseurs of the municipal art collection or private associations of art patrons or the popular buyer, well, then your lot will be no harder than the lot of any unsuccessful artist now; you will have to do something else for a time and win leisure to try again.

Theatrical productions will be run on a sort of improvement upon contemporary methods, but there will be no cornering of talent possible, no wild advertisement of favoured stars upon strictly commercial lines, no Theatrical Trust. The theatres will be municipal buildings, every theatre-going voter will be keen to see them comfortable and fine; they will, perhaps, be run in some cases by a public repertoire company and in another by a lessee, and this latter may be financed by his own private savings or by subscribers or partners, or by a loan from the public bank as the case may be. This latter method of exploitation by a lessee will probably also work best in the public Music Halls, but it is quite equally possible that these may be controlled by managers under partly elected and partly appointed public committees. In some cases the theatrical lessee might be a kind of stage society organized for the production of particular types of play. The spectators will pay for admission, of course, as they do now, but to the municipal box offices; and I suppose the lessee or the author and artists will divide up the surplus after the rent of the theatre has been deducted for the municipal treasury. In every town of any importance there will be many theatres, music halls and the like, perhaps under competing committees. In all these matters, as every intelligent person understands, one has to maintain variety of method, a choice of avenues, freedom from autocracies; and since the Socialist community will contain a great number of intelligent persons with leisure and opportunity for artistic appreciation, there is little chance of this important principle being forgotten, much less than there is in this world where a group of dealers can often make an absolute corner in this artistic market or that. You will not, under Socialism, see Sarah Bernhardt playing in a tent as she had to do in America, because all the theatres have been closed against her through some mean dispute with a Trust about the sharing of profits....

And if it is not too sudden a transition, it seems most convenient in a Socialist State to leave religious worship entirely to the care of private people; to let them subscribe among themselves, subject, of course, to a reasonable statute of mortmain, to lease land, and build and endow and maintain churches and chapels, altars and holy places and meeting-houses, priests and devout ceremonies. This will be the more easily done since the heavy social burthens that oppress religious bodies at the present time will be altogether lifted from them; they will have no poor to support, no schools, no hospitals, no nursing sisters, the advance of civilization will have taken over these duties of education and humanity that Christianity first taught us to realize. So, too, there seems no objection and no obstacle in Socialism to religious houses, to nunneries, monasteries and the like, so far as these institutions are compatible with personal freedom and the public health, but of course factory laws and building laws will run through all these places, and the common laws and limitations of contract override their vows, if their devotees repent. So that you see Socialism will touch nothing living of religion, and if you are a religious minister, you will be very much as you are at the present time, but with lightened parochial duties. If you are an earnest woman and want to nurse the sick and comfort the afflicted, you will need only, in addition to your religious profession, to qualify as a nurse or medical practitioner. There will still be ample need of you. Socialism will not make an end of human trouble, either of the body or of the soul, albeit it will put these things into such comfort and safety as it may.

Sec. 5.

And now let me address a section to those particular social types whose method of living seems most threatened by the development of an organized civilization, who find it impossible to imagine lives at all like their own in the Socialist State....

But first it may be well to remind them again of something I have already done my best to make clear, that the modern Socialist contemplates no swift change of conditions from those under which we live, to Socialism. There will be no wonderful Monday morning when the old order will give place to the new. Year by year the great change has to be brought about, now by this socialization of a service, now by an alteration in the incidence of taxation, now by a new device of public trading, now by an extension of education. This problem at the utmost is a problem of adaptation, and for most of those who would have no standing under the revised conceptions of social intercourse, it is no more than to ask whether it is wise they should prepare their sons or daughters to follow in their footsteps or consent to regard their callings as a terminating function.

So far as many professions and callings go, this matter may be dismissed in a few words. Under Socialism, while the particular trade or profession might not exist, there would probably be ample scope in the public machine for the socially more profitable employment of the same energies. A family solicitor, such as we know now, would have a poor time in a Socialist State, but the same qualities of watchful discretion would be needed at a hundred new angles and friction surfaces of the State organization. In the same way the private shopkeeper, as I have already explained, would be replaced by the department managers and buyers of the public stores, the rent collector, the estate bailiff—one might make long lists of social types who would undergo a parallel transformation.

But suppose now you are a servant, I mean a well-trained, expert, prosperous servant; would the world have no equivalent of you under the new order? I think probably it would. With a difference, there will be room for a vast body of servants in the Socialist State. But I think there will be very few servants to private people, and that the "menial" conception of a servant will have vanished in an entirely educated community. The domestic work of the ordinary home, one may prophesy confidently, will be very much reduced in the near future whether we move toward Socialism or no; all the dirt of coal, all the disagreeableness attendant upon lamps and candles, most of the heavy work of cooking will be obviated by electric lighting and heating, and much of the bedroom service dispensed with through the construction of properly equipped bath-dressing-rooms. In addition, it is highly probable that there will be a considerable extension of the club idea; ordinary people will dine more freely in public places, and conveniences for their doing so will increase. The single-handed servant will have disappeared, and if you are one of that class you must console yourself by thinking that under Socialism you would have been educated up to seventeen or eighteen and then equipped for some more interesting occupation. But there will remain much need of occasional help of a more skilled sort, in cleaning out the house thoroughly every now and then, probably with the help of mechanisms, in recovering and repairing furniture, and in all this sort of "helping" which will be done as between one social equal and another, many people who are now, through lack of opportunity and education, servants, will no doubt be employed. But where the better type of service will be found will probably be in the clubs and associated homes, where pleasant-mannered, highly-paid, skilful people will see to the ease and comfort of a considerable clientele without either offence or servility. There still remains, no doubt, a number of valets, footmen, maids and so on, who under Socialism would not be servants at all, but something far better, more interesting and more productive socially.

But this writing of servants brings me now to another possibility, and that is that perhaps you are, dear reader, one of that small number of fortunate people, rich and well placed in the world, who even under existing conditions seem to possess all that life can offer a human being. You live beautifully in a great London house, waited upon by companies of servants, you have country seats with parks about them and fine gardens, you can travel luxuriously to any part of the civilized world and live sumptuously there. All things are done for you, all ways are made smooth for you. A skilled maid or valet saves you even the petty care of your person; skilled physicians, wonderful specialists intervene at any threat of illness or discomfort; you keep ten years younger in appearance than your poorer contemporaries and twice as splendid. And above all you have an immense sense of downward perspectives, of being special and apart and above the common herd of mankind.

Now frankly Socialism will be incompatible with this patrician style. You must contemplate the end of all that. You may still be healthy, refined, free, beautifully clothed and housed; but you will not have either the space or the service or the sense of superiority you enjoy now, under Socialism. You would have to take your place among the multitude again. Only a moiety of your property will remain to your sort of person if any revolution is achieved. The rents upon which you live, the investments that yield the income that makes the employment of that army of butlers and footmen, estate workers and underlings possible, that buys your dresses, your jewels, your motorcars, your splendid furnishings and equipments, will for the most part be public property, yielding revenue to some national or municipal treasury. You will have to give up much of that. There is no way out of it, your way to Socialism is through "the needle's eye." From your rare class and from your class alone does Socialism require a real material sacrifice. You must indeed give up much coarse pride. There is no help for it, you must face that if you face Socialism at all. You must come down to a simpler and, in many material aspects, less distinguished way of living.

This is so clearly evident that to any one who believes self-seeking is the ruling motive, the only possible motive in mankind, it seems incredible that your class ever will do anything than oppose to the last the advancement of Socialism. You will fight for what you have, and the Have-nots will fight to take it away. Therefore it is that the Socialists of the Social Democratic Federation preach a class war; to my mind a lurid, violent and distasteful prospect. We shall have to get out of the miseries and disorder of to-day, they think, if not by way of chateau-burning and tumbrils, at least by a mitigated equivalent of that. But I am not of that opinion. I have a lurking belief that you are not altogether eaten up by the claims of your own magnificence. While there are no doubt a number of people in your class who would fight like rats in a corner against, let us say, the feeding of poor people's starving children or the recovery of the land by the State to which it once belonged, I believe there is enough of nobility in your class as a whole to considerably damp their resistance. Because you have silver mirrors and silver hairbrushes, it does not follow that you have not a conscience. I am no believer in the theory that to be a sans-culotte is to be morally impeccable, or that a man loses his soul because he possesses thirty pairs of trousers beautifully folded by a valet. I cherish the belief that your very refinement will turn—I have seen it in one or two fine minds visibly turning—against the social conditions that made it possible. All this space, all this splendour has its traceable connection with the insufficiencies and miseries from which you are so remote. Once that realization comes to you the world changes. In certain lights, correlated with that, your magnificence can look, you will discover—forgive the word!—a little vulgar....

Once you have seen that you will continue to see it. The nouveau riche of the new Plutocratic type comes thrusting among you, demonstrating that sometimes quite obtrusively. You begin by feeling sorry for his servants and then apologetic to your own. You cannot "go it" as the rich Americans and the rich South Africans, or prosperous book-makers or rich music-hall proprietors, "go it," their silver and ivory and diamonds throw light on your own. And among other things you discover you are not nearly so dependent on the numerous men in livery, the spaces and enrichments, for your pride and comfort, as these upstart people.

I trust also to the appeal of the intervening spaces. You cannot so entirely close your world in from the greater world without that, in transit at least, the other aspects do not intrude. Every time you leave Charing Cross for the Continent, for example, there are all those horrible slums on either side of the line. These things are, you know, a part of your system, part of you; they are the reverse of that splendid fabric and no separate thing, the wide rich tapestry of your lives comes through on the other side, stitch for stitch in stunted bodies, in children's deaths, in privation and anger. Your grandmothers did not realize that. You do. You know. In that recognition and a certain nobility I find in you, I put my hope, much more than in any dreadful memories of 1789 and those vindictive pikes. Your class is a strangely mixed assembly of new and old, of base and fine. But through it all, in Great Britain and Western Europe generally, soaks a tradition truly aristocratic, a tradition that transcends property; you are aware, and at times uneasily aware, of duty and a sort of honour. You cannot bilk cabmen nor cheat at cards; there is something in your making forbids that as strongly as an instinct. But what if it is made clear to you (and it is being made clear to you) that the wealth you have is, all unwittingly on your part, the outcome of a colossal—if unpremeditated—social bilking?

Moreover, though Socialism does ask you to abandon much space and service, it offers you certain austere yet not altogether inadequate compensations. If you will cease to have that admirable house in Mayfair and the park in Kent and the moorlands and the Welsh castle, yet you will have another ownership of a finer kind to replace those things. For all London will be yours, a city to serve indeed, and a sense of fellowship that is, if you could but realize it, better than respect. The common people will not be common under Socialism. That is a very important thing for you to remember. But better than those thoughts is this, that you will own yourself too, more than you do now. All that state, all that prominence of yours—do you never feel how it stands between you and life?

So I appeal from your wealth to your nobility, to help us to impoverish your class a little relatively and make all the world infinitely richer by that impoverishment. And I am sure that to some of you I shall not appeal in vain....

Sec. 6.

And lastly, perhaps you are chiefly a patriot and you are concerned for the flag and country with which your emotions have interwoven. You find that the Socialist talks constantly of internationalism and the World State, and that presents itself to your imagination as a very vague and colourless substitute for a warm and living reality of England or "these States" or the Empire. Well, your patriotism will have suffered a change, but I do not think it need starve under Socialist conditions. It may be that war will have ceased, but the comparison and competition and pride of communities will not have ceased. Philadelphia and Chicago, Boston and New York are at peace, in all probability for ever at peace, so far as guns and slaughter go, but each perpetually criticizes, goads and tries to outshine the other. And the civic pride and rivalry of to-day will be nothing to that pride and rivalry when every man's business is the city and the city's honour and well-being is his own. You will have, therefore, first this civic patriotism, your ancient pride in your city, a city which will be like the city of the ancient Athenian's, or the mediaeval Italian's, the centre of a system of territories and the property and chief interest of its citizens. I, for instance, should love and serve, even as I love to-day, my London and my Cinque Ports, these Home Counties about London, the great lap of the Thames valley and the Weald and Downland, my own country in which all my life has been spent; for you the city may be Ulster or Northumbria, or Wales or East or West Belgium, or Finland or Burgundy, or Berne or Berlin, or Venetia, Pekin, Calcutta, Queensland or San Francisco. And keeping the immediate peace between these vigorous giant municipal states and holding them together there will still be in many cases the old national or Imperial government and the old flag, a means of joint action between associated and kindred municipalities with a common language and a common history and a common temper and race. The nation and the national government will be the custodian of the national literature and the common law, the controller and perhaps the vehicle of intermunicipal and international trade, and an intermediary between its municipal governments and that great Congress to which all things are making, that permanent international Congress which will be necessary to insure the peace of the world.

That, at least, is my own dream of the order that may emerge from the confusion of distrusts and tentatives and dangerous absurdities, those reactions of fear and old traditional attitudes and racial misconceptions which one speaks of as international relations to-day. For I do not believe that war is a necessary condition to human existence and progress, that it is anything more than a confusion we inherit from the less organized phases of social development. I think but a little advancement in general intelligence will make it an impossible thing.

But suppose after all that I am wrong in my estimate in this matter, and that war will still be possible in a Socialist or partly Socialist world; suppose that the Socialist State in which I am imagining you to live is threatened by some military power. Then I don't think the military power that threatens it need threaten very long. Because consider, here will be a State organized for collective action as never a State has been organized before, a State in which every man and woman will be a willing and conscious citizen saturated with the spirit of service, in which scientific research will be at a maximum of vigour and efficiency. What individualist or autocratic militarism will stand a chance against it? It goes quite without saying from the essential principles of Socialism that if war is necessary then every citizen will, as a matter of course, take his part in that war. It is mere want of intellectual grasp that has made a few working-class Socialists in England and France oppose military service. Universal military service, given the need for it, is innate in the Socialist idea, just as it is blankly antagonistic to the "private individual" ideas of Eighteenth-Century Liberalism. It is innate in the Socialist idea, but equally innate in that is the conception of establishing and maintaining for ever a universal peace.



CHAPTER XV

THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIALISM

Sec. 1.

And here my brief exposition of the ideals of Modern Socialism may fitly end.

I have done my best to set out soberly and plainly this great idea of deliberately making a real civilization by the control and subordination of the instinct of property, and the systematic development of a state of consciousness out of the achievements and squalor, out of the fine forces and wasted opportunities of to-day. I may have an unconscious bias perhaps, but so far as I have been able I have been just and frank, concealing nothing of the doubts and difficulties of Socialism, nothing of the divergencies of opinion among its supporters, nothing of the generous demands it makes upon the social conscience, the Good Will in man. Its supporters are divergent upon a hundred points, but upon its fundamental generalizations they are all absolutely agreed, and some day the whole world will be agreed. Their common purport is the resumption by the community of all property that is not justly and obviously personal, and the substitution of the spirit of service for the spirit of gain in all human affairs.

It must be clear to the reader who has followed my explanations continuously, that the present advancement of Socialism must lie now along three several lines.

FIRST, and most important, is the primary intellectual process, the elaboration, criticism, discussion, enrichment and enlargement of the project of Socialism. This includes all sorts of sociological and economic research, the critical literature of Socialism, and every possible way—the drama, poetry, painting, music—of expressing and refining its spirit, its attitudes and conceptions. It includes, too, all sorts of experiments in living and association. In its widest sense it includes all science, literature and invention.

SECONDLY, comes the propaganda; the publication, distribution, repetition, discussion and explanation of this growing body of ideas, until this conception of a real civilized State as being in the making, becomes the common intellectual property of all intelligent people in the world; until the laws and social injustices that now seem, to the ordinary man, as much parts of life as the east wind and influenza, will seem irrational, unnatural and absurd. This educational task is at the present time the main work that the mass of Socialists have before them. Most other possibilities wait upon that enlargement of the general circle of ideas. It is a work that every one can help forward in some measure, by talk and discussion, by the distribution of literature, by writing and speaking in public, by subscribing to propagandist organizations.

And THIRDLY, there is the actual changing of practical things in the direction of the coming Socialized State, the actual socialization, bit by bit and more and more completely, of the land, of the means of production, of education and child welfare, of insurance and the food supply, the realization, in fact, of that great design which the intellectual process of Socialism is continually making more beautiful, attractive and worthy. Now this third group of activities is necessarily various and divergent, and at every point the conscious and confessed Socialist will find himself co-operating with partial or unintentional Socialists, with statesmen and officials, with opportunist philanthropists, with trade unionists, with religious bodies and religious teachers, with educationists, with scientific and medical specialists, with every sort of public-spirited person. He should never lose an opportunity of explaining to such people how necessarily they are Socialists, but he should never hesitate to work with them because they refuse the label. For in the house of Socialism as in the house of God, there are many mansions.

These are the three main channels for Socialist effort, thought, propaganda and practical social and political effort, and between them they afford opportunity for almost every type of intelligent human being. One may bring leisure, labour, gifts, money, reputation, influence to the service of Socialism; there is ample use for them all. There is work to be done for this idea, from taking tickets at a doorway and lending a drawing-room for a meeting, to facing death, impoverishment and sorrow for its sake.

Sec. 2.

Socialism is a moral and intellectual process, let me in conclusion reiterate that. Only secondarily and incidentally does it sway the world of politics. It is not a political movement; it may engender political movements, but it can never become a political movement; any political body, any organization whatever, that professes to stand for Socialism, makes an altogether too presumptuous claim. The whole is greater than the part, the will than the instrument. There can be no official nor pontifical Socialism; the theory lives and grows. It springs out of the common sanity of mankind. Constructive Socialism shapes into a great system of developments to be forwarded, points to a great number of systems of activity amidst which its adherents may choose their field for work. Parties and societies may come or go, parties and organizations and names may be used and abandoned; constructive Socialism lives and remains.

There is a constantly recurring necessity to insist on the difference between two things, the larger and the lesser, the greater being the Socialist movement, the lesser the various organizations that come and go. There is this necessity because there is a sort of natural antagonism between the thinker and writer who stand by the scheme and seek to develop and expound it, and the politician who attempts to realize it. They are allies, but allies who often pull against each other, whom a little heat and thoughtlessness may precipitate into a wasteful conflict. The former is, perhaps, too apt to resent the expenditure of force in those conflicts of cliques and personal ambition that inevitably arise among men comparatively untrained for politics, those squabbles and intrigues, reservations and insincerities that precede the birth of a tradition of discipline; the latter is equally prone to think literature too broad-minded for daily life, and to associate all those aspects of the Socialist project which do not immediately win votes, with fads, kid gloves, "gentlemanliness," rose-water and such-like contemptible things. These squabbles of the engineer and the navigating officer must not be allowed to confuse the mind of the student of Socialism. They are quarrels of the mess-room, quarrels on board the ship and within limits, they have nothing to do with the general direction of Socialism. Like all indisciplines they hinder but they do not contradict the movement. Socialism, the politicians declare, can only be realized through politics. Socialism, I would answer, can never be narrowed down to politics. Your parties and groups may serve Socialism, but they can never be Socialism. Scientific progress, medical organization, the advancement of educational method, artistic production and literature are all aspects of Socialism, they are all interests and developments that lie apart from anything one may call—except by sheer violence to language—politics.

And since Socialism is an intellectual as well as a moral thing, it will never tolerate in its adherents the abnegation of individual thought and intention. It demands devotion to an idea, not devotion to a leader. No addicted follower of so-and-so or of so-and-so can be a good Socialist any more than he can be a good scientific investigator. So far Socialism has produced no great leaders at all. Lassalle alone of all its prominent names was of that romantic type of personality which men follow with enthusiasm. The others, Owen, Saint Simon, and Fourier, Proudhon, Marx, and Engels, Bebel, Webb, J. S. Mill, Jaures, contributed to a process they never seized hold upon, never made their own, they gave enrichment and enlargement and the movement passed on; passes on gathering as it goes. Kingsley, Morris, Ruskin—none are too great to serve this idea, and none so great they may control it or stand alone for it. So it will continue. Socialism under a great leader, or as a powerfully organized party would be the end of Socialism. No doubt it might also be its partial triumph; but the reality of the movement would need to take to itself another name; to call itself "constructive civilization" or some such synonym, in order to continue its undying work. Socialism no doubt will inspire great leaders in the future, and supply great parties with ideas; in itself it will still be greater than all such things.

Sec. 3.

But here, perhaps, before the finish, since the business of this book is explanation, it may be well to define a little the relation of Socialism to the political party that is most closely identified with it in the popular mind. This is the Labour Party. There can be no doubt of the practical association of aim and interest of the various Labour parties throughout modern civilized communities with the Socialist movement. The Social democrats of Germany are the Labour Party of that country, and wherever the old conception of Socialism prevails, those "class war" ideas of the Marxist that have been superseded in English Socialism for nearly a quarter of a century, there essentially the Socialist movement will take the form of a revolutionary attack upon the owning and governing sections of the community. But in Great Britain and America the Labour movement has never as a whole been revolutionary or insurrectionary in spirit, and in these countries Socialism has been affected from its very beginnings by constructive ideas. It has never starkly antagonized Labour on the one hand, and the other necessary elements in a civilized State on the other; it has never—I speak of the movement as a whole and not of individual utterances—contemplated a community made up wholly of "Labour" and emotionally democratic, such as the Marxist teaching suggests. The present labouring classes stand to gain enormously in education, dignity, leisure, efficiency and opportunity by the development of a Socialist State, and just in so far as they become intelligent will they become Socialist; but we all, all of us of Good Will, we and our children, of nearly every section of the community stand also to gain and have also our interest in this development. Great as the Labour movement is, the Socialist movement remains something greater. The one is the movement of a class, the other a movement of the best elements in every class.

None the less it remains true that under existing political conditions it is to the Labour Party that the Socialist must look for the mass and emotion and driving force of political Socialism. Among the wage workers of the modern civilized community Socialists are to be counted now by the hundred thousand, and in those classes alone does an intelligent self-interest march clearly and continuously in the direction of constructive civilization. In the other classes the Socialists are dispersed and miscellaneous in training and spirit, hampered by personal and social associations, presenting an enormous variety of aspects and incapable, it would seem, of co-operation except in relation to the main Socialist body, the Labour mass. Through that, and in relation and service to that, they must, it would seem, spend their political activities (I am writing now only of political activities) if they are not to be spent very largely to waste. The two other traditional parties in British politics are no doubt undergoing remarkable changes and internal disruptions, and the constructive spirit of the time is at work within them; but it does not seem that either is likely to develop anything nearly so definitely a Socialist programme as the Labour Party. The old Conservative Party, in spite of its fine aristocratic traditions, tends more and more to become the party of the adventurous Plutocracy, of the aggressive nouveau riche, inclines more and more towards the inviting financial possibilities of modern "Imperialism" and "Tariff Reform." The old Liberal Party strains between these two antagonists and its own warring and conflicting traditions of Whiggery and Radicalism. There can be no denying the great quantity of "Good Will" and constructive intention that finds a place in its very miscellaneous ranks, but the strong strain of obstinate and irreconcilable individualism is equally indisputable.

But the official Liberal attitude is one thing, and a very unsubstantial and transitory thing, and the great mass of Good Will and broad thinking in the ranks of Liberalism and the middle class quite another. Socialists are to be found not only in every class, but in every party. There can be no "Socialist" party as such. That is the misleading suggestion of irresponsible and destructive adventurers. It is impossible to estimate what forces of political synthesis may be at work at the present time, or what ruptures and coalitions may not occur in the course of a few years. These things belong to the drama of politics. They do not affect the fact that the chief Interest in the community on the side of Socialism is Labour; through intelligent Labour it is that Socialism becomes a political force and possibility, and it is to the Labour Party that the Socialist who wishes to engage in active political work may best give his means and time and energy and ability.

I write "political work," and once more I would repeat that it is to the field of electioneering and parliamentary politics under present conditions that this section refers. The ultimate purpose of Socialism can rely upon no class because it aims to reconstitute all classes. In a Socialist State there will be no class doomed to mere "labour," no class privileged to rule and decide. For every child there will be fair opportunity and education and scope to the limit of its possibilities. To the best there will be given difficulty and responsibility, honour and particular rewards, but to all security and reasonable work and a tolerable life. The interests and class traditions upon which our party distinctions of to-day rely must necessarily undergo progressive modification with every step we take towards the realization of the Socialist ideal.

Sec. 4.

So this general account of Socialism concludes. I have tried to put it as what it is, as the imperfect and still growing development of the social idea, of the collective Good Will in man. I have tried to indicate its relation to politics, to religion, to art and literature, to the widest problems of life. Its broad generalizations are simple and I believe acceptable to all clear-thinking minds. And in a way they do greatly simplify life. Once they have been understood they render impossible a thousand confusions and errors of thought and practice. They are in the completest sense of the word, illumination.

But Socialism is no panacea, no magic "Open Sesame" to the millennium. Socialism lights up certain once hopeless evils in human affairs and shows the path by which escape is possible, but it leaves that path rugged and difficult. Socialism is hope, but it is not assurance. Throughout this book I have tried to keep that before the reader.

Directly one accepts those great generalizations one passes on to a jungle of incurably intricate problems, through which man has to make his way or fail, the riddles and inconsistencies of human character, the puzzles of collective action, the power and decay of traditions, the perpetually recurring tasks and problems of education. To have become a Socialist is to have learnt something, to have made an intellectual and a moral step, to have discovered a general purpose in life and a new meaning in duty and brotherhood. But to have become a Socialist is not, as many suppose, to have become generally wise. Rather in realizing the nature of the task that could be done, one realizes also one's insufficiencies, one's want of knowledge, one's need of force and training. Here and in this manner, says Socialism, a palace and safety and great happiness may be made for mankind. But it seems to me the Socialist as he turns his hand and way of living towards that common end knows little of the nature of his task if he does so with any but a lively sense of his individual weakness and the need of charity for all that he achieves.

In that spirit, and with no presumption of finality, this little book of explanations is given to the world.



THE END



RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,

AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.



SYNDICALISM

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION

BY

J. RAMSAY MACDONALD. M.P.

Cloth, 1s. net.

A clear and concise explanation of what Syndicalism means, with a Critical Examination of its Aims and Principles

CONTENTS

I Trade Unionism, Socialism, and Syndicalism II Political Action and the General Strike III The Philosophy of Sorel IV The Programme of Direct Action V Syndicalism in Europe and America VI Syndicalism in Great Britain VII An Examination of Syndicalist Principles VIII The Programme of Syndicalism IX Conclusion

"Mr. Ramsay Macdonald has done a genuine service in writing this little book."—Westminster Gazette.

"A lucid and accurate account of the ideas behind a movement which is much talked about, but little understood."—Daily Chronicle.

"A clever and creditable piece of work."—Western Morning News.

"Tells everything that need be known in regard to Syndicalism."—Yorkshire Observer.

London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd.



A HISTORY OF LABOUR REPRESENTATION

By A. W. HUMPHREY

With an Introduction by GILBERT SLATER, Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford

Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

The objects of this book are to present a record of the movement for labour representation in the United Kingdom from its first beginning in 1857 to the end of 1911, and the arguments for and against class representation. Professor Gilbert Slater in his introduction writes: "Mr. Humphrey has earned the gratitude of students by the striking and straightforward narrative he has put together."

"A clear business-like and detailed history of the rise of the labour representation."—Times.

"A well-studied and interesting account."—Scotsman.

"Mr. Humphrey has earned the gratitude of all earnest students of sociology."—Western Mail.

THE CHILD AND THE PARENT

By DOUGLAS PEPLER

Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

A small volume containing the history of the provision of meals to the children of poor parents, and an account of children's care committees, their work and organization, with particular reference to the place of the voluntary worker and the duties of an official.

"The history of the origin and work of the Care Committee is dealt with by Mr. Douglas Pepler in an interesting way, and he writes suggestively of the great problems with which its workers are brought into contact."—Nation.

"It would be impossible to put the conditions of the problem in clearer or better words."—Evening News.

London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd.



THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE

By HAVELOCK ELLIS

Author of "The World of Dreams," "The Soul of Spain," etc.

Large Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d. net.

CONTENTS

Introduction—The Changing Status of Women—The New Aspect of the Woman's Movement—The Emancipation of Women in relation to Romantic Love—The Significance of a Falling Birth-rate—Eugenics and Love—Religion and the Child—The Problem of Sexual Hygiene—Immorality and Law—The War against War—The Problem of an International Language—Individualism and Socialism—Index.

"A singularly powerful book."—Daily Graphic.

"The work of one who thinks of, and fearlessly looks to, the future."—The Times.

"Should be read by our legislators, philanthropists, and reformers."—Daily News.

"Those who like to have their thoughts stimulated will find his book delightful."—Observer.

"A most interesting and suggestive book."—Scotsman.

RATIONALISM

By Rt. Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON. M.P.

Cloth - 1s. net.

CONTENTS

The Term—The Practical Position—The Religious Challenge—The Philosophical Challenge—The Skeptical Religious Challenge—The Meaning of Reason—The Test of Truth—Ultimate Problems—Ideals.

London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd.



MAN AND SUPERMAN

A COMEDY AND A PHILOSOPHY

BY

BERNARD SHAW

Paper, 6d.

"Of extraordinary brilliance and suggestiveness."—Vanity Fair.

"From first to last it is a royal feast of witticisms."—Yorkshire Daily Observer.

"This is his masterpiece."—Saturday Review.

JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND

BY

BERNARD SHAW

New Edition in Paper, with a new Preface, 6d.

"The cleverest play Mr. Shaw has written."—Evening Standard.

"John Bull's 'Other Island' is so far the author's masterpiece."—Glasgow Herald.

"One of the choicest and most stimulating of all the author's plays."—Yorkshire Post.

London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd.

THE END