Читать книгу Pictures of the Socialistic Future (freely adapted from Bebel) онлайн

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Happily there is no problem so weighty, so profound, or so important, that its discussion cannot be relieved by a touch of humour. Herr Richter’s humour, his translator remarks, is Teutonic. This means, we apprehend, that the mock-heroic vein in which his narrative is couched is admirably preserved throughout. This, indeed, is its great artistic merit. We all recognise the magnanimity and generosity of our Socialist friends. Some of them, even in the private relations of life, may be as admirable as their sentiments, and it is an irrelevant waste of time to dispute their public spirit and virtue. There is, however, no authoritative exposition of the Socialist programme; and this, after all, and not the magnanimity of its doctrine, is the subject on which we require information. If we declare our difficulty in accepting as practicable the abolition of money and the substitution of a labour-note currency, as required by Marx, we are reminded, fairly enough, that Marx’s views have been demolished by his disciple, Edward Bernstein, a new leader of German Socialism, and that they are rejected by English Fabians. The policy of Fabians, German and English, is essentially a hand-to-mouth policy. It is hostile to the private employment of capital, but it has put forward no comprehensive plan for carrying its views into effect. It is, moreover, pertinently objected by the more logical or anarchical Socialists (the section represented by such writers as Prince Krapotkine in his recently published Conquest of Bread) that, by an extension of municipal trading, all that is compassed is the substitution of the rule of the political boss for the rule of the private capitalist, a plan which merely shifts the centre from which the tyranny of the enforced subordination of industry emanates. The Liberal controversialist, therefore, who wishes to criticise in detail the proposals of his opponents, is placed in a difficulty. He admits the imperfections of existing society; he accepts the laudatory estimate which the Socialists give of their own motives, but owing to lack of authoritative exposition, he is driven to work out for himself the details of the Socialist policy.