SOCIALISM 479 SOCIALISTS and Finnish affiliated organizations, and reduce the membership of the American Socialist Party to something like 7,000, as compared to a membership which once stood at 140,000. A split had already- taken place in August, 1919, in Chicago, when a large minority walked out of the convention hall, and formed the Com- munist and the Communist Labor parties, both of which organizations have since been driven underground by the prosecu- tions of the state and Federal authorities. The origin, development and the prin- ciples of the chief Socialist organizations having been set forth it remains only to describe briefly several important off- shoots of the main official movement. First of these is Syndicalism, which had its origin in the French labor movement. Syndicalism represents a reaction against State Socialism, to which, obviously, po- litical action would lead. Syndicalists hold that the State should be practically abolished, as it exists at present, at least, and that the industries should be owned and controlled by the organized workers employed in them. The school teachers should own the schools, the postal em- ployes should run the post office and the railroad workers should have full charge of transportation. The American repre- sentative organization of this movement is the I. W. W. Against this conception there has been still another reaction, originated in Eng- land, known as Guild Socialism. The movement is worthy of special notice, for while it remains comparatively small as on organization, it has nevertheless cap- tured the younger elements of the British Labor movement. Its program is almost perfectly represented in this country by the Plumb Plan of the American railroad brotherhoods for the nationalization of the railroads. The Guild Socialist program was first formulated, shortly before the World War, in the writings of G. D. H. Cole, an English writer, and A. R. Orage, editor of the "New Age." The idea is simply a combination of state ownership and control by the labor organizations. The state is to own the sources of raw mate- rial and the machinery of production. The workers, organized into "guilds," or industrial unions, are to control, each its own industry, regulating working condi- tions and prices. There are also to be consumers' guilds, representing those who will consume the output of the guild fac- tories, and these will have charge of dis- tribution. Apparently they will have very little to say about the prices they are to pay to the producers' guilds for the commodities they consume. Nor is it definitely stated what value will there Ih?, in state ownership of industries with- out control. "Guildsmen," as they term themselves, do not emphasize political action. Their plan is to permeate the labor organizations with their idea, cause them to organize on an industrial basis, and, finally, by sheer weight of their economic strength, take over the indus- tries. Another form of Socialism, using the word in its very broadest sense, is Con- sumers' Co-operation, whose origin is older than that of Marxian Social- ism, and which has ever since pursued its own course. It is the only form of collectivism which has demonstrated itself in actual practice. Here, society as a whole, as a general organization of con- sumers, will own and control, while labor will be in the service of society, on the old wage basis, modified by some system of joint-control, in so far as working conditions are concerned. Co-operation, however, has no theoretical program, but follows obediently in the wake of its own successful experiments, though its de- clared ideal, in common with all Socialists, is the Co-operative Commonwealth. Socialism, International, first as- sumed form in the International Work- ingmen's Association, organized in Paris, in 1864, of which Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Michael Bakunin were the leaders. It never prospered, and its head- quarters were, a few years later, re- moved to New York, where it gradually faded out of existence. The second inter- national organization of Socialists was effected, temporarily in 1889, when the political Socialist parties of all coun- tries began holding their international congresses. A permanent Bureau was finally formed in 1900, with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. This was removed to the Hague at the outbreak of the World War, in 1914, but for the entire duration of the war remained inactive. It was revived at Berne, in February, 1919. In March, 1919, a Third Inter- national was formed in Moscow, which repudiated political action and declared itself for violent revolution. (See So- cialism.) SOCIALISTS, CHRISTIAN, a name first taken by a small group of English reformers, in the forties of the last cen- tury, led by Vansittart Neale, Tom Hughes, author of "Tom Brown's School- days," and Canon Charles Kingsley, the noted novelist. They attached the "Chris- tian" to their Socialism to distinguish, themselves from the revolutionary So- cialists led by Marx and Engels, and to indicate their repudiation of Robert Owen's atheism, whose economic theories, however, they adopted in large part. They are undoubtedly the natural prede-
