218 SOCIALISM portant and most influential of all forms of socialism. (4) Anarchism. (5) Nihilism. (6) Christian socialism ; inasmuch as the various phases of Christian socialism condemn the principle of competition as operating in modern industry, and favour the organization of labour on united principles, and especially of productive associations with a common capital and an equitable system of distri- bution, they must be regarded as true forms of socialism. (7) To these should be added the speculative socialism of which Rodbertus is the most remarkable example ; recog- nizing the fundamental evils of the present system and agreeing with the Marx school in holding that socialism is the next stage in social evolution, Rodbertus believed that the period of its realization is so remote that any decidedly practical effort towards that end is inapplicable ; hence he could only recommend transitional remedial measures, which will at least circumscribe the mischief inherent in the present economic order and also pave the way towards a better state. (8) And last of all may be added the various forms of state socialism, which are all examples of state action on behalf of the poor, especially of the use of the public resources for that purpose. The word " socialism " is very frequently used in this sense. As the continued use of the word in such a way is almost a certainty, this phase of the subject must be recognized here. It may be described as socialistic inasmuch as it fully admits the responsibility of society for all its members ; but in many respects its tendencies are opposed to true socialism. It is a vague movement which has not yet had time to take shape, and cannot be discussed here. " Socialism of the chair " has already been discussed under POLITICAL ECONOMY, vol. xix. p. 393. The above classification can of course pretend only to be a rough and general one. The various heads of the classification are not exclusive. The first variety has chiefly an historical interest. The American communities (dis- cussed under COMMUNISM) are really cases of the old crude communism. Productive associations with state help stand on the Gotha programme of the social democrats of Germany. They are recommended by Christian socialists, both Catholic and Protestant, and they form an important item in the programme of the " knights of labour " of America. The resemblance in type between the " com- munity" of Owen, the phalange of Fourier, the mir or commune of Russia, and the free commune of Bakunin is apparent. It is the social unit as determined by obvious economic, local, and historical conditions, and in socialism naturally becomes the point of departure for a new con- struction of society. It will have been noted that most of the important phases of socialism have been and are international in sympathy and activity. The Marx so- cialism is spreading in nearly every country of the civilized world, the doctrine being diffused by energetic agitators, and not seldom by men of philosophic and literary culture. In late years this is true both of France and England. It is well known how active anarchism has been. The Christian socialist movement is more or less operative in Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, and to some extent in England. In this article our aim has been to give an expository and historical account of the various phases of socialism. It is impossible even to refer to all the different questions suggested in our sketch ; and to discuss the relations of antagonism and affinity between socialism and the pre- vailing social and economic ideas and institutions would require a long and elaborate treatise. In the course of the article many obvious points of relationship, and parti- cularly of contrast, between socialism and political economy have presented themselves. All that we can now do is to emphasize a few of the more important of these. The scope of the current political economy of Great Britain may be broadly defined as follows : given the existing arrangements with regard to land, capital, and labour, to determine the economic phenomena and the economic laws that will prevail under a system of free individual competition. As we have abundantly seen, socialism is diametrically opposed to the permanent continuance of these arrangements. It looks forward to the time when the present system of individual property in land and capital served by wage-labour will pass away, and when free competition on that basis will cease with the system of which it is a part. It regards the present economic order with the laws and conditions peculiar to it as a pass- ing phase in the historic evolution of mankind, with no greater claim to permanence or finality than other historic eras which have had their day. What enlightened socialism above all demands is that an unprejudiced science should endeavour to distinguish between such economic laws as are permanently grounded in the nature of man and his en- vironment and such as have their validity only in the exist- ing economic order, between such as are enduringly founded on nature and such as are only the accidents or temporary manifestations of a changing civilization. Socialists appeal to history to prove that what the orthodox economy con- sidered the natural and normal order of things, with its dis- tribution of wealth under the three categories of rent, profit, and wages, is really an exceptional phenomenon limited both in extent and duration. It is therefore an obvious error to speak of socialism as roundly controverting econo- mic law. It is no business of socialism to controvert a law grounded in nature, such as the physiological basis of the law of population ; but it denies the applicability of the Malthusian precept under the present condition, when wealth is superabundant, but badly distributed owing to causes for which neither nature nor science, but human selfishness and ignorance are responsible. Nor does it lie in the principles of socialism to question the validity of those special economic laws that hold good under the present economic order. Some of these, such as the iron law of wages, socialism is disposed rather to accentuate unduly as a necessity of the present system. It is the aim of socialism to abolish the conditions under which such laws have their validity. Socialists object to the present economic order because of the necessity of results which are opposed to human wellbeing. They object entirely to the existing order with its distribution of the produce of labour into the three categories of rent, profit, and wages, because on it are founded class distinctions, with the consequent antagonism of classes, and the subjection and degradation of the lower classes, holding that economic subjection involves all other forms of subjection and degradation. In short, scientific socialism as represented by Marx and Friedrich Engels appeals against the existing economic order, of which the orthodox political economy is an exposition and for which it is so frequently an apology, to the higher laws and principles of social evolu- tion as determined by the nature of man in relation to the environment in which he lives and develops. There is no space here to trace historically the influence of political economy in the genesis of socialism, nor that of socialism on the recent political economy. It has natu- rally been the tendency of socialism to emphasize the idea of the worth and significance of labour, so prominent in the school of Adam Smith. This was one of the most valuable features of the Saint-Simon school, otherwise so much dis- figured with utopianism and extravagance. As we have seen, the socialism of Marx is in some of its most im- portant aspects a development of Ricardian principles. Turning to the influence of socialism on political economists, we need but refer to that exercised by French socialism Relation to politi- cal eco- nomy.
