Socialism & the Family

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Socialism and the Family (from The Case Against Socialism: A Handbook for Speakers and Candidates By the London Municipal Society 1908)

That Socialism is to be accompanied by sweeping and drastic changes as regards the existence of the home, the rights and duties of parents, and the upbringing of children, in view of Socialist writings and utterances, can admit of no doubt.

Mr. H. M. Hyndman predicts under Socialism "the complete change in all family relations," which must issue in "a widely extended communism." [The Historical Basis of Socialism, p. 452]

Anything approaching to family life draws down the fiercest denunciations on the part of some of the Socialists. For example, Mr. Belfort Bax writes: "We defy any human being to point to a single reality, good or bad, in the composition of the bourgeois family. It has the merit of being the most perfect specimen of the complete sham that history has presented to the world." [The Religion of Socialism, p. 141]

"Let us take another 'fraud' of middle-class family life,'" continues Mr. Bax, "the 'family party.'"

All that partakes of family life is under Socialism to be summarily consigned to complete and immediate destruction.

"The transformation of the current family-form . . . must inevitably follow the economic revolution. . . . The bourgeois 'hearth' . . . will then be as dead as Roman Britain."

Reasons Accounting For The Socialist's Hatred Of Family Institutions

There can be little doubt that one of the principal reasons which serves to account for the Socialist hatred of family institutions is that, in their minds, family life partakes essentially of "monopoly." What right, argues the Socialist, has any small group of persons to seek their life and happiness apart from the rest of the community? What right has any man to usurp one woman? again asserts the Socialist. What right, further, have parents to regard their offspring as private property, or in any way as belonging to themselves and not to the State? Once again, what right has a family to home joys not shared in equally by the community at large?

One and all of these sentiments inherent to Socialism are begotten of malignant jealousy, and spring from that ultra-individualism which, as Dr. Schaffle has so frequently stated, is one of the fundamental characteristics of Socialism.

The Family Under Socialism

The family, to quote the opinion of one of the great leaders of International Socialism—M. Jules Guesde—was useful and indispensable in the past, but is now only an odious form of property. It must be either transformed or totally abolished. M. Guesde conjectures that the time may come when the family relationship will be reduced to the relation of the mother to her child "at the period of lactation, and that, moreover, the sexual relations between man and woman, founded on passion or mutual inclination, should be enabled to become as free, as changeable, and as diverse as the intellectual or moral relations between individuals of the same or different sexes." [See Le Cathlchisme Socialiste, by M. Jules Guesde, pp. 72-79, quoted n Prof. Lecky's Democracy and Liberty, Cabinet edition, vol. ii. p. 350.]

Mr. H.G. Wells, the well-known English Socialist, in an article on Socialism published in The Fortnightly Review for November 1906, thus summarises the position of the family under Socialism: "My concern now is to point out that Socialism repudiates the private ownership of the head of the family as completely as it repudiates any other sort of private ownership. . . . Socialism, in fact, is the State family."

To much the same effect write Mr. William Morris and Mr. Belfort Bax. They inform us that under Socialism "property in children would cease to exist. . . ." "Thus," state these two writers, "a new development of the family would take place. . . ." [Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, p. 299.]

Mr. O'Brien in the following passage directs attention to one of the fundamental differences which exists between Socialism and the present system: "According to Socialism, the family exists for the State. According to individualism, the State exists for the family." [Socialism Tested by Facts, p. 129.]

The consequences which flow from this essential difference between the two systems are many and far-reaching.

Under Socialism the individual is "to think, speak, train his children or even beget them, as the State directs or allows, in the interest of the common good." [Mr. Rae's Contemporary Socialism, 3rd edition, p. 16.]

That these two latter restrictions are to be imposed on the individual under Socialism, vitally though they interfere with individual liberty, will be sufficiently evident from what follows.

In place of the present home life, which has hitherto been regarded as one of the institutions on which the British have most cause to pride themselves, there is to be substituted under Socialism a universal system of Foundlings' Hospitals for the children, and not improbably a sort of barrack accommodation for the parents.

Mr. Robert Blatchford, for example, in his celebrated Merrie England, provides us with kaleidoscopic views of Socialist life spent in public dining-rooms, in public this and public that. "... We set up one great kitchen, one general dining-hall, and one pleasant tea-garden."

Such conditions Mr. Blatchford describes as "much more sociable and friendly."

Similarly Mrs. Annie Besant in Industry under Socialism furnishes us with a picture of "public meal-rooms," "large dwellings," which are to "replace old-fashioned cottages; " [Fabian Essays, p. 155.] in fact, to all the paraphernalia of the barracks, if not of the workhouse.

What is this but a sort of resurrected Socialist State of Peru, where "the people were required to dine and sup with open doors, that the judges might be able to enter freely." [See Mr. Herbert Spencer's article in The Contemporary Review for September 1881, vol. xl. p. 345. See further as to this the chapter on the" Socialist State," p. 161.]

This, then, according to the accounts of many Socialists, is to be the life of the adult population in the Socialist State. So far as the youth of the community are concerned, their upbringing from almost their very entry into life is to take place in the glorified Foundlings' Hospitals which Socialism is to establish throughout the country.

"The Socialist mothers," states the Socialist writer, Mrs. Snowden, in regard to the upbringing of children, "will take charge of the very early years." [The Woman Socialist, p. 88]

Other Socialist writers, as, for example, M. Guesde, would reduce the custody by the mothers of their children to a still shorter period from the date of birth.

Plato, in depicting his Socialistic State, speaks of the State taking every precaution to prevent any woman from recognising her own child.

From this, modern Socialist teaching appears to differ but little, if at all. Mr. William Morris and Mr. Belfort Bax, writing in conjunction, in Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, assure us that under Socialism, "... property in children would cease to exist. . . ."

Socialism would, consequently, impose the support of the children upon the State in substitution for the liability of the parents. In so doing Socialism would, in fact, replace the existing obligation by a system infinitely less just than that which to-day prevails. No one, in a word, is to be called upon to maintain his own children, while from every one there is to be exacted the support of the children of the other members of the community.

One of the fundamental changes in connection with this branch of the present subject which Socialism would effect concerns the education of children.

In lieu of supplementing family education by State education, Socialism would bring about an entire substitution of the former by the latter. The Socialist regime "would not simply supplement family upbringing; it would of necessity weaken and ultimately supersede it." [The Impossibility of Social Democracy, by Dr. SchSffle, translated by Mr. Bosanquet, p. 153.] This would result, to quote again the words of Dr. Schaffle, in robbing "the overwhelming majority of the people, whose well-being it is designed to secure, of the highest and purest form of happiness, and of that very form which differences of outward circumstances down to the very lowest conditions almost entirely fail to touch. . . ."

Further, "it would tend either to make parents indifferent to the lot of their children, which would be prejudicial both to the child's happiness and to its good upbringing, or to set the parents constantly in arms against the organs of public education. . . ." In addition, "it would destroy the love of parents for their children, and of children to their parents, and by sapping all the springs of individuality would prevent all possibility of an individualising system of education on the part of the State."

Such a system would, in short, profoundly alter for the worse the characters of both children and parents alike.

Professor Woolsey in his valuable history treating of Communism [Communism and Socialism, p.71], specially calls attention to the fact that the history of the communistic societies goes to show that "family affections—one essential means by which man rises above the brute, and religion with all human improvements finds a home in the world—are nearly undeveloped."

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Capitalism and Calvinism

Calvinism and Capitalism, article in The Nation 1910

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CALVINISM IN THE BUSINESS WOULD.
The intimate relations between Protestantism and the spirit of modern business enterprise have been clearly recognized. The lead taken in the development of industry, commerce, and finance during the last three centuries by Holland and Great Britain, and by the Protestant sections of the population of Germany, Switzerland, and France, the peculiar aptitude for business emanating from the Independents, Baptists, Unitarians, Quakers, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, establish the strongest reason for supposing that Protestantism brought a new driving force into the world. The very title Protestant implies a certain grit and independence of character, favoring other than merely religious enterprise, and bringing into each schismatic church a large proportion of thoughtful, thriving families. For self-protection and the furtherance of their strongly-realized spiritual mission, these heretical minorities will naturally be drawn into unusually close co-operation for social and political purposes. When economic evolution has reached the stage in which "credit" is the soul of business, their personal confidence in one another will acquire a first-rate importance as a commercial asset. These are obvious factors making for the economic success of earnest, energetic minorities, quite independently of the particular spiritual creed which animates them. But there are certain forces of Protestantism which, emerging by peculiarly apt coincidence just when the appropriate economic system was ready for the operation, have been of paramount importance in the modern business world.

In two articles of profound and delicate analysis in the "Contemporary Review." Dr. Forsyth sets forth the distinctive part which the tenets and the regimen of Calvinism have played in energizing business life. At once ascetic in its ethical code, and rationalistic in its stress upon private judgment and personal responsibility in matters both of faith and of external activity, Calvinism moulded a personality closely adapted to the needs and opportunities of a business world which required tough, reliable, industrious, honest, self-assertive, enterprising men for its new methods. Calvinism certainly educated and supplied such men, the thrifty, self-contained entrepreneurs of the modern economic order. The Lutheran faith was too mild and too reposeful in its piety, too respectful to traditions. Calvinism was "the most anti-traditional and revolutionary of all the forces of Protestantism." In matters not only of faith and of church organization, but of political and civic government, it furnished organs and leaders of revolt and reformation everywhere, in Geneva, Scotland. England, America. The doctrine of election engendered a spirit of high personal confidence and of a dignity whose absolute submission to a Higher Power made its votaries restive to the claims of earthly potentates. The eternal value that it stamped on inner personality evoked all the moral individualism needed for the breakdown of feudal traditions in the arts of government and business, and for the most liberal experiments in both fields of enterprise.

But this spirit of democratic individualism, complete self-reliance, could not itself supply the conquering power. Calvinism was a democratic aristocracy. It was the co-operative confidence of a Company of Saints, with a spiritual destiny, aye, and even temporal rights, superior to those of the rest of mankind, that made Calvinism a ruling power. But the main propelling force lay in a stress upon works, the duty of realizing the will of God in personal and social conduct upon this earth. There seems no logical necessity why the doctrines of Predestination and Election should have generated practical energy. The Oriental kismet exhibits itself more in sterile passivity than in active fanaticism. One may suspect that what is called the temperament, the natural proclivity, was responsible for the practical development of Calvinistic fatalism. "If you are sure, in predestination, of your destiny and your eternity, you can exploit the world with immense freedom and confidence. It is the ethical part of your religious duty, of your response to elect grace. And you can do it in the natural way of personal gain, without succumbing to an inordinate affection for your gain. Fixed in your eternal seat, your limbs are loose and free for the occupations and possibilities around you." Such a Christian will rise early, work hard, keep sober, and stint himself so as to save and get a nest-egg; he will be keen to seize, and industrious to improve, a business opportunity; he will bargain ably and hardly, asserting all his "rights"; he will be known to keep his word; he will put most of his rising income into his business; a formidable, a fearless competitor, he will secure the survival of the fittest; where combination displaces competition, his fidelity and efficiency as a colleague will be equally serviceable and profitable. As a religious man. he will regard all his activities as "auxiliary to that lifework in which a man was called to glorify God." He will half-consciously realize the economic importance of maintaining the reality of this conviction of an unselfish and a higher purpose in his business life. So he will never recognize quite clearly the largeness of the alloy of materialism and mere profit-seeking which will often have displaced the spiritual aim.

There can be no doubt whatever that this hard, forceful creed, impelling its votaries to conquer this world for the sake of the other, and all the while deceiving themselves as to the relative strength and genuineness of the two appeals, has given spiritual nutriment to Capitalism. It has not merely formed the good business manager; it has inspired those great religious and political missionary movements which have, quite incidentally, as naive historians suppose, opened up new markets and developed great hidden natural resources in distant quarters of the earth. Calvinism still gives the stiffening to the modern doctrine of efficiency, by virtue of which the Anglo-Saxons claim authority over heathen and backward peoples to work their railways and mines and supply them with good government. Liberal Imperialism, resolved into its ethical and intellectual premises, is little else than pure Calvinism, with Kipling and Roosevelt for its priests and prophets.

The economic services have been great and incontestable. Capitalism could hardly have run its course without this inner light and leading. We may, perhaps, be disposed to dispute the question how far the initiative belongs to Calvinism. There are those who will contend that the causative energy proceeded from Capitalism, and that the demand for the thrifty and energetic entrepreneur determined and moulded the creed and doctrines of Calvinism, rather than the converse. Probably the two processes were interactive, Calvinism and Capitalism evoking one another by a spiritual affinity, and so forming the natural partnership which has occurred.

Not the least interesting portion of Dr. Forsyth's essay consists in his recognition that the partnership has done its work. It has, indeed, outlasted its proper time, yielding to certain corruptions of worldliness. "Capitalism announces its own end in becoming de-ethicized in a plutocracy." It were strange indeed had this not been so. For the fundamental notion of a business exploitation of the world, not merely for the production, but for the accumulation of wealth in the possession of an exploiting class, which at the same time should preserve ascetic habits, is self-contradictory. An ethic which made against luxury, while it accumulated wealth, proved self-destructive. A life of charity or philanthropy seemed to offer an escape from the dilemma, but this escape is shown ever more clearly to be illusory.

All this Dr. Forsyth appears to recognize. He sees in the new claims of labor to displace capital as the central factor in the economic system, and the searching after a more equitable system of distribution, the opening of a new economic era. If Christianity is to do for this what Calvinism did for the capitalistic era, the creed and policy must be accommodated to the new situation. The old exclusiveness must disappear from "election," which must expand so as to include all men. Moral personality must remain its absorbing practical concern, but the conception of an inner society of "the elect," or even of "a favored people," must give way to the wider conception of "a world of moral personality."

So Dr. Forsyth leads us to the verge of a great issue, perhaps of a rich land of promise. He is clear that some large expansion of religious doctrine is required to enable the Church to furnish a soul to the new social organization. He is convinced that "the Church will stand or fall by its success or failure with the social question." Liberal thinkers in all the churches stand shivering on this brink. Perhaps they half recognize that the very economic structure of the churches themselves with their professional clergy and their finance, largely the peculiar product of the passing age of capitalism, may have to undergo a transformation before a really effective, impassioned creed of labor can arise to offer light and inspiration to a new social order.

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Economics as the Queen of all Sciences

Economics is the Queen of all Sciences By Henry Dunning Macleod 1896

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Economics as a Liberal Science.

Some idiot nick-named Economics the "dismal science." It would be impossible to conceive a more complete misnomer. Economics is the Queen of all sciences, it is in itself a complete liberal education.

To comprehend Economics it is indispensable to have:

1. An adequate knowledge of Latin and Greek, so as to read the classical writers in the original: because they abound in notices of Economical questions, and they contain most of the fundamental concepts of Economics.

2. But a mere knowledge of classical Latin and Greek is not sufficient, it is necessary to have a knowledge of Juridical Latin and Greek, because in the Pandects of Justinian and the Basilica, which are the sources of our Mercantile Law, there is a class of words which, in classical Latin and Greek, mean material commodities, but in Juridical Latin and Greek, and in modern Mercantile Law, mean only abstract Rights and Duties.

3. A general knowledge of the Law of Property, because Economics deals with property of every description.

4. But modern Commerce is carried on almost exclusively by Credit, consequently it is necessary to have a thorough knowledge of the Juridical principles of Credit, the most abstruse and profound branch of Mercantile Law.

5. A thorough knowledge of the principles and mechanism of Commerce, both agricultural and mercantile.

6. A thorough knowledge of the principles of Natural Philosophy and modern Algebra, and the capacity of seeing how they are to be applied to the phenomena of Economics.

7. A knowledge of the history of all nations, because it supplies the materials for Economics.

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There are numberless Mercantile Lawyers who are perfectly well versed in special points of Mercantile Law, but very few have any knowledge of the actual mechanism of Commerce.

There are multitudes of Bankers who have a perfect knowledge of practical business, but who were never trained in the abstruse principles of Mercantile Law on which their business is based.

Some Mathematicians have attempted to apply mathematics to Economics; but as they never had the slightest knowledge of Mercantile Law nor of practical business, their attempts are mere midsummer madness.

And those who have undertaken to write general treatises on Economics never had the slightest knowledge of Mercantile Law, nor of practical business, nor had the faintest knowledge of the fundamental principles of Natural Philosophy, nor how to apply them to the phenomena of Economics.

Every science is greater than any of its cultivators. Astronomy is greater than Hipparchus, than Ptolemy, than Copernicus, than Kepler, greater even than Newton himself. So Economics is greater than Turgot, than Quesnay, than Smith, than Ricardo, than Say, than Mill.

To every one who has done good service let us pay rational respect, but not abject idolatry. He who studies Philosophy must be a freeman in mind. No one, however eminent, is now permitted to be a despot in science, and chain up the human intellect, or arrest the progress of thought.

Economics is the noblest and grandest creation of the human intellect. It is the crown and the glory of the Baconian Philosophy. No one can thoroughly realise the awful sublimity of the genius of Bacon until he studies Economics, because it is the literal realisation of his matchless discovery that the same principles of Mathematical and Physical Science which govern the phenomena of nature equally govern the practical business of life.

Time's noblest offspring is its last.

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