A SUMMARY OF SOCIALISM.* M. YVES GuvoT, with his wonderfully
prolific pen, has just produced another little book on Socialism which he aptly calls Socialist Sophisms and Economic Facts. The purpose of the book is to give a summary of the Socialist creed, and of various attempts that have been made to give practical effect to Socialist principles. Such a summary is very useful at the present time, when a great many people are wanting to know something about Socialism without taking too much trouble to learn. Specially interesting are the pages which M. Guyot devotes to what might almost be called a lightning-sketch of a whole series of Socialist Utopias and experiments, from the days of Plato down to Robert Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, Louis Blanc, and the Communistic societies of North America. Modern Socialists are fond of saying that the failure of all these experiments proves nothing. At least it proves that the men who were the intellectual forefathers of the present generation of Socialists had not sufficient acumen to discover what were the conditions necessary for the success of their experiments. But the real lesson to be learnt from this long list of failures goes far deeper. While the authors of these experiments were wasting their energy on schemes which we are now told were foredoomed to failure, the world was moving on, and they were doing nothing to help its progress. The advancement of humanity has been secured, not by Socialist dreamers, but by men who were content to work on the lines of individual property and individual liberty which Socialists denounce. And the same failure which has marked all attempts by Socialists to put their theories into practice is also the characteristic of their confident prophecies. Very carefully M. Guyot examines the prophecies of Karl Marx, which modern Socialists still continue to recite, and shows how remote they are from the realised facts. He shows, among other things, that in all the principal countries of the world capital is not becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, but is every year becoming more widely diffused. On this important point his analysis of American, Belgian, and • Sophismes eocialistes et Faits economiques. Par Yves Guyot. Paris: Felix Alcan. [3fr. 50 c.l
French official figures is particularly valuable. We trust that a translation of M. Guyot's valuable little book will be published and circulated widely both in England and America.
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