SOCIALISM AND THE LATIN RACES.
Is the true aim of civilisation to strengthen the strog or to strengthen the weak ? to establish an open career for speed and endurance or to make the race of life a handicap with a lavish supply of "consolation prizes " ? In other words, are we to aim at democracy—meaning by democracy whatever form of government best secures personal liberty and free scope for the individual—or at Socialism,—meaning by Social- ism a system which shall recognise a right in every member of the community to "live and thrive "? The French Revolution did violently in France what steady reform has done gradually among us ; it broke up the old system, shattered class privileges, ended class disabilities ; in a word, it established liberty, and the result has been the servitude of the incapable, or even of the half-capable" :— "To remedy this servitude," says M. Le Bon, is perhaps the most difficult problem of modern times. If we set no limit to liberty the situation of the disinherited can only grow worse every day ; if we limit it—and evidently the State alone can undertake such a task—we arrive at State Socialism, the consequences of which are worse than the evils they pretend !co heal. The only means remaining is to appeal to the altruistic sentiments of the stronger ; but hitherto religions alone, and then only at periods of faith, have been able to awaken such sentiments, which even then have constituted very fragile bases of society."
For ourselves, we believe in democracy and the open career ; also, believing in hereditary fitness and the power of education, we would allow individuals to establish handicaps in favour of their descendants,—that is, to transmit property and position; and we are inclined to think that the
altruistic sentiments," compassion and kindness, never operated more strongly than at present. But then we do not hold M. Le Bon's view that the old religions are defunct ; and that is the key of his position. Socialism, he says, is more than a policy ; it is a religion, the religion of the future. It is illogical, but "the irrational has always been one of the most powerful motives of action known to humanity." Hopes, and not reason, are the driving forces of the world ; mankind is seeking for a religion that will offer new hopes, and will find it in Socialism. But it is a religion with two drawbacks. One is that the hopes are promised for realisation in this world, and they are of all things the most tangible. Every man is to have enough to eat, it is "a religion of the stomach." Consequently, if Socialism does not fill all stomachs, it will be bankrupt. The other weakness is that the religion finds its converts largely in the ranks of envy. That is the case in • Ths Psychology of Socialism. By Gustave Le Bon. London T. Fisher Unwin. Va.]
America, where, as M. Le Bon thinks, and we think too, the menace of Socialism is most instant. In the States are crowds of needy folk, an agglomeration of many peoples with no common beliefs and instincts to establish a feeling in favour of the established order, who see just one thing,—that they have not, and that others have in profusion. The appeal of Socialism to such is irresistible ; but they are no part of society,—they are the barbarians at the gates, says M. Le Bon, and society will have to fight them. There may be a big fight, in which America will pay dearly for her disregard of politics ; but America, while it remains America, will never be Socialist. The same may be said of this country ; and it is, indeed, for the Latin races that M. Le Bon is really concerned.
Among them the centralisation of a nation's whole life in the bands of Government is quite a natural conception ; they crave the transference of individual affairs to a Corporation, of local affairs to the Metropolis, and do not merely submit to such transfer. In Germany military discipline has accustomed the individual to subordinate his claims to the claims of others, and thus in a way Germany is a field ready for Socialistic experi- ment. But in France the nation actually cries out for measures which in their totality are Collectivism. A neighbourhood where a railway will not pay cries out for a railway ; the Government builds it and works it, employing workmen paid at rates which the Socialists approve, and the loss comes out of the taxes. Taxes fall in consequence so heavy upon com- panies and all wealth-producing industries that they cannot carry on, and the Government has to take over these enter- prises : for instance, the Omnibus Company in Paris, taxed to more than double the amount of its dividends. Railway travel is cheap, as we find when we can take our bicycle further for a penny than sixpence will carry it here ; and this is excellent for the manual labourer, who, as M. Le Bon observes, is the great beneficiary of modern civilisation; but by no means so happy for the man affected by direct taxation. Companies cannot afford in the face of heavy imposts to pay good salaries ; the Government must retrench on the incomes of its functionaries. The class hardest hit are the clerks, that lowest stratum of educated society which has never made itself felt or feared in politics. There you have the true recruiting-ground of Socialism. Collectivism has willed it that the State should take charge of education ; that every individual should be entitled to an education, "identical, gratuitous, and obligatory " ; and that from primary edu- cation there should be a way made to the secondary education of the College, the State again paying the cost. From the artisan class, according to M. Le Bon, few go to join the ranks of the certificated and unplaced ; but many from the peasants and many from the shopkeepers. These acquire not only knowledge, but tastes of a certain refinement; they are fit only for clerkships at a pittance, and there are ten applicants for every place ; and the whole of this class, politically impotent as yet, finds its affinities among those who would fain make a tabula rasa of property. It is useless to demonstrate that the total of private accumulations ap- portioned out equally would better no man ; Collectivism would deliver them from the tortures of envy. The mind of this class has been depicted with terrible power by M. Estaunie in his recent and remarkable novel, Le Ferment. These people, starving in deoent clothes, dream of a world like Dupont's in De Musset's brilliant satire :—
" Oa qui veut pent jeilner Mais nul n'aura du moms le droit de bien diner."
Yet upon the whole Socialism in France seems less predatory than in America. In throwing the attempt to satisfy all needs upon a central system of bureaux, the French are obeying a hereditary instinct ; they submit willingly to the tax-collector, and there is a real diffusion of benefits. Every one gains, for example, by the excellence of their railways and roads. Many evils are remedied which among us drive men and women inevitably into the workhouses. The crowd is sovereign, and, as M. Le Bon observes, a crowd has many good impulses. At all events, it can be relied on to be generous with public money, especially when the principle of differential taxation is well established, and it will gladly vote pension funds to the railway employes to be paid by the employers if possible, or, failing that, of a State subsidy, Thus there is effected a certain amelioration, and the con- trast between wealth and poverty is not so glaring as, for instance, in the States. But ultimately there may come a day when capital will migrate from a country where it is daily heavier taxed to the East. and Europe will be face to face with the industrial competttion of Orientals, manufacturing what she had hitherto exported to them. No doubt if that happens the wages of the Oriental working man will rise, but no European can thrive on twopence halfpenny a day; the Chinaman can. In that day, says M. Le Bon, it will go ill with the countries which cannot feed their own population. That is the one point which makes him hopeful for France the peasant will save her, who keeps the land in cultivation and does not multiply too rapidly upon it. Moreover, the peasant is the great barrier against Collectivism. Instincts implanted in the race are stronger than reason ; "it is the dead who discuss, not the living " ; and the instinct of proprietorship is ineradicable in France. The deluge would come there sooner than nationalisation of the land. Thus upon the whole France, being chiefly an agricultural country and protected by the existence of a very large class of small proprietors, has less to fear than the manufacturing countries, which may one day be absolutely starved out by the com- petition of the East,—in which case the whole fabric of society would go by the board. In France Socialism is hardly a menace to civilisation. On the other hand, though Collectivism is never likely to affect the life of the country— which is agriculture—it has deeply affected its moral being. Ambition and initiative seemed to be dying out among the French, and the one desire of every educated man is to secure a small competence, a post with a pension assured him by the State. Industrial enterprise, and even the professions, with a hope of larger gains, do not tempt. That is the ideal which Socialism seeks to inculcate ; and with it come the attendant evils, formalism and half-hearted work. For remedies, M. Le Bon can suggest none, except a radical reform of the system of education. But as he praises the English schools, and apparently believes that every English boy learns chiefly how to carpenter, and scarcely knows the names of Greek and Latin, we cannot but think that his own doctrine is fatally true,—that a nation's history is the result of a nation's character, and that it is not education but Nature which makes French pupils and French teachers what they are. We should like to entertain a higher opinion of French national character, however, than does M. Le Bon ; he quotes the behaviour of his countrymen at the Bazar de °barite, and the wreck of the 'Bourgogne,' as instances of humanity's normal action. Flagrant exceptions, we should have said, evidencing, however, in the easy spread of panic that tendency to follow like sheep, which is likely to be a result of Socialism. M. Le Bon also lets fall several observations, from which it appears that he regards the intellect uels as a danger to France. The intellectuels and 2111 iverv'taires may be Socialists, but it is not they who have shown of late the dis- regard of the individual.
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