A SPECIMEN OF ECONOMIC "ADAPTATION."*
THE special of the Muses seems to accompany in every de- partment the labour of those remarkable examples of unappreciated industry, the " adapters " of foreign authors. The instance before us scarcely forms an exception to the rule. It may, perhaps, be urged on the operator's behalf that the work which he has under- taken to submit to the ill-starred process was peculiarly unsuited for "adaptation." It is to be regretted that he volunteered on ground so uninviting. Readers acquainted with the original of this version, which is at once neither original nor translation, will not feel disposed to accept this kind of excuse. The work which Dr. Schaeffie, Minister of Commerce in the Hohenwart Cabinet in Austria, wrote upon the great question of •' Capitalism and Social- ism" that has occupied so much of the world's and particularly so much of Germany's speculation for the past twenty years, is in effect one of the most remarkable of recent contributions to the dis- cussion of the subject. It is an exhaustive review of the various theories or programmes of Socialist, Semi-Socialist, or simply Liberal organisation of the productive forces of society, which have appeared since the Labour problem began to be a German prob- lem. But comprehensive as it is, it is not a whit too comprehen- sive, and as Dr. Sehaeffie has interwoven his own views with his critical narrative of the schemes of Schultze-Delitsch, Lassalle, Marx, Marlo, and the other related or opposing thinkers of whom he treats, even the seven hundred and odd pages of his great volume are felt to be barely adequate for the completion of his survey. Of Dr. Schaeffie's own views, we may briefly say that they are formed on much that same ideal of social organisation which Stuart Mill had in mind, when he denounced the existence of any class of society which was not in some sense a labouring class, and when he pointed to co-operation as the likeliest solution of the industrial difficulty. Dr. Schaeffie contemplates an immense extension of the sphere of co-operation as the only means of raising the millions of what has come to be called the Proletariat from their dependence and misery. As, of course, in a work on Capitalism and Socialism, the proletariat must be the main subject, the co-operative ten- dencies of Dr. Schaeffie's system are brought out in a strong relief which perhaps exaggerates their real significance. It is - always hard, however, to observe the line between a highly de- veloped scheme of co-operation and those schemes which are more properly styled Socialistic and Communistic, and there are many, especially in England, where our best economists have devoted a very subordinate attention to this branch of their science, who will hold that Dr. Schaeffie has overpassed this line.
Without entering on a criticism for which ten times our available space world be utterly inadequate, we may say that Dr. Schaeffie professes to conciliate the institutions of private property, and what really amounts to a co-operative organisation of society. He accepts all the principles of the ordinary economic science, in the shape in which most of us have inherited them from Adam Smith and the school of writers who have spread the doc- trines of Adam Smith throughout the world. He maintains, how- ever, that these principles do not make up the whole of a political economy which is to work the permanent benefit of mankind. The laws of supply and demand and the impulse of self-interest must be judged as operating, and meant to operate; not merely in an ideally perfect community of faultless and calculating beings, identical in all mercantile and enterprising capacities, and co-equally incapable of over-reaching or being over-reached ; but in a community of an utterly different order, in human society as it actually is and must be to the end of the chapter,—full of weaknesses and inequalities, full of follies and miscalculations, with endless varieties of suffering and interminable inheritances of sorrow. In such a society, the sacredness of human brotherhood, the obliga- tions of fellow-humanity, must enter into and become part and parcel of every science which deals with human interests anti- human beings. Abstract political economy, political economy in the clouds, as one might say, may of course plume itself upon being a pure science, may affect mathematical precision, and array its formulae in all the severe and puritanic rigidity of mathematical curves and symbols. There are ten thousand things to be taken • Soejafism. By the Rev. H. Kaufmann. B.A. Founded on the German work pf Dr. A. E. F. Sehaeffle. London: Henry S. King and Co, 1674.
into consideration, however, when once the economist comes to reflect that his science has to do with men and women and children, and not with Babbage's calculating-machines.
Simply as an expression of profound and cultivated thought, upon the most abidingly interesting of human topics, the best mode of maximising the happiness and comfort of mankind, Dr. Schaeffie's book would well deserve full and careful translation. When, into the bargain, it is, or purports to be, a critical refutation of those most remarkable men who, by skilfully and most often honestly harping on some half-truths relating to the public condition, have produced such an astonishing transformation of the social and political aspirations of the masses in so many regions of the Continent, the propriety and, indeed, the obligation of translating it fully, if it were to be translated at all, becomes self-evident to everybody really conversant with the importance of the matter. Instead of a translation, however, what have we got here ? An " adaptation," and not only an adaptation, but an abstract, a stunted, docked, and " padded " abstract. Instead of the 732 large pages of Dr. Schaeffie's Kapitalismus and Socialismus, we have 315 small pages "founded on the German work of Dr.
Schaeflie." It also seems—the perpetrator styles himself " Curate of Chard "—that this has been done in order to " add another item, however subordinate in importance, towards the vindication of the clergy from the charge, often brought against them, of neglecting the material interests of the labouring classes." And so we have got a popularised epitome, with additions "and alterations to adapt it to English readers." As a specimen of the additions and alterations with which Dr. Schaeffie's ideas have been garnished, take such pecu- liarly luminous observations as the following :—" We may hope that the author of Sybil, called to the helm of public affairs by the voice of the people, will not lose sight "—of what do our readers think?—" of recognising the solidarity of interests of high and low, rich and poor, so that a wisely adjusted distribution of national burthens may assist indirectly in bringing about a more equalised distribution of income among all classes." So Mr. Disraeli is to devote the " unearned increment" of the land to raising the condition of the labouring classes. We seriously doubt, indeed, whether the adapter of Kapitalismus and Socialismus had a single other qualification for his task beyond a probably lively re- collection of German, and an imperfect acquaintance with English. Even his merely verbal knowledge of either language cannot be rated very high. Some of his mistranslations are singular. At one place he renders " Knochen " as "sinews," and at another page he renders " Elfenbein " as " ebony." The extraordinary style of many of his sentences fairly puzzles us, and we do not know whether to be most astonished at their uncouth inversions or at their hybrid terminology. Here are a few slight specimens :— "The trades being carried on in poor, dirty, and unhealthy work- shops, and the tradesmen being chained for years to the same mono- tonous occupation, sometimes compelled to spend a whole life-time in utter loneliness, he equally laments."
"Under a semblance of individual production, a distribution of property prevails which is determined altogether by the objective move- ments of society, the hegemony of capital, competition, and conjuncture."
"Capital brings the members of co-operating industrials together, and keeps them united, and appoints their functions individually."
Such is the clerical adapter's way of producing a " popular- ised " and " simplified " epitome. Often and often must the reader turn to the German original for the key to such marvels of simplification. Perhaps, however, the most annoy- ing feature of this anomalous composition is the uncertainty as to when we are dealing with the views of Dr. Scheele, and when with the interpolations of his Anglo-German " popu- lariser." In some cases, we are told, it was necessary—that is, the adapter thought it necessary—" to recast the matter of the book entirely, so as to adapt it to the varying conditions and ideas prevalent in England and America." The amount of in- terest which even a bare precis of Dr. Scheele's work would afford, is thus destroyed, and we get, instead of either faithful translation or mere précis, a sort of hotchpotch of views and theories which may belong to anybody, and which are a matter of consequence to nobody. It is worse than " Shakespeare Bowdlerised," and the Bowdlerising is done, into the bargain, in a jargon which may be called Johnsonian-Carlylese, but which beats even that.
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