EVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM.* IT is impossible for any journal which is
not specially devoted' to the subject to keep pace with the issues of the Socialist Press, and, as one Socialist volume is very much like another, our readers will not complain of some reticence on our part. The above volume, however, is of historical importance, and we must endeavour briefly to chronicle its career.
In 1898 the German Social Democratic Party found them- selves united in the bond of discipleship to Karl Marx, who in an elaborate but extremely obscure treatise had sought to place Socialism on what was called a scientific basis. His argument rested mainly on certain statements made by Ricardo and other so-called orthodox economists, obiter dicta, which, when forced into the interpretation put on them by Marx, would have been repudiated by their authors, as they certainly have been by the whole school of Liberal economists. Marx, however, was not content to be an obscure writer on economics ; he also essayed prophecy. Given the intense con- sciousness of the inequalities of modern civilisation, and the passionate desire for their removal and reform, which are characteristic of the psychology of the modern crowd, Marx, by way of explanation, applied to the situation a theory of value and of surplus value, which, involving as it does the supersession of money by social-labour-notes, to the unbiassed judgment is practically unthinkable. His analysis, however, served as an hypothesis, and enabled his party to launch a theory of Socialism, with a definite policy, which had little or nothing to do with the economic argument on. which it was based. Marx, moreover, as we have said, went further, and prophesied that the present basis of society, as explained in his analysis, was so iniquitous and so insupport- able that it was bound to collapse and to give place to the Socialist State. Time went on, and ob7iously his prophecy
Sao/ Socialism : a Criticism and Affirmation. By Edward Bernstein.
Translated by Edith C. Harvey. " The Sost Library," Vol. VII. London The Independent Latour Party. [1s. 6d. net.]
was not being fulfilled. At this point Edward Bernstein, a leader among German Socialist journalists, wrote a letter (subsequently expanded into this book) to a meeting of the party assembling at Stuttgart :-
" I set myself," he says, "against the notion that we have to expect shortly a collapse of the bourgeois economy, and that social democracy should be induced by the prospect of such an imminent, great, social catastrophe to adapt its tactics to that assumption.
The number of members of the possessing classes is to-day not smaller but larger. The enormous increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a decreasing number of large capitalists, but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees."
It is a curious commentary on the psychological attitude of the Socialist crowd that a statement of this very obvious, and indeed self-evident, character had the effect of a bombshell. Bernstein was vehemently denounced by Karl Kautsky, a journalist colleague of his own; and a subsequent meeting of the party at Hanover, led by the windy eloquence of Herr Bebel, discussed and condemned the compromising heresy of Herr Bernstein. That Bernstein's opinions were compromising to the
Socialist argument is abundantly clear. If the distribution of wealth under the present system is widening, cadit quaestio. A
slow improvement is all that poor human nature can expect.
True, the pace at which this practicable and inevitable amelioration proceeds is too slow for the temper of the crowd, and Bernstein argues that his recognition of facts does not invalidate the claims of Socialism ; but Kantsky and the extreme Marxists are surely right in their apprehension that the citadel is surrendered by the admissions of Bernstein. Progress must be by the morcellement or wider distribution of private property, and not by any form of collective ownership. Karl Kautsky in his Le Marzisme et son Critique Bernstein sums up the situation in the exclamation: "But Bernstein
thinks to develop Marxism, when he cries to it : • Arriere retourne a Kant, retourne a Lange, retourne d Proudh-on,' et
eneme on entendra Retourne a Radial I " This reminds us of Lassalle's scurrilous attack on Schulze-Delitzsch, whom he sought to dishonour by joining his name with the honoured name of Bastiat in his Herr Bastiat Schulze von Delitzsch, der Othonomische Julian. Schulze-Delitzsch was a popular leader who did something, by his advocacy of Co-operation and savings-banks, for the welfare of the people. He naturally incurred the enmity of the rhetoricians. We are not aware that Herr Bernstein has done anything beyond letting in a ray of truth on the discussions of the party. He has earned, however, the enmity of the thoroughgoing Marxists. Apparently, if we may judge by the inclusion of this volume in " The Socialist Library," our English Socialists are adopting the more plausible but more illogical position of Bernstein.
There is a further amusing sequel to the controversy.
Schulze-Delitzsch was said to have plagiarised from Bastiat; so Bernstein is said to have plagiarised from M. P. Leroy- Beaulieu, a principal exponent of the ecole lib4rale of political economy. M. .Leroy-Beanlieu in the latest edition of his classical work on Collectivism complains querulously, but not without some sense of the humorous aspects of the situation, that Bernstein has borrowed without due acknowledgment some portion of his proof of the absurdity of the Marxian contention. There the question remains. The so-called scientific basis of Socialism has been discredited and abandoned by the more reasonable Socialists ; but the senti- ment of the thing keeps the dead body in some semblance of animation, drawing its baneful inspiration, not from any scientific theory, but from visions of impracticable Utopias. The dissent of Herr Bernstein, however, marks a step in the evaporation of a form of fanaticism which is not without its generous and alluring aspects.
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