A History of British Socialism

Volume 2

Max Beer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781136448843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is volume 2 of the set A History of British Socialism. These volumes study the political thought experienced as a result of the massive transition of the British countryside to capitalist agriculture and capitalist industry.

PART IV

MODERN SOCIALISM (1855–1939)

X

MAIN CURRENTS OF THE PERIOD

THE period with which we are now going to deal, while, on the whole, less stirring, is more complicated, and of much more vital importance than any of the foregoing periods. We are leaving, as it were, the antiquities of socialist speculation and the childhood of Labour, and are nearing the recent past and the immediate present. We have now to do with problems of modern society which are touching the very life of the nation. It might, therefore, be expedient, for a better comprehension of the totality of the period, to give, before entering into details, a broad outline of its tendencies and struggles.

From the angle of vision of the socialist historian the sixty- five years from 1855 to 1920 exhibit three distinct phases:

1. —ZENITH OF LIBERALISM

Unchallenged reign of liberal thought, and partly apathetic, partly active adherence of Labour to the existing order. The twenty years following upon the collapse of Chartism formed the golden age of middle class Liberalism. The glamour of its doctrines as set forth by Mill in his essay, On Liberty, the phenomenal growth of British trade and commerce, the unrivalled position of Great Britain as the workshop of the world, made British Liberalism the lodestar of all nations striving for freedom and wealth. Competition as the regulator of economic relations, free trade as the international bond of peace and goodwill, individual liberty as the sacred ideal of national politics, reigned supreme, and under their weight the entire formation of social revolutionary ideas of the past disappeared from view. The working classes formed a part of triumphant Liberalism.

Gladstone, surveying his hosts in 1866, appeared quite justified in telling his Conservative opponents that there was no use fighting against the social forces, “which move onwards in their might and majesty and which … are marshalled on our side.”¹ He might have addressed the same eloquent words to the leaders of the International Working Men’s Association, who with Karl Marx at their head, were precisely at that time making a serious attempt to resuscitate Chartism and detach the masses from the Liberal Party. Socialism and independent labour politics came to be regarded as exotic plants which could never flourish on British soil.

The trade unions renounced all class warfare and merely tried to use their new citizenship (1867) and their growing economic organisation—the first trade union congress took place in 1869—with a view to influencing the distribution of the national wealth in their favour. Their aim and end was that of a class striving for equality with the possessing and ruling classes. It was, despite some struggle for the legalisation of trade unionism, a period of social peace, and it lasted till about 1880.

2. —LIBERAL LABOUR. BIRTH OF STATE SOCIALISM

The second phase is characterised by the rise of Labour to a junior partnership with the Liberal Party and the birth and growth of State and municipal socialism and new unionism. From 1875 the lustre of Liberalism began to grow dim, and in the years between 1880 and 1890 its inadequacy became apparent.² The years 1873 and 1874 witnessed big strikes in mining, manufacturing, and agricultural districts; they saw the entrance of working men into Parliament. On the heels of these ominous events came economic depression; free trade had not secured prosperity. Competition had proved destructive not only of the unfit, but of the less favoured by fortune; large capital crushed small capital, regardless of the qualities of their possessors. Foreign competition, mainly American and German, fostered by protective tariffs, was making itself increasingly felt to British manufacturers and agricultural interests. Combination and mutual protection were gradually coming to be regarded as superior to the competitive systems. The propositions of orthodox political economy were seriously questioned. Land reform movements grew in strength. The term Nationalisation was created. Socialist organisations sprang up: the Social Democratic Federation, founded by H. M. Hyndman, propagating the Marxian doctrine of class war; the Fabian Society, with Sidney Webb as its foremost exponent, trying to apply socialism to practical politics; the Independent Labour Party, working with might and main, under the leadership of James Keir Hardie, to discredit the old Liberal-Labour leaders, to imbue the younger trade union officials with the spirit of socialism. They were years of a severe contest between liberalism and socialism for the soul of the working-class.

As long as Gladstone was active, the socialist efforts met with little success. Gladstone, on whose mind the social criticism of the early ’forties had left an indelible impression,¹ never lost sight of organised Labour, and whenever he saw it moving towards class warfare and socialism he spared no effort to lead it back to peaceful waters. He was the most potent personal force of Liberal Labourism. His influence among the trade unionists was amazing. And they received from him political recognition as soon as they became an indispensable part of Liberalism, that is, from 1886. It was Gladstone who raised working men to the rank of Ministers, thus inaugurating the era which has finally thrown open the gates of the Cabinet to Labour leaders and socialists. The growing strength of socialism and Labour politics since 1880 may be gauged by the treatment which prominent trade unionists and socialists received at various times at the hands of Liberal Governments. In 1834 William Godwin, the anarchist communist author of Political Justice, received an appointment as gentleman usher; in 1849 Samuel Bamford, the Radical weaver and one of the leaders of the demonstration at Peterloo, was made doorkeeper at Somerset House. Such was in those times the remuneration of socialists and labour leaders, whom the Governments delighted to honour. In 1886 Henry Broadhurst, the Labour lieutenant of Gladstone, was appointed Under-Secretary of State; in 1892 Thomas Burt, Parliamentary Secretary; in 1906 John Burns entered the Cabinet. The difference between a doorkeeper of a Government building and a member of the Cabinet indicates the rise in the value of socialism and Labour politics from 1834 to 1906.

3. —INDEPENDENT LABOUR. REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM

Liberal-labour was declining since 1900. In that year the Labour Party was formed, and under the leadership of J. R. MacDonald, Hardie, and Pete Curran it rapidly developed. In 1906 the Party entered Parliament as an independent political force. Chartism revived, and the nation found itself soon in the grip of a widespread Labour unrest, which has been going on increasing in volume and revolutionary fervour, the motive power of which appears to be a more or less conscious striving for industrial democracy, for control of production,—an aim to be attained no more by State socialism or collectivism, but through direct action, through subordinating parliamentary methods to economic warfare. The new phase has already produced a host of leaders and writers, the most prominent of whom is G. D. H. Cole. The British Labour movement has never attracted so many intellectuals as at present. Hands and brains are unitedly at work towards some shape of a socialist reconstruction of the economic foundation and governmental system of society. They but form, under various names, a part of the general Labour unrest that is convulsing the civilised world. The social crisis is practically universal.

The whole movement appears to be the inevitable outcome of the contrast between political and legal equality on the one hand and industrial dependence and insecurity of existence on the other. Politically sovereign in the legislature, the workman is a mere hireling in the workshop; he can make and unmake Governments, but has no say whatever in the arrangement of his daily work. Political power without economic power is, therefore, in his eyes a mockery and dangerous delusion. He now desires some part in the control of the production, just as he desired, a half a century ago, a part in the making of the laws. The mentality of the working classes is now passing from politics to economics, and from economics to social ethics. They are no longer willing to be treated as a commodity. The older socialists, as we know, used to argue against the wage system on economic grounds; they said that labour as a commodity differed from other commodities by not only affording value for value, but by producing surplus value. The present-day socialist or revolutionary trade unionists or guild socialists, while agreeing with their predecessors, are arguing that labour differs from other commodities also by being inseparably bound up with a human soul. The working classes have grown in moral and intellectual stature, and are asking the nation to regard and treat them as free personalities. It is an appeal on economic as well as moral grounds.

Keeping this general outline in view, we shall now proceed to treat the various phases in detail, describing the events and movements as well as exhibiting the theories underlying them.

1 Quoted in John Morley’s Life of Gladstone, ed. 1908, Vol. I., p. 627.

2 Cf. John Morley, in Fortnightly Review, April, 1882, pp. 503–4, October, 1882, pp. 533–4.

1 See supra, Part III., p. 140.

XI

INTERNATIONALISM AND LIBERAL LABOUR

1. —YEARS OF APATHY

THE ten years after the failure of Chartism were a period of calm. All efforts to revive the movement proved ineffectual. Moreover, the working classes seemed to have abandoned politics altogether, and turned their attention to trade unionism and co-operation. Radical politicians, like Cobden and Bright, deplored the political indifference of the working classes and confessed themselves powerless to stir them into activity. The ruling classes, mindful of the Chartist agitations, attempted to introduce moderate measures of franchise reforms, but they met with no response from the masses.¹ In 1861, Cobden complained that the working men were “so quiet under the taunts and insults offered them. Have they no Spartacus among them to head a revolt of the slave class against their political tormentors? I suppose it is the reaction from the follies of Chartism which keeps the present generation so quiet.”² Even in 1863 Cobden described the conditions of the workers as that of political inertia. Two years later, however, we find the working men in full activity for suffrage reform, and in 1867 in possession of the franchise!

This rapid transformation appears to have been the result of the stirring events in the sphere of international politics—the American Civil War and the Polish insurrection, and of the agitation of the International Working Men’s Association. The thinking portion of the British working men retained as a legacy from the Chartist period strong sympathies for progressive movements abroad. During the American Civil War they demonstrated their sympathies for the Northern States; in the time of the Polish insurrection of 1863 they were heart and soul with the Poles; the Italians struggling to be free could always rely on the friendly feelings of British Labour, and when Garibaldi came to London they gave him a royal welcome. The working classes, once set in motion, were soon drawn into the agitation for suffrage reform. Under the auspices of the London Trades a Suffrage Association was formed in 1864, which was turned into the Reform League, the efficient instrument that caused the Government to introduce and carry the Second Reform Bill and change the United Kingdom into a Democracy. The close connection between internationalism and the reform agitation is most clearly exhibited by the fact that the same men who organised public meetings and demonstrations in favour of the anti-slavery Northern States, of the Poles and the Italians, were also the leaders of the Reform League—George Odger, W. Randall Cremer, and Robert Applegarth. They were likewise some of the most prominent members of the International Working Men’s Association.

Internationalism was no less potent a factor in the economic sphere of the Labour movement. The sympathy of the advanced sections of the French working classes with Poland and Italy, coupled with the desire of their leaders to learn something of English trade unionism, caused them to utilise their visit to the International Exhibition in London in 1862 for entering into closer communication with the London Labour leaders. After an exchange of addresses in 1863, it was decided to convene a conference in London for the purpose of forming an International Association of Working Men. This conference took place in the fourth week of September, 1864, and settled the main question. In order to afford the London working men an opportunity of welcoming their foreign friends, and to seal the bond of friendship between the French and British working classes, it was resolved to hold a public meeting on September 28, and to invite the representatives of all working men’s societies domiciled in London to attend either as guests or speakers. Among the representatives who accepted the invitation and attended the meeting was Karl Marx, whose knowledge of working class economics and whose literary abilities predestined him for the intellectual leadership of the new organisation.

2. —KARL MARX

Several circumstances have combined to render it necessary to deal with Marx (1818–1883) as one of the decisive personal factors of modem socialism in Great Britain. First, the best part of his life (1849–1883) was spent in London, where he gathered the elements of his economic system, partly from the writings of the Ricardian school and partly from the anti-capitalist thinkers who in the first half of the last century directed their critical shafts against the new social structure which arose out of the Industrial Revolution.¹ Marx gathered up their fragmentary views, gave them logical coherence and sequence, and embodied them into his system: he was the executor of the testament they had left. Secondly, Chartism and British industrial life were the inductive material from which he drew his sociological conclusions and upon which he based his hypotheses. Thirdly, the rise of modern socialism in Great Britain since 1882, as well as the whole Labour unrest since 1907, as far as their leaders have been attempting to give them a theoretical foundation, are inseparably linked to Marxism.

The teachings of Marx divide into three parts: (a) Sociological law of history, or the materialist conception of history; (b) class warfare and its meaning; (c) evolution of capitalism.

(a) Materialist conception of history.

Even a mere glance at human history shows that man, from period to period, has held different views of morality, religion, philosophy, law, government, trade, and commerce; that he has had diverse and different social and governmental arrangements; that he has undergone a whole series of struggles, wars, and migrations. What is the sufficient cause and reason of this baffling diversity and restlessness, of those various changes of human thought and action? Marx raises that question not for the purpose of investigating the psychological origin of the ideas underlying those arrangements and movements, but with a view to finding the motive power that is causing the changes and revolutions of the essentials and forms of the mental and social phenomena. He is much less interested in the origin and statics of things than in their dynamics: he is searching for the dynamic law of history.

Marx replies: The prime motive power causing the changes of human consciousness and, consequently, of the social arrangements, cannot be found in human reason nor in any transcendental idea or divine inspiration, but in the material conditions of life, that is, in the way in which man, as a social being, produces the means of life. Of all categories of the material conditions of existence the most important is production of the necessary means of life. This depends on the forces of production, which are partly in-animate (soil, water, climate, raw materials, tools, and machines) and partly personal (labourers, inventors, discoverers, engineers, and racial qualities). The foremost place among the productive forces belongs to the manual and mental labourers; they are in the capitalist society the real creators of exchange-value. The next place of importance is taken by technology; it is an eminently alterating and revolutionising force in society. These forces are operating under conditions of production, that is, under laws of property, political arrangements and class relations, habits and manners, moral and intellectual conceptions, created by man...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Part III Chartism
• Part IV Modern Socialism (1855–1939)
• Index