Читать книгу Socialism and Democracy in Europe - Samuel Peter Orth - Страница 10

Socialism began in France, that yeast-pot of civilization. It began while the Revolution was still filling men's minds with a turbulent optimism that knew no limit to human "progress."

Saint-Simon (Count Henri de) may be considered the founder of French Socialism. He was of noble lineage, born in 1760, and died in 1825. He took very little part in the French Revolution, but was a soldier in our Continental army, and always manifested a keen interest in American affairs. Possessed of an inquiring mind, an ambitious spirit, and a heart full of sympathy for the oppressed, he devoted himself to the study of society for the purpose of elaborating a scheme for universal human betterment.

Before he began his special studies he amassed a modest fortune in land speculation. Not that he loved money, he assures us, but because he wished independence and leisure to do his chosen work. This money was soon lost, through unfortunate experiments and an unfortunate marriage, and the most of his days were spent in penury.

He attracted to himself a number of the most brilliant young men in France, among them De Lesseps who subsequently carried out one of the plans of his master, the Suez Canal; and Auguste Comte, who embodied in his positivism the philosophical teachings of Saint-Simon.

Saint-Simon believed that society needed to be entirely reorganized on a "scientific basis," and that "the whole of society ought to labor for the amelioration of the moral and physical condition of the poorest class. Society ought to organize itself in the manner the most suitable for the attainment of this great end."[1]

The two counteracting motives or spirits in society are the spirit of antagonism and the spirit of association. Hitherto the spirit of antagonism has prevailed, and misery has resulted. Let the spirit of association rule, and the evils will vanish.

Under the rule of antagonism, property has become the possession of the few, poverty and misery the lot of the many. Both property and poverty are inherited, therefore the state should abolish all laws of inheritance, take all property under its dominion, and let society be the sole proprietor of the instruments of labor and of the fund that labor creates.

Through the teachings of Saint-Simon runs a constant stream of religious fervor. In Christianity he found the moral doctrine that gave sanction to his social views. He sought the primitive Christianity, stripped of the dogmas and opinions of the centuries. In his principal work, Nouveau Christianisme (New Christianity), he subjects the teachings of Catholicism and Protestantism to ingenious criticism, and finds in the teachings of Christ the essential moral elements necessary for a society based on the spirit of association.

Saint-Simon was a humanitarian rather than a systematic thinker. His analysis of society is ingenious rather than constructive. His teachings were elaborated by his followers, who organized themselves into a school called the "Sacred College of the Apostles," with Bazard and Enfantin as their leaders. They were accused, in the Chamber of Deputies, of promulgating communism of property and wives. Their defense, dated October, 1830, and issued as a booklet, is the best exposition of their views. They said that: "We demand that land, capital, and all the instruments of labor shall become common property, and be so managed that each one's portion shall correspond to his capacity, and his reward to his labors." "Like the early Christians, we demand that one man should be united to one woman, but we teach that the wife should be the equal of the husband."

On the question of marriage, however, the sect split soon after this defense was written. Enfantin became a defender of free love, and inaugurated a fantastic sacerdotalism which drove Bazard from the "Sacred College."[2]

The second French social philosopher of the Utopian school was François Marie Charles Fourier (1772–1837). He was a bourgeois, son of a draper, and brought as keen an intellect as did his noble fellow-countryman, Saint-Simon, to the analysis of society, and a much more practical experience. In his youth he had been employed in various business enterprises. He recalls, in his works, several experiences which he never forgot. As a lad, he was reproached for telling a prospective customer the truth about some goods in his father's shop. When a young man of twenty-seven he was sent to Marseilles to superintend the destruction of great cargoes of rice that had been held for higher prices, during a period of scarcity of food when thousands of people were suffering from hunger. The rice had spoiled in the waiting. The event made so profound an impression upon his mind that he resolved to devote his life to the betterment of an economic system that allowed such wanton waste.

To his mind the problem of rebuilding society was practical, not metaphysical. But underlying his practical solution was a fantastic cosmogony and psychology. He reduced everything to a mathematical system, and even computed the number of years the world would spin on its axis. He believed that God created a good world, and that man has desecrated it; that the function of the social reformer is to understand the design of the Creator, and call mankind back to this original plan, back to the original impulses and passions, and primitive goodness.

This could be done only under ideal environment. Such an environment he proposed to create in huge caravansaries, which he called phalansteries. Each group, or phalange, was composed of 400 families, or 1,800 persons, living on a large square of land, where they could be self-contained and self-sufficient, like the manors in the feudal days. The phalanstery was built in the middle of the tract, and was merely a glorified apartment house. Every one chose to do the work he liked best. Agriculture and manufacture were to be happily blended, and individual freedom given full sway. Each phalange was designed to be an ideal democracy, electing its officers and governing itself. The principle of freedom was to extend even to marriage and the relation of the sexes.

It was Fourier's belief that one such phalange once established would so impress the world with its superiority that society would be glad to imitate it. Ere long there would be groups of phalanges co-operating with each other, and ultimately the whole world would be brought into one vast federation of phalanges, with their chief center at Constantinople.

The general plan of this apartment-house utopia lent itself to all sorts of fantastic details. It gained adherents among the learned, the eager, and even the rich, and a number of experiments were tried. All of these have failed, I think, excepting only the community at Guise, founded by Jean Godin. Here, however, the fantasies have been eliminated, and the strong controlling force of the founder has made it prosperous. There is no agriculture connected with the Guise establishment.

A number of Fourier colonies, most of them modifications of his phalanstery idea, were started in the United States. Of thirty-four such experiments tried in America all have failed. The most famous of these attempts was Brook Farm.[3]

Robert Owen (1771–1858) was the great English utopian. He was the son of a small trader. Such was his business ability and tenacity of character that at nineteen years of age he was superintendent of a cotton mill that employed 500 hands. His business acumen soon made him rich, his philanthropic impulses led him to study the conditions of the people who worked for him. In 1800 he took charge of the mills at New Lanark. There he had under him as pitiful and miserable a group of workmen as can be imagined. The factory system made wretchedness the common lot of the English workingman of this period. The hours of labor were intolerably long, the homes of the working people unutterably squalid, women and tiny children worked all day under the most unwholesome conditions; vice, drunkenness, and ignorance were everywhere.

Owen began as a practical philanthropist. He improved the sanitary conditions of his mills and town, was the first employer to reasonably shorten the hours of work, founded primary schools, proposed factory legislation, and founded the co-operative movement that has grown to great strength in England. He was one of the powerful men of the island at this period. He had the enthusiastic support of the queen, of many nobles, of clergy and scholars. But in a great public meeting in London he went out of his way to denounce the accepted forms of religion and declare his independence of all creeds, an offense that the English people never forgive.

By this time he had perfected his scheme for social reform. He proposed to establish communities of 1,000 to 1,200 persons on about 1,500 acres of land. They were to live in an enormous building in the form of a square, each family to have its own apartments, but kitchen and dining-room to be in common. Every advantage of work, education, and leisure was planned for the inmates.

A number of Owenite communities were founded in England and America. The one at New Harmony, Ind., was the most pretentious, and in it Owen sank a large portion of his fortune. None of the experiments survived their founder.[4]

The Utopians were all optimists—the source of their optimism was the social philosophy that prevailed from the French Revolution to the middle of the last century. It was the philosophy of an unbounded faith in the goodness of human nature. A good God made a good world, and made man capable of attaining goodness and harmony in all his relations. The evil in the world was contrary to God's plan. It was introduced by the perversity of society. The source of misery is the lack of knowledge. If humankind knew the right way of living, knew the original plan of the Creator, then there would be no misery. You must find this knowledge, this science, and upon it build society. Hence they are all seeking a "scientific state of society," and call their system "scientific." From Rousseau to Hegel, the theory prevailed that evil is collective, good is individual; society is bad, man is pure.

Cabet expresses it clearly. "God is perfection, infinite, all-powerful, is justice and goodness. God is our father, and it follows that all men are brethren and all are equal, as in one all-embracing family." "It is evident that, to the fathers of the Church, Christianity was communism. Communism is nothing other than true Christianity. … " "The regnancy of God, through Jesus, is the regnancy of perfection, of omniscience, of justice, of goodness, of paternal love; and, it follows, of fraternity, equality, and liberty; of the unity of community interests, that is of communism (of the general common welfare), in place of the individual."[5]

This edenesque logic was dear to Fourier, who left more profound traces on modern thought than the fantastic Saint-Simonians.[6]

Fourier began with God. "On beholding this mechanism (the world and human society), or even in making an estimate of its properties, it will be comprehended that God has done well all that He has done."[7] Man has only to find "God's design" in order to find the true basis of society; and man's system of industrially parceling out the good things of life among a few favored ones, is the "antipodes of God's design." The finding of this design is the function of "exact science"; man, who has stifled the voice of nature, must now "vindicate the Creator."[8]

Saint-Simon's whole system rests on this principle: "God has said that men ought to act toward each other as brethren." This principle will regulate society, for "in accordance with this principle, which God has given to men for the rule of their conduct, they ought to organize society in the manner the most advantageous to the greatest number."[9]

The social philosophers at the end of the eighteenth century did not believe that this rightness should be brought about by violence. "What I should desire," says Godwin, "is not by violence to change its institutions, but by discussion to change its ideas. I have no concern, if I would study merely the public good, with factions or intrigue; but simply to promulgate the truth, and to wait the tranquil progress of conviction. Let us anxiously refrain from violence."[10]

Owen, who lived a few decades later, came into contact with the theories of the succeeding school of thought. His utopianism remained, however, upon the older basis. He taught that the evils of society were not inherent in the nature of mankind. The natural state of the world and of man was good. But the evils "are all the necessary consequences of ignorance." Therefore, by education and environment he could "accomplish with ease and certainty the Herculean labor of forming a rational character in man, and that, too, chiefly before the child commences the ordinary course of education."[11]

The Utopians are hopefully seeking the universal law which will re-form society. This was a natural view of things fundamental, to be taken by men who had witnessed the political emancipation of the Third Estate and had seen "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" carved over every public portal in France, and the abstract principles of justice debated in parliaments. A feeling of naïve simplicity runs through all their writings. Just as civil liberty, they believed, had come by the application of an abstract principle of natural law, so social and economic freedom would come by the application of one universal abstract principle of human conduct. From this simplicity came a violent reaction, which reached its climax in the anarchy of Proudhon.