COMING OF SOCIALISM
THE COMING OF SOCIALISM
(from Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru)
I have written to you about the advance of democracy; but remember that it was a hard-fought advance. People who have interests in an existing order do not want change, and resist it with all their might. And yet progress or any betterment means such change; an institution or a method of government has to give place to a better one. Those who desire such progress must necessarily attack the old institution or the old custom, and thus their path leads to constant repudiation of existing conditions and conflict with those who profit by them. The ruling classes in Western Europe resisted all advance step by step. In England they gave in only when a refusal might have resulted in a violent revolution. Another reason for them to advance was, as I have mentioned already, a feeling among the new business people that some democracy was expedient and good for business.
But again I shall remind you that these democratic ideas were, during the first half of the nineteenth century, largely confined to the intellectuals. The Common people had been powerfully affected by the growth of industrialism and driven from the land to the factories. An industrial working class was growing, huddled up in ugly and insanitary factory town, usually near the coalfields. These workers were changing rapidly and developing a new mentality. They were very different from the peasants and artisans who had flocked to the factories urged by starvation. As England had taken the lead in setting up these factories, she was also the first country to develop this industrial working class. The conditions in the factories were appalling, the workers’ houses or huts were even worse. There was great misery among them. Little children and women worked incredibly long hours. And yet all attempts at improving these factories and houses by legislation were stoutly opposed by the owners. Was not this a shameful interference, it was said, with the rights of property? Even the compulsory sanitation of private houses was opposed on this ground.
The poor English workers were dying from slow starvation and overwork. After the Napoleonic wars the country was exhausted, and there was an economic depression, the workers suffering most by this. The workers naturally wanted to form associations to protect themselves and to fight for better conditions. In the old days there had been guilds of artisans and skilled workers, but these were quite different. Still the memory of these guilds must have been an inducement to the factory-workers to form association of their own. But they were prevented from doing so. The British ruling classes were so frightened by the French Revolution that they made laws-CombinationActs they were called-to prevent the poor workers from even meeting together to discuss their own grievance. “Law and order”, then in England as now in India, has always performed the very useful function of serving the ends and the pockets of the handful of those in authority
But laws to prevent them from meeting did not better the conditions of the workers. They simply exasperated them and made them desperate. They formed secret association, taking oaths binding each other to privacy and meeting at dead of night in out –of-the-way places. When they were betrayed or found out there were conspiracy cases and terrible punishments. Sometimes they destroyed the machines in their anger and set fire to the factories, and even killed some of their masters. At last in 1825 the restrictions on workers’ associations were partly removed and trade unions began to be formed. These unions were formed by the better-paid skilled workers. The large majority of the unskilled workers remained unorganized for a long time. The workers’ movement thus took the shape of trade unions formed for the purpose of bettering the conditions of the workers by means of collective bargaining. The only effective weapon of the workers was the right to strike, that is to stop work and thus bring the factory to a standstill. This was no doubt a great weapon, but their employers had an even more powerful weapon, the ability to starve them into submission. So the struggle of the working class went on with great sacrifices on the part of the workers and slow gains. They had no direct influence on Parliament as they did not even have the vote. The great Reform Bill of 1832, which was so strongly opposed, only gave the vote to the well-to-do middle classes. Not only the workers, but the lower middle classes still had no vote.
Meanwhile there arose a man among the factory-owners of Manchester who was a humanitarian and who was pained at the shocking conditions of the workers. This man was Robert Owen. He introduced many reforms in his own factories and improved the condition of his workers. He carried on a agitation among his own class of employers and tried to convert them by argument to a better treatment of labour. Partly because of him, the British Parliament passed the first law to protect the workers against the greed and selfishness of the employers. This was the Factory Act of 1819.This Act laid down that little children of nine should not be made to work more than twelve hours a day. This provision itself will give you some idea of the terrible conditions to which the workers had to submit.
It was Robert Owen, it is said, who first used the world “socialism” somewhere about 1830. Of course the idea of a leveling-up between the rich and the poor, and a more or less equal distribution of property, was not a new one. Many people had advocated it in the past. In the early communities there had even been a kind of communism, the whole community or village holding land and other property in common. This is called primitive communism, and is to be found in many countries, including India. But the new socialism was something much more than a vague desire to equalize people. It was more definite and, to begin with, it was meant to apply to the new factory system of production. It was thus a child of the industrial system. Owen’s idea was to have workers’ cooperative societies, and that workers should have a share in the factories. He established model factories and settlements in England and America with more or less success. But he failed to convert his brother employers or the government. His influence during his time, however, was great, and he gave currency to a word, socialism, which has since captivated millions.
All this time capitalist industry was growing, and as it recorded success after success, the problem of the working class grew with it. Capitalism resulted in more and more production, and because of this the population grew with enormous speed, as more people could now be supported and fed. Huge businesses were built up their intricate co-operation between their different section, and at the same time the competition of little businesses was crushed out. Wealth was poured into England, but much of this went to start new factories or railways or other such concerns. The workers tried to get better conditions by strikes, which usually failed miserably, and then joined the Chartist movement of the ‘forties. This Chartist movement collapsed in the year of revolution, 1848.
The successes of capitalism dazzled people, but still there were some radicals or people with advanced views, or humanitarians, who were not happy at its cut-throat competition and the suffering it caused the workers in spite of the country’s growing wealth. In England and Germany and France these people considered various alternatives to it. Several solutions were suggested, and they are all grouped together under the name of socialism or collectivism or social democracy, each of these words vaguely meaning the thing. There was general agreement among these reformers that the trouble lay in the private ownership and control of industry. If instead of this the state could own and control this, or at any rate the principal means of production, like the land and the chief industries, then there would be no danger of the workers being exploited. So, rather vaguely, people sought an alternative to the capitalist system. But the capitalist system had no intention of collapsing. It was going from strength to strength.
These socialistic ideas were started by intellectuals and, in the case of Robert Owen,
by a factory-owner. The workers’ trade-union movement developed on different lines for a while, merely seeking higher wages and better conditions. But it was naturally influenced by these ideas, and in its turn it greatly influenced the development of socialism. In each of the three leading industrial countries in Europe-England, French and Germany-socialism developed somewhat differently, in accordance with the strength and character of the working class in each country. On the whole, English socialism was conservative and believed in evolutionary methods and slow progress; Continental socialism was more radical and revolutionary. In America conditions were very different because of the vastness of the country and the demand for labour, and so no strong working-class movement grew up for a long time.
From the middle of the century onwards, for a generation, British industry dominated the world, and wealth poured in both from profits of industry and the exploitation of India and other dependencies. A part of this great wealth managed to reach even the workers, and their standards of living rose to a height which they had never known before. Prosperity and revolution have little in common, and the old revolutionary spirit of the British workers disappeared. Even the British brand of socialism became the most moderate of all. Fabianism this was called, from an old Roman general who refused to give direct battle to the enemy, but gradually wore them out. In 1867 the British franchise was still further extended and some of the city workers got the vote. The trade unions were so well-behaved and prosperous that the labour vote was given to the British Liberal Party.
While England was smug and complacent with prosperity, on the Continent of Europe a new creed was finding enthusiastic and ardent support. This was anarchism, a word which seems to terrify many people who know nothing about it. Anarchism meant a society with, as far as possible, no central government and with a great ideal of individual freedom. The anarchist ideal was extraordinarily high: “Faith in the ideal of the common wealth based on altruism, solidarity, and voluntary respect for the other fellow’s rights”. There was to be no force or compulsion on the part of the state. “That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it that will be the kind of government which they will have “, said an American Thoreau.
This seems a very fine ideal-perfect freedom for everybody, each person respecting the other, unselfishness all round, willing cooperation, but the present-day world, with all its selfishness and violence, is far removed from it. The anarchist’s desire for all central government or a minimum of government must have arisen as a reaction from the autocracy and despotism under which people had suffered for so long. Governments had crushed them and tyrannized over them, therefore let there be no governments. The anarchists also felt that under some forms of socialism, the state, being master of all the means of production, might itself become despotic. The anarchists were therefore socialists of a kind laying great stress on local and individual freedom. Many of the socialists, on the other hand, were prepared to agree to the anarchist creed as a distant ideal, but were of the opinion that for some time it would be necessary to have a centralized and strong state government under socialism. Thus, although there was a great deal of difference between socialism and anarchism, there were many shades of each, gradually approaching and overlapping each other.
Modern industry gave rise to an organized working class. Anarchism, by its very nature, could not be a well-organized movement. Anarchistic ideas therefore had little chance of spreading in industrialized countries where trade unions and the like were growing up. England thus had no appreciable number of anarchists, nor had Germany. But southern and eastern Europe, which were backward I industrialism, were more fertile ground for these ideas. As modern industry spread to the south and east, anarchism became weaker and weaker. Today it is practically a dead creed, but even now it is represented to some extent in a non-industrialized country like Spain.
Anarchism as an ideal may have been very fine, but it gave shelter not only to excitable and dissatisfied people, but also to selfish individuals who tried to seek profit for themselves under a cloak of the ideal. And it led to a type of violence which has now become associated with the word in everyone’s mind and which has brought much discredit on it. Unable to do anything on a big scale to change society as they wanted, some anarchists decided to do propaganda in a novel way. This was the “propaganda by the deed”, the influence of courageous example, brave deeds to resist tyranny and sacrifice one’s own life. There were risings in various places undertaken in this spirit. Those who took part in them expected no success at the time. Willingly they risked their lives to do this novel kind of propaganda for their cause. Of course these risings were put down, and then individual anarchists began to resort to terrorism, the throwing of the bomb, the shooting of kings and high officials. This foolish violence was obviously a sign of growing weakness and despair. Gradually, towards the end of the nineteenth century, anarchism as a movement faded away. The throwing of bombs and the “propaganda by the deed” were not approved of by many of the leading anarchists, who repudiated them.
I shall give you some well-known names of anarchists. It is interesting to note that most of these anarchist leaders were extraordinarily gentle, idealistic and likeable in their private lives. The earliest of the anarchist leaders was a Frenchman, Pierre Proudhon, who lived from 1809 to 1865. Slightly younger than him was a Russian nobel, Michel Bakunin, who was a popular leader of European labour, especially in the south. He came into conflict with Marx, who drove him and his followers out of the international union he had formed, a third name, which brings us almost to our day, is that of Peter Kropatkin, another Russian, and a prince. He has written some very interesting books on anarchism and other subjects. The fourth and the last name I shall mention here is that of an Italian, Enrico Malatesta, over eighty years old, the last relic of the great anarchists of the nineteenth century.
There is a fine story about Malatesta which I much tell you. He was being prosecuted in a court of law in Italy. The government prosecutor argued that Malatesta’s influence among the workers of the area was very great and that it had entirely changed their character. It was crime stopped, what would the courts do? So Malatesta ought to be sent to gaol! And to gaol he was sent for six months.
Unfortunately anarchism has been identified too much with violence, and people have forgotten that it is a philosophy and an ideal which has appealed to many fine men. As an ideal it is still very far off from our present imperfect world, and our modern civilization is much too complicated for its simple remedies.