Lassalle, that extraordinary champion of the German working man, gives precisely the same unflinching answer, "Present possessions are alienated property." Thus it seems that the men who clamour for a redistribution of property, the men who would render that device of justice, "Suum cuique," "Take from everybody what is his," are the very men too, who maintain that the citizen who honestly gathers wealth is a thief! However, this is not exactly the meaning of agitators such as those we have mentioned above. Their meaning is rather that the order of society, as it is, with the predominant power of capital, leads frequently, nay compels, even wellmeaning employers to make hard terms with their labourers. Competition demands the lowering of wages below the actual value of labour, and the extortion of a portion of labour produce by the rich from the poor. In this sense, capital is compared to a sponge which persistently absorbs the surplus value of "another's work," who is terrified into an agreement for wages too low, by the threat of cessation of employment. Upon this issue Karl Marx speaks with the greatest authority, as a man of learning and intellectual power. According to him, ́ ́ capital, which is formed by the produce of another's labour, commands the market and the fluctuations of the exchange. It knows how to turn to account the various conjunctures of trade for the depression of wages; and by its agency small trade, partly destroyed by wholesale enterprise, is finally defrauded at the exchange. "How would you define socialism?" asks Lassalle of his opponents. Manifestly thus: "Division of property, for the benefit of society at large." "Now," he says, "this is precisely the condition of society of the present day. Under a semblance of individual production, a distribution of property prevails, which is determined altogether by the

objective movements of society, the hegemony of capital, competition, and conjuncture. This is in reality a division of property, for the benefit of society. At this very moment there reigns an anarchical socialism in the form of property." He then goes on to say that the object of socialists is not, therefore, to abolish property, but to establish private property founded on labour. And disregarding, he continues to say, for a moment existing rights, on account of existing social conditions, we have an undoubted right to decree that the property of the future, which is as yet non-existing, and is to be produced differently, shall be the property of labour. According to writers of this stamp, then, the present distribution of wealth is an anarchical and unjust socialism; and this "bad" form must be replaced by a better socialism in some sort of collective or common property. This may be realized either by means of free association property, tending towards social federalism, or by a concentration of all capital property in the state, which leads to pure communism. Or, again, the organization may be by state authority, without a communistic destruction of private property, without levelling down altogether, but allowing each individual a share in the common product, "in proportion to the talent, capital, or labour contributed." This leads to "semi-communism," or what is properly called socialism. Or, lastly, it may be brought about by a liberal community of goods, contributed by spontaneous love, brotherly kindness, or humanity. This leads to Christian, or humanitarian, socialism.

Now whichever of the above forms be adopted for the purpose of replacing private or individual property by common or collective property, all social neologians alike demand a new organization of property, more in proportion to the actual exertions of the individual. All

ATTACKS AGAINST CAPITALISM.

5

social reformers concur in this, that existing possessions are the result of a systematic curtailing of wages, deducting so much from every labouring day. In short, without accusing Peter or Paul personally of robbing each other, the modern socialist affirms that private property is another's property, and that the constant deductions from a needy proletariat form the source and aliment of growing capital, and that this objectively may be regarded as theft.

Thus Marx emphatically states in the preface to his important work. "The question here is about persons only so far as they are personifications of economic categories, representatives of certain class relations and interests. From my own point of view less than from any other the individual is held responsible for those conditions which are imposed upon him by the social system, although subjectively he may rise above them. For I look upon the development of the economic forms of society as a historical process in accordance with natural laws."

If then socialism attacks not private capital but capitalism itself, and calls into question every kind of private property, its attitude becomes the more serious and alarming. Here war is declared against all property -agricultural and industrial alike. But it resolves itself chiefly into a quarrel with real or landed property. It finds support among some political economists in their theories about ground rents. Agrarian socialism in Ireland during the last twenty years recalls to our mind the speeches of the Gracchi as preserved by Plutarch. In England the same movement makes itself daily more powerfully felt. Socialistic criticism aims its attacks, not only against the wealth of the upper ten thousand, but also against those 27,000 who are in possession of the entire soil. And justly was the first formation of an agricultural trade union pointed at by Marx as a phenomenon

marking an epoch. The spread of discontent is more rapid now than in the days of Roman complaints against the latifundia, or during the wars of the mediæval peasantry. The masses now know how to utilize telegraphic and postal means of communication, the railroad and the press, to further agrarian agitation. Science adds her share to the ferment, and theories are hazarded about ground rent which ultimately might as easily be applied against private property of every kind. In the seats of industry, amid a teeming labouring population, socialism is hatched, and dissatisfaction vents its complaints not only against the landed aristocracy, but against the owners of capital in every shape and form. Nobility itself becomes the harbinger of a social propaganda. It is not unlikely that before long the farm labourers will present the same organized opposition against their employers which we have been accustomed to observe among the manufacturing classes in their conflict with rich capitalists.

movement.

If then the attacks of socialism deserve attention because of their intrinsic importance and the magnitude of the interests at stake, they are no less worthy of consideration on account of the personal distinction of the leaders and the superior organization of the Let us ask then in the next place: by whom are these socialistic ideas represented? By such men, we reply, as Proudhon, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, and Karl Marlo (Winkelblech), each one of whom displays no ordinary mental capacity, and some both variety and solidity of learning. Lassalle, in his "Oekonomische Julian" and other writings, gives evidence of a splendid mind and trenchant polemical powers to aid his annihilating criticism. His deeper works, e.g., " Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln" and "System der

CHARACTER OF SOCIALISTS.

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Erworbenen Rechte," are works of a higher order. Karl Marx, in his work on " Capital," of which the first volume only has as yet appeared, has at his command a rare knowledge of political economy, of English writers especially, and is a man of varied historical, philosophical, and classical attainments. Whoever dips into any of Proudhon's writings will find, amid much that is paradoxical and capricious, nothing that is whimsical or insignificant; what he says is both profound and cheering. Karl Marlo, the calm scientific representative of federalism, occupies no inferior place among economists. Nor are the older French socialists, such as St. Simon, Enfantin, Bazard, and the strange Fourier, to be despised when compared with the Utopian type of Sir Thomas More. Their genius, bold conception, and unfettered elevation above the dead level of their contemporaries preclude this. St. Simonism enthralled even Michel Chevalier, the defender of commercial treaties, and the two Pereires, connected, not to their credit, with the founders of the Crédit Mobilier in their younger days, though later they represented the principles of liberalism and large capitalism in France. It must then be candidly confessed that, as to mental endowments, the leading spirits of socialism are equal, in some cases superior, to the foremost men of any contemporary party. But their moral character is sometimes impugned, and even branded by their enemies as infamous. This, however, does not apply to such men as Proudhon. His life of independence, incorruptibility, and noble defiance of brutal force, bears close inspection. He suffered martyrdom, imprisonment and exile, in support of his convictions. Robert Owen, the great English socialist, himself an employer of labour, sacrificing his property to elevate the labouring classes, stands forth as a great man, surpassed by few in elevation