Chapter II: Preface

What is here published was originally delivered in the form of lectures, in the Fall of 1896, in Zurich, before miscellaneous but in general appreciative and inspiring audiences. The approval which they received, and the earnestly expressed wish of many hearers that the addresses might appear in print, have finally overcome a not inconsiderable reluctance on my part, felt by all in like position. The lectures are in many places enlarged; indeed, largely put into new form--changed from extemporaneous utterance into the more formal style proper for the written word. But their character remains, especially the restricted setting into which a great mass of material had to be compressed. This is done intentionally, since what I would offer to a larger public through this book is a brief, pointed, well-defined view of "Socialism and the Social Movement in the Nineteenth Century."

W.S.

CONTENTS

PAGE

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE v

INTRODUCTORY NOTE by Professor John B. Clark viii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE ix

CHAPTER

I. WHENCE AND WHITHER 1

Class struggle--Kant--The meaning of the social
movement--Essential elements in every social
movement--Characterisation of the social
movement--Conditions under which the working class
lives--Russian peasants--Irish "rack-rent" tenants--
Uncertainty of existence--The Japanese--The Kurd--
Hegel--The ground of revolutionary passions in the
modern proletariat--Time environment of the modern
social movement--"Revolutionism."

II. CONCERNING UTOPIAN SOCIALISM 19

Social literature, old and new--Adam Smith--David
Ricardo--"Christian socialism"--Lamennais--Kingsley--
"Ethical socialism"--Sismondi--Carlyle--"Philanthropic
socialism"--Pierre Leroux--Grün--Hess--
Anti-capitalistic literature--Adam Müller--Leopold von
Haller--Capitalistic methods of production--Utopian
socialists--St. Simon--Fourier--Owen.

III. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 37

Beginnings of the social movement carried on by the
masses--Historic occurrences--Middle-class
movements--French Revolution--_Loi martiale_--
"Coalition Law"--Marat--The men of Montaigne--The
Sans-culottes--Danton--Robespierre--Constitution of
1793--_Droits de l'Homme_--Insurrection of
Babeuf--The first proletarian agitation--Elizabethan
trade law--The Chartist movement--English type of
working-men's movement--French type--German
type--Variations of the social movement--English
social development--Carlyle's teaching.

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL PECULIARITIES 62

Characterisation of the English working-men's
movement--English industrial monopoly, 1850-1880--
Alternation of power between Tories and Whigs--Value
of legislation in favour of the working man--
Temperament of the English working-man--Practical
tendency of the old English trade-union--English
"social peace"--French "revolutionism"--Factionism--
Clubbism--Putschism--Proudhon--The bourgeoisie--
Significance of the Reign of Terror--Difference
between Roman type of the born revolutionist and the
English working-man--Victor Hehn--French anarchism--
Bakunin--The peculiarities of social agitation in
Germany--Ferdinand Lassalle--Schulze-Delitzsch--The
Lassalle movement.

V. KARL MARX 90

Birthplace, 1818--Parentage--Cosmopolitanism of the
Marx family--At Bonn--Bruno Bauer--Driven from
Prussia--From Paris--Finds rest in London--Death,
1883--Marxian theory of social agitation--Communistic
Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederic Engels--The
theory of value--Marx's application of the evolution
idea to the social movement--Ideal and material
emancipation of the proletariat--Creation of class
interest--Marxism as a social-political realism--
Engels's _Struggle of Classes in France_.

VI. THE TREND TOWARDS UNITY 121

The proletarian-socialistic character of the revolution
of 1848--Internationalism--First attempt for
international combination--The "International"--The
"Inaugural Address"--_Alliance Internationale de la
Démocratie Sociale_--Dissolution of the
"International"--Internal and external unification of
the proletariat--Lassalle's "Working-Men's
Union"--Wilhelm Liebknecht--August Bebel--The
Social-Democratic Working-Men's Party--The
"Honourables"--The "Social-Democratic Party"--The
"Gotha" programme--Gradual extension of the Marxian
system--French trade-union agitation--Approach of the
English working-men's movement to that of the
Continental--The "minimum programme" of all social
agitation--Centripetal and centrifugal tendency of
the social agitation.

VII. TENDENCIES OF THE PRESENT 142

Contradiction apparent in the great social movement--
Sources from which contradictions spring--Political
influence of the social movement--Revolutionism a
manifestation of unripeness--Meaning of social
evolution--Theoretical and practical social
development--Confusion of "ideal" and "programme"--
Relation of the proletariat to the _demos_--The
social movement to be the representative of the
highest form of economic life at every period of
production upon the largest scale--The "agrarian
question"--The Marxian theory of development only for
the sphere of manufactures--Does not apply to
agricultural development--Anti-religious nature of
the proletarian movement--The grounds for this enmity
to religion--The movement anti-ecclesiastical--
Patriotism--Not the heritage of a particular class--
Nationalism--Feeling of nationalism not shared by the
proletariat--No reason in the essence of modern
socialism for anti-nationalism--Asiatic development--
Advancement of Japan--Attitude of America towards
Asiatic development.

VIII. LESSONS 169

Necessity of the social movement--Lorenz von
Stein--"Class strife" not identical with civil
war--Various forms of "class strife"--Struggle the
solution in social life--Conflict not necessarily the
beginning of a new culture--Can also betoken the end
of the old--Social struggle should be determined
within legal bounds--Must be carried on with proper
weapons--English social agitation as a model.