which includes images of the pages of the original book4 ,see #bcegd-;h4htm or #bcegd-;h4zip3 7https3_/_/www4gutenberg4org_/dirs_/#b_/ c_/e_/g_/bcegd_/bcegd-;h_/#bcegd-;h4htm7 or 7https3_/_/www4gutenberg4org_/dirs_/#b_/ c_/e_/g_/bcegd_/bcegd-;h4zip7 ,,socialism3 ,,positive ,,and ,,negative by ,,robert ,,rives ,,la ,,monte ,i will make a man more precious than fine gold2 even a man than the golden wedge of ,ophir4 --,isaiah xiii1 #ab4 ,chicago ,charles ,h4 ,kerr ,company #aijg ,copyright #aijg by ,charles ,h4 ,kerr ,company ,illustration3 logo ,press of ,john ,f4 ,higgins ,chicago ,,to ,m4 ,e4 ,m4 ,,and ,l4 ,h4 ,m4 ,,preface ,of the papers in this little volume two have appeared in print before3 ,science and ,socialism in the ,international ,socialist ,review for ,september1 #aijj1 and ,marxism and ,ethics in ,wilshire's ,magazine for ,november1 #aije4 ,my thanks are due to the publishers of those periodicals for their kind permission to re-print those articles here4 ,the other papers appear here for the first time4 ,there is an obvious inconsistency between the treatment of ,materialism in ,science and ,socialism and its treatment in ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism4 ,i would point out that seven years elapsed between the composition of the former and that of the latter essay4 ,whether the inconsistency be a sign of mental growth or deterioration my readers must judge for themselves4 ,i will merely say here that the man or woman1 whose views remain absolutely fixed and stereotyped for seven years1 is cheating the undertaker4 ,what ,i conceive the true significance of this particular change in opinions to be is set forth in the essay on ,the ,biogenetic ,law4 ,some ,socialists will deprecate what may seem to them the unwise frankness of the paper on ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism4 ,to them ,i can only say that to me ,socialism has always been essentially a revolutionary movement4 ,revolutionists1 who attempt to maintain a distinction between their exoteric and their esoteric teachings1 only succeed in making themselves ridiculous4 ,but1 even were the maintenance of such a distinction practicable1 it would1 in my judgment1 be highly inexpedient4 ,as a mere matter of policy1 ever since ,i first entered the ,socialist ,movement1 ,i have been a firm believer in the tactics admirably summed up in ,danton's ,de l'audace6 ,puis de l'audace6 ,et toujours de l'audace6 ,should any reader find himself repelled by ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism1 let me beg that he will not put the book aside until he has read the essay on ,the ,biogenetic ,law4 ,i do not send forth this little book with any ambitious hope that it will be widely read1 or even that it will convert any one to ,socialism4 ,my hope is far more modest4 ,it is that this book may be of some real service1 as a labor-saving device1 to the thinking men and women who have felt the lure of ,socialism1 and are trying to discover just what is meant by the oft-used words ',marxian ,socialism1' ,should it prove of material aid to even one such man or woman1 ,i would feel that ,i had been repaid a hundred-fold for my labor in writing it4 ,,robert ,,rives ,,la ,,monte4 ,feb4 #g1 #aijg4 ,,table ,,of ,,contents ,,page ,,science ,,and ,,socialism #ae ,i4 ,,the ,,materialistic ,,conception ,,of ,,history #be ,,ii4 ,,the ,,law ,,of ,,surplus-,,value #cd ,,iii4 ,,the ,,class ,,struggle #df ,,marxism ,,and ,,ethics #eg ,,instead ,,of ,a ,,footnote #ge ,,the ,,nihilism ,,of ,,socialism #ha ,,the ,,biogenetic ,,law #aca ,,kismet #adc ,,science ,,and ,,socialism#a 7,international ,socialist ,review1 ,september1 #aijj47 ,until the middle of this 7the nineteenth7 century the favorite theory with those who attempted to explain the phenomena of ,history was the ,great-,man-,theory4 ,this theory was that once in a while through infinite mercy a great man was sent to the earth who yanked humanity up a notch or two higher1 and then we went along in a humdrum way on that level1 or even sank back till another great man was vouchsafed to us4 ,possibly the finest flower of this school of thought is ,carlyle's ,heroes and ,hero ,worship4 ,unscientific as this theory was1 it had its beneficent effects1 for those heroes or great men served as ideals1 and the human mind requires an unattainable ideal4 ,no man can be or do the best he is capable of unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies beyond his grasp4 ,tennyson put this truth in the mouth of the ancient sage who tells the youthful and ambitious ,gareth who is eager to enter into the service of ,king ,arthur of the ,table ,round3 -----------the ,king ,will bind thee by such vows as is a shame ,a man should not be bound by1 yet the which ,no man can keep4 ,this function of furnishing an ideal was performed in former times by these great men and more especially by those great men whom legend1 myth and superstition converted into gods4 ,but with the decay of the old faiths the only possible fruitful ideal left is the ideal upheld by ,socialism1 the ideal of the ,co-operative ,commonwealth in which the economic conditions will give birth to the highest1 purest1 most altruistic ethics the world has yet seen4 ,it is true the co-operative commonwealth is far more than a ,utopian ideal1 it is a scientific prediction1 but at this point ,i wish to emphasize its function as an ideal4 ,but it is obvious that this ,great ,man theory gave no scientific clue to history4 ,if the ,great ,man was a supernatural phenomenon1 a gift from ,olympus1 then of course ,history had no scientific basis1 but was dependent upon the arbitrary caprices of the ,gods1 and ,homer's ,iliad was a specimen of accurate descriptive sociology4 ,if on the other hand the great man was a natural phenomenon1 the theory stopped short half way toward its goal1 for it gave us no explanation of the genesis of the ,great ,man nor of the reasons for the superhuman influence that it attributed to him4 ,mallock1 one of the most servile literary apologists of capitalism1 has recently in a book called ,aristocracy and ,evolution attempted to revive and revise this theory and give it a scientific form4 ,he still attributes all progress to ,great ,men1 but with the brutal frankness of modern bourgeois ,capitalism1 gives us a new definition of ,great ,men4 ,according to ,mallock1 the great man is the man who makes money4 ,this has long been the working theory of bourgeois society1 but ,mallock is the first of them who has had the cynicism or the stupidity to confess it4 ,but mark you1 by this confession he admits the truth of the fundamental premise of modern scientific socialism1 our ,socialism1 viz41 that the economic factor is the dominant or determining factor in the life of society4 ,thus you see the ablest champion of bourgeois capitalism1 admits1 albeit unconsciously1 the truth of the ,marxian materialistic conception of history4 ,this book1 however1 is chiefly remarkable for its impudent and shameless misrepresentations of ,marx and ,marxism1 but these very lies show that intelligent apologists of capitalism know that their only dangerous foe is ,marxian socialism4 ,but just as according to the vulgar superstition the tail of a snake that has been killed wiggles till sundown1 so this book of ,mallock's is merely a false show of life made by a theory that received its deathblow long since4 ,it is the wiggling of the tail of the snake that ,herbert ,spencer killed thirty years ago with his little book ,the ,study of ,sociology4 ,the environment philosophy in one form or another has come to occupy the entire field of human thought4 ,we now look for the explanation of every phenomenon in the conditions that surrounded its birth and development4 ,the best application of this environment philosophy to intellectual and literary phenomena that has ever been made is ,taine's ,history of ,english ,literature4 ,but while ,spencer's ,study of ,sociology is the most signal and brilliant refutation of the ,great ,man theory1 no one man really killed that theory4 ,the general spread and acceptance of ,darwinism has produced an intellectual atmosphere in which such a theory can no more live than a fish can live out of water4 ,by ,darwinism we mean1 as you know1 the transmutation of species by variation and natural selection--selection accomplished mainly1 if not solely1 by the struggle for existence4 ,now this doctrine of organic development and change or metamorphic evolution1 which was1 with its originators1 ,wallace and ,darwin1 a purely biological doctrine1 was transported to the field of sociology by ,spencer and applied with great power to all human institutions1 legal1 moral1 economic1 religious1 etc4 ,spencer has taught the world that all social institutions are fluid and not fixed4 ,as ,karl ,marx said in the preface to the first edition of ,capital3 ,the present society is no solid crystal1 but an organization capable of change1 and is constantly changing1 and again in the preface to the second edition1 ,every historically developed social form is in fluid movement4 ,this is the theory of ,evolution in its broadest sense1 and it has struck a death-blow to the conception of ,permanence so dear to the hearts of the bourgeoisie who love to sing to their ,great ,god1 ,private ,property1 ,as it was in the beginning1 is now and ever shall be1 world without end4 ,amen4 ,saecula saeculorum4 ,for the ,ages of ,ages4 ,before natural science had thus revolutionized the intellectual atmosphere1 great men proclaiming the doctrines of modern socialism might have been rained down from ,heaven1 but there would have been no socialist movement4 ,in fact many of its ideas had found utterance centuries before1 but the economic conditions1 and consequently the intellectual conditions were not ripe1 and these ideas were still-born1 or died in infancy4 ,the general acceptance of the idea that all things change1 that property1 marriage1 religion1 etc41 are in process of evolution and are destined to take on new forms prepared the way for ,socialism4 ,a man who has read ,wallace and ,darwin is ready to read ,marx and ,engels4 ,now the story of the birth of ,darwinism is itself a proof of the fallacy of the ,great ,man theory1 and a signal confirmation of the view that new ideas1 theories and discoveries emanate from the material conditions4 ,the role of the great man is still an important one4 ,we need the men who are capable of abstract thought1 capable of perceiving the essential relations and significance of the facts1 and of drawing correct inductions from them4 ,such men are rare1 but there are always enough of them to perform these functions4 ,and the ,great ,man1 born out of due time1 before the material and economic conditions are ripe for him1 can effect nothing4 ,when the conditions are ripe1 the new idea always occurs to more than one man2 that is1 the same conditions and facts force the same idea upon different minds4 ,it is true there is always some one man who gives this idea its best expression or best marshals the evidence of the facts in its support1 and the idea usually becomes inseparably linked with his name4 ,in this way does our race express its gratitude to its great men and perpetuate their memory4 ,darwinism or the theory of ,natural ,selection was in this way independently discovered by ,alfred ,russell ,wallace and ,charles ,darwin1 and the popular judgment has not erred in giving the chief credit to ,charles ,darwin4 ,wallace's paper ,on the ,law which has ,regulated the ,introduction of ,new ,species1 written by ,wallace on one of the far-away islands of the ,malay ,archipelago1 where he was studying the ,geographical ,distribution of ,species1 appeared in the ,annals of ,natural ,history in #ahee4 ,its resultant conclusion was that every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a preexisting closely allied species4 ,mr4 ,darwin tells us that ,mr4 ,wallace wrote him that the cause to which he attributed this coincidence was no other than generation with modification1 or in other words that the closely allied ante-type was the parent stock from which the new form had been derived by variation4 ,mr4 ,wallace's second paper1 which in my judgment is the clearest and best condensed statement of the ,doctrine of the ,struggle for ,existence and the principle of ,natural ,selection ever written1 was written by ,mr4 ,wallace at ,ternate in the ,malay ,archipelago1 in ,february1 #aheh1 and sent to ,mr4 ,darwin4 ,it was called ,on the ,tendency of ,varieties to ,depart ,indefinitely from the ,original ,type4 ,mr4 ,wallace requested ,mr4 ,darwin to show it to ,sir ,chas4 ,lyell1 the father of ,modern ,geology1 and accordingly ,dr4 ,hooker1 the great botanist1 brought it to ,sir ,chas4 ,lyell4 ,they were both so struck with the complete agreement of the conclusions of ,mr4 ,darwin and ,mr4 ,wallace that they thought it would be unfair to publish one without the other1 so this paper and a chapter from ,darwin's unpublished manuscript of the ,origin of ,species were read before the ,linnaean ,society on the same evening and published in their ,proceedings for #aheh1 and thus appeared in the same year1 #ahei1 as ,marx's ,critique of ,political ,economy4 ,this theory of ,natural ,selection is1 you know1 in brief1 that more animals of every kind are born than can possibly survive1 than can possibly get a living4 ,this gives rise to a ,battle for ,life4 ,in this battle those are the victors who are the best able to secure food for themselves and their offspring and are best able by fight or flight to protect themselves from their enemies4 ,this is called the ,law of the ,survival of the ,fittest1 but remember1 the ,fittest are not always the best or most highly developed forms1 but simply those forms best suited to the then existing environment4 ,these two extremely interesting papers of ,wallace are printed as the two first chapters of his book ,natural ,selection and ,tropical ,nature1 published by ,mac,millan1 a book so fascinating ,i would beg all my hearers and readers who have not read it to do so4 ,this law of double or multiple discovery holds good of all great discoveries and inventions1 and is notably true of the first of the three great thoughts that we ordinarily associate with the name of ,karl ,marx4 ,these three are3 #a4 ,the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history4 #b4 ,the ,law of ,surplus ,value4 #c4 ,the ,class ,struggle--the third being a necessary consequence of the first two4 ,now the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history was independently discovered by ,engels just as ,darwinism was by ,wallace1 as you will see by reading ,engels' preface to the ,communist ,manifesto4 ,but just as ,wallace gave ,darwin all the credit1 so ,engels did to ,marx4 ,,footnote3 #a ,this essay was originally prepared for and delivered as a ,lecture before the ,young ,mens' ,socialist ,literary ,society1 an organization of ,jewish ,socialists on the lower ,east ,side of ,new ,york city1 in the early part of the winter of #ahii-aijj4 ,i ,,the ,,materialistic ,,conception ,,of ,,history ,what do we mean by the ,doctrine of the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history1 or of ,economic ,determinism1 as ,ferri calls it8 ,we must make sure we understand1 for there is cant in ,socialism1 just as there is in religion1 and there is good reason to fear many of us go on using these good mouth-filling phrases1 ,materialistic ,conception of ,history1 ,class-,conscious ,proletariat1 ,class ,struggle1 and ,revolutionary ,socialism1 with no more accurate idea of their meaning than our pious friends have of the theological phrases they keep repeating like so many poll-parrots4 ,at bottom1 when we talk intelligently of the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history1 we simply mean1 what every man by his daily conduct proves to be true1 that the bread and butter question is the most important question in life4 ,all the rest of the life of the individual is affected1 yes dominated the way he earns his bread and butter4 ,as this is true of individuals1 so also it is true of societies1 and this gives us the only key by which we can understand the history of the past1 and1 within limits1 predict the course of future development4 ,that is all there is of it4 ,that is easy to understand1 and every man of common sense is bound to admit that that much is true4 ,the word materialistic suggests philosophy and metaphysics and brings to our minds the old disputes about monism and dualism1 and the dispute between religious people who believe in the existence of spirit and scientists who adopt modern materialistic monism4 ,but no matter what position a man may hold on these philosophical and theological questions he can with perfect consistency recognize the fact that the economic factor is the dominant1 determining factor in every day human life1 and the man who admits this simple truth believes in the ,marxian ,materialistic ,conception of ,history4 ,the political1 legal1 ethical and all human institutions have their roots in the economic soil1 and any reform that does not go clear to the roots and affect the economic structure of society must necessarily be abortive4 ,any thing that does go to the roots and does modify the economic structure1 the bread and butter side of life1 will inevitably modify every other branch and department of human life1 political1 ethical1 legal1 religious1 etc4 ,this makes the social question an economic question1 and all our thought and effort should be concentrated on the economic question4#b ,i am aware of the fact that in the ,preface of his ,socialism1 ,utopian and ,scientific1 ,engels apparently identifies the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history with ,materialistic ,monism in ,philosophy1 but this connection or identification is not a necessary logical consequence of any statement of the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history ,i have been able to find by ,engels1 ,marx1 ,deville1 ,ferri1 ,loria1 or any ,marxian of authority and to thus identify it1 is detrimental to the cause of ,socialism1 since many people who would not hesitate to admit the predominance of the economic factor1 instantly revolt at the idea of ,materialism4 ,let us take ,engels' statement of this doctrine in the preface to the ,manifesto4 ,it is as follows3 ,in every historical epoch1 the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange1 and the social organization necessarily following from it1 form the basis upon which is built up1 and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch4 ,does not that agree exactly with the doctrine as ,i have stated it8 ,or1 take this statement of it by ,comrade ,vail1 of ,jersey ,city3 ,the laws1 customs1 education1 public opinion and morals are controlled and shaped by economic conditions1 or1 in other words1 by the dominant ruling class which the economic system of any given period forces to the front4 ,the ruling ideas of each age have been the ideas of its ruling class1 whether that class was the patricians of ancient ,rome1 the feudal barons of the middle ages1 or the capitalists of modern times4 ,the economic structure of society largely controls and shapes all social institutions1 and also religious and philosophical ideas4 ,or1 take this1 by ,marx himself3 ,the mode of production obtaining in material life determines1 generally speaking1 the social1 political and intellectual processes of life4 ,does not that again agree exactly with the doctrine as ,i have stated it8 ,the doctrine is stated in nearly the same language by ,loria and ,ferri1 though ,ferri calls it ,economic ,determinism1 which seems to me a much better and more exact name4 ,ferri points out that we must not forget the intellectual factor and the various other factors1 which though they are themselves determined by the economic factor1 in their turn become causes acting concurrently with the economic factor4 ,loria deals with this whole subject most exhaustively and interestingly in his recently translated book ,the ,economic ,foundations of ,society4 ,curiously enough in this long book he never once gives ,marx the credit of having discovered this theory1 but constantly talks as though he--,loria--had revealed it to a waiting world4 ,the method of his book is the reverse of scientific1 as he first states his theory and conclusions and then starts to scour the universe for facts to support them1 instead of first collecting the facts and letting them impose the theory upon his mind4 ,and his book is by no means free from inconsistencies and contradictions4 ,but while you cannot place yourselves unreservedly and confidingly in his hands as you can in those of ,karl ,marx1 still his book has much value4 ,he shows most interestingly how all the connective institutions1 as he calls religious and legal and political institutions1 have been moulded in the interest of the economically dominant class1 and how useful they have been in either persuading or forcing the so-called lower classes to submit to the economic conditions that were absolutely against their interests4 ,but the system of ,wage ,slavery is such a beautifully automatic system1 itself subjugating the workers and leaving them no choice1 that ,i cannot see that the capitalists have any further need of any of these connective institutions save the ,state4 ,at all events1 these institutions are fast losing their power over the minds of men4 ,but the most valuable part of his book is the immense mass of evidence he has collected showing how political sovereignty follows economic sovereignty or rather1 revenue1 and how all past history has been made up of a series of contests between various kinds of revenue1 particularly between rent from landed property and profits from industrial or manufacturing capital1 but as this is nothing more than the ,class ,struggle between the landed aristocracy and the bourgeoisie1 a struggle sketched by master hands in the ,communist ,manifesto of ,marx and ,engels1 we can give ,loria no credit for originality1 but merely praise his industry in collecting evidence4 ,gabriel ,deville1 who has probably done more than any one else to popularize the ideas of ,marx in ,france1 has pointed out a very nice distinction here4 ,man1 like all living beings1 is the product of his environment4 ,but while animals are affected only by the natural environment1 man's brain1 itself a product of the natural environment1 becomes a cause1 a creator1 and makes for man an economic environment1 so that man is acted on by two environments1 the natural environment which has made man and the economic environment which man has made4 ,now in the early stages of human development1 it is the natural environment1 the fertility of the soil1 climatic conditions1 abundance of game1 fish1 etc41 which is all-important1 but with the progress of civilization1 the natural environment loses in relative importance1 and the economic environment 7machinery1 factories1 improved appliances1 etc47 grows in importance until in our day the economic environment has become well nigh all-important4 ,hence the inadequacy of the ,henry ,george theory which places all its stress on one element of the natural environment1 land1 and wholly neglects the dominant economic environment4 ,but while this economic environment1 the dominant factor in human life1 is the child of the brain of man1 man in its creation has been forced to work within strict limitations4 ,he had to make it out of the materials furnished him in the first place by the natural environment and later by the natural environment and the inherited economic environment1 so that in the last analysis the material and economic factors are supreme4 ,we ,marxians are often accused of neglecting the intellectual factor and1 as ,deville says1 a whole syndicate of factors2 but we do not neglect them4 ,we recognize their existence and their importance1 but we do refuse to waste our revolutionary energy on derivative phenomena when we are able to see and recognize the decisive1 dominant factor1 the economic factor4 ,as ,deville says1 we do not neglect the cart because we insist upon putting it behind the horse instead of in front of or alongside of him1 as our critics would have us do4 ,now1 if the economic factor is the basic factor1 it behooves us to understand the present economic system--,marx's ,law of ,surplus-,value is the key to this system4 ,,footnote3 #b ,if this be true the question naturally arises3 ,why do the socialists1 instead of using economic methods to solve an economic question1 organize themselves into a political party8 ,to answer this question1 we must first see what the ,state is and what relation it holds to the economic conditions4 ,gabriel ,deville defines the ,state thus3 ,the ,state is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division into classes1 a power which1 being clothed with force1 makes laws and levies taxes4 ,as long as the economically dominant class retain full possession of this public power of coercion they are able to use it as a weapon to defeat every attempt to alter the economic structure of society4 ,hence every attempt to destroy economic privilege and establish ,industrial ,democracy inevitably takes the form of a political class struggle between the economically privileged class and the economically exploited class4 ,,ii ,,the ,,law ,,of ,,surplus-,,value ,the second great idea that we associate with the name of ,karl ,marx is the ,law of ,surplus-,value4 ,curiously enough this one technical theory is the only discovery that bourgeois writers and economists give ,marx credit for4 ,if you look up ,marx in any ordinary encyclopedia or reference book you will find they make his fame depend on this theory alone1 and to make matters worse they usually misstate and misrepresent this theory1 while they invariably fail to mention his two other equally great1 if not greater discoveries1 the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history and the ,class ,struggle4 ,i think the reason they give special prominence to this law of ,surplus-,value is that1 as it is a purely technical theory in economics1 it is easier to obscure it with a cloud of sophistry and persuade their willing dupes that they have refuted it4 ,and then they raise the cry that the foundation of ,marxian ,socialism has been destroyed and that the whole structure is about to tumble down on the heads of its crazy defenders1 the ,socialists4 ,it is much to be regretted that many so-called ,socialists are found foolish enough to play into the hands of the ,capitalists by joining in the silly cry that some pigmy in political economy has overthrown the ,marxian theory of ,value4 ,i suppose these so-called ,socialists are actuated by a mad desire to be up to date1 to keep up with the intellectual band-wagon4 ,revolutions in the various sciences have been going on so rapidly1 they fancy that a theory that was formulated forty years ago must be a back-number1 and so they hasten to declare their allegiance to the last new cloud of sophistry1 purporting to be a theory of value1 that has been evolved by the feeble minds of the anarchists of ,italy or the capitalist economists of ,austria4 ,the ,fabians of ,london are the most striking example of these socialists whose heads have been turned in this way by the rapid progress of science4 ,but the followers of ,bernstein in ,europe and this country are running into the same danger and in their eagerness to grasp the very newest and latest doctrine will fall easy victims of the first windy and pretentious fakir who comes along4 ,ask any one of these fellows who tells you that the ,marxian theory of ,value has been exploded1 to state the new and correct theory of ,value that has taken its place and you will find that he cannot state a theory that you or ,i or any other man can understand4 ,he will either admit he is floored1 or else he will emit a dense fog of words4 ,i challenge any one of them to state a theory of value that he himself can understand1 let alone make any one else understand4 ,now the ,marxian theory of ,value can be clearly stated so that you and ,i can understand it4 ,but let us begin with surplus-value4 ,this theory of surplus-value is simply the scientific formulation of the fact that workingmen had been conscious of in a vague way long before ,karl ,marx's day1 the fact that the workingman don't get a fair deal1 that he don't get all he earns4 ,this fact had been formulated as long ago as #ahba by the unknown author of a letter to ,lord ,john ,russell on ,the ,source and ,remedy of the ,national ,difficulties4 ,in this letter the very phrases surplus produce and surplus labor are used4 ,you will find that ,marx refers to this letter in a note on page #cfi 7,humboldt edition1 #fdd ,kerr edition7 of the ,american edition of ,capital4 ,the ,russian writer1 ,slepzoff1 quotes several passages from this letter in an article in the ,december1 #ahii1 number of ,la ,revue ,socialiste1 and it is amazing to see how near to ,marx's conclusions this unknown writer had come eighty years ago1 but the conditions were not ripe and his letter would to-day be forgotten if ,marx had not embalmed it in a footnote4 ,i confess ,i was surprised to learn that this was not a purely original discovery of ,marx's1 but the fact that it is not is one more signal confirmation of the theory ,i have given in this lecture of the double or multiple discovery of great ideas4 ,but let us resume the discussion of ,surplus ,value and see just what it really is4 ,no matter where you1 my workingman hearer or reader may work1 the person or corporation or trust for whom or which you work gets back more out of your labor1 than he or it pays you in wages4 ,if this is not so1 your employer is either running a charitable institution or he is in business for his health4 ,you may have employers of that kind here on the ,east ,side of ,new ,york1 but ,i have never met any of them elsewhere4 ,it is impossible to conceive of a man going on day after day1 week after week1 year after year1 paying you wages1 unless he receives more for the product of your labor than he pays you in wages4 ,now1 this difference between what you get and what he gets is what we call surplus-value4 ,this surplus-value is the key to the whole present economic organization of society4 ,the end and object of bourgeois society is the formation and accumulation of surplus-value1 or in other words1 the systematic robbery of the producing class4 ,now when we say robbery1 we do not mean to accuse employers of conscious dishonesty4 ,they are the creatures of a system just as the workers are1 but it is a system which makes their interests diametrically opposed to the interests of their employees4 ,the only way the capitalists can increase their relative share of the product of their employees' labor is by decreasing the relative share of the latter4 ,now1 if out of the total product of his labor the workingman only receives a part1 then it is true to say that he works part of the day for himself and part of the day gratuitously for the capitalist4 ,let us say1 for purposes of illustration1 that he works three hours for himself and seven hours for his employer for nothing4 ,this three hours we call his necessary labor time1 or his paid labor2 and the seven hours we call his surplus labor time or his unpaid labor4 ,the product of his three hours' labor is the equivalent of his wages or as we call it1 the value of his ,labor-,power4 ,the product of the other seven hours of his labor1 his surplus or unpaid labor1 is surplus product or surplus-value4 ,starting from the fact that every workingman knows to be true1 that he don't get all he feels he ought to get1 we have thus1 ,i think1 made the definition of surplus-value clear to every one of you1 but we have been talking of surplus-value and value of labor power and we have not yet defined ,value4 ,when we speak of the value of an object we mean the amount of human labor that is embodied or accumulated in it1 that has been spent in fitting it to satisfy human needs4 ,and we measure the amount of this human labor by its duration1 by labor-time4 ,you1 if you are a skilled1 highly-paid worker1 receiving say four dollars a day1 may say that it is absurd to say that an hour of your labor produces no more value than an hour of ,tom's or ,dick's or ,pete's1 who get only eighty cents a day apiece4 ,you are quite right4 ,your hour does produce more value4 ,the labor-time that determines value is the labor-time of the average1 untrained worker4 ,again1 you may waste your time1 spending half of it looking out of the window or carrying on a flirtation4 ,this wasted labor does not count in measuring value4 ,the only labor that counts is the labor that is socially necessary under normal conditions for the production of the given commodity4 ,again1 labor spent to produce a useless article does not produce value4 ,to produce value the labor must serve to satisfy human wants4 ,now1 ,i think this is quite clear so far4 ,we know what surplus-value is4 ,we know what value is and how it is measured4 ,let us now see what is meant by the ,value of ,labor-,power4 ,to begin with1 what is ,labor-,power8 ,when a workingman goes upon the market to sell something for money with which to buy bread and butter and other necessaries of life1 what has he to offer for sale8 ,he cannot offer a finished commodity1 such as a watch1 a shoe1 or a book1 because he owns nothing4 ,he has neither the necessary machinery1 the necessary raw material1 nor even the necessary place in which to work to make these things4 ,these all belong to another class who by owning them1 in fact1 own him4 ,he cannot offer labor for sale1 because his labor does not yet exist4 ,he cannot sell a thing that has no existence4 ,when his labor comes into real objective existence1 it is incorporated with materials that are the property of the class that rules him1 and no longer belongs to him4 ,he cannot sell what he don't possess4 ,there is only one thing he can sell1 namely1 his mental and physical or muscular power to do things1 to make things4 ,he can sell this for a definite time to an employer1 just exactly as a livery stable keeper sells a horse's power to trot to his customers for so much per hour4 ,now this power of his to do things is what we call his labor-power2 that is1 his capacity to perform work4 ,now1 its value is determined precisely like the value of every other commodity1 i4 e41 by the labor-time socially necessary for its production4 ,now the labor-time socially necessary for the production of labor-power is the labor-time socially necessary to produce the food1 clothing and shelter or lodging that are necessary to enable the laborer to come on the labor market day after day able physically to work1 and also to enable him to beget and raise children who will take his place as wage-slaves when he shall have been buried by the ,county or some ,sick and ,death ,benefit ,fund4 ,in the example we used above we assumed that the laborer worked three hours a day to produce a value equal to the value of his labor-power4 ,the price of this value1 the value produced by his paid labor1 we call ,wages4 ,this price is often reduced by the competition of scabs and other victims of capitalist exploitation1 below the real value of labor-power1 but we have not time to go into that here1 so we will assume that the laborer gets in wages the full value of his labor-power4 ,well1 then1 if he produces in three or four hours a value equal to the value of his labor-power or wages1 why doesn't he stop work then1 and take his coat and hat and go home and devote the rest of the day to study1 reading1 games1 recreation and amusement8 ,he don't because he can't4 ,he has to agree 7voluntarily1 of course7 to any conditions that the class who by owning his tools own him choose to impose upon him1 and the lash of the competition of the unemployed1 ,capital's ,reserve ,army1 as ,marx called it1 is ever ready to fall upon his naked back4 ,why is he so helpless8 ,because he and his class have been robbed of the land and the tools and all the means of sustenance and production1 and have nothing left them but that empty bauble1 legal liberty1 liberty to accept wages so small that they barely enable them to live like beasts1 or liberty to starve to death and be buried in unmarked graves by the public authorities4 ,the wage system necessarily implies this surplus labor or unpaid labor4 ,so long as there are wages1 workingmen1 you will never get the full product of your labor4 ,let no reformer beguile you into a struggle which simply aims to secure a modification of the wage system6 ,nothing short of the annihilation of the wage system will give you justice and give you the full product of your labor4 ,but while wages necessarily imply surplus-labor1 the reverse is not true4 ,you can have surplus-labor without wages4 ,surplus-labor is not an invention of modern capitalists4 ,since ,mankind emerged from the state of ,primitive ,communism typified by the ,garden of ,eden in the ,hebraic myth1 there have been three great systems of economic organization3 #a4 ,slavery2 #b4 ,serfdom2 #c4 ,the ,wage ,system4 ,it is interesting to note the varying appearances of surplus or unpaid labor under these three systems4 ,under the first1 ,slavery1 all labor appears as unpaid labor4 ,this is only a false appearance1 however4 ,during a part of the day the slave only reproduces the value of his maintenance or keep4 ,during that part of the day he works for himself just as truly as the modern wage slave works for himself during a part of his day4 ,but the property relation conceals the paid labor4 ,under the second system1 ,serfdom1 or the ,feudal ,system1--the paid labor and the unpaid labor are absolutely separate and distinct1 so that not even the most gifted orthodox political economist can confuse them4 ,under the third system1 ,wage ,slavery1 the unpaid labor apparently falls to ,zero4 ,there is none4 ,you voluntarily enter into a bargain1 agreeing that your day's work is worth so much1 and you receive the full price agreed upon4 ,but again this is only a false appearance4 ,as we saw by our analysis1 a part of the wage-slave's day is devoted to paid labor and a part to unpaid4 ,here wages or the money relation conceals the unpaid labor and disguises under the mask of a voluntary bargain the struggle of the working class to diminish or abolish unpaid labor1 and the class-conscious1 pitiless struggle of the capitalist class to increase the unpaid labor and reduce the paid labor to the minimum1 i4 e41 to or below the level of bare subsistence4 ,in other words the ,wage ,system conceals the ,class ,struggle4 ,,iii ,,the ,,class ,,struggle ,the third of the great ideas that will always be associated with the name of ,karl ,marx is that of the ,class ,struggle4 ,the ,class ,struggle is logically such a necessary consequence of both the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history and the ,law of ,surplus-,value1 that as we have discussed them at some length1 but little need be said of the ,class ,struggle itself4 ,in discussing the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history we showed with sufficient fullness and clearness that1 in the language of the ,communist ,manifesto1 ,the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of ,class ,struggles4 ,hence it is clear the doctrine of class struggles is a key to past history4 ,but it is more than this4 ,it is a compass by which to steer in the present struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat1 who cannot1 fortunately1 emancipate themselves without emancipating and ennobling all mankind4 ,the ,law of ,surplus-,value has shown us that there is a deep-seated1 ineradicable conflict between the direct class interest of the proletariat which coincides with the true interests of the human race1 and the direct1 conscious guiding interest of the class who own the means of production and distribution4 ,there is here a direct clash between two hostile interests4 ,this fact has been skilfully hidden from the eyes of the workers in the past1 but the modern socialist movement1 aided by the growing brutality of the capitalist class1 is making it impossible to fool them in this way much longer4 ,in other words1 the workingmen are becoming ,class-,conscious1 i4 e41 conscious of the fact that they1 as a class1 have interests which are in direct conflict with the selfish interests of the capitalist class4 ,with the growth of this class-consciousness this conflict of interests must inevitably become a political class struggle4 ,the capitalists1 the economically privileged class1 struggle to retain possession of the ,state that they may continue to use it as a weapon to keep the working class subjugated1 servile and dependent4 ,the proletariat1 the working-class1 struggle to obtain possession of the ,state1 that they may use it to destroy every vestige of economic privilege1 to abolish private property in the means of production and distribution1 and thus put an end to the division of society into classes1 and usher in the society of the future1 the ,co-operative ,commonwealth4 ,as the ,state is in its very nature a class instrument1 as its existence is dependent upon the existence of distinct classes1 the ,state in the hands of the victorious proletariat will commit suicide1 by tearing down its own foundation4 ,until a man perceives and is keenly conscious of this class conflict1 a conflict which admits of no truce or compromise1 and ranges himself on the side of the workers to remain there until the battle is fought and the victory won1 until the proletariat shall have conquered the public powers1 taken possession of that class instrument1 the ,state 7for so long as the ,state exists it will be a class instrument7 and made it in the hands of the working class a tool to abolish private ownership in the tools and the land1 in the means of production and distribution1 and to abolish all classes by absorbing them all in the ,brotherhood of ,man2 until a man has thus shown himself clearly conscious of the ,class ,struggle1 with its necessary implications1 his heart may be in the right place1 but laboring men can not trust him as a leader4 ,the fact that the hearts of many popular reformers1 political candidates and so-called friends of labor1 who ignore the class struggle1 are on the right side1 but gives them added power to mislead and betray workingmen4 ,workingmen1 ,i beg you to follow no leader who has not a clear enough head to see that there is a class struggle1 and a large enough heart to place himself on your side of that struggle4 ,but remember that you are not fighting the battle of a class alone4 ,you are fighting for the future welfare of the whole human race4 ,but while this is true1 it is also true that your class must bear the brunt of this battle1 for yours is the only class that1 in the language of the ,manifesto1 has nothing but its chains to lose1 and a ,world to gain6 ,the rich have much to lose1 and this very real and tangible risk of loss not unnaturally blinds the eyes of most of them to the more remote1 though infinitely greater compensations that ,socialism has to offer them4 ,the ,middle ,class1 even down to those who are just a round above the proletarians on the social ladder1 love to ape the very rich and the capitalist magnates4 ,it tickles their silly vanity to fancy that their interests are capitalistic interests1 and their mental horizon is too hopelessly limited for them to perceive that the proletariat whom it pleases them to despise as the great army of the unwashed are in truth fighting their battles for them1 and receiving instead of gratitude1 contempt1 gibes and sneers4 ,socialism does occasionally receive a recruit from the very highest stratum of society1 but ,i tell you it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a member of the ,middle ,class to become a scientific socialist4 ,i have said the ,class ,struggle is a compass to steer by in the present struggle for the emancipation of the working class4 ,if we steer by this compass1 we will resolutely reject all overtures from political parties representing the interests of other classes1 even when such parties in their platform endorse some of the immediate demands of the socialists2 we will fear the ,greeks bringing gifts2 we will not be seduced for a moment by the idea of fusion with any so-called ,socialist party which is not avowedly based on the ,class ,struggle2 especially as individuals will we avoid giving our votes or our support to any ,middle ,class party which we may at times fancy to be moving in the right direction4 ,the history of the class conflicts of the past shows that whenever the proletarians have joined forces with the ,middle ,class or any section of it1 the proletarians have had to bear the heat and burden of the day and when the victory has been won their allies have robbed them of its fruits4 ,you1 yourselves1 then1 ,workingmen1 must fight this battle6 ,to win1 it is true1 you will need the help of members of the other classes4 ,but this help the economic evolution is constantly bringing you4 ,it is a law of the economic evolution that with the progress of industrialism the ratio of the returns of capital to the capital invested constantly diminishes1 7though the aggregate volume of those returns increases74 ,you see this in the constant lowering of the rate of interest4 ,now1 as their incomes decrease1 the small capitalists and the middle class1 who form the vast majority of the possessing class1 become unable to continue to support the members of the liberal professions1 the priests1 preachers1 lawyers1 editors1 lecturers1 etc41 whose chief function heretofore has been to fool the working class into supporting or at least submitting to the present system4 ,now1 when the income of these unproductive laborers1 an income drawn from the class hostile to the proletariat1 shall sensibly decrease or1 worse still1 cease1 these educated members of the liberal professions will desert the army of ,capital and bring a much-needed reinforcement to the ,army of ,labor4 ,some of the more far-seeing upholders of the present system are keenly conscious of this danger4 ,and this danger 7even though most of the expansionists may not realize it71 is one of the most potent causes of the ,imperialism1 ,militarism1 and ,jingoism which are at present disgracing the civilized world4 ,england in ,africa1 and ,america in the ,philippines are pursuing their present criminal policies1 not solely to open new markets for ,english and ,american goods1 but also to secure new fields for the investment of ,english and ,american capital1 and thus to stop the continuous dropping of the rate of interest and profits1 for if this cannot be stopped1 the intellectual proletariat will join the sweating proletariat1 and the ,co-operative ,commonwealth will be established and then the poor capitalists will have to work for their livings like other people4 ,this was clearly pointed out by a capitalist writer in an essay in a recent number of the ,atlantic ,monthly1 who warned the capitalist opponents of ,mc,kinley1 ,destiny ,co4's policy of expansion that they were attempting to close the only safety-valve which under present conditions could1 not avert1 but postpone the ,social ,revolution4#c ,but1 friends1 nothing can postpone it long1 for the industrial crises and financial panics are recurring at shorter and shorter intervals1 and the process of recovery from them is slower and slower1 and every panic and crisis forces thousands of educated1 intelligent members of the middle class off their narrow and precarious foothold down into the ranks of the proletariat1 where the hard logic of the facts will convert them to class-conscious ,socialism4 ,workingmen1 ,i congratulate you upon the approaching victory of the workers and the advent of the ,co-operative ,commonwealth1 for ,i tell you1 in the language of an ,english comrade3 ,failure on failure may seem to defeat us2 ultimate failure is impossible4 ,seeing what is to be done then1 seeing what the reward is1 ,seeing what the terms are1--are you willing to join us8 ,will you lend us the aid of your voice1 your money1 your sympathy8 ,may we take you by the hand and call you ',comrade'8 ,,footnote3 #c ,the expansion policy also acts as a safety-valve by promoting the emigration of the discontented and by providing employment abroad for the educated proletarians who would1 no doubt1 become dangerous and incendiary ,socialist agitators in their native lands4 ,,marxism ,,and ,,ethics 7,wilshire's ,magazine1 ,november1 #aije74 ,what are wrong1 right1 vice1 virtue1 bad and good8 ,mere whips to scourge the backs that naked bear ,the burden of the world--bent backs that dare ,not rise erect1 defy the tyrant1 ,should1 ,and freely1 boldly do the things they would4 ,in living's joy they rarely have a share2 ,they look beyond the grave1 and hope that there ,they'll be repaid1 poor fools1 for being good4 ,to serve thy master1 that is virtue1 ,slave2 ,to do thy will1 enjoy sweet life1 is vice4 ,poor duty-ridden serf1 rebel1 forget ,thy master-taught morality2 be brave ,enough to make this earth a ,paradise ,whereon the ,sun of ,joy shall never set6 ,thanks to modern science--the child of the machine process--the universality of the law of cause and effect is now assumed on all hands4 ,in ,labriola's strong words1 ,nothing happens by chance4 ,the ,marxist believes this in all its fulness4 ,to him systems of religion1 codes of ethics and schools of art are1 in the last analysis1 just as much products of material causes as are boots or sausages4 ,there are some intellectual ,socialists whose mode of life has shielded them from the discipline of the ,machine ,process--the inexorable inculcator of causation--who attempt to place religion and ethics and other ideological phenomena in a separate category not to be accounted for by the materialistic conception of history4 ,these may turn to ,marx and weary their auditors by their iteration of ,lord6 ,lord6 but verily they know not the mind of the ,master4 ,with ,marx matter always comes first1 thought second4 ,the dialectic materialism of the ,socialist is an all-inclusive philosophy1 accounting for all phenomena--as fully for those called spiritual as for the most grossly material4 ,the man who narrows this dialectic materialism down to economic determinism and then defines the latter as meaning that the economic factor has been the dominant factor--among many independent factors--in producing the civilization of to-day1 may be a sincere ,socialist1 but he is no ,marxist4 ,the work of the theoretical ,marxist will not be done till the origin and development of all religions1 philosophies1 and systems of ethics have been explained and accounted for by reference to material and economic causes4 ,to understand history the primary requisite is to understand the processes by which the material means of life have been produced and distributed4 ,the ruling ideas of every age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class4 ,this applies of ideas of right and wrong--of what is commonly known as morality--as fully as to ideas of any other kind4 ,conduct that has tended to perpetuate the power of the economically dominant class--since the increase of wealth has divided society into classes--has ever been accounted moral conduct2 conduct that has tended to weaken or subvert the power of the ruling class has always been branded as immoral4 ,there you have the key to all the varying codes of ethics the world has seen4 ,for it must never be forgotten that ideas of right and wrong are not absolute1 but relative2 not fixed1 but fluid1 changing with the changes in our modes of producing food1 clothes and shelter4 ,morality varies not only with time1 but with social altitude4 ,what was accounted a virtue in a bold baron of the feudal days was a crime in that same baron's serf4 ,the pipe-line hand who regulates his daily life by the same moral ideas which have made ,john ,d4 ,rockefeller a shining example of piety will find himself behind prison bars4 ,ethics simply register the decrees by which the ruling class stamps with approval or brands with censure human conduct solely with reference to the effect of that conduct upon the welfare of their class4 ,this does not mean that any ruling class has ever had the wit to devise ab initio a code of ethics perfectly adapted to further their interests4 ,far from it4 ,the process has seldom1 if ever1 been a conscious one4 ,by a process akin to natural selection in the organic world1 the ruling class learns by experience what conduct is helpful and what hurtful to it1 and blesses in the one case and damns in the other4 ,and as the ruling class has always controlled all the avenues by which ideas reach the so-called lower classes1 they have heretofore been able to impose upon the subject classes just those morals which were best adapted to prolong their subjection4 ,even to-day in ,america the majority of the working class get their ideas--like their clothes--ready-made4 ,but there is an ever-growing portion of the working class whom the ever-increasing severity of the discipline of the machine process is teaching more and more to think solely in terms of material cause and effect4 ,to them1 just as much as to the scholar who has learned by study the relativity of ethics1 current morality has ceased to appeal4 ,it is idle to talk of the will of ,god1 or of abstract1 absolute ideas of right and wrong to the sociological scholar and the proletarian of the factory alike4 ,george ,bernard ,shaw1 in the preface to ,plays1 ,pleasant and ,unpleasant1 says3 ,i have no respect for popular morality4 ,a few weeks since1 a workingman1 who had been listening to a stereotyped sentimental harangue emitted by one of our amiable ,utopian comrades1 showed me the palms of his hands1 which were thickly studded with callouses1 and asked me1 ,what the hell has a fellow with a pair of mits like those to do with morality8 ,what ,i want is the goods4 ,shaw meant just what he wrote2 yet the critics will continue to treat his utterance as one of ,bernard ,shaw's delightfully witty paradoxes4 ,my friend meant just what he said2 yet ,salvation ,armyists and other good ,christians will continue to preach to him and his kind a religion and a morality which have become meaningless to them4 ,organized government1 with its power to make laws and levy taxes--in other words1 the ,state--only came into existence with the division of society into classes4 ,the ,state is1 in its very essence1 a class instrument--an agency in the hands of the ruling class to keep the masses in subjection4 ,hence the name1 ,state1 cannot fitly be applied to the social organization of a society in which there are no classes1 whether that society be the primitive communist group of savagery or the co-operative commonwealth of the future4 ,the word capital1 cannot be applied to the machinery and means of production in any and every society4 ,they only become capital when they are used as means to exploit 7rob7 a subject class of workers1 and when they shall cease to be so used they will cease to be capital4 ,the word wages1 necessarily implies the extraction of surplus-value 7profits7 from the workers by a parasitic class2 hence1 that share of the social product which the workers of the future will devote to individual consumption cannot be correctly spoken of as wages4 ,in the same way1 morality is1 in its very essence1 a class institution--a set of rules of conduct enforced or inculcated for the benefit of a class4 ,hence1 to speak of the morality of the future1 when one refers to the classless society to which ,socialists look forward1 is the height or the depth of absurdity4 ,in the free fellowship of the future there will be no morality4 ,this is not saying that there will be no criteria by which conduct will be praised or deplored2 it is simply saying that with the abolition of classes1 morality1 like the ,state1 capital and wages1 being a product of class-divisions1 will cease to exist4 ,while the revolutionary proletariat have no respect for current morality1 it is none the less true that they have in process of growth a morality of their own--a morality that has already emerged from the embryonic stage4 ,the proletariat are to be the active agents in bringing to pass the social revolution which is to put a period to ,capitalism and usher in the new order4 ,during this transition period and until the change is fully accomplished1 they will be a distinct class with special class interests of their own4 ,as fast as they become class-conscious they will recognize and praise as moral all conduct that tends to hasten the social revolution--the triumph of their class1 and they will condemn as unhesitatingly as immoral all conduct that tends to prolong the dominance of the capitalist class4 ,already we can note manifestations of this new proletarian morality in that sense of class solidarity exhibited by the workers in the many acts of kindness and assistance of the employed to the unemployed1 and more especially in the detestation in which the scab is held4 ,the revolutionary workingman1 be he avowed ,socialist or not1 who repudiates the current or capitalist morality1 does not abandon himself to unbridled license1 but is straightway bound by the obligations of the adolescent proletarian morality which is enforced with ever greater vigor by the public opinion of his class as his class grows in class-consciousness4 ,does the new morality condemn what the old branded as crimes against property8 ,it must be confessed that the revolutionary worker has absolutely no respect for natural rights--including the right of property--as such4 ,hence1 as the act of an individual in appropriating the goods of another is not likely either to help or to injure his class1 he neither approves or condemns it on moral grounds2 but knowing1 as he does1 that his class enemies1 the capitalists1 own not only the goods1 but also the courts and the police1 he condemns theft by a workingman as suicidal folly4 ,the ,marxist absolutely denies the freedom of the will4#d ,every human action is inevitable4 ,nothing happens by chance4 ,every thing is because it cannot but be4 ,how then can we consistently praise or blame any conduct8 ,if one cares to make hair-splitting distinctions1 it may be replied that we cannot1 but none the less we can rejoice at some actions and deplore others4 ,and the love of praise1 with its obverse1 the fear of blame1 has ever been one of the strongest motives to human conduct4 ,it is not necessarily the applause of the thoughtless multitude that one seeks2 but in writing this paper1 which ,i know will be misunderstood or condemned by the majority of those who read it1 undoubtedly one of my motives is to win the approbation of the discerning few for whose good opinion ,i deeply care4 ,the passengers whose train has come to a standstill on a steep up-grade owing to the inefficiency of the engine1 will not fail to greet with a hearty cheer the approach of a more powerful locomotive4 ,in the same way1 ,socialist workingmen1 though they know that no human act deserves either praise or blame1 though they know1 in the words of the wise old ,frenchman1 that comprendre tout1 c'est pardonner tout1 or1 better yet1 that to understand all is to understand that there is nothing to pardon1 will not be chary of their cheers to him who is able to advance their cause1 nor of their curses upon him who betrays it4 ,and in so doing they will not be inconsistent1 but will be acting in strict accordance with that law of cause and effect which is the very fundament of all proletarian reasoning2 for those cheers and curses will be potent factors in causing such conduct as will speed the social revolution4 ,while we have no respect for current morality1 we must not fall into the error of supposing that there are no criteria by which to judge conduct1 that there are1 so to say1 no valid distinctions between the acts of a hero and those of a blackguard4 ,by referring to the ethic inspiring the actor we can always pronounce some conduct to be fine and other acts base4 ,it is this power of a fine or noble action to thrill the human heart that makes the triumphs of dramatic art possible4 ,the dramatists1 like ,shakespeare1 whose characters accept the current moral code1 appeal to a wide audience--to nearly all4 ,but those dramatists1 such as ,ibsen1 ,shaw1 ,maeterlinck1 and above all1 ,sudermann1 whose heroes and heroines attempt to put into practice the ideals of to-morrow in the environment of to-day1 are misunderstood and disliked by the majority1 and understood and appreciated only by the few who1 like themselves1 have rejected the current code and adopted the criteria of to-morrow4 ,but those of us who call ,sudermann the first of living dramatists1 do so on account of the extreme nobility of his heroines' conduct judged by the criteria of the future4 ,while there will be no morality in ,socialist society2 while in the perfect solidarity of a classless society there can be no conflict of individual with social interests2 there will nevertheless be certain actions exceptionally fitted to increase the welfare and augment the happiness of the community1 and the men and women who perform these acts will undoubtedly be rewarded by the plaudits and the love of their comrades4 ,indeed1 we with our debased standards are incapable of conceiving how dear to them this reward will be4 ,it is because ,i believe that this love of one's fellows under ,socialism will be a joy far exceeding in intensity any pleasure known to us1 that ,i look for dramatic art to reach under ,socialism a perfection and influence to-day inconceivable4 ,the most striking phenomenon in the field of ethics to-day is the rapid growth of the new proletarian morality2 and one of the principal functions of the ,socialist agitator and propagandist is to facilitate and further this growth4 ,he is the teacher of a new morality and1 if one accepted ,matthew ,arnold's definition of religion as morality touched with emotion1 he might be called the preacher of a new religion4 ,let who will call this sentimentalism1 it is none the less hard fact4 ,for1 after all1 this new proletarian ethic is nothing else than class-consciousness under a new name4 ,and what ,socialist will deny that the chief function of the militant ,socialist is to develop class-consciousness in the workers8 ,the one hope of the world to-day is in the victory of the proletariat--aye1 it is more than a hope1 it is a certainty2 but this victory can only be won by a proletariat permeated with the sense of solidarity2 and the workingman imbued with this sense of proletarian solidarity will be a living incarnation of the new morality4 ,and what is this class-consciousness which it is our business to preach in season and out of season8 ,there is probably no term in the whole technical vocabulary of ,socialism which grates so unpleasantly on the ear of the petit bourgeois who is coming our way as this one of class-consciousness4 ,to say class-consciousness is not to say class hatred2 though class-consciousness ofttimes develops into class hatred and does not thereby become the less effective4 ,the ,socialist recognizes in the words of ,edmund ,burke that ,man acts not from metaphysical considerations1 but from motives relative to his interests1 and hence1 he regards it as his first duty to show his fellow-workers that their economic interests are in direct conflict with those of the master-class4 ,he does not create this conflict by pointing it out2 he merely shows the working class where they are at4 ,but besides pointing out this conflict of material interests1 the ,socialist propagandist shows the workers that it is their high destiny to accomplish a revolution far more glorious and pregnant with blessings for humanity than any of those recorded in the history of the past4 ,this consciousness of the great part that he and his class are called to play on the world's stage is the most uplifting and ennobling influence that can enter the life of a workingman4 ,there can be no doubt that the sentiment expressed by the words1 noblesse oblige1 has had an influence on the lives of the more worthy of the aristocrats4 ,similar in its nature is the influence here under consideration1 and that this influence is not less potent is well known to every one acquainted with the men and women who form what is known as the ,socialist ,movement4 ,the non-,socialist1 who wishes to see the effect of this influence1 has but to read even in the files of the capitalist press the accounts of the high and noble bearing of the martyrs of the ,paris ,commune who faced death with calm and cheerful courage1 though they were buoyed up by no hope of a hereafter4 ,while we continue devoting our whole energies to arousing in our fellow-workers a keen and clear consciousness of the hideous class-struggle now waging in all its brutal bitterness1 let us keep our courage high and our hope bright by keeping our eyes ever fixed upon the glorious future1 upon the wonderful days a-coming when all shall be better than well6 ,,footnote3 #d ,it will be seen that the text treats the long-debated question of the freedom of the will as res adjudicata4 ,it may be that some readers will want to know where to turn for fuller discussions of this famous question4 ,as a full bibliography of the literature on this subject would more than fill this volume1 ,i must content myself with telling them that a very helpful discussion of it may be found in ,huxley's ,life of ,hume1 and a clear and succinct statement of the conclusions of the modern school of psychology in ,ferri's ,the ,positive ,school of ,criminology4 ,both of these are to be had in cheap form4 ,,instead ,,of ,a ,,footnote#e ,a photograph of a ,fifth ,avenue mansion1 taken from the partition wall in the back-yard1 might be a perfectly accurate picture and yet give a very inadequate idea of the house as a whole4 ,this article on ,marxism and ,ethics is1 in a sense1 just such a picture4 ,in writing it1 space limitations compelled me to confine myself wholly to impressing upon the reader the relative and transitory character of moral codes4 ,but in the popular concept of morality there are elements that are relatively permanent4 ,darwin in his ,descent of ,man showed that the gregarious and social traits that make associated life possible antedate1 not only the division of society into classes1 but even antedate humanity itself1 since they plainly appear in the so-called lower animals4 ,so that my contention that morality only came into being with the division of society into classes and will pass away when class divisions are abolished1 becomes a question of definition4 ,if we include in our definition of morality the almost universal and relatively permanent gregarious traits of men and beasts1 then morality has existed longer than humanity itself1 and will continue to exist under ,socialism4 ,but it cannot be denied that moral codes were not formulated until after class-divisions had arisen4 ,every moral code of which we have any knowledge has been moulded by the cultural discipline of a society based on class-divisions4 ,in every one of them there is implied the relation of status1 of a superior1 natural or supernatural1 with the right or power to formulate commandments1 and of an inferior class whose lot it is to obey4 ,we find this implication of status in even the noblest expressions of current ethical aspirations4 ,wordsworth's immortal ,ode to ,duty begins1 ,stern ,daughter of the ,voice of ,god6 ,since then morality as a word through the force of immemorial habit unavoidably suggests to the mind the relation of status1 it appears to me that its use to describe truly social conduct in a society of equals can lead to nothing but confusion4 ,what we really need is the right word to apply to the highest conduct in a classless society2 and1 ,i am inclined to think that a generation to whom the idea of status will have become wholly alien will find the word social entirely adequate for this purpose1 though ,i frankly confess it is not adequate for us ,in the days of the years we dwell in1 that wear our lives away4 ,my statement that the ,revolutionary worker abstains from crimes against property from expediency rather than from principle must not be construed into an allegation that fear of personal punishment is the only ground for abstaining from such crimes4 ,if it were not for the stupidity and malice of our opponents ,i would feel that ,i was insulting my readers by making this explanation2 but for their benefit be it said that in a society based economically upon the institution of private property social life is impossible without respect 7respect here refers to acts1 not to mental attitude7 for private property4 ,crimes against property are distinctly unsocial4 ,but respect for the rights of property is rapidly disintegrating both among trust magnates and proletarians4 ,the ,natural ,rights ,philosophy#f still has much vitality in the middle classes1 but as a broad statement it will hold good that the millionaire or the proletarian who shows respect for private property 7the private property of others1 be it understood7 does so chiefly on grounds of expediency4 ,the socialist materialist is well content to leave this whole question of ethics to adjust itself1 since he knows that equality of condition1 the economic basis of ,socialism1 will necessarily evolve a mode of living1 and standards of conduct in perfect harmony with their economic environment4 ,,footnotes3 #e ,it may be as well to state that this was written before the writer had read ,karl ,kautsky's illuminating work1 ,ethics and the ,materialist ,conception of ,history4 #f ,for a fuller discussion of the relation of current conceptions of property-rights to the ,natural ,rights ,philosophy see ,veblen's ,the ,theory of ,business ,enterprise1 ,chapters ,,ii and ,,viii1 and ,la ,monte's paper ,veblen1 ,the ,revolutionist1 ,international ,socialist ,review1 ,vol4 ,v4 pp4 #gbf-gci4 ,,the ,,nihilism ,,of ,,socialism4 ,in their negative proposals the socialists and anarchists are fairly agreed4 ,it is in the metaphysical postulates of their protest and in their constructive aims that they part company4 ,of the two1 the socialists are more widely out of touch with the established order4 ,they are also more hopelessly negative and destructive in their ideals1 as seen from the standpoint of the established order4 ,,thorstein ,,veblen in ,the ,theory of ,business ,enterprise4 ,page #cch4 ,to label a truth a truism is too often regarded as equivalent to placing it in the category of the negligible4 ,it is precisely the salient obviousness1 which makes a truth a truism1 that places it in the direst peril of oblivion in the stress of modern life4 ,such a truth was well stated by ,enrico ,ferri1 the ,italian criminologist1 in a recent lecture before the students of the ,university of ,naples3 ,without an ideal1 neither an individual nor a collectivity can live1 without it humanity is dead or dying4 ,for it is the fire of an ideal which renders the life of each one of us possible1 useful and fertile4 ,and only by its help can each one of us1 in the longer or shorter course of his or her existence1 leave behind traces for the benefit of fellow-beings4 ,platitude though this may be1 our greatest poets have not hesitated to use their highest powers to impress it upon us4 ,robert ,browning put this truth into the mouth of ,andrea del ,sarto in one of the strongest lines in all ,english verse1 ,ah1 but a man's reach should exceed his grasp4 ,mr4 ,george ,s4 ,street1 in a very interesting paper in ,putnam's ,monthly for ,november 7#aijf71 points out that the most significant contrast between our time and ,early ,victorian days is a decrease in idealism4 ,the most characteristic note1 he tells us1 in the mental attitude of the forties and fifties in ,england1 and that in which they contrast most sharply with our own times1 was confidence4444 ,in party politics this confidence was almost without limit4 ,there was a section of ,conservatism which really believed in things as they were1 and thought it undesirable to attempt any change for the better4444 ,it was simply--,i speak of a section1 not the party as a whole--the articulate emotion of privileged and contented people and their parasites1 and its denomination as 'stupid' was an accurate description1 though hardly the brilliant epigram for which1 in our poverty of political wit1 it has been taken4 ,on the other hand1 there was a confident ,liberalism which inspired a whole party4 ,some wished to go faster1 some slower1 but all believed sincerely in a broad scheme of domestic policy4 ,they were to reform this and that at home2 they were to assist1 or at least applaud1 the reforming of this and that abroad4 ,so believing and intending1 they naturally conceived themselves made very little indeed lower than the angels4 ,the contrast with our own day hardly needs pointing4 ,you might now search long and in vain for a ,conservative in public life who would not admit that reforms are desirable or even urgent1 though few might be prepared with precise statements about particulars4444 ,but their 7the ,liberals'7 confidence in reform1 in their ability to improve the body politic by certain definite measures1 is gone4 ,the old ,liberal spirit animating a whole party is dead4 ,it may seem an odd remark to make just after the late election1 but the evidence is abundant1 and the explanation simple4 ,domestic reform on a large scale and on individualist lines has reached its limit2 but to many ,liberals1 to many eminent and authoritative ,liberals1 reform on socialist lines is abhorrent4444 ,consequently there is a large party called ,liberal1 which1 through the faults of its opponents and the accidents of time1 is successful and has the high spirits of success1 but is no more now than it has been for twenty years a party of homogeneous confidence in domestic reform1 while on the world outside the ,british islands it looks with passivity1 perhaps timidity1 certainly with no intention of assisting oppressed peoples4 99 99 99 99 99 ,theoretical ,socialism of a logical and thoughtful kind1 not entangled with ,radicalism1 has made much progress of late years1 more especially1 so far as my own experience goes1 in the educated and professional classes2 but in practice it bides its time1 with confidence perhaps1 but with a consciousness that the time will be long coming4 ,that is a different spirit from the buoyant expectancy of the old ,liberalism4 ,granted the necessity of idealism to individual and social health1 ,mr4 ,street's views do not conduce to optimism4 ,here we have a competent observer telling us that the only note of idealism he finds in contemporary intellectual life is a growing1 but half-hearted1 belief in ,socialism1 which is more noticeable in the educated and professional classes4 ,there is another note of idealism in the life of to-day which ,mr4 ,street ignores4 ,this is the tendency toward the apotheosis of the individual in antithesis to society4 ,this is a sign of health1 in so far as it is a revolt against the stifling pressure of outworn conventionality1 and it has found worthy expression in the philosophy of ,herbert ,spencer and the poetry of ,browning and ,walt ,whitman4 ,but this form of idealism cannot be said to differentiate our time from the ,early ,victorian era1 for it found its classic expression back in the middle of the last century in ,max ,stirner's ,der ,einzige und sein ,eigentum1 a book which has been forgotten amid the growing consciousness of the organic solidarity of society4 ,but ,mr4 ,street is possibly justified in ignoring this tendency1 for as a school of thought it has committed suicide in the person of ,nietzsche's ,overman attempting to construct out of materials drawn from his inner consciousness a pair of stilts on which to tower above the herd4 ,what is the lure of ,socialism that is appealing1 according to ,mr4 ,street1 to more and more of our educated and professional people8 ,for1 in spite of what ,professor ,veblen truly says of the negative and destructive 7in the quotation at the head of this paper7 character of socialist ideals1 ,socialism must hold up some positive ideals to attract such growing numbers of the educated classes4 ,to convince oneself of the actuality of this appeal it is only necessary to run over the writers' names in the tables of contents in our popular magazines4 ,the proportion of socialists is surprisingly large and is constantly growing4 ,there can be no doubt that the percentage of ,socialists among writers of distinction is larger than the percentage of socialists in the population at large4 ,socialism does present certain very definite positive ideals4 ,the first of these is ,comfort for ,all 7to use a chapter-heading from ,prince ,kropotkin's too little known book1 ,la ,conquete du ,pain74 ,the second is ,leisure for ,all1 or1 in ,paul ,lafargue's witty phrase1 ,the ,right to be ,lazy4 ,the third is the fullest possible physical and intellectual development of every individual1 considered not as an isolated1 self-centred entity1 but as a member of an interdependent society2 or1 in the words of ,karl ,marx and ,friedrich ,engels in the ,communist ,manifesto1 the socialist ideal is an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all4 ,it may be noted that all that is vivifying in the ideal of individualism is included in this third positive ideal of ,socialism1 so that1 it is now seen1 ,mr4 ,street was fully justified in making no separate mention of the ideal of individualism4 ,there can be no doubt that it is the immensely richer literary and artistic life promised by this third ideal of ,socialism that accounts for the phenomenon noted by ,mr4 ,street4 ,the beauties of the positive ideals of the socialist ,utopias have been sufficiently lauded by scores of writers from ,sir ,thomas ,more to ,bellamy and ,mr4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells4 ,what it is desired to emphasize here is the negative and destructive 7from the standpoint of the established order7 aspects of socialist ideals2 for it is the ,nihilism of ,socialism that explains why ,mr4 ,street's educated and professional socialists have more patience than confidence in awaiting the realization of their ideal4 ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism turns aside many1 who have felt the lure of the socialist ideal1 into what ,professor ,veblen calls1 some excursion into pragmatic romance1#g such as ,social ,settlements1 ,prohibition1 ,clean ,politics1 ,single ,tax1 ,arts and ,crafts1 ,neighborhood ,guilds1 ,institutional ,church1 ,christian ,science1 ,new ,thought1 ,hearstism1 or some such cultural thimble-rig4 ,yet more1 there are many of the educated and professional classes who call themselves socialists1 because they cherish the charming delusion that it is possible to separate the positive from the negative ideals of ,socialism1 and to work 7in a dilettante fashion7 for the former while blithely anathematizing the latter4 ,it is the purpose of this paper to show that ,socialism is not a scheme for the betterment of humanity to be accomplished by a sufficiently zealous and intelligent propaganda1 but that it is1 on the contrary1 a consistent1 7though to many repellent7 monistic philosophy of the cosmos2 that it is from its ,alpha to its ,omega so closely and inextricably interlocked that its component parts cannot be disassociated1 save by an act of intellectual suicide2 that1 in a word1 the ,nihilism#h of ,socialism is of the very essence of ,socialism4 ,but1 here1 a most important distinction should be noted4 ,socialism1 viewed as a political propaganda1 is purely positive in its demands4 ,in fact1 all its demands may be reduced to two--,collectivism and ,democracy4 ,that the people shall own the means of production1 and the producers shall control their products--that is the sum and substance of all ,socialist platforms4 ,socialist parties do not attack ,religion1 the ,family1 or the ,state4 ,but socialist philosophy proves conclusively that the realization of the positive political and economic ideals of ,socialism involves the atrophy of ,religion1 the metamorphosis of the ,family1 and the suicide of the ,state4 ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism springs from the ,materialist ,conception of ,history1 and this is precisely the portion of the socialist doctrine that is usually ignored or half-understood by the enthusiastic young intellectuals who are in growing numbers joining the ,socialist movement on both sides of the ,atlantic4 ,while the ,communist ,manifesto1 written by ,karl ,marx and ,friedrich ,engels in #ahdg1 is throughout founded on this conception1 the first clearly formulated statement of the conception itself is to be found in the ,preface to the ,contribution to the ,critique of ,political ,economy1 published by ,karl ,marx in #ahei1 the same year in which ,darwin and ,wallace made public their independent and almost simultaneous discoveries of the theory of ,natural ,selection4 ,this first statement runs thus3 ,in the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will2 these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production4 ,the sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society--the real foundation1 on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness4 ,the mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social1 political1 and spiritual processes of life4 ,it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence1 but1 on the contrary1 their social existence determines their consciousness4 ,at a certain stage of their development1 the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production1 or--what is but a legal expression for the same thing--with the property relations within which they had been at work before4 ,from forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters4 ,then comes the period of social revolution4 ,with the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed4#i ,this statement contains a whole ,revolution in embryo4 ,viewed from the standpoint of the established order1 it is the very ,quintessence of ,nihilism4 ,in a word1 it teaches the material origin of ,ideas4 ,in the last analysis1 every idea can be traced back to the economic and telluric environments4 ,in the words of ,joseph ,dietzgen1 philosophy revealed to them 7,marx and ,engels7 the basic principle that1 in the last resort1 the world is not governed by ,ideas1 but1 on the contrary1 the ,ideas by the material world4 ,this doctrine involves a new epistemology1 the distinguishing mark of which is its denial of the immaculate conception of thought4 ,the human mind1 according to ,marx and ,dietzgen1 can only bring forth thought after it has been impregnated by the objects of sense perception4#aj ,here we have a thorough-going system of materialist monism4 ,ours is the organic conception of history1 says ,labriola4 ,the totality of the unity of social life is the subject matter present to our minds4 ,it is economics itself which dissolves in the course of one process1 to reappear in as many morphological stages1 in each of which it serves as a substructure for all the rest4 ,finally1 it is not our method to extend the so-called economic factor isolated in an abstract fashion over all the rest1 as our adversaries imagine1 but it is1 before everything else1 to form an historic conception of economics1 and to explain the other changes by means of its changes4#aa ,in another place he says3 ,ideas do not fall from heaven1 and nothing comes to us in a dream4444 ,the change in ideas1 even to the creation of new methods of conception1 has reflected little by little the experience of a new life4 ,this1 in the revolutions of the last two centuries1 was little by little despoiled of the mythical1 religious and mystical envelopes in proportion as it acquired the practical and precise consciousness of its immediate and direct conditions4 ,human thought1 also1 which sums up this life and theorizes upon it1 has little by little been plundered of its theological and metaphysical hypotheses to take refuge finally in this prosaic assertion3 in the interpretation of history we must limit ourselves to the objective co-ordination of the determining conditions and of the determined effects4 ,he reiterates3 ,ideas do not fall from heaven2 and1 what is more1 like the other products of human activity1 they are formed in given circumstances1 in the precise fulness of time1 through the action of definite needs1 thanks to the repeated attempts at their satisfaction1 and by the discovery of such and such other means of proof which are1 as it were1 the instruments of their production and their elaboration4 ,even ideas involve a basis of social conditions2 they have their technique2 thought also is a form of work4 ,to rob the one and the other1 ideas and thought1 of the conditions and environment of their birth and their development1 is to disfigure their nature and their meaning4#ab ,this socialist materialism does not refuse the inspiration of ideals4 ,by granting that society is dominated by material interests1 ,dietzgen explains1 we do not deny the power of the ideals of the heart1 mind1 science1 and art4 ,for we have no more to deal with the absolute antithesis between idealism and materialism1 but with their higher synthesis which has been found in the knowledge that the ideal depends on the material1 that divine justice and liberty depend on the production and distribution of earthly goods4#ac ,religions1 schools of ethics1 philosophy1 metaphysics1 art1 political and juridical institutions are all to be explained in the last analysis by the economic and telluric environments1 present and past4 ,this ruthless materialism crushes belief in ,god1 in the ,soul1 in immortality4 ,it leaves no room for any shred of dualism in thought4 ,it is true that the ,german ,social ,democracy included in the famous ,erfurt ,programme 7adopted in #ahia--the first clearly ,marxian socialist platform ever promulgated7 a demand for a ,declaration that religion is a private matter4 ,abolition of all expenditure from public funds upon ecclesiastical and religious objects4 ,ecclesiastical and religious bodies are to be regarded as private associations1 which order their affairs independently4 ,it will be seen that this is nothing more than a demand that the ,state withdraw its sanction of religion as ,france has recently done in the ,clemenceau law4 ,but ,ferri does nothing but draw the necessary conclusions from socialist premises when he writes3 ,god1 as ,laplace has said1 is an hypothesis of which exact science has no need2 he is1 according to ,herzen1 at the most an ,x1 which represents not the unknowable--as ,spencer and ,dubois ,raymond contend--but all that which humanity does not yet know4 ,therefore1 it is a variable ,x which decreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science4 ,it is for this reason that science and religion are in inverse ratio to each other2 the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle against the unknown4#ad ,joseph ,dietzgen has thus stated what may be called the law of the atrophy of religion3 ,the more the idea of ,god recedes into the past the more palpable it is2 in olden times man knew everything about his ,god2 the more modern the form of religion has become1 the more confused and hazy are our religious ideas4 ,the truth is that the historic development of religion tends to its gradual dissolution4#ae ,the characteristic attitude of the socialist materialist toward ,christianity appears very clearly in the following excerpt from ,professor ,ferri's ,socialism and ,modern ,science3 ,it is true that ,marxian ,socialism1 since the ,congress held at ,erfurt 7#ahia71 has rightly declared that religious beliefs are private affairs#af and that1 therefore1 the ,socialist party combats religious intolerance under all its forms4444 ,but this breadth of superiority of view is1 at bottom1 only a consequence of the confidence in final victory4 ,it is because ,socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs1 whether one regards them1 with ,sergi1 as pathological phenomena of human psychology1 or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation1 are destined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary scientific culture4 ,this is why ,socialism does not feel the necessity of waging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are destined to disappear4 ,it has assumed this attitude1 although it knows that the absence or the impairment of the belief in ,god is one of the most powerful factors for its extension1 because the priests of all religions have been1 throughout all the phases of history1 the most potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion1 just as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks of his whip 7page #fc74 ,it is also well to remember that a prevalent animistic habit of thought in viewing the events of life1 whether it take the form of a belief in luck1 as in gamblers and sporting men1 or the form of a belief in supernatural interposition in mundane affairs1 as in the case of the devotees of the anthropomorphic cults1 or merely the tendency to give a teleological interpretation to evolution1 to attribute a meliorative trend to the cosmic process1 as in ,tennyson's through the ages one increasing purpose runs1 tends1 by retarding the prompt perception of relations of material cause and effect1 to lower the industrial efficiency of the community4#ag ,the socialist materialist can look forward with unruffled serenity to the passing of religion1 since his very definition of religion as a popular striving after the illusory happiness that corresponds with a social condition which needs such an illusion1#ah implies that it cannot pass away till it has ceased to be needful to human happiness4 ,from the point of view of this ,socialist materialism1 the monogamous family1 the present economic unit of society1 ceases to be a divine institution1 and becomes the historical product of certain definite economic conditions4 ,it is the form of the family peculiar to a society based on private property in the means of production1 and the production of commodities for sale4 ,it is not crystallized and permanent1 but1 like all other institutions1 fluid and subject to change4 ,with the change in its economic basis1 the code of sexual morality and the monogamous family are sure to be modified2 but1 in the judgment of such socialists as ,friedrich ,engels and ,august ,bebel1 we shall probably remain monogamous1 but monogamy will cease to be compulsorily permanent4#ai ,what we may anticipate1 says ,engels1 about the adjustment of sexual relations after the impending downfall of capitalist production is mainly of a negative nature and mostly confined to elements that will disappear4 ,but what will be added8 ,that will be decided after a new generation has come to maturity3 a race of men who never in their lives have had any occasion for buying with money or other economic means of power the surrender of a woman2 a race of women who have never had any occasion for surrendering to any man for any other reason but love1 or for refusing to surrender to their lover from fear of economic consequences4 ,once such people are in the world1 they will not give a moment's thought to what we to-day believe should be their course4 ,they will follow their own practice and fashion their own public opinion--only this and nothing more4#bj ,changed economic conditions are already reflected in the disintegration of the traditional bourgeois belief in the permanency of the existing forms of the family and the home4 ,a portentous sign of the times for the conservatives is the appearance of ,mrs4 ,elsie ,clews ,parsons' book on ,the ,family1 the most scholarly work on the subject by a bourgeois writer that has yet appeared4 ,like all bourgeois writers ,mrs4 ,parsons has been very chary of using materials furnished by ,socialist scholars4 ,very striking is the absence from her very extensive bibliographical notes of the names of ,marx1 ,engels1 ,bebel and ,ferri4 ,but she was compelled to avail herself freely of the wealth of materials provided by the scholarly and industrious researches of ,morgan1 ,kautsky1 and ,cunow4 ,in her now famous ,fifteenth ,lecture on ,ethical ,considerations1 she suggests various modes of ameliorating the condition of ,woman1 and improving conjugal and family relations2 but she is again and again driven to admit that the economic independence of women is a condition precedent to her reforms4 ,most of her suggestions are tinged with the utopian fancifulness characteristic of the bourgeois theorist4 ,two excerpts will illustrate these points sufficiently3 ,again reciprocity of conjugal rights and duties is desirable for parenthood4 ,if marriage have a proprietary character1 neither the owner nor the owned is entirely fit to develop free personalities in his or her children4 ,moreover the idea of marital ownership more or less involves that of parental ownership1 and the latter1 as we have seen1 is incompatible with a high type of parenthood4 ,the custom of proprietary marriage inevitably leads1 for example1 to restrictions upon female education4 ,now just in so far as a woman's education is limited is she handicapped as an educator of her children4 ,it is unfortunate that in the emancipation of woman agitation of the past half-century the reformers failed to emphasize the social as adequately as the individualistic need of change4 ,if women are to be fit wives and mothers they must have all1 perhaps more1 of the opportunities for personal development that men have4 ,all the activities hitherto reserved to men must at least be open to them1 and many of these activities1 certain functions of citizenship#ba for example1 must be expected of them4 ,moreover1 whatever the lines may be along which the fitness of women to labor will be experimentally determined1 the underlying position must be established that for the sake of individual and race character she is to be a producer as well as a consumer of social values4#bb ,as soon as this ethical necessity is generally recognized the conditions of modern industry will become much better adapted to the needs of women workers than they are now1 the hygiene of workshop1 factory1 and office will improve1 and child bearing and rearing will no longer seem incompatible with productive activity 7pages #cde-cdg74 ,here follows the paragraph upon which the ,reverend ,doctor ,morgan ,dix and other clerical defenders of the economic conditions that cause marital and non-marital prostitution pounced with such avidity3 ,we have therefore1 given late marriage and the passing of prostitution1#bc two alternatives1 the requiring of absolute chastity of both sexes until marriage or the toleration of freedom of sexual intercourse on the part of the unmarried of both sexes before marriage1 i4 e41 before the birth of offspring4 ,in this event condemnation of sex license would have a different emphasis from that at present4 ,sexual intercourse would not be of itself disparaged or condemned1 it would be disapproved of only if indulged in at the expense of health or of emotional or intellectual activities in oneself or in others4 ,as a matter of fact1 truly monogamous relations seem to be those most conducive to emotional or intellectual development and to health1 so that1 quite apart from the question of prostitution1 promiscuity is not desirable or even tolerable4 ,it would therefore1 seem well from this point of view1 to encourage early trial marriage1#bd the relation to be entered into with a view to permanency1 but with the privilege of breaking it if proved unsuccessful and in the absence of offspring without suffering any great degree of public condemnation4 ,the conditions to be considered in any attempt to answer the question that thus arises are exceedingly complex4 ,much depends upon the outcome of present experiments in economic independence for women1 a matter which is in turn dependent upon the outcome of the general labor 'question4' ,much depends upon revelations of physiological science4 ,if the future brings about the full economic independence of women1 if physiologists will undertake to guarantee society certain immunities from the sexual excess of the individual1#be if1 and these are the most important conditions of all1 increases in biological1 psychological and social knowledge make parenthood a more enlightened and purposive function than is even dreamed of at present and if pari passu with this increase of knowledge a higher standard of parental duty and a greater capacity for parental devotion develop1 then the need of sexual restraint as we understand it may disappear and different relations between the sexes before marriage and to a certain extent within marriage may be expected4 ,the ,socialist materialist leaves idle speculations of this nature to the bourgeois ,utopians2 he knows that a revolution in economic conditions must precede any material changes in sexual relations1 and that when such changes take place they will take place in response to the stimuli of the transformed economic environment1 and not in accordance with any preconceived notions of ,mrs4 ,parsons or others4 ,those1 who are horrified at such proposed modifications of marriage as ,mr4 ,george ,meredith's marriages for a fixed1 limited period1 and ,mrs4 ,parsons' trial marriages1 will do well to ponder this posthumous aphorism of the clearsighted ,norse genius1 ,ibsen1 recently published in ,berlin3 ,to talk of 'men born free' is a mere phrase4 ,there are none such4 ,marriages1 the relations of man and woman1 have ruined the whole race and set on all the brand of slavery4#bf ,in the same case is what we may call the stage-setting of the monogamous family1 the home4 ,the home ceases to be regarded as the sacred and eternal ,palladium of society4 ,it1 too1 is destined to change1 if not to disappear4 ,with the transformation of the means of production into collective property1 ,engels writes1 the private household changes to a social industry4 ,the care and education of children becomes a public matter4#bg ,this does not deny the splendid role that the ,home has played in the history of the last three centuries4 ,many an ,english and ,american home to-day still merits even such an offensively pretentious epithet as ,palladium4 ,what morals our people have known and practised they have learned and been drilled in in the homes4 ,that these morals should have been warped by a class-bias was inevitable4 ,a home1 itself the product of a society divided into classes1 could not teach anything but a class-morality4 ,a purely social morality 7if morality be the proper name for the highest conduct in a classless society7 is even yet impossible4 ,but1 much as we owe to the home1 7,i pity the reader who can recall his or her early home life with dry eyes71 the ,nihilism of ,socialism tells us the day of the home is drawing to its close4 ,so it may be as well for us to consider for a moment the bad side of the home as we know it to-day4 ,it may be that when we have done so1 we shall be able to anticipate its passing with greater equanimity4 ,at this late day--when seventeen years have rolled by since ,ibsen's ,the ,doll's ,house was first introduced to an ,english-speaking audience at the ,novelty ,theatre in ,london--it is surely not necessary to dwell upon the dwarfing and stifling effects upon women of even happy homes4 ,in the brilliant preface to ,plays3 ,pleasant and ,unpleasant1 ,bernard ,shaw1 referring to middle-class home life1 speaks of the normal ,english way being to sit in separate families in separate rooms in separate houses1 each person silently occupied with a book1 a paper1 or a game of halma1 cut off equally from the blessings of society and solitude4 ,the result1 he continues1 is that you may make the acquaintance of a thousand streets of middle-class ,english families without coming on a trace of any consciousness of citizenship1 or any artistic cultivation of the senses4 ,in the following paragraph he adds3 ,in proportion as this horrible domestic institution is broken up by the active social circulation of the upper classes in their own orbit1 or its stagnant isolation made impossible by the overcrowding of the working classes1 manners improve enormously4 ,in the middle classes themselves the revolt of a single clever daughter 7nobody has yet done justice to the modern clever ,englishwoman's loathing of the very word 'home'71 and her insistence on qualifying herself for an independent working life1 humanizes her whole family in an astonishingly short time2 and the formation of a habit of going to the suburban theatre once a week1 or to the ,monday ,popular ,concerts1 or both1 very perceptibly ameliorates its manners4 ,but none of these breaches in the ,englishman's castle-house can be made without a cannonade of books and pianoforte music4 ,the books and music cannot be kept out1 because they alone can make the hideous boredom of the hearth bearable4 ,if its victims may not live real lives1 they may at least read about imaginary ones1 and perhaps learn from them to doubt whether a class that not only submits to home life1 but actually values itself on it1 is really a class worth belonging to4 ,for the sake of the unhappy prisoners of the home1 then1 let my plays be printed as well as acted4 ,a concrete picture may give us a better idea of what ,shaw means when he calls women the unhappy prisoners of the home4 ,in that magnificent scene in the third act of ,candida1 after ,morell has called on ,candida to choose between him and the poet1 ,marchbanks1 ,candida gives us a vivid glimpse of what her home life had been1 in this speech1 addressed to ,marchbanks1 and1 in reading it1 remember that ,morell was a good husband and that ,candida loved him4 --,you know how strong he 7,morell7 is--how clever he is--how happy6 ,ask ,james's mother and his three sisters what it cost to save ,james the trouble of doing anything but be strong and clever and happy4 ,ask me what it costs to be ,james's mother and three sisters and wife and mother to his children all in one4 ,ask ,prossy and ,maria how troublesome the house is even when we have no visitors to help us slice the onions4 ,ask the tradesmen who want to worry ,james and spoil his beautiful sermons who it is that puts them off4 ,when there is money to give1 he gives it3 when there is money to refuse1 ,i refuse it4 ,i build a castle of comfort and indulgence and love for him1 and stand sentinel always to keep little vulgar cares out4 ,i make him master here1 though he does not know it1 and could not tell you a moment ago how it came to be so4 ,this should make it easy for us to understand why so many women are ready to sympathize with ,william ,morris in the sentiments he expressed in the following paragraph in ,signs of ,change3 ,as to what extent it may be necessary or desirable for people under social order to live in common1 we may differ pretty much according to our tendencies toward social life4 ,for my part ,i can't see why we should think it a hardship to eat with the people we work with2 ,i am sure that as to many things1 such as valuable books1 pictures1 and splendor of surroundings1 we shall find it better to club our means together2 and ,i must say that often when ,i have been sickened by the stupidity of the mean1 idiotic rabbit warrens that rich men build for themselves in ,bayswater and elsewhere1 ,i console myself with visions of the noble communal hall of the future1 unsparing of materials1 generous in worthy ornament1 alive with the noblest thoughts of our time1 and the past1 embodied in the best art which a free and manly people could produce2 such an abode of man as no private enterprise could come anywhere near for beauty and fitness1 because only collective thought and collective life could cherish the aspirations which would give birth to its beauty1 or have the skill and leisure to carry them out4 ,i for my part should think it much the reverse of a hardship if ,i had to read my books and meet my friends in such a place2 nor do ,i think ,i am better off to live in a vulgar stuccoed house crowded with upholstery that ,i despise1 in all respects degrading to the mind and enervating to the body to live in1 simply because ,i call it my own1 or my house4 ,from the viewpoint of this historical materialism1 the ,state loses its attribute of permanence and becomes the product of definite economic conditions--in a word1 it is the child of economic inequality4 ,the ,state1 in the words of ,engels1 is the result of the desire to keep down class conflicts4 ,but1 having arisen amid these conflicts1 it is as a rule the ,state of the most powerful economic class that by force of its economic supremacy becomes also the ruling political class1 and thus acquires new means of subduing and exploiting the oppressed masses4 ,the antique ,state was1 therefore1 the ,state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding the slaves in check4 ,the feudal ,state was the organ of the nobility for the oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers4 ,the modern representative ,state is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labor4#bh ,the ,state1 then1 ,engels says on another page of the same work1 did not exist from all eternity4 ,there have been societies without it1 that had no idea of any ,state or public power4#bi ,at a certain stage of economic development1 which was of necessity accompanied by a division of society into classes1 the ,state became the inevitable result of this division4 ,we are now rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in production1 in which the existence of classes has not only ceased to be a necessity1 but becomes a positive fetter on production4 ,hence1 these classes must fall as inevitably as they once arose4 ,the ,state must irrevocably fall with them4 ,the society that is to reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers1 will transfer the machinery of the ,state where it will then belong--into the ,museum of ,antiquities by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze ax4#cj ,in another work1 he says3 ,the first act by virtue of which the ,state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society--the taking possession of the means of production in the name of ,society--this is1 at the same time1 its last independent act as a ,state4 ,state interference in social relations becomes1 in one domain after another1 superfluous1 and then dies out of itself2 the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things1 and by the conduct of processes of production4 ,the ,state is not abolished4 ,it dies out4#ca ,it is thus seen that1 according to the teaching of historical materialism1 the ,state is destined1 when it becomes the ,state of the working-class1 to remove its own foundation--economic inequality--and thus1 to commit suicide4 ,many of those1 who have witnessed with mingled consternation and amusement the strenuous efforts of ,mr4 ,roosevelt and the frantic zeal of ,mr4 ,hearst to enlarge the scope of governmental action to cover every conceivable field of human activity from spelling to beef-canning1 will hail with delight ,engels' tidings that the ,state is to die out4 ,the thesis1 that the realization of the socialist ideal involves the atrophy of ,religion1 the metamorphosis of the ,family1 and the suicide of the ,state1 would now appear to be sufficiently demonstrated4 ,one cannot help wondering what proportion of the educated and professional persons1 who1 ,mr4 ,street testifies1 are in growing numbers yielding to the lure of ,socialism1 really desire these results4 ,many of them1 no doubt1 are trying on a new field the old experiment of serving ,god and ,mammon1 of putting new wine into old bottles4 ,ibsen's ,nora1 though she had far less learning than is usual in the educated and professional classes of ,england and ,america1 was1 in this matter1 far wiser than are they4 ,when the falsehood and slavery of life in ,the ,doll's ,house became unbearable to her1 she knew that she must choose between the ,old and the ,new2 and that1 if she chose the new life of revolt and freedom1 she must leave behind her all the badges of her doll's life4 ,had she taken with her the trinkets and gauds that the master of the ,doll's ,house had given her1 she would not have escaped from the doll's life when she turned her back on the ,doll's ,house4 ,her woman's instinct did not fail her1 and1 when1 with a woman's courage she chose the ,new and left the ,old1 she told ,torvald1 ,whatever belongs to me ,i shall take with me4 ,i will have nothing from you either now or later on4 ,many of the young people of education1 who have of late come into the socialist movement1 have left--temporarily1 at least--the ,doll's ,house of conservatism2 but they have brought with them many of the habits of thought1 many of the conventions of their old doll's life4 ,some of them1 doubtless1 realizing that the ,materialist ,conception of ,history involves the ,nihilism of ,socialism1 and thus calls on them to abandon their religious1 metaphysical1 and dualistic habits of thought1 to cast aside their conventional class morality1 to cease vaporing about that impossible monstrosity1 the ,socialist ,state1 attempt to cut the ,gordian knot by denying the ,materialist ,conception of ,history1 while clinging to their socialist ideal4 ,they thus repeat in inverted form the curious feat in intellectual acrobatics performed by ,professor ,seligman1 who believes in historical materialism1 but rejects ,socialism4 ,there is nothing in common1 he asserts1 between the economic interpretation of history and the doctrine of socialism1 except the accidental fact that the originator of both theories happened to be the same man4 ,and a few pages further on he reiterates3 ,socialism and 'historical materialism' are entirely independent-conceptions4#cb ,to the educated socialists1 who deny or mutilate the doctrine of historical materialism1 the materialist socialist might well reply by asserting that these educated socialists are socialists only because of the artistic1 intellectual1 ethical1 and spiritual changes they expect the economic revolution of socialism to produce4 ,the fact that they1 lovers of the things of the spirit1 are socialists proves that they believe1 albeit unconsciously1 in economic determinism4 ,but1 although this personal argument might ,well be deemed sufficient1 it can readily be proven affirmatively that the whole theory of ,modern ,socialism rests upon the foundation of historical materialism4 ,this clearly appears in the' admirable summary of the teachings of ,marx that ,gabriel ,deville gives in the ,preface to his epitome of ,marx's ,capital4 ,history1 ,marx has shown1 is nothing but the history of class conflicts4 ,the division of society into classes1 which made its appearance with the social life of man1 rests on economic relations--maintained by force--which enable some to succeed in shifting on to the shoulders of others the natural necessity of labor4 ,material interests have always been the inciting motives of the incessant struggles of the privileged classes1 either with1 each other1 or against the inferior classes at whose expense they live4 ,man is dominated by the material conditions of life1 and these conditions1 and therefore the mode of production1 have determined and will determine human customs1 ethics1 and institutions--social1 economic1 political1 juridical1 etc4 ,as soon as one part of society has monopolized the means of production1 the other part1 upon whom the burden of labor falls1 is obliged to add to the labor-time necessary for its own support1 a certain surplus-labor-time1 for which it receives no equivalent1--time that is devoted to supporting and enriching the possessors of the means of production4 ,as an extractor of unpaid labor1 which1 by means of the increasing surplus-value whose source it is1 accumulates every day1 more and more1 in the hands of the proprietary class the instruments of its dominion1 the capitalist regime surpasses in power all the antecedent regimes founded on compulsory labor4 ,but to-day1 the economic conditions begotten by this regime1 trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime1 inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer contain them1 and these destroying principles are the elements of the new society4 ,the historic mission of the class at present exploited1 the proletariat1 which is being organized and disciplined by the very mechanism of capitalist production1 is to complete the work of destruction begun by the development of social antagonisms4 ,it must1 first of all1 definitively wrest from its class adversaries the political power--the command of the force devoted by them to preserving intact their economic monopolies and privileges4 ,once in control of the political power1 it will be able1 by proceeding to the socialization of the means of production through the expropriation of the usurpers of the fruits of others' toil1 to suppress the present contradiction between collective production and private capitalist appropriation1 and to realize the universalization of labor1 and the abolition of classes4#cc ,if the educated and professional socialists cannot break the chain of this logic1 they find themselves1 as ,nora did1 face to face with the necessity of making a choice4 ,behind them is the old doll's house life with its manifold conventions--once useful1 but through economic evolution outgrown and thus become false and deadly--a life1 easy enough mayhap1 but wholly devoid of idealism2 before them is the new life of freedom1 of revolt against outworn beliefs and conventions--a life of great difficulty1 mayhap1 but a life cheered by a noble ideal--an ideal in whose realization the socialist materialists believe as fully1 as passionately as the ancient ,hebrews believed in the fulfilment of the ,messianic prophecies4 ,theirs is a hard case4 ,without ideals they cannot1 in any worthy sense1 live4 ,the only possible ideal1 that even the keen eyes of so shrewd an observer as ,mr4 ,street can perceive1 is the ideal of ,socialism4 ,but they cannot accept this ideal without abandoning much1 ,i do not say that is dear to them1 but much that by habit and tradition has become part and parcel of their intellectual being4 ,if they decide to go forward into the ,new1 the old world of dolls' houses must become a strange land to them4 ,in the difficulties and trials of the new life1 they cannot send back for aid to the old world1 which will have become a world of strangers to them4 ,nora's woman's instinct did not fail her here2 when ,torvald asked if he could send help to her in case of need1 her unhesitating reply was1 ,no1 ,i say4 ,i take nothing from strangers4 ,far better is the case of the workingman attracted by the socialist ideal4 ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism has no deterrent terrors for him1 for1 as ,karl ,marx said long ago1 he has nothing to lose but his chains1 and a whole world to gain4 ,he has long since lost all interest in religion2 the factory by enlisting his wife and children as workers has already destroyed his home2 and to him the ,state means nothing but the club of the policeman1 the injunction of the judge1 and the rifle of the militiaman4 ,but for the man of the educated and professional classes leaving the doll's house is indeed a difficult task4 ,for its performance three things are requisite3 a free and open mind1 courage1 and a vivid imagination4 ,the ,russian genius1 ,peshkoff 7,maxim ,gorky71 did it1 and did it with relative ease because he was a workingman before he became an educated man4 ,for the same reason1 though in a less degree1 ,jack ,london has also done it successfully1 though here and there he still lapses into the doll's mode of thought4 ,the sex-interest in the latter part of ,the ,sea ,wolf is obviously treated from the dolls' point of view2 but it should be remembered that ,mr4 ,london necessarily expected the majority of the purchasers of ,the ,sea ,wolf to be dolls4 ,but1 in spite of this instance1 we may be sure that ,jack ,london brought but little with him when he left the ,doll's ,house2 and ,i am very sure he never sends back to have parcels forwarded to him4 ,when ,mr4 ,upton ,sinclair left the ,doll's ,house1 he evidently stuffed his mental pockets with a large assortment of intellectual lingerie and millinery from the doll wardrobes4 ,in telling us what ,life means to him in a recent magazine1 he says that during a certain stress and storm period of his life he lived in close intimacy with three friends who loved him very dearly4 ,their names are ,jesus1 ,hamlet and ,shelley4 ,can any one imagine ,william ,morris writing a sentiment so perfectly satisfying to a doll's sense of beauty8 ,when ,i read these lines there rises before me a picture of the author tastefully robed in an exquisite dress--a doll's dress--of dotted swiss4#cd ,recently he has started a ,co-operative ,home ,colony quite in the spirit of the bourgeois ,utopians who founded ,brook ,farm more than half-a-century ago4 ,colony-founding1 historians tell us1 was a favorite amusement of the dolls of that era4 ,in the ,times ,magazine 7for ,december #aijf7 he tells us that the home has endured for ages1 and through all the ages it has stayed about the same4 ,this belief1 ,i am informed1 is almost universal among dolls4 ,i find myself the prey of a growing suspicion that ,mr4 ,sinclair from time to time receives express parcels from the ,doll's ,house4 ,william ,morris was a genius2 he had a free and open mind2 he had courage2 and he had a vivid imagination4 ,when he left the ,doll's ,house1 he took nothing with him1 and he never afterward took anything from strangers4 ,it was his poet's imagination that enabled him to write ,news from ,nowhere1 the only ,utopia in whose communal halls the unwary reader does not stumble over dolls' furniture4 ,morris is the perfect type of the man of culture turned revolutionist4#ce ,mr4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells has recently written a ,utopian romance1 ,in the ,days of the ,comet1 which1 although it possesses in the fullest measure ,mr4 ,wells' well known charm of style1 is in substance at best a very feeble echo of ,news from ,nowhere4 ,one of the modes of thought specially characteristic of eighteenth century ,french dolls is strongly to the fore in ,mr4 ,wells' treatment of war4 ,in the conversations after the ,change between ,melmount1 the famous ,cabinet ,minister1 and the pitiful1 cowardly1 inefficient hero 7871 ,leadford1 they both appear to be inexpressibly shocked at the unreasonableness of war4 ,it is true it is somewhat difficult to tell just what ,melmount did think or feel1 for ,melmount is in one particular like ,boston's distinguished litterateur1 ,mr4 ,lawson1--he appears to be constantly on the point of uttering some great thought1 but never utters it4 ,but so far as light is given us ,melmount after the ,change seems to have looked on war much as ,carlyle did long before4 ,every one remembers ,carlyle's two groups of peasants1#cf living hundreds of miles apart1 who never heard of each other1 and had not the slightest quarrel1 the one with the other1 but who none-the-less obeyed the orders of their respective kings1 and marched until they met1 and at the word of command shot each other into corpses4 ,most of us will agree with ,carlyle and ,melmount that1 viewed from the peasants' standpoint1 this was unreasonable to the point of sheer folly4 ,but1 if ,i understand ,mr4 ,wells aright1 he seems to elevate the reason of the peasant into something very like the eternal reason of ,diderot and ,rousseau4 ,he apparently forgets for the nonce that ,engels long ago pointed out that this eternal reason was in reality nothing but the idealized understanding of the eighteenth century citizen1 just then evolving into the bourgeois4 ,the difficulty that ,mr4 ,wells will encounter in trying to bring human society into harmony with eternal reason is the impossibility of getting different classes of men to agree as to what is reasonable4 ,no one outside of dolls' houses any longer believes in eternal reason4 ,every man and every class has an ideal of what is reasonable1 but these ideals vary4 ,war is unreasonable to the peasant-target2 it is also unreasonable to ,melmount and ,mr4 ,wells so far as they are representatives of the citizens of the classless society of the future1 a society based on social solidarity1 on world-wide brotherhood4 ,but to the socialist materialist1 war1 in a world based on private ownership of the means of production used to produce commodities1 with its concomitants1 the wage-system1 competition--domestic and international1--and ever-recurring over-production1 is so very far from unreasonable that it is absolutely inevitable4#cg ,mr4 ,wells evidently brought something with him when he left the ,doll's ,house4 ,we now begin to realize what a very difficult matter it is to rid the mind completely of the effects of what ,professor ,veblen calls the institutional furniture handed down from the past4 ,the man1 who yields to the lure of ,socialism1 must sooner or later effect a revolution within his own mind2 if he does not1 he will sooner or later return to his ,doll's ,house1 or make an excursion into some field of pragmatic romance where he will build himself a new doll's house4 ,granted the truth of historical materialism1 how will future generations look on the literature of to-day and yesterday8 ,to a generation wholly untrained in theological1 metaphysical and dualistic modes of thought how much meaning will there be in the poetry of ,tennyson and ,browning8 ,for my part1 ,i never read ,browning now without being unpleasantly reminded of the aphorism ,nietzsche put into the mouth of ,zarathustra3 ,alas1 it is true ,i have cast my net in their 7poets'7 seas and tried to catch good fish2 but ,i always drew up the head of some old ,god4 ,but ,i am glad to believe that the matchless melody and the chiseled beauty of ,tennyson's verse will charm the senses of men to whom his curious mixture of pantheism and ,broad ,church theology1 which the middle classes of ,england and ,america in the latter decades of the nineteenth century welcomed as the ultimate massage of philosophy1 will not be ridiculous only because it will be meaningless4 ,but ,i am unable to think of the men of the future deriving any pleasure from our greatest poet1 ,browning4 ,on the other hand it is not impossible that the fame of ,swinburne will stand higher in the twenty-first century than it does in this opening decade of the twentieth4 ,the men and women of the future will1 ,i am sure1 feel themselves akin to ,shelley4 ,they will probably enjoy ,byron too1 so far as they understand him2 but men and women1 who have never known any relationship between the sexes but that of independence and equality1 will be bored and baffled by that great bulk of ,byron's verse which shocked his contemporaries4 ,when we turn to the drama1 it appears probable that the revolution in the relations of the sexes will convert into mere materials for the historian even our greatest plays1 such as ,ibsen's ,the ,doll's ,house1 ,sudermann's ,the ,joy of ,living1 ,maeterlinck's ,monna ,vanna1 and ,shaw's ,mrs4 ,warren's ,profession4 ,are the educated and professional socialists prepared to accept gladly such tremendous changes8 ,they are confronted by a momentous question4 ,it was of their class ,william ,morris was thinking when he wrote3 ,i have looked at this claim by the light of history and my own conscience1 and it seems to me so looked at to be a most just claim1 and that resistance to it means nothing short of a denial of the hope of civilization4 ,this1 then1 is the claim3-- ,it is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing1 and be of itself pleasant to do3 and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious4 ,turn that claim about as ,i may1 think of it as long as ,i can1 ,i cannot find that it is an exorbitant claim2 yet again ,i say if ,society would or could admit it1 the face of the world would be changed2 discontent and strife and dishonesty would be ended4 ,to feel that we were doing work useful to others and pleasant to ourselves1 and that such work and its due reward could not fail us6 ,what serious harm could happen to us then8 ,and the price to be paid for so making the world happy is ,revolution4#ch ,are they willing to pay the price8 ,nora paid the price for her freedom and paid it in full4 ,she took nothing from strangers4 ,if they are unwilling to pay the price1 what is there left for them save the joyless sensuality and black despair of pessimism8 ,,footnotes3 #g ,the ,theory of ,business ,enterprise1 ,veblen1 ,new ,york1 #aijd4 ,pages #cea1 #ceb4 ,see also my article on ,veblen the ,revolutionist1 ,international ,socialist ,review1 ,june1 #aije1 vol4 ,v1 page #gbf4 #h ,throughout this article nihilism is not used in its strict technical or philosophical sense1 but is used simply as a convenient term by which to designate the aggregate of those aspects of ,socialism which1 viewed from the standpoint of the existing regime1 appear as negative and destructive4 #i ,a ,contribution to the ,critique of ,political ,economy4 ,karl ,marx1 ,new ,york1 #aijd4 ,pages #aa1 #ab4 #aj ,see ,philosophical ,essays1 ,joseph ,dietzgen1 ,chicago1 #aijf4 ,pages #agd and #eb4 #aa ,essays on the ,materialistic ,conception of ,history4 ,antonio ,labriola1 ,chicago1 #aijd4 ,pages #he1 #hf4 #ab l4 c4 pages #aee-f1 #aeh4 #ac ,philosophical ,essays4 ,dietzgen4 ,page #hf4 #ad ,socialism and ,modern ,science4 ,enrico ,ferri1 ,new ,york1 #aijd4 ,pages #fj1 #fa4 #ae ,philosophical ,essays4 ,dietzgen4 ,page #aaf4 #af ,the reader will observe that ,ferri reads into the ,erfurt pronouncement on religion 7quoted in full above7 a broader spirit of tolerance than its words necessarily imply4 #ag ,see ,the ,theory of the ,leisure ,class4 ,thorstein ,veblen1 ,new ,york1 #aije4 ,pages #bhg1 #bhh4 #ah ,marx in ,zur ,kritik der ,hegelschen ,rechts ,philosophie4 #ai ,the ,origin of the ,family1 ,private ,property and the ,state4 ,f4 ,engels1 ,chicago1 #aije4 ,page #ii1 and ,woman under ,socialism1 ,august ,bebel1 ,new ,york1 #aijd4 ,page #abg4 #bj ,engels1 ,origin of the ,family1 c4 ,page #ajj4 #ba 7,mrs4 ,parsons'47 ,the enlightened public opinion of to-day finds the chief if not the only warrant for universal male suffrage in its being an educational means4 ,in this view women need the suffrage at present even more than men4 #bb 7,mrs4 ,parsons'47 ,dr4 ,alice ,drysdale ,vickery gave striking expression to one phase of this subject at a recent discussion of the ,london ,sociological ,society4 ,she urged that without economic independence the individuality of woman could not exercise that natural selective power in the choice of a mate which was probably a main factor in the spiritual evolution of the race4 ,the ,american ,journal of ,sociology1 ,sept41 #aije4 ,page #bgi4 #bc 7,la,monte's47 ,no wonder such a startling hypothesis aroused the ire of our clerical friends4 #bd 7,la,monte's47 ,it is worthy of note that this suggestion of a serious modification of marriage under existing economic conditions comes characteristically1 not from a ,socialist1 but from the wife of a ,republican member of ,congress and the daughter of a distinguished financier4 #be 7,mrs4 ,parsons'47 ,through the discovery of certain and innocuous methods of preventing conception4 ,the application of this knowledge would have to be encouraged by public opinion in cases where conception would result in a degenerate offspring4 ,public opinion would also have to endorse the segregation of persons tainted with communicable sexual disease4 #bf ,berlin cablegram in the ,new ,york ,sun of ,dec4 #g1 #aijf4 #bg ,origin of the ,family1 c41 ,pages #ia1 #ib4 ,see also ,bebel1 ,woman under ,socialism1 ,page #abb1 and elsewhere4 #bh ,origin of the ,family c4 ,pages #bjh1 #bji4 #bi ,on the existence of organized societies without a co-ercive ,state1 see also1 ,ancient ,society4 ,lewis ,h4 ,morgan1 ,chicago1 #aijg4 #cj ,origin of the ,family c4 ,pages #baa1 #bab4 #ca ,socialism3 ,utopian and ,scientific4 ,f4 ,engels1 ,chicago1 #aije4 ,pages #gf1 #gg4 #cb ,the ,economic ,interpretation of ,history4 ,edwin ,r4 ,a4 ,seligman1 ,new ,york1 #aijc4 ,pages #aje and #aji4 #cc ,the ,people's ,marx4 ,gabriel ,deville1 ,new ,york1 #aijj4 ,pages #ah1 #ai4 #cd ,cartoonists are warned that this idea is protected by copyright4 #ce ,the other day ,i chanced upon a pamphlet by one ,oscar ,lovell ,triggs of ,chicago4 ,it bore the title1 ,william ,morris1 ,craftsman1 ,writer and ,social ,reformer4 ,in turning over its pages ,i was somewhat startled to read3 ',scientific' socialism he never understood or advocated4 ,and again further on my eye fell on this gem3 ,it is apparent that ,morris's ',socialism' is poetic and not scientific socialism4 ,this pamphlet should have a place of honor in every doll's library4 #cf ,in ,sartor ,resartus4 #cg ,in fact1 ,professor ,veblen has shown that for the last quarter of a century the commonest cause of seasons of ordinary prosperity has been war4 ,see ,the ,theory of ,business ,enterprise4 ,pages #bej-a4 #ch ,from ,art and ,socialism1 a pamphlet that is now rare4 ,,the ,,biogenetic ,,law ,it is very easy to go too far in drawing analogies between biology and sociology4 ,society--as yet1 at least--is not an organism in the sense that a tree or a mammal is4 ,it is quite true that with the perfect organization and solidarity to which ,socialists look forward the analogy will be more complete than it is to-day1 but for the present we must always remember that1 as the lawyers would say1 the cases are not on all fours4 ,if we bear these reservations in mind laws drawn from natural science are often of the greatest aid in enabling us to understand the phenomena of psychology and sociology4 ,one of the most helpful of these laws of science is the biogenetic law which is always associated with the great name of ,ernest ,haeckel1 its most distinguished exponent4 ,doctor ,william ,boelsche1 in his book#ci on ,haeckel1 uses1 to illustrate this law1 the familiar example of the frog4 ,the mother frog lays her eggs in the water4 ,in due course a new little frog develops from each of these eggs4 ,but the object that develops from them is altogether different from the adult frog4 ,this object is the familiar fish-like tadpole4 ,it finally loses its tail1 develops legs1 and becomes a frog4 ,doctor ,boelsche discusses the matter as follows3-- ,there are reasons on every hand for believing that the frogs and salamanders1 which now stand higher in classification than the fishes1 were developed from the fishes in earlier ages in the course of progressive evolution4 ,once upon a time they were fishes4 ,if that is so1 the curious phenomenon we have been considering really means that each young frog resembles its fish ancestors4 ,in each case to-day the frog's egg first produces the earlier or ancestral stage1 the fish1 it then develops rapidly into a frog4 ,in other words1 the individual development recapitulates an important chapter of the earlier history of the whole race of frogs4 ,putting this in the form of a law1 it runs3 each new individual must1 in its development1 pass rapidly through the form of its parents' ancestors before it assumes the parent form itself4 ,if a new individual frog is to be developed and if the ancestors of the whole frog stem were fishes1 the first thing to develop from the frog's egg will be a fish and it will only later assume the form of a frog4 ,that is a simple and pictorial outline of what we mean when we speak of the biogenetic law4 ,we need1 of course1 much more than the one frog-fish before we can erect it into a law4 ,but we have only to look around us and we find similar phenomena as common as pebbles4 ,let us bear in mind that evolution proceeded from certain amphibia to the lizards and from these to the birds and mammals4 ,that is a long journey1 but we have no alternative4 ,if the amphibia 7such as the frog and the salamander7 descend from the fishes1 all the higher classes up to man himself must also have done so4 ,hence the law must have transmitted even to ourselves this ancestral form of the gill-breathing fish4 ,what a mad idea1 many will say1 that man should at one time be a tadpole like the frog6 ,and yet--there's no help in prayer1 as ,falstaff said--even the human germ or embryo passes through a stage at which it shows the outlines of gills on the throat just like a fish4 ,it is the same with the dog1 the horse1 the kangaroo1 the duck mole1 the bird1 the crocodile1 the turtle1 the lizard4 ,they all have the same structure4 ,nor is this an isolated fact4 ,from the fish was evolved the amphibian4 ,from this came the lizard4 ,from the lizard came the bird4 ,the lizard has solid teeth in its mouth4 ,the bird has no teeth in its beak4 ,that is to say1 it has none to-day4 ,but it had when it was a lizard4 ,here1 then we have an intermediate stage between the fish and the bird4 ,we must expect that the bird embryo in the egg will show some trace of it4 ,as a matter of fact1 it does so4 ,when we examine young parrots in the egg we find that they have teeth in their mouth before the bill is formed4 ,when the fact was first discovered1 the real intermediate form between the lizard and the bird was not known4 ,it was afterwards discovered at ,solenhofen in a fossil impression from the ,jurassic period4 ,this was the archeopteryx1 which had feathers like a real bird and yet had teeth in its mouth like the lizard when it lived on earth4 ,the instance is instructive in two ways4 ,in the first place it shows that we were quite justified in drawing our conclusions as to the past from the bird's embryonic form1 even if the true transitional form between the lizard and the bird were never discovered at all4 ,in the second place1 we see in the young bird in the egg the reproduction of two consecutive ancestral stages3 one in the fish gills1 the other in the lizard-like teeth4 ,once the law is admitted1 there can be nothing strange in this4 ,if one ancestral stage1 that of the fish1 is reproduced in the young animal belonging to a higher group1 why not several8--why not all of them8 ,no doubt1 the ancestral series of the higher forms is of enormous length4 ,what an immense number of stages there must have been before the fish6 ,and then we have still the amphibian1 the lizard1 and the bird or mammal1 up to man4 ,why should not the law run3 the whole ancestral series must be reproduced in the development of each individual organism8 ,we are now in a position to see the whole bearing of ,haeckel's idea4 ,in analogy with this1 is it not true that every thinking man and woman in the course of his or her development1 epitomizes the history of human thought8 ,to be more specific1 ,i take it that you1 reader1 are an educated man of middle-class origin1 and that you have been a socialist for at least six months1 and have1 of course1 read ,engels' ,socialism3 ,utopian and ,scientific4 ,now1 is it not a fact that your socialism has developed from ,utopia toward ,science exactly along the lines ,engels has traced for the movement at large8 ,so true was this in my case that for a long time ,i was inclined to push the biogenetic law too far and to conclude that every socialist had traveled the same road4 ,i still think the law holds here1 but not in the narrow way ,i first applied it4 ,in the course of my work as an agitator 7and socialist agitation is the best ,school of ,socialism7 ,i met many sterling socialists who had never been ,utopians as ,i had4 ,they were born fighters1 so to speak1 and had been full of the class spirit1 and fighting the capitalists in the trade-union and elsewhere in every way they could think of1 long before they had ever heard of the ideal of the ,co-operative ,commonwealth4 ,and these men are among our best and most uncompromising socialists4 ,here was a hard problem for me4 ,i believed in my law1 but it did not seen to cover the cases of these militant socialists4 ,i was long in solving the problem1 but ,i solved it at last4 ,socialism has two aspects4 ,as the most vital fact of modern life it is a kinetic force4 ,modern ,socialism in ,engels' words is1 in its essence1 the direct product of the recognition on the one hand1 of the class antagonisms1 existing in the society of to-day1 between proprietors and non-proprietors1 between capitalists and wage-workers2 on the other hand1 of the anarchy existing in production4 ,this is ,socialism1 the most pregnant actuality in the palpitating life all about us4 ,but1 as ,engels pointed out1 ,socialism also has its ideological side4 ,in this sense it may correctly be called a theory1 if we bear in mind that it is the virile force of class-feeling1 and not the theory1 that is going to effect the ,social ,revolution4 ,now1 every individual socialist does in his development conform to the biogenetic law2 but the bourgeois socialist is more apt to epitomize the history of ,socialist theory1 while the proletarian socialist recapitulates the development of class feeling as a kinetic force from blind and often unavailing hatred of the rich to the fruitful class-consciousness of the ,marxian ,socialist4 ,the individual may combine these two processes in varying proportions2 but in broad outline the bourgeois may be expected to reproduce fairly closely the history of ,socialism1 as a theory1 while the proletarian reproduces the history of ,socialism1 the great kinetic force4 ,while1 from the standpoint of socialist theory1 the statement of ,doctor ,parkhurst and many others that ,christ was a ,socialist is a manifest absurdity1 the historian who traces back the history of ,socialism1 the kinetic force1 will surely be led by the chain of facts to ,james and ,jesus and ,isaiah4 ,for they were among those who gave most effective expression to the class hatred which is the lineal ancestor of ,marxian ,socialism viewed as a kinetic actuality4 ,in this sense ,jesus was one of the founders of ,socialism4 ,here are a few extracts from these ancient sowers of the seeds of discontent3 ,the ,lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people1 and the princes thereof3 for ye have eaten up the vineyard2 the spoil of the poor is in your houses4 ,what mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces1 and grind the faces of the poor8 saith the ,lord ,god of hosts4 ,wo unto them that join house to house1 that lay field to field1 till there be no place1 that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth6 ,,isaiah4 ,verily ,i say unto you1 ,that a rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven4 ,and again ,i say unto you1 ,it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle1 than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of ,god4 ,wo unto you1 scribes and ,pharisees1 hypocrites6 for ye devour widows' houses1 and for a pretense make long prayer3 therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation4 ,,jesus4 ,go to now1 ye rich men1 weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you4 ,your riches are corrupted1 and your garments are moth-eaten4 ,your gold and silver is cankered2 and the rust of them shall be a witness against you1 and shall eat your flesh as it were fire4 ,ye have heaped treasure together for the last days4 ,behold1 the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields1 which is of you kept back by fraud1 crieth2 and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the ,lord of ,sabaoth4 ,,james4 ,james would appear to have been somewhat more class-conscious than is deemed decorous by most of our modern ,christian ,socialists4 ,but ,isaiah and ,jesus and ,james all give expression to precisely the same fierce emotions that ,i have many a time seen blazing out of the eyes of poor hopeless proletarians grouped around the soap-box2 and it is the glory of ,modern ,socialism that it has been able to transform this fierce class hatred into intelligent class-consciousness which aims by loyalty to the ,proletariat to rescue the rich as well as the poor from the fatal curse of economic inequality4 ,the bourgeois and the proletarian who come into the ,socialist movement both have tadpole tails to lose in the course of their development into scientific socialists2 but the tails are different4 ,the proletarian has to rid himself of his hatred of the rich as individuals4 ,he has to learn that ,rockefeller1 just as much as he himself1 is a product of economic conditions4 ,after he once thoroughly learns this there will be no danger of his being a ,democrat or ,anarchist or any other species of dangerous reactionary4 ,the bourgeois tail is harder to lose4 ,it consists of animistic1 theological and dualistic habits of thought1 issuing in utopianism and non-materialistic idealism4 ,for1 if ,i may be permitted to toy with the ,hegelian dialectic in the manner of ,marx1 no man can be a fruitful idealist until he has become a materialist4 ,the reader of this volume will probably find himself able to agree pretty fully with what ,i have said in ,science and ,socialism4 ,that is because1 when ,i wrote that1 ,i had not fully gotten rid of my idealistic tadpole tail4 ,he will probably have more difficulty in assenting to the theses of ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism4 ,that is because he has not yet gotten rid of his tadpole tail4 ,i do not wish to be understood as speaking with contempt or depreciation of the tadpole tails4 ,without their aid most of us bourgeois socialist frogs would never have been able to get out of our old conservative shells4 ,it was the utopianism of our tails1 in most cases1 that first cracked the shell4 ,i should be sorry to have any reader interpret the materialism of ,the ,nihilism of ,socialism into a disposition to deny or depreciate the great and beneficent influence that ,christianity has had in the past4 ,i should be greatly chagrined to be accused of irreverence in discussing religion4 ,irreverence is ever a sign of a narrow intellectual horizon and a limited vision4 ,the scoffer is the product of the limited knowledge characteristic of what ,engels called metaphysical materialism4 ,unfortunately the mental development of many in the past has been arrested at this ,ingersoll-,voltaire stage4 ,but with the growth of ,modern ,socialism the tendency is for the metaphysical materialist to grow into socialist or dialectic materialism with its ,hegelian watchword1 ,nothing is2 every thing is becoming4 ,the socialist materialist realizes that the obsolescent ideals of ,christianity and the ,family have played leading roles in the great drama of human progress4 ,it is impossible for him to speak lightly or contemptuously of the ideals which have sustained and comforted1 guided and cheered countless hosts of his fellows through the long1 dark ages of ,christian ,faith4 ,but he knows that those ages are past and that present day adherence to the old ideals is atavistic and reactionary4 ,but none-the-less his mental attitude toward the old ideals is one of reverent sympathy and1 ,i had almost added1 gratitude4 ,this state of feeling has found perfect expression in these lines by ,william ,morris3 ,they are gone--the lovely1 the mighty1 the hope of the ancient ,earth3 ,it shall labor and bear the burden as before that day of their birth2 ,it shall groan in its blind abiding for the day that ,sigurd hath sped1 ,and the hour that ,brynhild hath hastened1 and the dawn that waketh the dead2 ,it shall yearn1 and be oft-times holpen1 and forget their deeds no more1 ,till the new sun beams on ,baldur1 and the happy sea-less shore4 7,from ,,sigurd the ,,volsung47 ,,footnote3 #ci ,haeckel3 ,his ,life and ,work4 ,by ,william ,boelsche4 ,george ,w4 ,jacobs ,company4 ,,kismet4 ,verily ,i say unto you4 ,that there be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death1 till they have seen the kingdom of ,god come with power4 ,mark1 ix1 #a4 ,the very close analogy between primitive ,christianity and ,modern ,socialism has often been pointed out both by materialists1 such as ,enrico ,ferri1 and by ,churchmen1 such as the ,reverend ,doctor ,hall4 ,we find in both the doctrine of the ,advent4 ,the primitive ,christian believed in all simplicity and sincerity that he should not taste death until the ,son of ,man had come and established upon earth ,his kingdom of justice1 peace and brotherhood4 ,the ,marxian ,socialist to-day is even more sure that men and women now living will bear a part in the ,social ,revolution which is to usher in the reign of ,fellowship on earth4 ,the secret of the propaganda power of both movements is in the sincerity of this conviction4 ,just at this point we are often met with two queries1 both of which bear witness to the persistence of the utopian tadpole tails of the questioners4 ,the first question is3 ,if the early ,christians were sincere and yet mistaken1 may not the ,socialists also be mistaken in their doctrine of the inevitability of ,socialism8 ,the second question is3 ,if ,socialism is inevitable--is coming anyhow--why do you ,socialists vex your souls agitating for it8 ,the doubt of the inevitability of ,socialism on analysis is always found to be a doubt of the pro-socialist desires and actions of the ,proletariat4 ,no one disputes that the ,capitalist system is breaking down4 ,with the great mass of the producers receiving bare subsistence wages the impossibility of disposing of the almost miraculously stupendous product of modern machines and processes is mathematically demonstrable4 ,the former paradox of the ,socialist agitator1 that the ,utopian is the man who believes in the possibility of the continuance of the present system1 has become a platitude4 ,nor can many be found to dispute the statement that the centralization of industry in the ,united ,states has reached a point where ,socialism is economically entirely practicable4 ,the doubt of the sceptics is3 ,will the workers create1 in the language of economics1 an effective demand for ,socialism8 ,two eminent ,utopians have voiced this doubt in the recent past4 ,their names are ,george ,d4 ,herron and ,daniel ,de,leon4 ,both alike forget that the desires1 ideals1 and motives of the proletariat cannot but be in harmony with their economic environment1 and ,i do not think that either of them would deny that1 as we near the downfall of ,capitalism1 the economic environment will more and more imperatively drive men to ,socialism as the only avenue of escape from chaos and pessimism4 ,on this point1 of the motives to action of the individual being formed by economic conditions1 ,marx wrote in ,the ,eighteenth ,brumaire of ,louis ,bonaparte3 ,on the various forms of property1 on the conditions of social existence1 there rises an entire superstructure of various and peculiarly formed sensations1 illusions1 methods of thought and views of life4 ,the whole class fashions and moulds them from out of their material foundations and their corresponding social relations4 ,the single individual1 in whom they converge through tradition and education1 is apt to imagine that they constitute the real determining causes and the point of departure of his action4 7,prof4 ,seligman's translation47 ,the man who has thoroughly assimilated the doctrine of historical materialism cannot for a moment doubt the inevitability of ,socialism4 ,the utopianism which evinces itself in this doubt may be depended upon to betray itself elsewhere in the views of the doubters4 ,we find that this is signally true in the case of the two illustrious utopian sceptics ,i have mentioned4 ,the ,natural ,rights platform that ,professor ,herron wrote and the ,socialist ,party adopted in #aijd is only less utopian than ,daniel ,de,leon's curiously childish conceit that in the highly factitious1 wheel of fortune form of organization of the ,industrial ,workers of the ,world#dj we have the precise frame-work of the coming ,co-operative ,commonwealth4 ,it does not seem too much to say that doubt of the inevitability of ,socialism is in all cases a symptom of failure to apprehend clearly the full implications of the ,materialist ,conception of ,history4 ,the second question1 ,if ,socialism is inevitable1 why do ,socialists work to bring it about81 would appear to have been answered by implication in the course of our discussion of the first question4 ,in brief1 we work for it because we know that if we did not it would never come4 ,it is inevitable simply because ,socialists are inevitable4 ,our activity as ,socialist agitators is a necessary result of the development of capitalist industry just as much as the ,trust is4 ,again1 we work for ,socialism because we know we can get it1 and we work all the harder if we believe it is coming soon4 ,one of the most active of our wealthy socialists has said3 ,if ,i had to be in 'the hundred year1 step at a time1 take-what-you-can-get' class1 you would find me automobiling my life away down at ,newport with ,reggie ,vanderbilt instead of editing this magazine4444 ,as said1 ,i would rather chase down the pike on my ,red ,dragon at 'steen hundred miles an hour1 terrifying the farmers1 than go in for any 'reform game'4 7,gaylord ,wilshire in ,wilshire ,editorials4 ,new ,york1 #aijg4 ,pages #bcb1 #bcc47 ,so we find that in practice the belief in the inevitability and the proximity of ,socialism is the most powerful stimulus to socialist activity4 ,we believe that the doctrine of the inevitability of ,socialism is scientifically true1 that its proclamation is the most effective weapon in the arsenal of the ,socialist agitator1 and that it is the most powerful incentive to ,socialist activity2 so that we mean exactly what the words imply when we address our non-socialist friends in the words of ,william ,morris3 ,come1 join in the only battle wherein no man can fail1 ,where whoso fadeth and dieth1 yet his deed shall still prevail4 ,,footnote3 #dj ,i trust that no one will construe this as an attack on the ,industrial ,workers of the ,world4 ,it is not my intention to express in this place any opinion as to the merits or demerits of that organization4 ,it is only mentioned here because mention of it was necessary to illustrate the most curious case ,i know of the abnormally prolonged retention of the utopian tadpole tail4 ,,advertisements ,illustration ,books on ,socialism1 ,modern ,science1 etc4 ,,standard ,,socialist ,,series4 ,this series of books1 the first volumes of which were issued in #aija1 contains some of the most important works by the ablest ,socialist writers of ,europe and ,america4 ,the size of page is #fc_/d by #da_/d inches1 making a convenient shape either for the pocket or the library shelf4 ,the books are substantially bound in cloth1 stamped with a uniform design1 and are mechanically equal to many of the books sold by other publishers at a dollar a copy4 ,our retail price1 postage included1 is ,,fifty ,,cents4 #a4 ,karl ,marx3 ,biographical ,memoirs4 ,by ,wilhelm ,liebknecht1 translated by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,this personal biography of ,marx1 by an intimate friend who was himself one of the foremost ,socialists of ,germany1 gives a new insight into the beginnings of ,socialism4 ,moreover1 it is a charming book1 as interesting as a novel1 and will make an admirable introduction to heavier reading on ,socialism4 #b4 ,collectivism and ,industrial ,evolution4 ,by ,emile ,vandervelde1 member of the ,chamber of ,deputies1 ,belgium4 ,translated by ,charles ,h4 ,kerr4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,the author is a ,socialist member of the ,belgian ,parliament and is one of the ablest writers in the international ,socialist movement4 ,this book is1 on the whole1 the most satisfactory brief summary of the principles of ,socialism that has yet been written4 ,one distinctive feature of it is that it takes up the difficult questions of how the machinery of production could be acquired and how wages could be adjusted under a ,socialist administration4 #c4 ,the ,american ,farmer3 ,an ,economic and ,historical ,study4 ,by ,a4 ,m4 ,simons4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,the ,american ,farmer1 in spite of its small size1 is the largest contribution yet given to the agrarian literature of this country4 ,the author1 besides being a student of ,american social conditions1 is thoroughly conversant with practical farming1 and there is little doubt that the farmer who reads the work will have to admit that the conclusions are based on a real understanding of the difficulties of his struggle with the soil1 with railroads1 trusts and foreign competitors4--,chicago ,tribune4 #d4 ,the ,last ,days of the ,ruskin ,co-operative ,association4 ,by ,isaac ,broome4 ,cloth1 illustrated1 #ej cents4 ,socialism does not mean withdrawing from the class struggle and trying to set up a paradise on a small scale4 ,if there are those who still think such a scheme practicable1 they will find interesting facts in this book4 #e4 ,the ,origin of the ,family1 ,private ,property and the ,state4 ,by ,frederick ,engels4 ,translated by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,this is one of the most important of the author's works1 and although first published in #ahhd1 was never accessible to ,english readers until our translation appeared in #aijb4 ,it contains practically everything necessary to the general reader in the voluminous work of ,morgan1 and it furthermore gives many additional facts and a coherent1 scientific treatment of the whole subject4 ,the book is of great propaganda value1 in that it shows the folly of the popular idea that wealth and poverty always have existed and so may always be expected to continue4 #f4 ,the ,social ,revolution4 ,by ,karl ,kautsky4 ,translated by ,a4 ,m4 and ,may ,wood ,simons4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,kautsky is the editor of the ,neue ,zeit1 and is universally recognized as one of the ablest ,socialist writers and thinkers in ,europe4 ,this book is in two parts4 ,part ,i41 ,reform and ,revolution1 explains the essential difference between the ,socialist party and all reform parties4 ,part ,,ii41 ,the ,day ,after the ,revolution1 gives straightforward answers to the questions so often asked about what the ,socialists would do if entrusted with the powers of government4 #g4 ,socialism1 ,utopian and ,scientific4 ,by ,frederick ,engels4 ,translated by ,edward ,aveling1 ,d4,sc41 with a ,special ,introduction by the ,author4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,this book ranks next to the ,communist ,manifesto as one of the best short statements in any language of the fundamental principles of ,socialism4 ,it is an essential part of every ,socialist library1 however small4 #h4 ,feuerbach3 ,the ,roots of the ,socialist ,philosophy4 ,by ,frederick ,engels4 ,translated1 with ,critical ,introduction1 by ,austin ,lewis4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,this book is a criticism on the works of a forgotten philosopher1 but it is still of timely interest1 since attempts are still being made to reintroduce dualist notions into the philosophy of ,socialism4 ,austin ,lewis contributes an interesting historical introduction4 #i4 ,american ,pauperism and the ,abolition of ,poverty4 ,by ,isador ,ladoff1 with a supplement1 ,jesus or ,mammon1 by ,j4 ,felix4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,a study of the last ,united ,states census1 bringing out in bold relief the social contrasts that are purposely left obscure in the official documents4 ,an arsenal of facts for ,socialist writers and speakers4 #aj4 ,britain for the ,british 7,america for the ,americans47 ,by ,robert ,blatchford1 with ,american ,appendix by ,a4 ,m4 ,simons4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,a popular presentation of ,socialism1 in the same charming and simple style as the author's ,merrie ,england1 but giving a far more adequate and scientific account of the subject4 #aa4 ,manifesto of the ,communist ,party4 ,by ,karl ,marx and ,frederick ,engels4 ,authorized ,english ,translation3 ,edited and ,annotated by ,frederick ,engels4 ,also included in the same volume1 ,no ,compromise3 ,no ,political ,trading4 ,by ,wilhelm ,liebknecht4 ,translated by ,a4 ,m4 ,simons and ,marcus ,hitch4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,this manifesto1 first published in #ahdh1 is still recognized the world over as the clearest statement of the principles of the international ,socialist party4 ,it has been translated into the language of every country where capitalism exists1 and it is being circulated more rapidly to-day than ever before4 #ab4 ,the ,positive ,school of ,criminology4 ,by ,enrico ,ferri4 ,translated by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,the science of criminology has been revolutionized within one generation by the ,socialist students of ,italy1 of whom ,ferri is the most prominent living representative4 ,this book is indispensable to any one desiring reliable information on the modern theory of crime and its treatment4 #ac4 ,the ,world's ,revolutions4 ,by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,a study of the economic causes of the great revolutions of the world's history in the light of the ,socialist principle of historical materialism4 #ad4 ,the ,socialists1 ,who ,they ,are and ,what ,they ,seek to ,accomplish4 ,by ,john ,spargo4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,scientific yet readable and easy2 written in a style that the man in the street will understand and the man in the university will admire4 ,just the book to start a new reader4 #ae4 ,social and ,philosophical ,studies4 ,by ,paul ,lafargue4 ,translated by ,charles ,h4 ,kerr4 ,in ,preparation4 ,this book will contain two studies entirely new to ,american readers1 ,causes of ,belief in ,god1 and ,the ,origin of ,abstract ,ideas4 ,it will also contain several studies reprinted from the ,international ,socialist ,review4 ,lafargue's brilliant style makes even the most abstract subjects delightful4 ,,library ,,of ,,science ,,for ,,the ,,workers4 ,modern ,international ,socialism is directly related to modern science4 ,it is in a sense the evolution theory applied to the facts of society4 ,it1 therefore1 follows that for a full understanding of socialism some general knowledge of the facts of modern science is necessary4 ,a new series of books has lately appeared in ,germany which give in simple and popular form complete proofs of the evolution theory along with a clear account of the latest applications of this theory in the various fields of modern science4 ,we have arranged to translate and publish some of the best of these1 along with such original works in the same line as are available4 ,they are uniform in size with the ,standard ,socialist ,series4 #a4 ,the ,evolution of ,man4 ,by ,wilhelm ,boelsche4 ,translated by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,the ,evolution of ,man tells in full detail1 in a clear1 simple style1 illustrated by pictures1 just how the descent of man can be traced back through monkeys1 marsupials1 amphibians1 fishes1 worms and lower forms of life1 down to the animals composed each of a single cell4 ,moreover1 it proves that there is no such fixed line as was formerly thought to exist between the organic and the inorganic1 but that the same life-force molds the crystal that molds the cell4 ,it is not only simple2 it is up-to-date and gives the latest discoveries in science4 ,it is the book on the subject4 #b4 ,germs of ,mind in ,plants4 ,by ,r4 ,h4 ,france4 ,translated by ,a4 ,m4 ,simons4 ,cloth1 illustrated1 #ej cents4 ,a cardinal point in the philosophical systems favored by the ruling classes is that the mind of man is something unique in the universe1 governed by laws of its own that have no particular connection with physical laws4 ,modern science has proved that not only animals1 but also plants1 receive impressions from the outside world and use the data thus obtained to modify their movements for their own advantage1 exactly as human beings do4 ,these facts are told in this book in so charming and entertaining a style that the reader is carried along and does not realize until later the revolutionary significance of the facts4 #c4 ,the ,end of the ,world4 ,by ,dr4 ,m4 ,wilhelm ,meyer4 ,translated by ,margaret ,wagner4 ,cloth1 illustrated1 #ej cents4 ,this book answers in the light of the discovery of modern science the questions frequently asked as to the probable end of human life on this planet4 ,moreover1 it goes a step further in making clear the relations of man's life to the universe life4 ,we have already seen that mind is but another form of life4 ,dr4 ,meyer shows that not only animals and plants but even worlds and suns have their birth1 growth1 maturity1 reproduction1 decay and death1 and that death is but the preparation for a new cycle of life4 #d4 ,science and ,revolution3 ,a ,historical ,study of the ,evolution of the ,theory of ,evolution4 ,by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,a history of the evolution of the theory of evolution1 from the earliest scientific writings that have been preserved1 those of the ,greek philosophers1 down to the present time4 ,the author shows how the ruling classes1 living on the labor of others1 have always supported some form of theology or mysticism1 while the working classes have developed the theory of evolution1 which is rounded out to its logical completion by the work of ,marx1 ,engels and ,dietzgen4 ,the author frankly recognizes that no writer can avoid being influenced by his class environment1 and he himself speaks distinctly as a proletarian and a ,socialist4 ,science and ,revolution is an essential link in the chain of evidence proving that conclusions drawn by ,socialists from the facts of science4 #e4 ,the ,triumph of ,life4 ,by ,wilhelm ,boelsche4 ,translated by ,may ,wood ,simons4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,the ,german critics agree that this book is even more interesting than ,the ,evolution of ,man1 by the same author4 ,it tells of the struggle of life against its physical environment1 and introduces a wealth of scientific detail charming set forth4 ,the ,german original contains no illustrations1 but our edition is fully illustrated with pictures that aid materially in an understanding of the text4 #f4 ,life and ,death1 a ,chapter from the ,science of ,life4 ,by ,dr4 ,e4 ,teichmann4 ,translated by ,a4 ,m4 ,simons4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,a study of how life begins and how it ends4 ,it does not duplicate any other book in this series1 but is a special investigation into the laws which govern the reproduction of life4 ,it also deals with the methods by which the life of each separate individual is brought to an end1 and shows that in an overwhelming majority of cases throughout the whole animal kingdom death is violent rather than natural4 ,even among human beings a really natural death is rare4 ,the author suggests that with improved conditions of living1 most premature deaths may be prevented1 and that in that event the fear of death1 which causes so much of the misery of the world1 may disappear4 #g4 ,the ,making of the ,world4 ,by ,dr4 ,m4 ,wilhelm ,meyer4 ,translated by ,ernest ,untermann4 ,cloth1 #ej cents4 ,this is a companion volume to ,the ,end of the ,world1 and traces the processes through which new suns and new worlds come into being to take the place of those that have grown old and died4 ,it is an essential link in the chain of evidence proving that the human mind is not something apart from nature but only another manifestation of the one force that pervades all matter4 ,the book has twenty-four illustrations1 for the most part reproductions of telescopic photographs1 which make the truth of the statements in the book evident to every reader4 ,,the ,,international ,,library ,,of ,,social ,,science4 ,this new library1 the first volume of which appeared in ,january1 #aijf1 contains in substantial and artistic cloth binding some of the most important works on socialism and kindred subjects that have ever been offered in the ,english language4 ,while our price has been fixed at a dollar a volume1 most of the books in the library are equal to the sociological books sold by other publishers at from #a4ej to #b4jj4 #a4 ,the ,changing ,order4 ,a ,study of ,democracy4 ,by ,oscar ,lovell ,triggs1 ,ph4,d4 ,cloth1 #a4jj4 ,dr4 ,triggs was a prominent professor in the ,university of ,chicago1 but he taught too much truth for ,standard ,oil1 and is no longer a professor in the ,university of ,chicago4 ,this book contains some of the truth that was too revolutionary for ,mr4 ,rockefeller's institution4 ,it traces the inevitable rise of democracy in industry1 in other words1 of a working class movement that will take industry out of the control of capitalists4 ,it also studies the necessary effect of this rising democracy on literature and art1 on work and play1 on education and religion4 ,for description of other books in this library1 and a large variety of other ,socialistic literature1 see catalog2 mailed free on request4 ,address ,,charles ,h4 ,,kerr ,,co4 #bfd ,east ,kinzie ,street ,,chicago