![]() And it was immediately after the Great Revolution that the three great theoretical founders of modern Socialism - Fourier, Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, as well as Godwin (the No-State Socialism) - came forward while the secret communist societies, originated from those of Buonarotti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to militant Communism for the next fifty years. It was during this remarkable movement, which has never yet been properly studied, that modern Socialism was born - Fourierism with L’Ange, at Lyons, and authoritarian Communism with Buonarotti, Babeuf, and their comrades. And the third was a sort of Municipal Communism as regards the consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost price. The Convention worked hard at this scheme, and had nearly completed its work, when reaction took the overhand. The second attempt was to introduce a wide national system of rationally established prices of all commodities, for which the real cost of production and moderate trade profits had to be taken into account. It was, first, the equalization of fortunes, by means of an income tax and succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a direct confiscation of the land in order to subdivide it, and by heavy war taxes levied upon the rich only. It is now known that the French Revolution apart from its political significance, was an attempt made by the French people, in 17, in three different directions more or less akin to Socialism. And modern Communism had to take them into account. These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the eighteenth century, took, however, their full swing in the nineteenth century only, after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. The latter appears especially as a disturbing element, since it is no longer individuals only, or cities, that enrich themselves by distant commerce and export but whole nations grow rich at the cost of those nations which lag behind in their industrial development. It appears, on the contrary, as a succession of endeavours to realize some sort of communist organization, endeavours which were crowned with a partial success of a certain duration and all we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has not yet found the proper form for combining, on communistic principles, agriculture with a suddenly developed industry and a rapidly growing international trade. The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer, then, an argument against Communism. We learn, moreover, that the mediæval cities succeeded in maintaining in their midst for several centuries in succession a certain socialized organization of production and trade that these centuries were periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial, and artistic progress and that the decay of these communal institutions came mainly from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth of the military states, which destroyed the free cities. We see, first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of years, one of the main elements of Socialism the common ownership of the chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of the same according to the labour capacities of the different families and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the nobility and the middle classes. However, the moment we consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. Don’t you think that there is some fundamental error in your understanding of human nature and its needs?”Īt first sight this objection seems very serious. “And yet, you see,” we are told, “how far away is still the realization of your schemes. Then, the same ideals were revived during the great English and French Revolutions and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. One of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it could never be realized.
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