tions to Mr. Spencer's doctrine of non-interference : It ignores the fact that there is a Social Question, or implies that the Government should let it alone. Logical consequences of complete non-interference : would leave no room for the operation of his own prin. ciple of distribution. The State interference of recent years just, as well as necessary. The Government inspector a product of social evolution. Probable results had there been no State interference. Inter- ference a practical, as well as logical, consequence of the "Law of Equal Freedom.” Answer to the objec- I. Statement of the two principal supposed tendencies- Extension of the State's functions, and the increasing concentration of capital. Mistake of Karl Marx and other philosophers as to the second tendency. It is not a tendency to concentration in few hands, but to II. Difficulties that this peculiar concentration of capital places in the way of Socialism. Under what con- ditions the spread of companies and syndicates might lead to an extension of State Socialism. III. The tendency to co-operative effort on the part of labourers. Its relation to Socialism. The tendency slower than that to the concentration of capital, but the State might restrain the latter and aid the former. The future political action of the working classes a SECT. Herbert Spencer, Mill, St. Simon, Carlyle. True PAGE 411-416 INTRODUCTION, I. THE object of this book is in the first place to give an account of contemporary Socialism, its forms and aims, its origins, and the causes of its appearance and spread; secondly, to examine how far, taking the most. reasonable form of it, it is desirable or practicable; thirdly, to set forth certain measures of a socialistic character that would seem both beneficial and necessary as supplements to the present system, to adopt which there is a spontaneous tendency on the part of the State, and to which the course of the industrial and social evolution seems to point. I have devoted a certain space to the history of Socialism, in order not only to explain the particular forms it now assumes, but also to show that in its essence it is no new thing; that it has frequently appeared before, and has always been produced by like causes; that in its most frequent and recurrent form of communism the universal human experience has rejected it as unsuited to average human nature, though in primitive times groups of kindred in village communities were general; that where any species of Socialism has been found practicable and advan tageous, it has been rather what we should now call State-Socialism, by which, as in the Jewish polity, institutions like the Jubilee were interwoven with the fundamental laws of the State; a species of Socialism that aimed not at abolishing private property, but at universalizing it, and, by interposing obstacles to its too-easy alienation, mostly by limiting the field of freedom of contract by express commands, at preventing great inequality from arising. I have outlined the successive schemes of the chief social system-makers, and have dwelt at some length on the views of the three writers who have been most influential as respects the development of Socialism, namely Rousseau, St. Simon, and Karl Marx; the first, the founder of modern Democracy and of StateSocialism; the second, of a kind of aristocratic Socialism based on natural inequality of capacity; the third, of the new Socialism, which has gained favour with the working classes in all civilized countries, and which agrees with the first in being democratic, and with the second in aiming at collective ownership. It is with the third of these, commonly called Collectivism, that we shall be concerned in the second part of the book (Chaps. IV.-VIII.). And with respect to it, we must first observe that the historical summary which condemns communism in general as impracticable does not apply to it, in so far as it allows to some extent private property and inheritance; it would only apply to it in so far as it approaches to communism. But the Socialists hold further, that a historical condemnation of past systems does not apply to their system, because the industrial and social circumstances are different to-day, because their system, they say, is adapted to the new circumstances, and because the social and industrial evolution still going on is spontaneously leading up to their ideal, and must inevitably issue in it, spite of argument or of effort to the contrary. And there is in this so much of truth, together with unproved or doubtful assumption, that the system must be examined separately on its own merits, apart from the judgment of history on past systems. I take the form of Socialism called Collectivism, which postulates the collective ownership of land and capital, with production under State direction, to be Socialism. I do so because most Socialists, as a matter of fact, are collectivists, and because the collectivists regard themselves as the true church, though, as will be seen hereafter, there are differences within its bosom as to the way of attaining the goal, the further and ultimate aims when the goal is reached, and even as to the time of its realization; there being some who look for the coming of the Socialist kingdom within a generation or two, whilst others postpone the event indefinitely, but still expect it to come. In giving an exposition of Collectivism, there is a difficulty from a certain reserve on the part of authoritative writers as regards their positive programmes. Neither Karl Marx nor Lassalle submit any beyond the vaguest outline, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu complains; but this want of definite programme, as |