The Subtle and Dangerous Character of Socialism by Orestes Augustus Brownson 1852
[Socialism] is as artful as it is bold. It wears a pious aspect, it has divine words on its lips, and almost unction in its speech. It is not easy for the unlearned to detect its fallacy, and the great body of the people are prepared to receive it as Christian truth. We cannot deny it without seeming to them to be warring against the true interests of society, and also against the Gospel of our Lord. Never was heresy more subtle, more adroit, better fitted for success. How skilfully it flatters the people! It is said, the saints shall judge the world. By the change of a word, the people are transformed into saints, and invested with the saintly character and office. How adroitly, too, it appeals to the people's envy and hatred of their superiors, and to their love of the world, without shocking their orthodoxy or wounding their piety! Surely Satan has here, in Socialism, done his best, almost outdone himself, and would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect, so that no flesh should be saved.
What we have said will suffice to show the subtle and dangerous character of Socialism, and how, although the majority may recoil from it at present, if logically drawn out by its bolder and more consistent advocates, the age may nevertheless be really and thoroughly Socialistic. We know that the age seeks with all its energy, as the greatest want of mankind, political and social reforms. Of this there is and can be no doubt. Analyze these reforms and the principles and motives which lead to them, which induce the people in our days to struggle for them, and you will find at the bottom of them all the assumption, that our good lies in the natural order, and is not attainable by individual effort. All we see, all we hear, all we read, from whatever quarter it comes, serves to prove that this is the deep and settled conviction of the age. If it were not, these revolutions in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, would have no meaning, no principle, no aim, and would be as insignificant as drunken rows in the streets of our cities.
But the essence of Socialism is in this very assumption, that our good lies in the natural order, and is unattainable by individual effort. Socialism bids us follow nature, instead of saying with the Gospel, Resist nature. Placing our good in the natural order, it necessarily restricts it to temporal goods, the only good the order of nature can give. For it, then, evil is to want temporal goods, and good is to possess them. But, in this sense, evil is not remediable or good attainable by individual effort. We depend on nature, which may resist us, and on the conduct of others, which escapes our control. Hence the necessity of social organization, in order to harmonize the interests of all with the interest of each, and to enable each by the union of all to compel Nature to yield him up the good she has in store for him. But all men are equal before God, and, since he is just, he is equal in regard to all. Then all have equal rights, —an equal right to exemption from evil, and an equal right to the possession of good. Hence the social organization must be such as to avert equal evil from all, and to secure to each an equal share of temporal goods. Here is Socialism in a nutshell, following as a strictly logical consequence from the principles or assumptions which the age adopts, and on which it everywhere acts. The systems drawn out by Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Proudhon, or others, are mere attempts to realize Socialism, and may or may not be ridiculous and absurd; but that is nothing to the purpose, if you concede their principle. These men have done the best they could, and you have no right to censure them, as long as you agree with them in principle, unless you propose something better.
Now we agree with De la Mennais, that Christianity has a political and social character, and with the editor of The Boston Quarterly Review, that Christianity seeks the good of man in this life as well as in the life to come. We say with all our heart, "On the earth was he [our Lord] to found a new order of things, to bring round the blissful ages, and to give to renovated man a foretaste of heaven. It was here the millions were to be blessed with a heaven, as well as hearafter." No doubt of it. But in the new order and by it,—not out of it and independently of it. Out of the new order and independently of it, the millions are, to say the least, no better off than if it did not exist, and have no right to any portion of its blessings. The Socialists, when they attempt to press Christianity into their service, are bad logicians. They are right when they tell us that our Lord came to found a new order of things, for he certainly did come for that purpose; they are right when they tell us that it is Christian to seek a heaven on earth for the millions, for there is a Christian heaven here for all men, if they choose to accept it; but when they say this, they are bound to add that this heaven is in the new order established, and is to be sought in it, and by obedience to its principles. It is Christian to seek that order of happiness which Christianity proposes, by the means it prescribes; but to seek another order of happiness, and by other means, is not therefore necessarily Christian, and may even be anti-christian. Here is the point they overlook, and which vitiates all their reasoning.
Socialism, by its very principle, enslaves us to nature and society, and subjects us to all the fluctuations of time and sense. According to it, man can attain to true good, can gain the end for which he was made, only in a certain political and social order, which it depends on the millions, whom the individual cannot control, to construct, and which, when constructed, may prove to be inconvenient and inadequate, and require to be pulled down and built up again. The individual, it teaches us, can make no advance towards his destiny but in proportion as he secures the cooperation of his race. All men must be brought down or brought up to the same level before I can go to the end for which my God made me; each man's true good is unattainable, till all men are prepared to take "a pull, a strong pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether," to attain theirs! This is slavery, not liberty. Nay, it denies the possibility of liberty, and makes slavery the necessary condition of all men. Is not he a slave who is chained to nature for his good, or to a social organization which does not exist, and which depends on the wisdom, the folly, the passions or instincts, the whims or caprices of other men to create or to destroy? Who can deny it? He only is free, he only knows what freedom is, who tramples the world beneath his feet, who is independent of all the accidents of time and space, of all created beings, and who has but to will and all heaven is bis, and remains his, though the entire universe fall in ruins around him.
Undoubtedly Christianity requires us to remove all evil, and in seeking to remove evil we follow the Christian principle; but what the Socialists call evil, and the people in revolt are seeking to remove, is not evil. Nothing is evil but that which turns a man away from his end, or interposes a barrier to his advance towards it. Nothing but one's own sin can do that . Nothing, then, but sin is or can be evil, and that is evil only to him who commits it. Take all these things which Socialists declaim against,—monarchy, aristocracy, inequalities of rank, inequalities of riches, poverty, want, distress, hunger, starvation even,— not one of them, in itself considered, is necessarily evil; not one of them, nor all of them combined, can harm the just man, or prevent, except by his own will, any one from the fulfilment of his destiny. If one is prepared to die, he may as well die in a hovel as a palace, of hunger as a fever. Nothing can harm us, that does not separate or tend to separate us from God. Nothing but our own internal malice can so separate us, and it is always in our power, through grace, which is never withheld, to remove that at will.
Undoubtedly, also, Christianity requires us to seek not only to remove evil, but to promote good, and good in this world. Good is the object of the will, and we are always to propose it. But the things the people in their insurrectionary movements are seeking after, and which Socialists commend, are not necessarily good. As there is no evil to the just, so is there no good to the sinner, while he continues in his sinful state. If the Socialists could secure to all men every thing they promise or dream of, they would secure them nothing to their advantage. Place every man at the highest social level that you can conceive; give him the most finished education you can devise; lavish on him in profusion this world's goods; lodge him in the most splendid palace that genius can construct, furnished in the most tasteful and luxurious manner; let him be surrounded by the most beautiful scenes of nature and the choicest specimens of art; and let him have ample leisure and opportunity for travel, for social intercourse, and for the fullest and most harmonious development of all his natural faculties;—you advance him not the millionth part of a hair-breadth towards his destiny, avert from him no evil, secure him no conceivable good. It will be no consolation to the damned to recollect, that, while here, they were clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day; and your rich men, your great and renowned men, your fine gentlemen and ladies, with their polished manners and fashionable dresses, their soft complexions and gentle speech, your accomplished artists, your brilliant poets, your eloquent orators, your learned scholars, your profound and subtile philosophers, as well as coarse artisans, ragged beggars, cross-grained old hags, and country bumpkins, will be damned, eternally damned, if they die without the grace of God; and that grace is as likely to find its way to the hovel as to the palace, to dwell beneath the beggar's gabardine as the embroidered mantle of the rich and refined. The bulk of the strong-minded and thrifty citizens of this republic, with all their political franchises, social advantages, universities, academies, common schools, meeting houses, external decorum, and material prosperity, are infinitely more destitute than those Neapolitan lazzaroni whose lot they deplore, and are in no rational sense one whit better off than the miserable miners and degraded populace of Great Britain. Their possessions will add nothing to the fullness of their joy, if, by a miracle of mercy, they gain heaven, and will only render fiercer the flames of their torment, if they are doomed to hell, as they have every reason to fear will be the case.
The Socialists fall into the fallacy of passing, in their reasoning, from one species to another. Nothing they call evil is evil; nothing they call good is good; and hence, because Christianity commands us to remove evil and seek good, it does not follow that we must associate with the disaffected populations to bring about political and social reforms. All that is in any sense good or worth having the individual can always, under any political or social order, secure by a simple effort of his will. Forms of government and forms of social organization, then, are at best indifferent; Socialism is a folly, and Socialists fools. The Creator is good, and Providence is wise and just. All external events take place by the express appointment of God. If, then, a single event were evil or the occasion of evil to a single individual, save through that individual's own fault, the goodness of the Creator would be denied, and the wisdom and justice of Providence could not be asserted. No doubt, there is evil in the world, far more heart-rending, far more terrific, than Socialists depict, or even conceive; but to no man is there or can there be evil, but his own sin, which is purely his own creation. Since no man is obliged or compelled to sin, since sufficient grace is given unto every man to enable him to break off from sin and to become just, every man can, as far as himself is concerned, put an end to all evil, and secure all good, even the supreme Good itself, at any moment he pleases. Nothing, then, is more idle than to pretend that political and social reforms,— touching the organization of the state or of society, we mean, not those which touch administration—are or ever can be necessary as the condition of averting any evil or procuring any good.
[Socialism] is as artful as it is bold. It wears a pious aspect, it has divine words on its lips, and almost unction in its speech. It is not easy for the unlearned to detect its fallacy, and the great body of the people are prepared to receive it as Christian truth. We cannot deny it without seeming to them to be warring against the true interests of society, and also against the Gospel of our Lord. Never was heresy more subtle, more adroit, better fitted for success. How skilfully it flatters the people! It is said, the saints shall judge the world. By the change of a word, the people are transformed into saints, and invested with the saintly character and office. How adroitly, too, it appeals to the people's envy and hatred of their superiors, and to their love of the world, without shocking their orthodoxy or wounding their piety! Surely Satan has here, in Socialism, done his best, almost outdone himself, and would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect, so that no flesh should be saved.
What we have said will suffice to show the subtle and dangerous character of Socialism, and how, although the majority may recoil from it at present, if logically drawn out by its bolder and more consistent advocates, the age may nevertheless be really and thoroughly Socialistic. We know that the age seeks with all its energy, as the greatest want of mankind, political and social reforms. Of this there is and can be no doubt. Analyze these reforms and the principles and motives which lead to them, which induce the people in our days to struggle for them, and you will find at the bottom of them all the assumption, that our good lies in the natural order, and is not attainable by individual effort. All we see, all we hear, all we read, from whatever quarter it comes, serves to prove that this is the deep and settled conviction of the age. If it were not, these revolutions in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, would have no meaning, no principle, no aim, and would be as insignificant as drunken rows in the streets of our cities.
But the essence of Socialism is in this very assumption, that our good lies in the natural order, and is unattainable by individual effort. Socialism bids us follow nature, instead of saying with the Gospel, Resist nature. Placing our good in the natural order, it necessarily restricts it to temporal goods, the only good the order of nature can give. For it, then, evil is to want temporal goods, and good is to possess them. But, in this sense, evil is not remediable or good attainable by individual effort. We depend on nature, which may resist us, and on the conduct of others, which escapes our control. Hence the necessity of social organization, in order to harmonize the interests of all with the interest of each, and to enable each by the union of all to compel Nature to yield him up the good she has in store for him. But all men are equal before God, and, since he is just, he is equal in regard to all. Then all have equal rights, —an equal right to exemption from evil, and an equal right to the possession of good. Hence the social organization must be such as to avert equal evil from all, and to secure to each an equal share of temporal goods. Here is Socialism in a nutshell, following as a strictly logical consequence from the principles or assumptions which the age adopts, and on which it everywhere acts. The systems drawn out by Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Proudhon, or others, are mere attempts to realize Socialism, and may or may not be ridiculous and absurd; but that is nothing to the purpose, if you concede their principle. These men have done the best they could, and you have no right to censure them, as long as you agree with them in principle, unless you propose something better.
Now we agree with De la Mennais, that Christianity has a political and social character, and with the editor of The Boston Quarterly Review, that Christianity seeks the good of man in this life as well as in the life to come. We say with all our heart, "On the earth was he [our Lord] to found a new order of things, to bring round the blissful ages, and to give to renovated man a foretaste of heaven. It was here the millions were to be blessed with a heaven, as well as hearafter." No doubt of it. But in the new order and by it,—not out of it and independently of it. Out of the new order and independently of it, the millions are, to say the least, no better off than if it did not exist, and have no right to any portion of its blessings. The Socialists, when they attempt to press Christianity into their service, are bad logicians. They are right when they tell us that our Lord came to found a new order of things, for he certainly did come for that purpose; they are right when they tell us that it is Christian to seek a heaven on earth for the millions, for there is a Christian heaven here for all men, if they choose to accept it; but when they say this, they are bound to add that this heaven is in the new order established, and is to be sought in it, and by obedience to its principles. It is Christian to seek that order of happiness which Christianity proposes, by the means it prescribes; but to seek another order of happiness, and by other means, is not therefore necessarily Christian, and may even be anti-christian. Here is the point they overlook, and which vitiates all their reasoning.
Socialism, by its very principle, enslaves us to nature and society, and subjects us to all the fluctuations of time and sense. According to it, man can attain to true good, can gain the end for which he was made, only in a certain political and social order, which it depends on the millions, whom the individual cannot control, to construct, and which, when constructed, may prove to be inconvenient and inadequate, and require to be pulled down and built up again. The individual, it teaches us, can make no advance towards his destiny but in proportion as he secures the cooperation of his race. All men must be brought down or brought up to the same level before I can go to the end for which my God made me; each man's true good is unattainable, till all men are prepared to take "a pull, a strong pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether," to attain theirs! This is slavery, not liberty. Nay, it denies the possibility of liberty, and makes slavery the necessary condition of all men. Is not he a slave who is chained to nature for his good, or to a social organization which does not exist, and which depends on the wisdom, the folly, the passions or instincts, the whims or caprices of other men to create or to destroy? Who can deny it? He only is free, he only knows what freedom is, who tramples the world beneath his feet, who is independent of all the accidents of time and space, of all created beings, and who has but to will and all heaven is bis, and remains his, though the entire universe fall in ruins around him.
Undoubtedly Christianity requires us to remove all evil, and in seeking to remove evil we follow the Christian principle; but what the Socialists call evil, and the people in revolt are seeking to remove, is not evil. Nothing is evil but that which turns a man away from his end, or interposes a barrier to his advance towards it. Nothing but one's own sin can do that . Nothing, then, but sin is or can be evil, and that is evil only to him who commits it. Take all these things which Socialists declaim against,—monarchy, aristocracy, inequalities of rank, inequalities of riches, poverty, want, distress, hunger, starvation even,— not one of them, in itself considered, is necessarily evil; not one of them, nor all of them combined, can harm the just man, or prevent, except by his own will, any one from the fulfilment of his destiny. If one is prepared to die, he may as well die in a hovel as a palace, of hunger as a fever. Nothing can harm us, that does not separate or tend to separate us from God. Nothing but our own internal malice can so separate us, and it is always in our power, through grace, which is never withheld, to remove that at will.
Undoubtedly, also, Christianity requires us to seek not only to remove evil, but to promote good, and good in this world. Good is the object of the will, and we are always to propose it. But the things the people in their insurrectionary movements are seeking after, and which Socialists commend, are not necessarily good. As there is no evil to the just, so is there no good to the sinner, while he continues in his sinful state. If the Socialists could secure to all men every thing they promise or dream of, they would secure them nothing to their advantage. Place every man at the highest social level that you can conceive; give him the most finished education you can devise; lavish on him in profusion this world's goods; lodge him in the most splendid palace that genius can construct, furnished in the most tasteful and luxurious manner; let him be surrounded by the most beautiful scenes of nature and the choicest specimens of art; and let him have ample leisure and opportunity for travel, for social intercourse, and for the fullest and most harmonious development of all his natural faculties;—you advance him not the millionth part of a hair-breadth towards his destiny, avert from him no evil, secure him no conceivable good. It will be no consolation to the damned to recollect, that, while here, they were clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day; and your rich men, your great and renowned men, your fine gentlemen and ladies, with their polished manners and fashionable dresses, their soft complexions and gentle speech, your accomplished artists, your brilliant poets, your eloquent orators, your learned scholars, your profound and subtile philosophers, as well as coarse artisans, ragged beggars, cross-grained old hags, and country bumpkins, will be damned, eternally damned, if they die without the grace of God; and that grace is as likely to find its way to the hovel as to the palace, to dwell beneath the beggar's gabardine as the embroidered mantle of the rich and refined. The bulk of the strong-minded and thrifty citizens of this republic, with all their political franchises, social advantages, universities, academies, common schools, meeting houses, external decorum, and material prosperity, are infinitely more destitute than those Neapolitan lazzaroni whose lot they deplore, and are in no rational sense one whit better off than the miserable miners and degraded populace of Great Britain. Their possessions will add nothing to the fullness of their joy, if, by a miracle of mercy, they gain heaven, and will only render fiercer the flames of their torment, if they are doomed to hell, as they have every reason to fear will be the case.
The Socialists fall into the fallacy of passing, in their reasoning, from one species to another. Nothing they call evil is evil; nothing they call good is good; and hence, because Christianity commands us to remove evil and seek good, it does not follow that we must associate with the disaffected populations to bring about political and social reforms. All that is in any sense good or worth having the individual can always, under any political or social order, secure by a simple effort of his will. Forms of government and forms of social organization, then, are at best indifferent; Socialism is a folly, and Socialists fools. The Creator is good, and Providence is wise and just. All external events take place by the express appointment of God. If, then, a single event were evil or the occasion of evil to a single individual, save through that individual's own fault, the goodness of the Creator would be denied, and the wisdom and justice of Providence could not be asserted. No doubt, there is evil in the world, far more heart-rending, far more terrific, than Socialists depict, or even conceive; but to no man is there or can there be evil, but his own sin, which is purely his own creation. Since no man is obliged or compelled to sin, since sufficient grace is given unto every man to enable him to break off from sin and to become just, every man can, as far as himself is concerned, put an end to all evil, and secure all good, even the supreme Good itself, at any moment he pleases. Nothing, then, is more idle than to pretend that political and social reforms,— touching the organization of the state or of society, we mean, not those which touch administration—are or ever can be necessary as the condition of averting any evil or procuring any good.
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