"PICTURES OF THE FUTURE."

 How A Socialist Millenium Would Work.

Let us start by admitting that it is pretty hard to say how anything would "work." So long as the materials to be worked upon are the ever-changing thoughts and passions of mankind the best of us must be content to grope about more or less in the dark. Those who think on social questions at all are all disposed to believe that things might easily be better than they are. Some imagine that they could not possibly be worse. Be that as it may upon one point we are all agreed, and that is that there is room for improvement. Hence the zeal with which we pull to pieces one another's little schemes. Now everyone has a right to his own opinion about these things ; and the only man whose opinion is not worth having is the one who holds that conditions can never be bettered because just at present they are good enough for him. Carl Marx had a perfect right in his "working man's bible" to expose the evil of "profit-mongering ;" Gronlund conferred a boon on many of us by publishing a sort of new testament by which the hard economics of the "bible" were brought within the grasp of working men, and Bellamy certainly did a good day's work when he undertook to weave the sacred doctrines into a romance. Now one, Eugene Richter, described as "the most brilliant parliamentary leader in the German Reichsrath," has risen in his might to demolish all three ; and Mr. Stead in the current number of the Review of Reviews bestows upon his pamphlet, for it is as a pamphleteer that he has taken the arena, the distinction of commenting upon it as "The book of the month."

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According to Mr. Stead Richter has delineated "what would almost of necessity be the incidents of an attempt prematurely to realise the collectivist ideal." I need hardly tell the readers of the Worker after what I have written on the subject that I am not myself a State Socialist. Whatever I write I write from the standpoint of an Individualist, which presumably is Mr. Richter's standpoint too. Still as an Individualist I should like before touching upon the subject matter of the book to ask Mr. Stead what earthly use it is at this time of day to publish even a pamphlet on the evils of prematurely realising the collectivist ideal, and offering that to the public as an antidote to Bellamy's " Looking Backward." Obviously the kind of Socialism sought by my socialistic friends is not the Socialism of a premature birth. They call themselves "evolutionary socialists." In other words they see the wisdom of "making haste slowly," and are ready to guide rather than to rush the forces of industry on towards their goal— the more ready indeed because they are firmly convinced that that is the goal towards which industrial life itself is tending. One might as reasonably look for a good night's rest after eating a dish of half cooked potatoes as expect much satisfaction from premature Socialism, or for that matter anything else that comes out of season. It surely doesn't call for a pamphlet to convince us of that. And to do Mr Richter justice it is evidently the genuine article that he has in his mind. Only Mr. Stead, who likes to stand well with all sorts of people— the very wicked ones alone excepted— seems in this respect to have been disposed to let his Socialist friends down gently at the expense of the author.

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Now if Mr. Stead could have told us that the book was a sort of political extravaganza he might have set a good many readers hunting through its pages in vain for a glimmer of humour, but he would at least have prepared them for some of the extraordinary things the author has to say. "Looking Backward" is a dream if you like— the dream of a healthy and beautiful mind: "Pictures of the Future" is a wretched nightmare— one of those especially provoking nightmares in which the walls of your room refuse to stand at right angles to the floor, in which you invariably post the wrong letter to the wrong girl, in which you walk abroad in your purple and fine linen and all of a sudden find yourself "doing the block" in your night shirt. Mr. Richter has as much right to speculate upon the possibilities of State Socialism as anybody else, but his readers have also a right to demand that in an apparently serious work upon a really serious subject he should speak like a serious man, and he is certainly not doing this when he assumes that in a Socialistic state of society twentieth century Germany would manifest less common sense than a tribe of Australian blacks. His rulers are perfect donkeys. Bumble himself was not such an ass— and with the solitary exception of the man who is supposed to be telling the story, a master bookbinder and an ardent disciple or Marx and Bebel, his citizens are blessed with less intelligence than you would expect to find in the majority of nurseries.

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The narrative begins appropriately enough with the reconstruction of society. The Socialists have secured a majority in the Reichsrath ; the bourgeois are leaving the the country by thousands ; the workers are celebrating their victory, and the new government is just getting into swing. Very good, but listen : The first thing they do is to pass a law making labour compulsory upon all persons between the ages of twenty-one and sixty-five. Up to the age of twenty-one young people are compelled to spend their time at school ; after sixty five to the end of their days old people are compelled to live in idleness. No one has a right to choose his own work, no one has a right to say where he will work. Thus a man who was in the old days an expert telegraphist may be employed in sweeping the streets of Berlin whilst his wife may be told off to run a soup kitchen at Cologne. And such a soup kitchen! Your food is weighed out in equal portions. The hungry labourer gets no more than the dyspeptic clerk. There are no menus because there is no choice of dishes; there are no waiters because that would be un-socialistic. The dietary scale, however, is based "on a scientific calculation of the quantities of albumen, fat and carbohydrates needful to maintain the human body in a healthy condition." The idea of a second helping is "mercilessly laughed down," and indeed a policeman stands by, watch in hand, ready to tap you on the shoulder when the regulation number of minutes has expired ; and you are then expected to make room for some other hungry Socialist who has been waiting patiently behind you. 

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As women are told off to work some provision must of course be made for their children and this is done by means of State nurseries in which the poor little things are "regulated" into a state of hopeless misery. Their friends are allowed to visit them rarely, and they are on no account permitted to bring them sweets or toys. Indeed the idea of a child having playthings "all to itself" is altogether opposed to the laws of the State, "as that would interfere with its training in the principles of social equality." No wonder the only child depicted in the book soon pines away and finally dies of croup. It is all of a piece with the general tenor of life under these extraordinary conditions, too, that the mother first hears of the illness of her darling, when after its death she calls to pay her usual fortnightly visit. "The great removal" involves another gigantic stretch of imagination. The houses in which the various families— or as many members of the family as are permitted to live at home— are to occupy is decided by lot. The hero of the story had hitherto been comfortably quartered in a decent house fronting the road. Much to the chagrin of his wife, however, the result of the lottery necessitates their removal to a couple of small rooms at the back. Their furniture, too, goes astray in a most unsatisfactory manner. Excepting a few chairs, a table and a couple of beds it is wanted for the new institution for children, old people and invalids. And thus they lose the big armchair that they had presented to the grandfather on his last birth day, the wardrobe they had bought after their wedding, and innumerable other things hallowed by the sacred recollections of family life ; and as one may imagine it was small compensation to know that in the aristocratic parts of the city "the furniture vans were standing in files," and that after all in their new apartments they would not have room for more than was left. Apart from the insanity of the whole proceeding one can only wonder what the cabinetmakers were doing all this time. 

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 The theatres were managed no better. At first there was a mischievous degree of preference for variety performances, whilst classical plays intended for the glorification of Social Democracy were acted to empty benches. So after a while the government in its wisdom decided to arrange for individual pleasure seekers the particular place of amusement at which they were to spend their evenings, and to determine by lot the respective parts of the house they were to sit in— with the natural consequence that those who were deaf and short-sighted were often stowed away in remote corners at the back of the pit. In the workshops people not only objected to do an honest day's graft themselves, but they objected to others working hard. Bebel had promised them a "four hours' day," you see, and as the government could only see its way to reducing the number of hours to eight they felt it incumbent to work at no more than half their normal speed. Little wonder that zeal and energy were killed, that whilst discipline was lax tyranny prevailed on every hand, that the question of ways and means began to trouble the authorities, that everyone grew discontented, some seeking escape in emigration, others in suicide, and that the "Socialist Millenium" ended in open revolt, aggravated by a war with France.

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These are but a few of the remarkable things that Mr. Richter expects to follow in the wake of collectivism. Can any one— would Mr. Herbert Spencer himself— say that his expectations were likely to be fulfilled ? Is it reasonable to suppose that a ministry of socialist would not do the best they could for Socialism. Why, by the absurdity of his own suppositions Mr. Richter does more for the party of State control than the characters he has here delineated. He is not even consistent. Thus, in one place he tells us that journeymen get things all their own way, loafing and slumming their work at pleasure, because they appoint their own overseers, and a little farther on he allows his hero to lament that the girls in the shops are afraid to complain of the undue familiarity of the male superintendents because complaints only made matters worse. "Such things may have happened formerly," the poor father reflects. "But in those cases escape was always possible by seeking employment elsewhere." This is just a little "too thin." The lady who did the book into English for the Review of Reviews steps from behind the curtain with the gentle rebuke—"not always under unlimited competition." On the other hand the journeymen who have their "bosses" so completely under their thumbs are represented as being quite unable to effect a change of ministry because being civil servants they are afraid of the pains and penalties attached to hostile criticism. Really what does this "brilliant parliamentary leader" mean?

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As for his all round compulsory labour, his assumption that socialists would begin by deliberately trampling under foot the first principle of social fife— the family— his scheme of education, his State restaurants, his nurseries, his system of house occupation and the tyrannical management of his ideal theatres, could anything be more absurd? Is it even a moderately fair portrayal of what could possibly happen ? That things would not work smoothly under a system of general State proprietorship and control, that the prerogative of the Government would more or less come into conflict with the reasonable liberties of the individual, that production would be devoid of healthy stimulus, and that discontent and friction would be the inevitable result, I for one firmly believe. But there is moderation in all things and of course a limit to what some of us deem the evils of State control. Why, life under Nero was not more hopeless for the masses than Mr. Richter assumes that a government of Democratic Socialists would make it. Is that a fair supposition? For my part I say unhesitatingly that it is not. On the contrary, is there not much in the socialistic idea to warrant the belief that it would on the whole make the world brighter and better than it is ; and are many of us not justified in rejecting it only because we think we know of something better still— a something that would endow the individual with greater freedom than he has ever had before and which as a result of that would banish for ever the fear of want to those who were ready and willing to work? And that is the Nationalisation of the Land. E.B. 

 — The Brisbane Courier, commenting upon the book says, "Something of the kind is needed in Australia just now, and perhaps this may not be altogether too late." A well-known Social-Democrat of Brisbane thereupon writes to the WORKER thus: The Courier's sublime ignorance of the economic interpretation of history and the quicksand basis of modern industrialism is indeed amazing. She little dreams of the inevitability of socialistic development. She shrieks against the flow of the ocean and calls on the fools to sit on the shore Canute-like and defy the waves to wash their dirty feet, apparently forgetting that the mighty swell is caused by the capitalist upheavals, trade depressions and bank smashes, in which she herself plays her little part." Can the Courier really think that Richter is going to succeed where Bismarck failed, or that any man or body of men can retard by so much as a momentary pause, let alone reverse, the motion of the world's axis because its rotation is now making slick for Socialism. A feat of that kind might be very gratifying to those who riot on the unpaid labour of the wage workers, on cut-throatism in trade with its booms and depressions, trade wars to force shoddy goods on unoffending races, bank smashes and bankruptcies with their inevitable concomitant of low wages and overwork, want of employment, starvation, and prostitution. But then it isn't possible. Capital will concentrate and insist of itself in becoming public property. It can't help its destiny, which is nationalisation and municipalisation. And in the face of this it is "altogether too late" to talk of a pamphleteer stopping Socialism in Australia or anywhere else.

Worker (Brisbane, Qld.),  1893 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70861317