CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM.

 [By Rev. A.C. SUTHERLAND, M.M., B.D.]

The dullest eye among us cannot but discern the existence everywhere of a social disunion of the same kind as that which alarmed St. Paul at Corinth, and against which he so powerfully expostulated and argued, The schism in the Corinthian Church was something quite distinct from party spirit, in which men range themselves under special leaders to give effect to special views, without in any way endangering organic unity. In such a conflict the " base and the honorable," to quote Isaiah, the noble and the peasant, the rich man and the poor, may serve under the same banner. But matters assume a very different complexion when the cause of disunion is found to be, not differences between man and man in the exercise of their reason, but differences between orders, ranks, classes as such. Obviously the struggle in this case will be more terrible, more war to the death, than in the other. St. Paul felt this, and put forth his full strength to avert the calamity.

 At Corinth this disunion, this war of classes arose, because on the one hand the great in gifts, in money, in authority, were contemptuous to those who had no genius, no place or office ; and on the other these last felt that as matters stood they did not belong to the body, had none of its privileges ; that, in short, for them there was no body.

 Now what is the position of our civilisation at this moment ? The democracy has secured after a hard struggle its political emancipation —its right to govern itself. But as usual the visions of regeneration, of peace and plenty, have not been realised. Reform Bills have not filled all our larders, have not rid the land of misery, of want, oppression, and injustice. From the hovel of the farm laborer, and from the foul lanes of our great cities is heard a cry like the cry from the clay pits of Egypt. Of old the remedy was supposed to lie in the abolition of privilege; now the remedy is sought for in making the Government do the work now done by our merchants, manufacturers, farmers, butchers, and costermongers. Not long since men thought they were serving humanity by pulling the strong teeth of the central power, but now they are to be sharpened. Now this tremendous change of feeling is not without reason. No one is quite satisfied with the existing state of society—not the wage-receiver, not the capitalist, for he is not without his anxieties in presence of the mutterings of discontent heard on every side. Listen to the indictment which the great founder of modern socialism, Karl Marx, brings against society as now constituted. " Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the laborer into fragments of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they transform his lifetime into working-time, and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the Juggernaut of Capital. . . . . The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation; this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than did the wedges of Vulcan Prometheus to the rocks. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with an accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole."

 Now in this powerful and lurid description of the laboring classes there is enough of truth to sting and to make us uneasy; but it is a manifest exaggeration, and as applied to labor as a whole even false. Still when one calls to mind the fact that in a city like Glasgow some 40 per cent. of the population live in dwellings of one room, and tries to imagine what is implied in that fact, we shall not be surprised that the system under which it is possible should be denounced by earnest men, who seek to raise the fallen and let the sunshine in to their dark haunts. Socialism there draws its strength from thwarted aspirations, and from the seething mass of human misery, bodily and mental, whose presence chills our enjoyments at the feast of civilisation.

 I am not going to trouble you with a definition of Socialism. That would not help us much. Our working classes have secured their political rights, political equality, and power to vote, none making them afraid. They have also won at a great price the right to combine for their own protection against the power of capital, and so have razed to the ground much of its former tyranny and even cruelty. Then education, cheap literature, public discussion in the press and on the platform, have awakened in the minds of our toilers new desires, new tastes, a higher sense of comfort and refinement. But, toil as they may, they feel that the vast majority are doomed to be shut out from the sweetness, culture, and fullness of life, which the more fortunate few have within their reach. So they are in revolt, as is too manifest, against the existing social relations, political and spiritual; and the remedy is Socialism. The laborer feels that much of his labor goes to feed and clothe those who don't labor in his sense, or indeed in any sense. Thus he is not only hungry, badly clothed, badly housed, but what is more intolerable he knows or believes that his misery is due not to the nature of things, but to downright injustice. He has been taught that it is all a question of supply and demand, of the strong and energetic against the weak and listless. So the laborer looks to the strong hand of the State to help him in his need. He calls upon the State to redress social inequalities, as it has already redressed political inequalities. This is to be effected by making land and capital the property of the community, thus sweeping away profit, interest, rent, leaving to the individual only what he actually earns by hand or head. A man under this regime might possess a razor to shave, but not a plough or a spinning-wheel— these two being instruments of production.

 This view of social life is now an actual force in our modern world, and a very potent force. Even where it is not accepted it is influential and operative. It has passed beyond the stage of neglect and ridicule, and has reached the field of serious conflict. In its ranks are to be found men of profound speculative grasp, of creative genius, and of warm piety. Statesmen are advocating its claims in the Senate, poets are insinuating its doctrines in melodious verse, and it is no longer a stranger even in great universities. It has produced a literature great in quantity and brilliant in quality. It has its newspapers and periodicals in abundance. Whatever we may think of its soundness or practicability it cannot be ignored, either by the Church or the State. Many good men hold it is true that the Church as a spiritual agency should stand aloof from politics. But Presbyterianism has from the first striven to influence and mould the whole national life, and not without success. We shall be unworthy of our history if we retire to our spiritual homes and let the issue be decided without us.

  With regard to the relation of Christianity and Socialism, they have much in common. To disown Adam Smith is not of necessity to disown Christ, though by the way Adam Smith does not teach absolute competition, but competition conditioned by justice between man and man, which justice the State is to enforce Christianity then in my opinion has nothing but blessings to bestow on socialism, in so far as it is in the first place an expression of intense sympathy with the hard and cheerless lot of vast numbers of those who do the drudgery work of the world, and in no far as it is a protest against those who lie upon beds of ivory, drink wine in bowls, but are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph. The whole Bible is one long demand for justice to the poor and the needy, especially when they are the victims of social arrangements. The young lion is roaring for his prey, and much of that roar the gospel does not condemn but welcomes, and gives due warning to those who would in their strength and self-indulgence or ambition put him off with pleasant words. Socialism does well in thundering in the ears of Dives that there is a Lazarus outside his palace gates to whom the law of supply and demand does not apply and ought not to be applied, but who has a claim of a quite different kind. The gospel is distinctly, and indeed in an awful way, upon the side of Lazarus. It tacitly enforces that a man may fall into a condition so terrible as to make the ministration of the brute creation a grateful service, through not fault of his own, neither through idleness, nor intemperance, nor want of foresight, nor thrift, but simply through the visitation of God, or through circumstances which hold him in their strong meshes. Many comfortable people imagine that all misery is in some form sin. Socialism points out with power that the sin often lies at the door, not of the famishing wretch, but at a door much more respectable and higher up the street. The gospel seeks to abolish hunger and nakedness and misery, stuntedness of soul and of body, and so far as Socialism has this end we can only wish it God speed, and take our share in the work of leading men from the arid deserts into a land flowing with milk and honey.

 But, secondly, Socialism is in the same ranks with Christianity when it loudly protests against a pessimistic and fatalistic acquiescence in wretchedness from whatever cause "Whatever is is best," is a maxim hateful to Isaiah and Karl Marx alike. In so far as Socialism preaches hope for humanity it forsakes paganism and appropriates the spirit of Christ. Every Christian should welcome the energy with which it insists on the possibility of cleansing our human styes, of clothing naked backs, and of filling empty stomachs and still more empty souls.

 Thirdly, Socialism is Christian in so far as it asserts that the weal of the individual is contingent on the weal of the society. Especially valuable is the teaching of the Old Testament in this connection, and should be carefully studied by us all. Under the ancient dispensation the salvation of the individual was scarcely possible even in thought, apart from the salvation of the nation. Christianity has of course modified and purified that doctrine, but has not destroyed it; and Carlyle taught us long ago that if we don't recognise our brother by sharing our wine and milk and oil with him he will prove his brotherhood with us by compelling us to share with him his cholera and typhus.

 Fourthly, Socialism is Christian in its attacks on the principles underlying the maxim —" May I not do what I will with my own ?" I quote tho words not in the sense in which they were used by Christ as a defence of generosity in giving another more than he had earned. Socialism demands that this "my own" give an account—how did it come? what share have others in it? have their claims been recognised? is its enjoyment the misery of others? its glory their shame? People dare not now speak on this point as they did even a quarter of a century ago. I can myself remember a respected county gentleman saying on the hustings, in response to some heckling land reformer, that when the leases of his tenants should expire he had a perfect moral as well as legal right to turn them all out and plant his fields with furze. Law has already invaded his legal right, and public opinion, in the formation of which Socialism has had no mean influence, has made the moral right a very shadowy one. The Socialist in this case wears a portion of the mantle of Moses and St. James. Both put very practical limits on this "my own" principle. Both sought to check its tendency to excessive accumulation and to irresponsible use. The law of inheritance, the law of interest, the Sabbatic year of the jubilee, the law of pledges, take great liberties with private property. There laws are not binding on us, and 'twere folly to imitate them. I may say here that the land question is a moral question, and not merely an economic or political one. Scotch crofters and the slums of Edinburgh, where I labored for some time, and where I have seen 143 people living under the same roof, some at them down in the bowels of the earth, and others familiar with the whistlings of the east wind at an elevation which would make a rook giddy, lead me to hold that speculation in land in immoral, and is the cause of immorality. The recent revelations in Melbourne has confirmed the faith of my youth. Let us have a jubilee of some kind to check this disastrous trafficking with a view to a gain which has not really been earned, and which has corrupted many not ignoble men. The Socialist has drawn attention to St James, and though Luther called his letter one of straw, the madness of the prophet has been rebuked by the Socialistic ass, in this case more familiar with the angel of God than the leader of the Reformation. The teaching of the New Testament on health has not been so thoroughly assimilated by the Christian Church as much of the rest of its teaching. Compare the feeling of men in general with respect to covetousness and intemperance. Does that feeling reflect the teaching of Christ and His apostles. I much doubt. We shall have good cause to thank Socialists if they lead us to give the same prominence as the New Testament to the horror and mischievousness of the sin which has possession of its sphere.

 It is with feelings of regret that after having marched so far under the banner of Socialism one finds himself constrained to fall out of the ranks and become a critic with doubts in his mind rather than an unquestioning follower. I am afraid that taken as a whole, though not without earnest exceptions, popular Socialism is not in sympathy with Christianity, either in its methods or its motives. True! what goes under the name of Christian Socialism, so far from denying Christianity, affirms that it is the ripe fruit of Christianity; that only as Socialism becomes established can the redemption of Christ have free course and be glorified among men. Much of what may be said will not apply to the Christian Socialist. Significantly enough the hardest blows the Christian Socialist gets in the way of argument and ridicule come from Socialists and not from so-called individualists. It is too manifest that the great majority of Socialists are not only opposed to Christianity, but are inspired with a fanatical zeal in seeking to erase it from among men. One says "I will relate how I left the Church and became a Socialist. I discovered that my belief gave me never anything to eat. With five hungry children about me this argument was conclusive." Hear what another says;—" To suppress religion which promises an illusory happiness is to establish the claims of real happiness, for to demonstrate the non-existence of these illusions tends toward suppressing a state of things which requires illusions for maintaining its own existence."—(Benoit Malon.) The name doctrine is graphically put by George Eliot in the mouth of Felix Holt:—" They'll supply us with a religion, like everything else, and get a profit on it; they'll give us plenty of heaven —we may have land there. That is the sort of religion they like —a religion that gives a working man heaven and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with them. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world"—a social organisation of labor, resting on materialism, with no room for God or worship, and whose promised land is temporal prosperity at as little personal toil as possible, and with no care. But further, if Christianity is offensive to the intellectual conclusions of the prevailing Socialism, if it furnishes no bread for hungry stomach, it is also a stumbling-block to the moral sense of its leading advocates. They tell us that the worship of Ceres or Bacchus could not be more repugnant to the feelings of the early Christians than Christianity is in our time to those who look for salvation to the transfer of capital from the individual to the State Parodying one of our Lord's fundamental utterances they say ye cannot serve "God" and humanity. The only hopeful thing about this coarse materialism is that its acceptance by men, at least not for long, is impossible. No Socialism can rid our life of accident, of pain, of sin, of remorse, and fatalism does not speak to the heart in its captivity. Human nature, we may be sure, though it may be thrown into revolt and confusion for the moment, will ever find its hope in the cross.

 But even where Socialism is not a denial of Christianity and its spiritual postulates, but the reverse, it seems to me that in its very nature it is opposed to the spirit of Christ. Let me present a brief discussion and defence of this somewhat strong statement. 1. Socialism would seem to revive the conditions of the ancient world which were swept away, in measure at least, by His gospel. In paganism the individual had to a great extent no rights as against the State, especially no rights so far as the free expression of his inner life was concerned. Like nature it was careful of the type, but allowed the individual to wither. But it is of more importance to call to mind that Judaism, with its minute and elaborate regulation of the whole, or at any rate a great part of a man's life, became an intolerable burden to the noblest minds among its children. At every point they were met with rule this and rule that, so that spontaneity of service was impossible, making life grievous to the conscientious, and leading those who were otherwise to a perfunctory and casuistical formalism. It is of course not denied but asserted that this severe and minute discipline imposed upon men from a central source had its uses, and issued in characters of the highest order, in all spheres of human life, public and private, civil and religious, industrial and military. But it was not and could not be final. It was for the schoolboy and not for the mature man. Nor is it forgotten that it dealt largely with matters which Socialism ignores ; that it does not give the same prominence to food and clothing, shelter and amusement, that Socialism does. It sought its end by regulation from without—so does Socialism. It failed, and could not but fail, when the fulness of time came and men ceased to be children, or soldiers merely accustomed to take orders from their superiors. It is significant that Socialists see in the army a model of what life should be generally. Our soldiers are relieved from all care regarding their daily bread, their tailor's bill, and their rents. This discipline gives us men ready to dare anything or go anywhere. Heroism, in short, is the child of the drill-sergeant and a national commissariat. A similar regime applied to life generally would secure similar desirable results. But would it? I don't wait to point out that no army can, like a democracy, be a government for the army and by the army. If it were I venture to say that the first ballot would dissolve every army in Europe, and its members would prefer the risk of starvation and of a patched coat with a free life to the comfort which necessitates the subjection of the will and intellect to regulations from without. Desertion even is not uncommon, not only on the part of the forced conscript, and in the Socialistic army we should be all forced conscripts, but even on the part of the volunteer. Now, I admit that drill and the negation of spontaniety which it involves develops strength of character along certain lines, but does not do so along all the lines of our humanity. But as Christ came to make us perfect this regimentalism cannot be his method, as indeed it is not. To reach his end, personal freedom, personal responsibility, contact with risk of loss, of danger, of poverty, are essential. Not that he makes liberty an end in itself, but rather a means toward attaining the perfection of our being, and of subduing our circumstances to aid us and not to hinder us in this supreme object. Socialism is a beggarly element in what pertains to the higher things of the spirit.

 But Socialism sins in another way against the Gospel of Christ. It practically denies a difference of faculty in men, and so explains our social inequalities to be the result of arbitrary injustice. All men are brethren in Christ. True, but as in nature one star differs from another in glory, and that by the decree of the Almighty, so there is a brother of low degree and a brother of higher degree—one member of the body to honor and another comparatively speaking to dishonor. Now the Gospel teaches that this inferior member is to have more abundant honor, but never that it is to be put absolutely on the same level with the superior, nor that it is of the same value with the superior. This may seem harsh to those who have not the higher gifts, but facts are facts, whatever may be our feelings. This arrangement of high and low is God's arrangement, and it is absurd as well as sinful to resent it. Indeed, Socialism itself could not live without respecting it In theory the shoemaker may be as valuable to the State as the Prime Minister, the simple member of the church as an apostle, the hodman as the skilled physician, the clerk as the poet, but in practice the thing would be impossible. Does Socialism really think that there would be no scramble under its regime to drop the pick and shovel and secure a place among its vast array of governing officers, and that there would be no sulking among the dis appointed or among those ordered by authority to serve at the forge or the mine. On this rock Socialism would go to pieces. The Gospel, truer to nature, recognises destinations springing from higher gifts, but takes care to teach that they are to be used for the help of the lesser gifted. It knows nothing of a levelling equality, which only breeds envy, rebellion, and a sinful discontent, though there is a discontent that is not sinful, but praiseworthy, because it is the starting point towards higher things.

 Once more Socialism, not merely on the part of its wilder and more reckless advocates, but through some of its most scientific exponents, teach doctrines regarding the family which subvert the deliverances of Christianity on this grave matter. It permits the dissolution of family ties for reasons which the Christ does not recognise as valid. Further, Socialism denies not only the competency of parents to educate their children as good citizens ought to be educated, but also their right and responsibility in the matter. Their nurture as to its methods and end must be determined by the State. If religion is regarded as a necessary factor in education the form of that religion would rest with the secular power. One need not add that the New Testament contemplates a very different relation between parent and child.

 Further Socialism is at variance with Christianity in its doctrine as to the inherent degradation of laboring for wages. We have every reason to believe that our Lord gave the labor of his hands for wages, and that not to the State, but to the individual who might require it He speaks much about the right use of money, directly and in parable, but never drops a hint that there is anything sinister in the idea of hired labor, whether regarded from the point of view of the hirer or the hired. Of course this does not imply that the actual relation between the two is in practice what it ought to be.

 There is another aspect of Socialism which the followers of Jesus Christ cannot but regards with aversion—its relation to liberty of conscience. The Fabian Essays foretell that one of the changes to be effected by Socialism will be the inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a democratic basis, so that the possibility opens up of the election of an avowed Freethinker like Mr. Bradlaugh and John Morley to the Deanery of Westminster. They are kind enough to tell us that this will not take place until the settlement of the bread-and-butter question leaves men free to use and develop our higher faculties. Now, there is nothing here of that foaming hatred to Christianity which is cherished by the great body of Socialists. Nevertheless it anticipates State control of other things than the instruments of production. The Church is not to be co-ordinate with the State, but a creation and so a creature of the State. This is pure and undiluted paganism. Christianity is not Democracy—Jesus Christ is King, absolute King of His Church, and not a President voted to His exalted position. It is very significant that Socialists see much to admire, not in the faith of the medieval Church, but in its all embracing organisation, surrounding men everywhere as closely as the atmosphere. It is equally significant that they refer to Protestantism in terms which might be borrowed from an Anglo-Catholic priest, or even Pio Nono of pious memory. Will there be room for Socrates, for St Peter, for Knox, for Cranmar, for non juring bishops under this new democratic Catholicism of politicians? My soul, come not thou into their secret. It is significant, too, that many great intellects who felt that men could not be managed without the drill-sergeant, inclined to intolerance. Plato, in his old age, forgot his " defence of Socrates." and insisted on putting to death those who should introduce new doctrines in politics or religion. T. Carlyle had, I fear, more faith in the police than in the preacher as an agent in human progress.

 Lastly, experience and the teaching of Christ are at one in condemning the excessive hopes which Socialism builds in State regulation for the amelioration of man's outward and inward life. The settlement of the bread and butter question on Socialistic lines will not issue in a Paradise of peace and plenty, of culture and energy. What do we see at this moment among ourselves? Trades unions among our working men failing to attract a majority of themselves, while their indirect result is to band employers together as one man. Trades unions are feeling that they can't attain their end on materialistic grounds; that the moral element must come into play. Promises of more bread and more butter fail to influence many laborers as the trades unions desire, because a present sacrifice of purse and will is demanded.

 The Gospel is clear—that given all possible external advantages these are not enough to make either a man or a nation what they ought to be. There is the awful fact of sin to be reckoned with. Life is developed, not by bread and butter settlements, but from within. Till the kingdom of God is in men's hearts it will never hold sway over their circumstances.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ), Tuesday 18 October 1892,

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25339682

"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.

 * * * 

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?

 * * * 

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

BELLAMY, MORRIS & DONNELLY

ANARCHISTS AND SOCIALISTS.

THERE was much dissatisfaction in the opening years of this century with existing forms of government, but associations of men under the name of Anarchists or Socialists were unknown. On the continent of Europe Socialism has for some time past been regarded as a menace to political systems, and, in Germany more especially, stringent methods have been adopted for its suppression. Anarchists have only recently excited much apprehension anywhere, but cruel, and apparently almost senseless, outrages have been so frequent of late, and so generally attributed to their agency, that the Governments of Europe are seriously considering the advisability of unitedly taking active steps against them. Anarchy, in its modern sense, took its rise in Russia, when, under the designation of Nihilism, it has long held its ground as a secret but powerful enemy of the recognised State authorities. As a check to autocracy, in a country where liberty of speech or writing was, proscribed, and the discussion of grievances at meetings' of citizens prohibited, Nihilism carried a certain measure of sympathy from people at a distance who dwelt under a happier regime. The full measure of the Nihilist creed was not comprehended, and it was popularly supposed in other countries that only what is turned constitutional freedom was demanded. Fuller information has since been secured, and it is evident, that the Anarchists of Europe are the legitimate inheritors of the aspirations of the Russian Nihilists. To most people the terms Nihilists, Anarchists and Socialists merely represent disturbers of the public peace who are ready to combine for purposes of destruction, and have no theories of construction to present worthy of a sane man's attention. This is a misapprehension, and is liable to be attended with serious consequences, when it is found, as frequently happens, that some eminent man, who has gained the world's esteem by his actions, is inclined to support constitutional changes which have been banned by association with an evil name. In point of fact, it is sheer ignorance to confound together the different sections of revolutionaries who have of late years made themselves prominent. Their views of life, hopes of reform, and propagandist efforts place them in reality at the opposite poles of society. The Anarchist or Nihilist proclaims the sovereignty of the individual, and looks for the abolition of State Governments and the formation of simply voluntary associations. The Socialist, on the other hand, aims at increasing the powers of the State so long as it is representative of an unmistakable majority of the people to an extent that has never yet been known in practice, and claiming from the individual during a certain portion of life as complete a surrender of selfhood in the course of industrial progress as has hitherto been yielded only in military campaigns. Whatever may be thought of these theories, it is well that they should be clearly understood by the intelligent reader. Overt acts of violence, whatever name may be assumed by those who perpetrate them, have to be suppressed and punished by the State, but theories of society may claim to be ventilated in all communities where freedom of speech is permitted, so that if there be any good in them it may be ascertained. Men of the highest standing in the Christian church have advocated the cause of Socialism because they conceive that in a stricter discipline of individuals, and a more scientific organisation of society, lies the best hope for progress of the race. They are probably enough mistaken enthusiasts, but they cannot be supposed to have the slightest sympathy with aggressive revolution.
Within the last four years three books have been published in the English language, possessed of notable characteristics, and covering no small portion of the struggle of social ideas to which we have briefly reverted. They deserve to be regarded as a trilogy dealing with the imaginative side of the subject. They share one common element, namely, that of prophecy, as they profess to peer into the future, but in all other respects are strikingly dissimilar. The first of these, under the title of "Looking Backward," has  gained a considerable measure of fame, and a wide circle of readers. Its author, Mr. EDWARD BELLAMY, under the guise of a romance, whose characters live in the twenty-first century, treats of the Socialistic scheme pure and simple. Society is arranged and captained for industrial purposes, just as is an army now for military ones ; and although the people composing it have plenty of opportunities for free action outside of drill hours, within them they have to surrender their personal likings for the benefit of the machine. Everyone has to work for a definite time at a specific occupation, and whatever the merit or capacity of individuals, all receive the same remuneration, emulation being stimulated, as is largely the case at present in military operations, by hope of distinction and love of public approbation. The second work to which we refer is also from the pen of an American, and cannot be said to have excited the same attention as, or to be equal in merit with, "Looking Backward." The writer, IGNATIUS DONNELLY, attained a notoriety that can hardly be denominated fame by the publication of a somewhat cranky work, called the "Great Crytogram," designed to prove that Bacon was the author of Shakspeare's plays. His later production, "Caesar's Column," though much less ambitious, may possibly have a greater value for modern society. In it he purports to narrate the history of the evils arising through the efforts of privileged and wealthy citizens to maintain dominion over the workers. He does not commit himself to any project of social salvation, but is content to paint in lurid colors the social damnation liable to be caused by in justice and cruelty. Book number three has issued from the press within the last few months. Its author, WILLIAM MORRIS, gained a reputation as a poet before he presented himself as a reformer. His earlier volumes, "The Earthly Paradise," have, long been prized by all lovers of classical English verse, and contain poems of a beauty and luxuriance which would not have discredited the muse of Keats. Although himself placed by inheritance beyond the fear of want, Morris became struck by the terrible inequalities of fortune which he witnessed around him, and conceived that in the teachings of the German socialists was to be found the panacea of existing evils. He joined the Social Democrats, and became so ardent a public advocate of their principles as to find himself at the time of the Trafalgar-square disturbances in collision with the police. Although he was brought up before the magistrates, he, in common with some of his friends, escaped the penalty of imprisonment, and has since, with more sobriety but equal pertinacity, propagated his opinions concerning the rottenness of nineteenth century systems and the coming day of communal glory.
Although Mr. Morris has been mixed up with the Socialists through out his later public career, his volume, which bears the title of "News from Nowhere," is occupied with a development of the Anarchistic ideal rather than the Socialistic. It is, in brief, at attempt to realise in practice the central principle of Herbert Spencer's 'Social Statics,' that every person is entitled to the utmost freedom compatible with the like freedom of every other person. By means of the some what hackneyed expedient of a dream the narrator of the story finds himself projected into a future century of English life, the associate of a superior race of people, who dwell about the banks of transfigured Thames, and scarcely know the meaning of the disagreeable word "compulsion." The leading characteristic of the age is enjoyment of the beauty of the world and the pleasure of life, bereft of any fear of either visible or invisible authority. Each person works for the love of work and not for private gain, and if he grows tired of one kind of toil effects a transfer with some other worker, just as a minister in our day who preaches in the country occasionally exchanges pulpits with a brother of the cloth in the city. The happy people of that regenerated England cannot understand how any one would ever have felt it unpleasant to have work to do, and are mainly occupied in extending the scope of useful occupation, so as to make sure that everyone who wants to work can do so. Government, in our sense of government, there is none ; politics have to be picked out of the black letter volumes of the past, and the Houses of Parliament have been turned to profitable account as a dung market. Nobody wants to harm any person, so there is no necessity for courts of police or lawyers, and where, through occasional outbreaks of evil temper not yet redeemed from heredity, some wrong is done, the wrongdoer finds himself an object of sympathy rather than persecution, and is shamed into repentance. Of course the dreamer meets with the querulous old antiquary, who tells him all about the process of reformation, how through mighty strikes, social upheavals and civil wars the idea of freedom had taken possession of mankind, and they had found that if everybody was well treated no. one would wish to do ill to his neighbour. Anarchy in this sense becomes a sort of millennium, and Mr. Morris's literary ability and poetical nature have helped him to turn out a decidedly fascinating composition. But on rising from its perusal, and remembering that Anarchists are just now engaged in propagating their faith by the agency of dynamite bombs and electric explosions, we have to acknowledge with a sigh that there is a great gulf between the dream and the reality.

The Burrowa News 8 April 1892,

MR. BELLAMY AND THE NEW NATIONALIST PARTY.—II.

By FRANCIS A. WALKER in the Atlantic Monthly.

Such is the mechanism which Mr. Bellamy proposes for carrying on the industry of the nation and providing for its material wants.  What are the advantages which, in his view, would result from thus organising the productive forces of the country ? These may be grouped, in a general way, as follows :—

1. Since no man is to be allowed to enjoy more of good things than others, those who stand at the lower end of the scale of industrial efficiency, moral energy, physical force, and technical skill would obtain a dividend from a body of comforts, luxuries, and necessaries of life to the production of which their own force or industry would not be competent. Here, of course is clearly seen an opportunity to improve the condition of the less fortunate members of the community, as at present constituted provided only and provided always that this lavishing away of the fruits of exceptional intelligence, industry, and skill should not diminish the zeal with which those qualities will be applied in future production Should the latter prove to be the case, the less fortunate members of the community would not be better off, but worse off,—indeed, indefinitely worse off, by reason of such a confiscation.

But while Mr. Bellamy's scheme thus offers an opportunity (subject to the important proviso just now indicated) to divide up the superfluity of the rich, the author has to admit that with so huge a divisor as the total number of the people, the addition made thereby to the income of each man, woman, and child would, at the most, be but a few cents a day. Whence, then, is to come that abundance of good things which is depicted in this romance ?—an abundance so great of all the comforts, decencies, and wholesome luxuries of life including the best of wines and cigars, and opera twenty-four hours a day, that it is stated to be not unlikely that any man would care to use less than the amount of purchasing power placed at his disposal. In order to provide the abundance, Mr. Bellamy is obliged to leave the distribution of what we now call wealth, and undertake to show that the production would be enormously increased under his proposed scheme. 

2. In meeting this exigency of his argument, the author indulges in an extravagance of exaggeration which is hardly to be equalled in the myths of any people, from Scandinavia to the Indian Peninsula According to his exhibit, only an insignificant portion of the labour and capital power of a thousand million of toilers, the world over is now really applied to the satisfaction of human wants. His statement of the evil effects of excessive competition and ill-directed enterprise rises into the realm of the marvellous. All this is to be saved and turned to the most beneficent use in his industrial state. There is to be no waste of substance and no duplication of effort. No man or woman is to be obliged to labour after the age of 45 with exceptions too inconsiderable to be noticed, and no child before 21; yet all are to have enough and to spare.

3. Having thus shown that much can be added to the good things to be enjoyed by the community, though what he regards as an improved system of production, Mr. Bellamy proceeds to show that in the consumption of what we now call wealth, a vast saving is to be effected. Property having been virtually abolished, all crimes against property disappear, by the necessity of the case. As no man has anything of which he could be robbed, and is no man has any wants unsatisfied which could lead him to robbery, a very beautiful order of things is immediately instituted. Moreover, in such a happy state, all vicious and malignant instincts and impulses will be so acted upon by general forces, making for intelligence and morality, that crimes against the person and against the community will practically disappear and society will thus be relieved from the expense of providing policemen, Judges, and gaols.

Such are the three modes in which Mr. Bellamy proposes to afford the world that abundance of good things which is depicted so appetisingly in his now famous novel, " Looking Backward."

I do not know that I could give in a brief space, a better idea of the degree of discretion and moderation with which Mr. Bellamy deals with obstacles to his scheme than by saying that he settles in a single line the greatest of human problems. "We have," says this light and airy human providence, no wars and our governments have no war powers." Is it wonderful that a novelist who in one line can dispose of a question which has baffled the power of statesmen, diplomats and philanthropists through the course of centuries, should in a few chapters put you together a social order from which vice, crime pauperism and every form of human selfishness altogether disappear? 

Yet even after such a masterly disposition of the problems which have taxed the powers of the greatest minds of the race, even after the tremendous assumptions which he permits himself on his mere fancy to make, Mr. Bellamy is well aware that he has still to deal with a difficulty of colossal magnitude. Conceding all he would be disposed to claim for his system, if erected and put into operation, it still remains to be shown how this industrial army shall be officered ; how "the administration" which is to set and keep millions of persons at work, each in the place and in the way best suiting his capacity, to order and control this gigantic industrial machine without friction, without waste and without loss shall be chosen or elected, or otherwise constituted. If the choice of rulers and administrators for governments which exercise but a tenth of a hundredth part of the power and authority that is to be placed in the hands of the officers of the industrial army gives rise to parties and factions which are ready to tear each other asunder, generates intrigues and cabals which threaten the existence of government itself, and creates a large class of professional politicians what may we expect when "the administration" controls all the activities of life, sets every man of the community at work and in place according to its pleasure, and undertakes to redress the balance of advantages and disadvantages among hundreds of occupations and thousands of considerable communities ?

I have said that Mr. Bellamy is aware of this difficulty. He proposes a scheme for the choice of those who are to exercise these tremendous powers, which may safely be claimed by his admirers to be without a parallel in political speculation.  This is, in truth, the great original feature of Mr. Bellamy's plan. The analogy of an industrial to a military army has been suggested by other writers ; many philosophers have risen to the conception of a comprehensive socialism in which the State should be all and in all ; but Mr. Bellamy alone has undertaken to show how seeking and striving for office can be entirely eliminated, and how an "administration," exercising a hundred times the power of an ordinary government can be secured so purely and so peacefully that demagoguery and corruption shall become words of an historical significance only. Such a discovery constitutes his chief claim to destruction as a social and political philosopher.

Mr. Bellamy's project is unique and grand in its simplicity. It consists solely in bestowing the choice of the officers of the industrial army upon those who have already been discharged from service, at 45.  The constituency thus composed, being themselves exempted from further service in the industrial army, can have no possible interest other than the selection of the altogether best man for each place of command ; and they will proceed to exercise their function of choice, in this momentous matter, disinterestedly, dispassionately, and with the highest intelligence. Among a body thus constituted intrigues and cabals can, of course, not originate, the tremendous powers of patronage they are to wield cannot possibly give rise to favouritism or partisanship.

Mr. Bellamy's notion of the composition of an electoral constituency has an interest and a value for us, as citizens deeply concerned in public affairs, even under the present benighted organisation of society We need not wait for the complete realisation of the scheme to put this feature of it into operation for the improvement of current politics. The choice of legislators and governors now causes a great deal of trouble, gives rise to office-seeking and offensive partisanship, provokes intrigues and cabals, generates demagoguery and corruption. Is it not clear that we need to seek some constituency within the common wealth whose members are free from interest in the government and can derive no personal benefit from the choice of officials? It is in this view that I venture to supplement Mr. Bellamy's suggestions. Is there anywhere in Massachusetts such a constituency, to which might be intrusted the selection of our governors and legislators?  Clearly there is. We have certain highly populous institutions in which are to be found no inconsiderable number of persons who are definitely relieved from further participation in public affairs. Sequestered for the remainder of their existence, by act of law, from activity and agency within the Commonwealth, why should not these persons, familiarly known as Convicts for Life, be intrusted with the choice of magistrates and rulers? They can have no selfish interest in the matter; and since Mr. Bellamy assures us that it is not necessary that human nature should be changed, but only a right organisation of existing forces seemed, why might not such a confidence properly be proposed in the discretion of these gentlemen—and ladies ?

Such is Mr. Bellamy's scheme as completed by the mechanism he proposes for the choice of officers for his new nation. I am sanguine enough to believe that the simplest statement will answer most of the purposes of a laborious refutation. I will only touch upon a few points.

In the first place, the constituency which Mr. Bellamy would create for the choice of "the administration," under his system, is about the worst which could possibly be devised. A more meddlesome mischief-making, and altogether pestilent body of electors was never called into being. It is a mistake to suppose that a man's selfish interest in a service ceases because he has himself retired from it. There was a time, after the war, when it was almost impossible for the Secretary of the Navy to administer his department, on account of the intermeddling of twenty or thirty retired admirals living in Washington. Men may still have friends and relatives and dependents to promote, leaders and champions to push, not to speak of enemies to punish, long after they have themselves gone upon the retired list.

Equally unreasonable is it to assume that the great mass of ordinary people would be free from selfish, sectional, and partisan impulses in such a system as Mr. Bellamy proposes. Instead of politics being abolished, it would be found that, with 5,000,000 of men over 45 years in the United States having nothing else to attend to, politics would become the great business of the nation. Parties and factions would be formed under sectional, moral,* or personal impulses, and would carry their contents to a pitch of fury impossible to constituencies, most of whose members have a great deal else to do and that of a very engrossing nature. " Magnetic" leaders would come to the front ; "issues" would arise, and all the combativeness and creature pugnacity of fallen humanity, refused longer occupation in war or in industry
would find full scope in the contests of politics. Doubtless the whole 5,000,000 of veteran male electors, being perfectly free to live where they pleased and to draw then rations where they lived, would at once move to Washington, to be as near the source of power as possible. Doubtless, also, the 5,000,000 female electors would follow them, to take a hand, to the best possible effect, in the choice of the "woman general in chief." Under such attractions, and with no practical business remaining in life, the whole voting population would speedily join the throng at the capital, where power and place were to be fought for With 10,000,000 of discharged industrial soldiers, having no other business but politics, Washington would become a city in comparison with which, in the fury of its partisanship and factional strife, Rome, under the later Empire, would not deserve to be mentioned.

Secondly, Mr. Bellamy's assumption that, were selfish pecuniary interests to be altogether removed as a motive to action, the sense of duty and the desire of applause would enter fully to take thou place, and would inspire all the members of the community to the due exertion of all their powers and faculties for the general good, is utterly gratuitous.

Nothing that we read in human history, nothing that we see among existing societies, justifies such a supposition. From the origin of mankind to the present time the main spur to exertion has been want, and while, with the growth of small-brained into large-brained races the desire of applause and consideration for the public weal have steadily grown in force as motives to human action, and while among the higher individuals of the higher races, a delight in labour has even, in a certain degree, come to replace the barbarous indisposition to all kinds of work, it is still in this age of the world, little short of downright madness to assume that disinterested motives can be altogether trusted to take the place of selfish motives in human society.   

Thirdly, like Mr. Georges great work, "Looking Backward" shows, through its whole structure, the perverting effect of a single false notion, having the power to twist out of shape and out of due relation every fact which comes, in any way, at any point, within the field of its influence. It is the notion that military discipline applied to production would work miracles, both in gain and in saving, which has led Mr Bellamy astray. In sooth, Mr. Bellamy did not turn to the military system of organisation because he was a Socialist. He became a Socialist because he had been moonstruck with a fancy for the military organisation and discipline itself. So that in a sense, militarism is, with him, an end rather than a means. A very funny end one must admit. 

It would be difficult to prove what has been thus asserted, were one left to his book alone, though the domination exerted over the author's mind by this "fixed idea" would suggest that it was the passion for militarism which had made the author a Socialist. But we are not left to that source of information In the May, 1889 number of " The Nationalist," Mr. Bellamy has told us "how he [I] came to write 'Looking Backward.' " He there says that he had, at the outset, " no idea of attempting a serious contribution to the movement of social reform." Indeed, he had never had any affiliations with any class or sect of industrial or social reformers, "nor any particular sympathy with undertaking of the sort." To make the picture he proposed to draw as unreal as possible, to secure plenty of elbow room for the fancy and prevent awkward collisions between the ideal structure and the hard facts of the real world, he fixed the date of his story in the year AD 3000. Starting thus without any distinct social intention ; with " no thought of constructing a house in which practical men might live, but merely of hanging in mid-air, far out of the reach of the sordid and material world of the present, a cloud palace for an ideal humanity." Mr. Bellamy began "Looking Backward."   

The opening scene, he tells us, was a grand parade of a departmental division of the industrial army, on the occasion of the annual muster day, when the young men coming of age that year were mustered into the national service, and those who that year had reached the age of exemption were mustered out.   "The solemn pageantry of the great festival of the year; the impressive ceremonial of the oath of duty, taken by the new recruits in the presence of the world standard ; the formal return of the thanks of humanity to the veterans who received their honourable dismissal from service ; the review and the march past of the entire body of the local industrial forces, each battalion with its appropriate insignia ; the triumphal arches, the garlanded streets, the banquets, the music, the open theatres and pleasure gardens, with all the features of a gala day sacred to the civic virtues and the enthusiasm of humanity, furnished materials for a picture exhilarating at least to the painter." No wonder he was fired with martial ardour at his own conception, and felt at once like running away to enlist. 

Observe: this is the real germ of Mr. Bellamy's social scheme. He goes on to tell us that, enraptured by the contemplation of the grand review, he began to dwell more and more on the feasibility of applying the modern military system of Europe to the industrial life of every country, by turns and finally of the world.

More and more as he dwelt on this theme the possibilities of the subject expanded before him ; the difficulties vanished ; the time for such a consummation drew near. †  Whereas he had at first only thought of utilising the military system as furnishing "an analogy to lend an effect of feasibility to the fancy sketch he [I] had in hand," he at last, after much working over details "perceived the full potency of the instrument he [I] misusing, and recognised in the modern military system, not merely a rhetorical analogy for a national industrial service, but its prototype, furnishing at once a complete working model for its organisation, an arsenal of patriotic and national motives and arguments for its animation and the unanswerable demonstration of its feasibility drawn from the actual experience  of whole nations organised and manoeuvred as armies."

Fired, as well he might be, by a discovery so momentous, Mr. Bellamy, like Archimedes, rushed from his bath into the streets shouting Eureka. The date 3000 was incontinently dropped, and that of 2000 substituted, the details of the new scheme were wrought out, even at the sacrifice, as Mr Bellamy confesses, with a tinge of regret not unbecoming a professional novelist, of some of the doubts and hopes and fears of the predestinated lovers ; and Looking Backward was put to press as the Koran of a new faith.

* For example Mr. Bellamy represents his favourite characters as using wine freely. Can anyone doubt that within the first few years the industrial army would be convulsed by contests between a prohibition and a license party ; and that when this question was settled if it ever should be, tea, coffee and tobacco would come in for the passionate attentions of the Miners and Faxons of that day? Mr. Bellamy's "open theatres" continue all the possibilities of a whole century of active politics.

† Instead of a mere fairy tale of social perfection, it ( Looking Backward) became the vehicle of a definite scheme of industrial reorganisation.

I http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article52338016 III http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article67948537
 The Brisbane Courier 1890,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3515222