SEMI-SOCIALISTS.

 " There is, generally speaking, amongst democrats a leaning towards a kind of limited State Socialism, and it is through that that they hope to bring about a peaceful revolution, which, if it does not introduce a condition of equality, will at least make the workers better off and contented with their lot.

" They hope to get a body of representatives elected to Parliament, and by them to get measure after measure passed which will tend to this goal ; nor would some of them, perhaps most of them, be discontented, by this means we could glide into complete State Socialism.

 " I think that the present democrats are widely tinged with this idea, and to me it is a matter of hope that it is so ; whatever of error there is in it, because it means advance beyond the complete barrenness of the mere political programme. Yet I must point out to these semi-Socialist democrats that in the first place they will be made the catspaw of some of the wilier of the Whigs. There are several of these measures which look to some socialistic, as, for instance, the allotment scheme, and other schemes tending towards peasant proprietorship, co-operation, and the like, but which, after all, in spite of their benevolent appearance, are really weapons in the hands of reactionaries, having for their real object the creation of a new middle class made out of the working class and at their expense ; the raising, in short, of a new army against the attack of the disinherited.

" There is no end to this kind of dodge, nor will be, apparently, till there is an end of the class which tries it on, and a great many of the democrats will be amused and absorbed by it from time to time. They call this sort of nonsense "practical," but it seems like doing something, while the steady propaganda of a principle which must prevail in the end is, according to them, doing nothing, and is unpractical. For the rest, it is not likely to become dangerous, further than as it clogs the wheels of the real movement somewhat, because it is sometimes a mere piece of reaction, as when, for instance, it takes the form of peasant proprietorship, flying right in the face of commercial development of the day, which tends ever more and more towards the aggregation of capital, thereby smoothing the way for the organised possession of the means of production by the workers when the true revolution shall come ; while, on the other hand, when this attempt to manufacture a new middle class takes the form of co-operation and the like, it is not dangerous because it means nothing more than a slightly altered form of joint stocking, and everybody almost is beginning to see this. . . The enormous commercial success of the great co-operative societies, and the absolute no-effect of that success on the social condition of the workers, are sufficient tokens of what this non-political co-operation must come to ' Nothing — it shall not be less.' 

" But again, it may be said, some of the democrats go further than this ; they take up actual pieces of Socialism and are more than inclined to support them.

 " Nationalisation of the land or railways, or cumulative taxation on income, or limiting the right of inheritance, or new factory laws, or the restriction by law of the day's labor— one of these, or more than one sometimes, the democrats will support, and see absolute salvation in these one or two planks of the platform. All this, I admit, and once again I say, there is a snare in it— a snake lies lurking in the grass.

" Those who think they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organisation under which we live, and which appoints each of us to his place, and if we do not chance to fit it, grinds us down till we do.

 " Nothing but a tremendous force can deal with this force ; it will no suffer itself to be dismembered, nor to lose anything which is really its essence without putting forth all its force in resistance ; rather than lose anything which it considers of importance, it will pull the roof of the world down.

 " For, indeed, I grant these semi-Socialist democrats that there is one hope for their tampering piecemeal with our society, if by chance they can excite people into seriously, however blindly, claiming one or other of these things in question, and could be successful in Parliament in driving it through, they would certainly draw on a great civil war, and such a war once let loose would not end but either with the full triumph of Socialism or its extinction for the present, it would be impossible to limit the aim of the struggle ; nor can we even guess at the course which it would take, except that it would not be a matter of compromise. But suppose the Democratic party were peaceably successful on this new basis of semi-State Socialism, what would it mean ?

 Attempts to balance the two classes whose interests are opposed to each other, a mere ignoring of the antagonisms which has led us through so many centuries to where we are now, and then, after a period of disappointment and disaster, the naked conflict once more ; a revolution made, and another immediately necessary on the morrow — William Morris, "Signs of Change." 

People (Sydney, NSW ),11 November 1905, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138914451