THE SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIR.
275
found scholars whose authority is even less contested, such as
Roscher, Nasse, Conrad, and Von Sybel. It is none the less
true that the members of the new school pass by insensible
shades—descensus Averni—from the borders of orthodoxy
to the confines of Radical Socialism.
The Socialism of the Chair may be said to have taken
bodily form, and to have been established as a special doctrine
in the annual reunions of the Association for “ Social Politics ”
{Sozial Politik), the first of which took place on the 6th of
October, 1872. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that
similar ideas had been previously expressed in Germany,
France, and England. We may mention in particular God
win’s “Political Justice,” 1793; Sismondi’s Nouveaux prin
cipes dkconotnie politique, 1827 ; and his Études sur Véconomie
politique, 1836; A. '^mxqí's La Misère des classes laborieuses en
France et en Angleterre ; Lorenz Stein’s Der Socialismus des
heutigen Frankreichs, 1842 ;* also the “ History of the Petty
Crafts in Germany during the Nineteenth Century,” f by
G. Schmoller, Professor at the University of Halle, then of
Strasburg, and now of Berlin, in which book he has well
brought out the relative character of economic phenomena;
and another work by the same author, in which, while examin
ing a tax on income, he has admirably indicated the influence
of morals on Political Economy. Again, G. Schönberg, Pro
fessor at the University of Tübingen, in his much-discussed
works on the industrial régime in our epoch and in the
Middle Ages,J admitted the necessity of protective interven-
• I may also mention an article that I published in 1848, in a Belgian
review, the Flandre Libérale, in which I came to the conclusions now
held by the Extreme Left of the Socialists of the Chair. It is a critical
examination of the letters then recently published by Michael Chevalier
on the organization of labour. M. Chevalier, in order to bring about the
solution of the social (¡uestion, recommends thrift, property, and association.
I replied, “ Thrift is an excellent thing, but to render it possible for the
labourer, there must be a more equitable distribution of produce ; property
is a still better thing, but it must be made universal ; association is perfect,
but it ought to be based on the recr^nition of the natural right of appro
priation common to all.” I was inspired by the “ Natural Right ’ of
Ahrens, by Fichte’s book on the French Revolution, and, above all, by the
ideas of our eminent professor at the University of Ghent, François Huet.
t Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kleingewerbe im xixten Jahrhunderte.
$ Arbeitsämter and Deutsche Zunftwesen im Mittelalter, 1868.
