SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND.
323
great.” We beg leave to differ from Mr. Bax’s estimate of the
relative efficiency of the Collectivist factory as compared with
the individualist owner of a needle and thread, but it is more
important to observe that, in the absence of prohibitory laws,
the old “ profit-mongering, competitive, individualistic system ”
will be sure to creep in again. In process of time, even if a
counter-revolution does not hasten matters, energetic individuals,
in spite of the levelling system of remuneration, will amass capital
by working overtime. They will then compete with the State
in production, and, unless we read history all awrong, they will
in the end prevail.
Thus it appears that the Collectivist experiment can only
be tried after the sacrifice of national honour j the experiment
itself, if workable at all, would deprive life of most of what
makes life endurable, and sooner or later it would inevitably
f^-il and leave us centuries behind even our present stage of
development
Moreover, the Social Democrats of England are never tired
of asserting—what, indeed, is sufficiently obvious—that a forcible
revolution will be necessary before they can try their Collectivist
scheme. It cannot, they say, like the systems of Owen and
Fourier, be tried experimentally on a small scale. T hey there
fore lay themselves open to the strictures passed by J. S. Mil
on the Revolutionary Socialists of the Continent in respect of
similar schemes proposed by them. It must be acknow
ledged,” he says, “ that those who would play this game on the
strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by
^ny experimental verification—who would forcibly deprive all
^ho have now a comfortable physical existence of their only
present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightfu
bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was
msisted—must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom
on the one hand, and a recklessness of other people s sufferings
on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the
typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up
to.” *
Unless a great change comes over the workers of England,
* “ Chapters on Socialism,” lortnightly Review (April, 1879).
