CHAPTER XIII.

THE FUTURE.

IN considering the future in any branch of human knowledge, it is absolutely necessary to base all attempts at prognostication upon the most careful records of past events. This is true of every field of inquiry, and specially true, though not always so clearly admitted, in regard to the most complicated field of all, that of human society. The study of social and economical problems is now seen to be as hopeless when divorced from sound historical methods as anatomy or surgery which took no account of lower forms of life on the work of previous generations. Not many centuries have elapsed since any man who said he could predict the return of a comet or calculate the recurrence of an eclipse would have been set down as a magician or a maniac. The elaborate diagnosis which will to-day enable a first-rate pathologist to state precisely the course of physical, and through physical of mental disease in a manner surprising even to the educated, is due to as carefully recorded observations as those which have guided the astronomer to his irrefragable conclusion. Rigid accuracy, so far as possible, in the tabulation of facts, guided all the while by scientific imagination, has taken the place of the slip-shod guess-work of old time led astray by theological crazes. The same with the study of the movements and relations of mankind in civilised society to-day. Just in so far

as we can trace the evolution through the long ages of social development, precisely to that extent may we fairly hope to forecast correctly the next stages of our growth.*

And this is precisely the object of all historical research. The mere facts that men did thus and so in periods long gone by have no practical or scientific bearing upon us, the men of to-day, save that they may lead to a wiser understanding of our present society, and point out the road to an earlier improvement in the conditions of existence for the race. Mankind are modified by their surroundings from generation to generation; but just as the individual man can to some extent, at least, modify his own character and change his own surroundings, so within far wider limits can a complete human society mould the character and modify the surroundings of the next and coming generations. It is with a view to learn how, taking the fullest

That this scientific method should now be generally adapted by Socialists we owe above all other men to Karl Marx, who himself, however, was too great a man to claim that absolute originality which some of his followers are foolish enough to assert on his behalf. Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology, and it is not a little remarkable that though in the "Misere de la Philosophie" in 1847, and in earlier writings, as well as in the famous Communist Manifesto which he wrote in conjunction with Engels, he puts forward his theories, the groundwork of his greatest work, "Zur Kritik der politischen Ekonomie," appeared in the same year as the "Origin of Species."

+ The truly remarkable experiment which the Jesuits made in the development of social life among the inhabitants of Paraguay seems to me never to have received sufficient attention. Robert Owen's experiment at New Lanark in unfavourable circumstances has been already referred to. What may be done by man in the way of developing hereditary qualities in the higher animals is, of course, a matter of common knowledge. In India we can see clearly that skill in handicraft becomes distinctly hereditary. What the animal man in association may develop into, it is, of course, absurd to imagine, but the power of development as a society is, so far as I can see, illimitable.

account of our fundamentally animal nature, such modifications may most safely be made that we should study the history of Rome, Greece, Egypt, India, China, and modern Europe. But, in all such work, to be of any use, the study of the present must go hand in hand with examination of the past. The man who cannot see and understand the complications of the society in which he himself lives has but a poor chance of comprehending social relations based upon totally different forms of production, exchange, and class interests in the remote past. The difficulty in Europe is that the various nations though passing slowly through the same or very similar stages in the same material evolution, are seen at different points in the growth in the same way that our highly complex capitalist civilisation is contemporaneous with the nomad of Australia or North America, with the stone age and cannibalism in Polynesia, with village communities in Russia, or with feudalism in Japan. As a consequence of this unequal growth, each country must to a great extent work out its own social problems, though there is no hope of a complete solution until the proletariat of Europe and America at any rate unite on the basis of the common interests of labour.

My attempt has been to give a sketch of the development as regards Great Britain alone, though the circle of our commercial interests being now world-wide, the whole globe necessarily enters into the sphere of our economical relations.

In this chapter I shall touch briefly upon external questions, such as the treatment of Ireland and India, the operation of capitalism in America and our Colonies, and the steady growth of Socialism in all civilised countries; but England is still the centre of modern industrial relations, even states apparently most independent being

to a large extent providers of food and raw materials for our all-devouring industrialism. With England, therefore, and the reconstruction of English society we have in the future as in the past chiefly to deal. What, then, to resume briefly, has been the course our evolution has followed? What generally is it likely to be? Strictly speaking, of course, it is impossible to take the history of human development at any point, and say "we will begin here." The thousands, the millions of years of the growth of mankind can no more be divided at any special epoch than could the growth of an ancient tree. Change, development, evolution, revolution, decay are going on all the time: there is no statical condition in human society, though movement may be more or less rapid. But the end of the feudal period in England affords a convenient starting-point for such a survey as I have undertaken, and the scientific record of progress can be satisfactorily traced from that point. *"In the society of the middle ages we saw then a petty form of isolated production; in which the means of production were adapted to the use of the individual, and on that account were necessarily themselves small, mean, and of limited power. But these means of production, poor and inefficient as they seem to us, were generally owned by the producers themselves, who were consequently independent and practically free, personally and economically. They produced for immediate use for the use of the producers themselves, or of the feudal lord to whom they had personal relations. Their products were only offered for sale and entered into exchange when there was an overplus beyond what was needed for actual consumption. This is the first step passage which follows is freely translated from Friedrich Engels'

* The latest work.

towards the production of articles not for use, but as commodities, articles produced with a view to their exchange, at first in small quantities, but already bearing with them in their earliest infancy the germ of social anarchy in production. Production for profit, in fact, gradually slips into a society based upon production for immediate use."

"Upon this follows the capitalist revolution. We traced the entire transformation of the industrial system first through manufacture and simple co-operation, which in themselves necessitate association. Then came the concentration of the means of production which were hitherto scattered. Great workshops at this time are formed; that is to say, the means of production become social, instead of being at the disposal of the individual— this transformation scarcely affects the exchange, and consequently the old methods of appropriation are continued. There is already a socialised method of production, and to give it full development the capitalist appears. He is the owner of the means of production, and he it is who takes possession of the products and turns them into goods for exchange, or merchandise. Production has become a social business, but exchange, and with it appropriation, remain individual actions; the social product is seized by the individual capitalist. Here, then, is the fundamental antagonism—the origin of all the antagonisms which our existence is moved by. As a result the producer is separated from his means of production, and the labourer is condemned to wage-slavery his life long: the antagonism referred to at the end of the last chapter between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie shows itself. Secondly, there follows the development of the laws which govern the produc