Socialism and Democracy in EuropeOrth, Samuel Peter
History
Socialism and Democracy in Europe
Orth, Samuel Peter
Democracy; Socialism
These two great bodies of workers, skilled and unskilled, have been
gradually brought together and their interests united. The Taff Vale
and Osborne judgments have forced them into politics. The unskilled
have been given the benefit of the experience of the skilled, and a
fair degree of homogeneity and group ambition has been reached.
To enter politics a new form of organization was necessary. We will
see how one was prepared for them.
IV
We will now turn to the Socialist organizations. They are more
numerous than in the other countries we have studied, and more varied
in color. But not any of them are as strong as the French or German
organizations.
In 1880 William Morris and H.M. Hyndman, a personal friend of Marx,
organized the "Democratic Federation." For a few years it was the only
Socialist organization. It split on the question of revolution. Morris
and his friends, many of them inclined toward Anarchy, founded the
"Socialist League." This league has long since vanished. Hyndman and
his followers renamed their society the "Social Democratic
Federation." It still persists, under the name Social Democratic Party
(popularly "S.D.P."), and remains the only organized trace of
militant, reactionary Marxianism in England. For a long time it
refrained from politics, advocated violence, and was the faithful
imitator of the Guesdist party in France. These are doctrines and
methods that repel the English mind, and the Federation never has been
strong. It has a weekly paper, _Justice_, and a monthly paper, _The
Social Democrat_; claims one member in Parliament, elected however by
the Labor Party, and (in 1907) 124 members of various local governing
bodies. Its aged leader, Hyndman, clings tenaciously to the dogmas of
Marx, and all the changes that have come over the Socialist movement
during the last decades have not altered his views or methods.[11] The
Federation's affiliations and sympathy have been with the
International rather than the British movement, and until a few years
ago it monopolized British representation on the International
Executive Committee.
Soon after Morris left the Federation a new and novel Socialist
society was formed in London. Two Americans gave the impulse that
started the movement--Henry George, through his works on Single Tax,
and Thomas Davidson of New York, a gentle dreamer of the New
To-morrow. Henry George's books had been read by a group of young men
in London, and when Dr. Davidson went there to lecture he found these
young men ready to listen to his utopian generalizations. Soon these
men organized the Fabian Society. They were not sure of their ground,
and took for their motto: "For the right moment you must wait as
Fabius did when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his
delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did,
or your waiting will be in vain and fruitless."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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