E-text prepared by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes images of the pages of the original book. See 23574-h.htm or 23574-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/5/7/23574/23574-h/23574-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/3/5/7/23574/23574-h.zip) SOCIALISM: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE by ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE "I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir." --_Isaiah xiii, 12._ Chicago Charles H. Kerr & Company 1907 Copyright 1907 by Charles H. Kerr & Company [Illustration: logo] Press of John F. Higgins Chicago TO M. E. M. AND L. H. M. PREFACE Of the papers in this little volume two have appeared in print before: "Science and Socialism" in the International Socialist Review for September, 1900, and "Marxism and Ethics" in Wilshire's Magazine for November, 1905. My thanks are due to the publishers of those periodicals for their kind permission to re-print those articles here. The other papers appear here for the first time. There is an obvious inconsistency between the treatment of Materialism in "Science and Socialism" and its treatment in "The Nihilism of Socialism." I would point out that seven years elapsed between the composition of the former and that of the latter essay. Whether the inconsistency be a sign of mental growth or deterioration my readers must judge for themselves. I will merely say here that the man or woman, whose views remain absolutely fixed and stereotyped for seven years, is cheating the undertaker. What I conceive the true significance of this particular change in opinions to be is set forth in the essay on "The Biogenetic Law." Some Socialists will deprecate what may seem to them the unwise frankness of the paper on "The Nihilism of Socialism." To them I can only say that to me Socialism has always been essentially a revolutionary movement. Revolutionists, who attempt to maintain a distinction between their exoteric and their esoteric teachings, only succeed in making themselves ridiculous. But, even were the maintenance of such a distinction practicable, it would, in my judgment, be highly inexpedient. As a mere matter of policy, ever since I first entered the Socialist Movement, I have been a firm believer in the tactics admirably summed up in Danton's "_De l'audace! Puis de l'audace! Et toujours de l'audace!_" Should any reader find himself repelled by "The Nihilism of Socialism," let me beg that he will not put the book aside until he has read the essay on "The Biogenetic Law."