It is generally known that Bismarck has been endeavoring to introduce new economic measures and institutions of a more or less socialistic nature in Germany. One of these projects has been described in an earlier chapter. It is not, however, an equally familiar fact that he may be regarded as a member of an economic school. Such is, nevertheless, the case. In the earlier part of his career as imperial chancellor Bismarck accepted the doctrines of English political economy in modified form, as taught by the National Liberals of the Reichstag. But he professes that he received their teachings only as a makeshift, until he should find time to study political economy and investigate economic problems for himself. This he did some eight years since. The first-fruits of his new researches were the tariff reform of 1879. Later fruits have been the tobacco monopoly and labor insurance bills. He repudiates the politicians with whom he formerly worked as “representatives of a party which in political economy advocates the right of the stronger and deserts the weak in the struggle against the might of capital, and which refers him to free competition, to private insurance, and I do not know what else—in short, refusing him all help of the state.” [236]
It is, then, a matter of more than ordinary interest to study the principles of the economic system, whose leading advocate at present is the favorite counsellor of the most powerful statesman of modern times. This is the system of the so-called professorial socialists, or socialists of the chair.
In the ordinary or vulgar signification of the term professorial socialists are not socialists at all; in the strict sense of the word they are. They recognize the existence of a social problem, and hold that the co-operation of government is necessary to its solution. They believe that man, associated with his fellows in the state, has duties to perform which, single and alone, he is unable to fulfil. They point to the fact that all civilized governments are, even at present, more or less socialistic. Sanitary legislation, governmental inspection of buildings, the legal limitation of a day’s labor, the prohibition of work on Sunday, the regulations respecting the labor of women and children, temperance laws, state control and management of railroads, the post-office, and other like arrangements, are socialistic in their nature.[199] These matters are not left to individual initiative and private competition. The state—in a certain sense, even now, the highest and most majestic of co-operative associations—steps in and attempts to do for the citizens what it is supposed they could not do for themselves without the help of such a union as government represents. It is sought to give, as it were, a divine sanction[237] to this kind of socialism, by calling to mind the strong socialistic tinge of the Mosaic legislation. Of such character were the laws compelling the return of land in the year of jubilee, of which one had been forced to dispose by reason of poverty, the setting free of slaves at the same time, the forgiveness of debt, and the prohibition of interest in passages like the following: “And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him.... Take thou no usury (=interest) of him or increase; but fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee.”[200]
The party of professorial socialists was formed ten years ago in Germany. They received their name from an opponent, a clever newspaper writer. He also called them “sweet-water” socialists, but the first name is their ordinary designation, and they do not, as a rule, object to it. Some of them have sought to give the word socialist an honorable and respected meaning by avowing themselves unreservedly socialists on all occasions. Others think that the prejudice against the name is so strong that they only injure themselves thereby. They are, in the narrowest sense, all university professors of political economy, though there is no reason why the name should not be extended so as to include others who hold similar views.
The scientific leader of the party is its most radical member, Adolf Wagner, the Berlin professor. Other prominent members are Gustav Schmoller, recently professor in Strassburg, now, likewise, professor in Berlin, and Brentano, professor in Breslau, lately transferred, I am told, to Strassburg. Adolf Held, the late young and talented professor in Bonn, and later in[238] Berlin, did not hesitate to speak of himself as a professorial socialist. Although John Stuart Mill died before this school of political economists became known, his views and tendencies as regards social questions were so much in accord with theirs that he can properly enough be ranked among them. It must be remembered that Mill placed no limit to state activity save the general good, and declared that all the difficulties of even communism would be but as dust in the balance if he were called upon to choose between that system and a continuance of our present economic life without improvement.
Perhaps, to-day, no professorial socialist could give a better statement of his own aims and desires than Mill’s description of the views and expectation of himself and his wife some thirty years ago. “While we repudiated,” says Mill, “with the greatest energy, that tyranny of society over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat will be applied, not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labor, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership[239] in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor.” This is, I must remark in passing, an extreme position. The professorial socialists are not accustomed to express themselves in favor of carrying socialism so far, and I believe Mill does it nowhere else. “We had not the presumption,” continues Mill, “to suppose that we could already foresee by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the laboring masses and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labor and combine for generous, or, at all events, for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments will make a common man dig or weave for his country as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to th............