A moderate kind of active socialism is represented by each separate case of public ownership or industry. Even public regulation by authority, of the many kinds de scribed in this volume, is touched with a quality of active socialism. In this sense there can be more or less of active socialism in a community; a state may be more or less social ized in its economic aspects. An English Chancellor of the Exchequer declared in the last decade of the nineteenth cen tury, "We are all socialists now." The ever-increasing sphere of the state 2 gives to that statement to-day a larger, fuller meaning than when it was uttered.
Socialism in action is of course always the expression of a more or less socialistic philosophy held either by a democratic majority of the people or by a despotic minor ity, as in Russia under the Czars and the Bolsheviki. Most of the great recent movement of socialism in indus try is the expression not of a radical but of a moderate social philosophy. It does not look to the abolition, but only to the modification and limitation in some directions, of pri vate property and of competitive industry. The spirit of this movement is opportunist, or experimental. It is ready to try public action, but recognizes that it has difficulties and limita tions. The ultra-radical and the ultra-conservative alike de clare that these measures "logically" lead on to the com plete destruction of private property. But men find that they can warm their hands without being "logically" compelled to thrust them into the fire, and that they can quench their thirst without a growing resolution to drink the well dry. When 2 See e.g., ch. 9, §§ 2, 10; ch. 11, II§ 7, 8; ch. 7, If 3, 4. 12; chs. 19, 22, 23, 24, 29, and 31.
this governmental activity has proceeded somewhat exten sively and systematically in cities, as in Great Britain, it is called municipal socialism ; and in states, as in Germany be fore the World War, it is called state socialism.
its printed program, the socialist party sets forth both a social ist philosophy and an ideal of active socialism in their most radical forms.
Modern political socialism traces its origin directly to the most radical of German social philosophers, Marx, Engels, and Lassalle. Karl Marx (1818-1883), preeminently the philo sophic leader of the movement, collaborating with his friend Friedrich Engles (1820-1895), sought to give a solider founda tion of reason to the somewhat romantic socialist philosophy current his day. His own doctrine, first set forth con nectedly 3 in the Communist Manifesto in 1847, and later developed in his chief book "Das Capital," he called Com munism. He deemed this to be, as it has been called by his followers, "scientific socialism." "Scientific" was meant to emphasize the contrast with "Utopian" socialism, as Marx and Engels somewhat scornfully characterized alike the older communist philosophy, the romances of the ideal state, and the attempts to found and conduct small communistic societies.
to show that all profits and incomes from investment were due virtually to robbery of the wage-workers' "Capital," that is, the ownership of the means of production, was declared to be the instrument of this "exploitation." The other pillar was "the materialistic philosophy of his tory," that is, the explanation of all the intellectual, cultural, and political changes of mankind from the side of the material economic conditions as causes. As Engels expressed it, "The pervading thought . . . that the economic production with the social organization of each historical epoch necessarily resulting therefrom forms the basis of the political and intel lectual history of this epoch." This doctrine denies that, in an equally valid sense, biological changes in brain, and cultural changes in science, arts, and education, cause the mechanical inventions and improved processes and thus alter the form of economic production.