D. The 'Esthetic Revolt Against Material ism and Misery.— While the Industrial Revolu tion has produced nearly all the material com forts of modern life and created many new forms of art and beauty as well, there can he no doubt that in its first stages, at least, the new industrialism with its dismal factories, clouds of smoke and filthy tenements was ex tremely ugly and repulsive to the esthetic tem perament and to humanitarian impulses. There fore, the new order of things and its supporters among the economic liberals received a vigorous attack from those who were the representatives of the literary and artistic standards of the age. This so-called esthetic revolt against the origins of the modern industrial order was of a rather varied sort, ranging all the way from the purely cultural protest of men like Matthew Arnold to the conversion of leading literary figures like George Sand and William Morris to open socialistic programs. While most of the lead ing figures in art and literature during the second third of the 19th century were repulsed by the new industrial developments, a few can be singled out as the leaders in the esthetic protest. Among these were Robert Southey (1774-1843), Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) ; Charles Dickens (1812-70), Charles Reade (1814-84), John Rus kin (1819-1900), Matthew Arnold (1822-88), William Morris (1834-96), Ralph Waldo Emer son (1803-82), George Sand (Madame Dude vant) (1804-76) and Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). Of this group the most important were Carlyle, Ruskin, George Sand and Tolstoy. Carlyle is significant chiefly as a critic of materialism and the economic abstractions of the classical school. He had no constructive program of reform further than a willingness to wait for some unique genius to appear with a ready made solution. Ruskin was as bitter as Carlyle in his criticism of the new industrial society and its ideals, but he offered some solution of the problems through his advocacy of a restora tion of the dignity of labor, the institution of a regime of industrial co-operation, state-educa tion, government workshops and state insurance for the working classes. A part of his program bordered on the gild-socialism of a slightly later period, hut he set education above all other types of relief for the situation. George Sand, of a slightly earlier period, imbibed freely the utopian and revolutionary socialism of the "forties') in France, and by her writ ings did much to popularize these notions, in particular the doctrines of Pierre Leroux. Tolstoy's reform program was espe cially retrogressive and irrational. He advo cated a complete abandonment of the new in dustrialism, a return to an agrarian age and the organization of the agrarian economy ac cording to the principles of the Russian Mir, with its communistic practices considerably ex panded. While one can appreciate the real and valid motives for this revolt of the esthetic temperament against the repulsive features of modern industrial society, this group offered little in the way of workable constructive re forms. Few, except those who went over to socialism, had any real reform program. Only an insane person could accept the proposal of some of them that society should revert to a pre-Industrial Revolution economy where kings lived with less comforts than the average work ingman of to-day. Further, even those who, like Ruskin, had some program to offer were scarcely in line with modern industrial de mocracy, but desired the establishment of some sort of authoritative and benevolent paternalism. In spite of all this, the esthetic protest was a real contribution to the reform cause, for it effectively insisted that an increase in material gain was no complete justification of a new order of civilization and maintained that modern industrialism must make a place for the realm of the ideal and the esthetic. The more recent circle of literary critics, of the social order, like Emile Zola, Anatole France, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Maeterlinck and Upton Sinclair differ from most of their predecessors in that, instead of favoring a re turn to a more primitive economy and social order, they are among the most ardent ex ponents of radical social reform. Only a few, enamored with the best of older civilizations and seeing only the darkest phases of the pres ent order, have looked back with longing eyes to a by-gone age. In this class may be put Profs. J. P. Mahaffy and Warde Fowler, Ralph Adams Cram and J. A. Symonds.
E. Utopian Socialism and the Reconstruction of the Social and Economic Environment.— It has already been shown that those extremely radical schemes of social reform, which are con ventionally known as "utopian," appear in the greatest numbers after some great transition which brings with it an abnormal degree of misery. The Industrial Revolution, the great est of all such transitions and probably the most productive of accompanying misery, natu rally brought forth an unprecedented number of utopian plans for the solution of existing social problems, but all of these programs were more realistic and practical than the somewhat fanciful utopias of the 17th century. In the most fundamental sense utopian socialism of the first half of the 19th century was a revolt against the semi-fatalism of the premises of economic liberalism, which had represented so ciety as the product of natural laws and forces, had accused the proletariat of being the authors of their own miseries and sorrows and had sharply denied the possibility of improving con ditions artificially through constructive legisla tion. Utopian socialism denied this premise of Romanticism, individualism and economic lib eralism and revived the notions of the French Revolution to the effect that human intelligence and ingenuity were fully equal to the task of forging a new social and economic order. They held that human nature is primarily the prod uct of the social environment and that, accord ingly, the solution of the contemporary evils was to be found in the creation of a better set of social institutions and practices. They maintained that man can by rational thought determine his own social system and social re lations, and some, like Fourier, even claimed that man may by well-conceived legislation an ticipate the normal course of social evolution.
The initiator of the utopian schemes of this period is conventionally assumed to be Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), though he can be quite as much regarded as the formu lptor of the chief theses of Comtian sociology and a forerunner of Christian Socialism, and though there is no doubt that the other utopias would have appeared out of the surrounding conditions had Saint-Simon never written. Probably Saint-Simon's most important con tribution to social science and ultimately to social reform was his contention that the social problems created by the Industrial Revolution were of so serious a sort that a distinct science of society, or of social reconstruction, must be evolved to deal with them. This goal was at last realized with the foundation of scientific sociology in the works of Auguste Comte, Her bert Spencer and the early Organicists. Saint Simon 's practical program of reform rested upon the reconstruction of society according to two somewhat divergent proposals, namely, the restoration of the practices and principles of primitive Christianity and the handing over of society to the control of a group of industrial experts who would reorganize things in a rational and humanitarian manner. His em
phasis on the ability of a purified Christianity to solve current political questions constituted an impulse to the later development of Christian Socialism, while his proposal for a scientific direction of modern industrial society was elaborated by his disciple, Auguste Comte, in the latter's 'Principles of a Positive Policy.' The disciples of Saint-Simon developed his diverse notions. Enfantin and Bazard em phasized the communistic principles which were to be found in that primitive Christianity which Saint-Simon had so much admired. Leroux defended the notion of the social and moral equality of men and stressed the concept of the essential and desirable solidarity of society' and of the interests of all social classes. Comte attempted to systematize the new social science of which Saint-Simon had seen the need. The greatest of the French utopians was Francois Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1835). He was one of the most thorough believers in the possibility of reforming mankind through the creation of an ideal social environment. This he believed would he found in an "apartment house utopia" — a co-operative community or phalanstery of some 1,800 individuals. He hoped ultimately to see human society reconstituted as a world federation ofphalansteries, the capital of which was, significantly, to be lo cated at Constantinople. Fourier, wisely, did not plan a society which would wholly abolish all private property or attempt to equalize all classes and individuals, but worked out what he believed to he a proper fractional distribu tion of the social income between labor, capital and enterprise. While he did not profoundly affect France, no other member of the utopian group attracted so large and sympathetic a following in America and many phalansteries were established in the United States, the most famous of which was Brook Farm, founded and conducted by some of the most noted members of the "Brahman caste') of New England literary lights. The remaining French utopian reformer was Etienne Cabet (1788-1856), whose follow ers established an experimental community first in Texas and later in Nauvoo, Ill. The lead ing English utopian was Robert Owen (1771 1858), who came into the field of utopian theorizing fresh from a practical demonstration of the possibility of establishing an ideal in dustrial community. At the cotton mills in New Lanark he had organized an advanced industrial community, which, at the opening of the 19th century, possessed most of the features which characterize the more progressive indus trial organizations of the present day and which was unique at that time. While Owen gave his support to almost every type of constructive philanthropy which was current in his day, he is known especially for his agitation in the cause of factory legislation and trade-unionism, his vigorous advocacy of industrial co-opera tion and his concrete plan for ideal industrial communities. The latter did not differ markedly from that of Fourier, though each group was to be slightly smaller. Though his plan was adopted in several places in the United States, most notably at New Harmony, Ind., it re sulted in little practical success, and the en during mark which Owen left on social reform consists chiefly in his support of every means of aiding the solution of existing evils and his emphasis upon the peculiar virtues in co-op eration. But significant as were the premises and the achievements of utopian socialism in emphasizing the ability of society consciously and artificially to solve its own problems, this type of socialism could scarcely lead directly into Marxian socialism. It was too imprac tical and, from the standpoint of the Marxian, it was not sufficiently democratic. The Utopians* did not set forth plans designed to aid the proletariat alone, but aimed at a reconstruction of all of society. In a very real sense they were as much the forerunners of modern French- "solidarism" as of Marxian socialism. Between utopian and Marxian socialism there intervened the stage of "transitional socialism") by which socialism was made a revolutionary and a proletarian movement. More recent echoes of the utopian movement have been William Mor ris"News from Nowhere' and Edward Bellamy's 'Looking Backward.) F. Transitional or Revolutionary Socialism. —The most important figures in the so-called transitional socialism were the Irishman, Wil liam Thompson (1785-1833) ; the Frenchmen, Louis Blanc (1813-82) and Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), and the Germans, Wil helm Weitling (1808-70), and Ferdinand La salle (1825-64), though Proudhon played a more prominent part in founding modern anarchy and Lasalle is equally distinguished as an advocate of state socialism. As far as his practical reform program is concerned, Thompson was a disciple of Robert Owen, but his 'Inquiry into the Principles of the Dis tribution of Wealth most Conducive to Human Happiness' (1824) contained a very clear state ment of the famous Marxian postulate of the doctrine of "surplus value." He maintained that labor produces all value and should get the whole product, but under capitalistic so ciety it is exploited out of a great part of its just income. Louis Blanc was one of the first to insist that the only effective help which the proletariat could expect must come from their own efforts. He believed that the laboring classes would have to triumph through revolu tion, and his post-revolutionary program con sisted in "social workshops," which practically meant state support and control of industry according to a democratic plan of organization. In the French Revolution of 1848 his plan was tried, but, as it was operated by his enemies who solely desired to discredit it, the scheme proved a hopeless failure. Proudhon made an especially bitter attack upon the institution of private property, or rather upon the abuses of private property which then existed. But he was equally critical of the doctrine of com munism. He proposed to base the income of solely upon the amount of labor per formed, the unit value of which was to be equal and uniform among all members of so ciety. He attempted to secure the establish ment of a national banking system founded upon this labor script following the Revolu tion of 1848, but he failed utterly in this. Standing at the opposite pole from Say and Bastiat he is chiefly significant for his effective onslaught upon the abuses of the bourgeois regime. Weitling, a Magdeburg tailor who later came to the United States, anticipated Marx by a comprehensive and trenchant re view of the evils which modern industrialism had brought to the workingmen and by an eloquent appeal to the proletariat, urging them to rise in their own behalf and overthrow their capitalistic oppressors. Lasalle stressed the fact that the laborers could only escape from bond age through political activity and assumed a leading part in urging and guiding the forma tion of a labor party in Germany. His con crete plan for reform was state workshops much like those proposed by Louis Blanc, but this phase of his doctrines and activity had little subsequent influence. Transitional social ism, thus, in many obvious ways prepared Eu rope for Marxian socialism.