SIR – In the last number of the Bath Magazine, I see an article from you, advocating the late system of Poor Laws. Being one of those who think that the “Poor Laws are bad in principle, and that they have in their effects operated most injuriously,” I am desirous of making a few observations on your letter. – You say that the poor have a right to a maintenance out of the land. Who gave them that right? and where does nature declare, that “the earth was made productive for the support of all its inhabitants,” without those inhabitants using the proper means for obtaining the produce? But, waiving the question of right, there is that natural tendency in human nature to lean upon any support that may be afforded, and that tendency in such support to corrupt and unhinge the mind, that even on this account alone, the Poor Laws ought to be considered as injurious. Your supposition that one person might “amass in his own possession all the means of subsistence that the earth has produced in that part of the country where he dwells,” to the starvation of the rest, is an impossibility, since every person who has accumulated much property, must employ and pay labourers and shop-keepers, who therefore cannot starve. The whole tenor of your argument implies, also, that a person is not to be allowed to raise himself by his own exertions.

Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression and by aggression. In small undeveloped societies where for ages complete peace has continued, there exists nothing like what we call Government: no coercive agency, but mere honorary headship, if any headship at all. In these exceptional communities, unaggressive and from special causes unaggressed upon, there is so little deviation from the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond an occasional expression of public opinion by informally-assembled elders is needful. Conversely, we find proofs that, at first recognized but temporarily during leadership in war, the authority of a chief is permanently established by continuity of war; and grows strong where successful aggression ends in subjection of neighbouring tribes. And thence onwards, examples furnished by all races put beyond doubt the truth, that the coercive power of the chief, developing into king, and king of kings (a frequent title in the ancient East), becomes great in proportion as conquest becomes habitual and the union of subdued nations extensive. Comparisons disclose a further truth which should be ever present to us – the truth that the aggressiveness of the ruling power inside a society increases with its aggressiveness outside the society. As, to make an efficient army, the soldiers in their several grades must be subordinate to the commander; so, to make an efficient fighting community, must the citizens be subordinate to the ruling power.

The Proper Sphere of Government was Spencer's first attempt to determine what relationships there should be between government and the individual, while The Man versus The State was the more famous sequel. In the intervening years his publications ranged far beyond the boundaries of political theory. The Manchester Guardian judged Spencer on his death England's one contemporary philosopher of world-wide reputation and ranked him ‘among the two or three most influential writers of the last half-century’. Arnold Bennett conjures up a magnificent picture of what Spencer's unorthodox thoughts could unleash when the young Carlotta discovers The Study of Sociology in Sacred and Profane Love:

It was imperative that a book so exhilarating, toppling conventional wisdom on every page, had to be concealed from her hidebound aunt: Carlotta tore from their binding the pages of The Old Helmet, ‘probably the silliest novel in the world’, and inserted her treasure in their place. Spencer's impact survived subsequent reflection undiminished: ‘he taught me intellectual courage; he taught me that nothing is sacred that will not bear inspection; and I adore his memory’.

The kinship of pity to love is shown among other ways in this, that it idealizes its object. Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions. The feeling which vents itself in “poor fellow!” on seeing one in agony, excludes the thought of “bad fellow,” which might at another time arise. Naturally, then, if the wretched are unknown or but vaguely known, all the demerits they may have are ignored; and thus it happens that when, as just now, the miseries of the poor are depicted, they are thought of as the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being thought of, as in large measure they should be, as the miseries of the undeserving poor. Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their own misdeeds.

On hailing a cab in a London street, it is surprising how frequently the door is officiously opened by one who expects to get something for his trouble. The surprise lessens after counting the many loungers about tavern-doors, or after observing the quickness with which a street-performance, or procession, draws from neighbouring slums and stable-yards a group of idlers. Seeing how numerous they are in every small area, it becomes manifest that tens of thousands of such swarm through London. “They have no work,” you say.

The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.

However irrational we may think the earlier of these beliefs, we must admit that it was more consistent than is the latter. Whether we go back to times when the king was a god, or to times when he was a descendant of a god, or to times when he was god-appointed, we see good reason for passive obedience to his will. When, as under Louis XIV., theologians like Bossuet taught that kings “are gods, and share in a manner the Divine independence,” or when it was thought, as by bur own Tory party in old days, that “the monarch was the delegate of heaven;” it is clear that, given the premise, the inevitable conclusion was that no bounds could be set to governmental commands. But for the modern belief such a warrant does not exist. Making no pretension to divine descent or divine appointment, a legislative body can show no supernatural justification for its claim to unlimited authority; and no natural justification has ever been attempted. Hence, belief in its unlimited authority is without that consistency which of old characterized belief in a king's unlimited authority.

The Westminster Review for April 1860, contained an article entitled “Parliamentary Reform: the Dangers and the Safeguards.” In that article I ventured to predict some results of political changes then proposed.

Reduced to its simplest expression, the thesis maintained was that, unless due precautions were taken, increase of freedom in form would be followed by decrease of freedom in fact. Nothing has occurred to alter the belief I then expressed. The drift of legislation since that time has been of the kind anticipated. Dictatorial measures, rapidly multiplied, have tended continually to narrow the liberties of individuals; and have done this in a double way. Regulations have been made in yearly-growing numbers, restraining the citizen in directions where his actions were previously unchecked, and compelling actions which previously he might perform or not as he liked; and at the same time heavier public burdens, chiefly local, have further restricted his freedom, by lessening that portion of his earnings which he can spend as he pleases, and augmenting the portion taken from him to be spent as public agents please.

The causes of these foretold effects, then in operation, continue in operation – are, indeed, likely to be strengthened; and finding that the conclusions drawn respecting these causes and effects have proved true, I have been prompted to set forth and emphasize kindred conclusions respecting the future, and do what little may be done towards awakening attention to threatened evils.

Most of those who now pass as Liberals, are Tories of a new type. This is a paradox which I propose to justify. That I may justify it, I must first point out what the two political parties originally were; and I must then ask the reader to bear with me while I remind him of facts he is familiar with, that I may impress on him the intrinsic natures of Toryism and Liberalism properly so called.

Dating back to an earlier period than their names, the two political parties at first stood respectively for two opposed types of social organization, broadly distinguishable as the militant and the industrial – types which are characterized, the one by the régime of status, almost universal in ancient days, and the other by the régime of contract, which has become general in modern days, chiefly among the Western nations, and especially among ourselves and the Americans. If, instead of using the word “co-operation” in a limited sense, we use it in its widest sense, as signifying the combined activities of citizens under whatever system of regulation; then these two are definable as the system of compulsory co-operation and the system of voluntary co-operation.

When, in the spring of 1899, Bernstein's Preconditions of Socialism appeared, it caused a sensation. In effect, the book was a restatement and elaboration of the reformist standpoint Bernstein had been developing in a series of articles published during the previous two years. The controversy which these articles provoked had culminated in the rejection of Bernstein's position at the Stuttgart Conference of the German Social Democratic Party in October 1898. However, many felt that the issue had not yet been laid to rest. Karl Kautsky in particular was profoundly dissatisfied and he therefore urged that Bernstein produce ‘a systematic, comprehensive, and carefully reasoned exposition of his basic conceptions, insofar as they transcend the framework of principles hitherto accepted in our party’. Bernstein agreed, and the result was The Preconditions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy. Hastily written and flawed as it was, it was to become the classic statement of democratic, non-revolutionary socialism.

The background

Bernstein was born in Berlin on 6 January 1850. His father was a locomotive driver and the family was Jewish though not religious. When he left school he took employment as a banker's clerk. In 1872, the year after the establishment of the German Reich and the suppression of the Paris Commune, he joined the ‘Eisenach’ wing of the German socialist movement and soon became prominent as an activist.

The political and economic prerequisites of socialism

If we asked a number of people of any class or party to give a brief definition of socialism, most of them would be in some difficulty. Those who do not simply toss off some phrase they have heard must first be clear as to whether they are characterising a state of affairs or a movement, a perception or a goal. If we consult the literature of socialism itself, we will find very different accounts of the concept depending on whether they fall into one or other of the categories indicated above. They will vary from its derivation from legal ideas (equality, justice) to its succinct characterisation as social science and its identification with the class struggle of the workers in modern society and the explanation that socialism means cooperative economics. In some cases, fundamentally different conceptions provide the basis for this variety of explanations, but for the most part they are simply the result of seeing or representing one and the same thing from different points of view.

In any case, the most precise characterisation of socialism will be the one that takes the idea of cooperation as its starting point, because this idea expresses simultaneously an economic and a legal relationship. It takes no long-winded demonstration to show that the legal side is just as important as the economic side.