The British Labour Church movement which was discussed by Mr. K. S. Inglis in a recent article is of some importanceto New Zealand for two resons. A native New Zealander, H. A. Atkinson, was one of the early leaders of the movement in Britain, and he later introduced the idea of the Labour Church to New Zealand and formed the first openly socialist organisation in this country.

Die Schriften Lassalles geben Aufschluss genug, wie eine Verquickung von allgemeinem Wahlrecht und sozialistischem Staat versucht wird. Es ist dabei auffällig, dass die Forderung nach dem Wahlrecht als not-wendige Voraussetzung fär den sozialistischen Staat erscheint. So schrieb Lassalle in dem „Offenen Antwortschreiben”: „Das allgemeine und direkte Wahlrecht ist also…nicht nur ihr politisches, es ist auch ihr soziales Grundprinzip, die Grundbedingung aller sozialen Hilfe. Es ist das einzige Mittel, um die materielle Lage des Arbeiterstandes zu verbessern.” Lassalle identifizierte hier, wie Brandis bereits richtig bemerkt hat, die parlamentarische Demokratie mit der sozialistischen Gesellschaftsordnung. In der Überantwortung des Staates an die arbeitenden Klassen durch das allgemeine Wahlrecht schien ihm die Voraussetzung für die „freie Arbeit als herrschendes Prinzip der Gesellschaft” gegeben. Das allgemeine Wahlrecht als Emanzipationsmittel schuf ihm den politischen Unterbau, auf dem der „soziale Staat” errichtet werden konnte.

La connaissance des tendances qui prédominaient dans les milieux ouvriers barcelonais avant 1868 quant au travail et à la politique, nous permet d'évaluer avec quelque certitude l'influence exercée par la visite de Fanelli sur l'orientation du mouvement ouvrier, et de mieux comprendre la signification des courants qui se manifestèrent au Congrès Ouvrier de Barcelone en juin 1870.

This essay was written with the thought in mind that there is need for more clarification in the terminology used to describe certain socialist philosophies of the nineteenth century. It seems clear that the terms ‘democratic socialism” or “social democracy” have lost much of the meaning they might have had in the past. “Democratic” as an adjective or “democracy” as a noun, have been so abused that today they may convey the idea of either a civil libertarian kind of government or a form of totalitarianism. Indeed, the words made for confusion in the nineteenth century when Jacobins, Babouvians, Blanquists, even Bonapartists, claimed each to be true representatives of the general will, and either executed or would have executed those representing opposing wills. Nonviolent were P.-J.-B. Buchez and Louis Blanc, each of whom claimed to be a democratic socialist. Yet in 1848 they opposed each other with intense vehemence. There is need then, for definition and delineation.

The “war communism” of the Jacobins, mobilizing all economic forces for the defence of the Republic, has many features which seem to anticipate later regimes more self-consciously and more consistently socialist. At the same time it appears in some respects as a partial return to the étatisme of the Ancien Régime in reaction against the liberalism of 1789. Particularly is this true of the adoption, in 1793, of a system of price control for essential commodities.

When Warren Hastings established the English East India Company's opium monopoly in Bihar in 1773, the contractors who undertook its management were expressly forbidden to compel the ryots (tenant-cultivators) to grow poppy. Later, Warren Hastings allowed this restriction to be quietly dropped from the contracts, and in the 1780's the ryots were protected only by implication, in that the contractors were required to deliver to the Company as much opium as could be procured “lawfully and reasonably”. Although no legal powers of coercion were granted, it accorded well with native custom that the ryots should be compelled to keep up the cultivation where it had previously existed, and when Lord Cornwallis investigated the matter in 1788 he found it to be generally understood that such compulsion was in force. Cornwallis intended to bring to the Company's terriories the benefits of personal freedom under the rule of law, but he did not wish to disrupt the opium arrangements. He therefore laid down fixed scales of remuneration for the opium ryots which he hoped would be generous enough to make them willing to continue and extend the cultivation, but did not immediately proclaim their emancipation. The contracts of 1789 were ambiguous; they did not say whether the continuance of existing cultivation was to be comulsory, but only that its extension was to be left to the option of the ryots. In 1793, however, when the ryots had had time to experience the benefits of the fixed rates of pay and their deliveries were increasing satisfactorily, the cultivation was declared to be completely optional. This caused no difficulties in Bihar.

In one of the supreme ironies of history, the austere Lycurgan system at Sparta failed in its primary aim – the fossilization of martial virtue – and succeeded in military victories, the heady profits of which undermined the precarious communism of the bivouac state. Conditioned to repress fear, the Spartan compensated by indulging greed – bribery, not cowardice, was his fatal weakness. After the collapse of the Spartan Empire at the Battle of Leuctra in 371, mercenary service became the principal Spartan occupation, even for Xenophon's model officer and gentleman, King Agesilaus. With landed estates encroaching on the traditional lots and great fortunes swollen by the gains of empire and mercenary adventure, the common Spartan found himself reduced to an equality of obligation only. The inflation and economic stress of the Hellenistic era intensified the imbalance between wealth and poverty in Lacedaemon. In a brief reign (244–241), the idealistic young King Agis IV tried to revive Sparta's military glory by restoring „Lycurgan ways” and did effect the abolition of debts but failed to redistribute land lots – his agent, Agesilaus, avoided the issue until a counter-revolutionary coup led by the deposed King Leonidas overthrew the reformers and lynched Agis. In 227, Leonidas' son, Cleomenes III, seized power and completed the aborted reforms of Agis-his subsequent success forced his rival for leadership of the Peloponnse, Aratus of Sicyon, into an alliance with Macedon, and Cleomenes was defeated at Sellasia in 222 to die shortly after in exile in Egypt.