At what point a history of socialism should begin is a
question which might give occasion to high argument. There are some who hold
that we merely becloud our judgment if we allow ourselves to speak of socialism
before the middle of the 18th century, or perhaps even somewhat later. On this
view socialism is essentially a manifestation of the proletarian spirit; or, if
socialism is not necessarily proletarian in character and origin, it at least
postulates a society which tends to be comprehensive in its membership.
Accordingly, it is suggested that a society which assumes for its efficient
working the existence of a slave population, denied all rights, may at times
speak a language suggestive of socialism, but it can know nothing of socialism
as that word has been understood in the 19th and 20th centuries. The existence
of a serf or slave population may in certain respects add a complication to
life; but in other directions it quite obviously enormously simplifies the
social and political problems of existence, as these are presented to that
section of the population who are not slaves. On this view, a history of
socialism should probably begin among these first ripples and disturbances
which presaged the deluge of the French Revolution.
As against this view, which looks on socialism as
something which cannot be dissociated from the social and political conditions
of the last century and a half, there are some who carry their excavations for
the roots of socialism not merely to ancient Greece, but to ancient China and
to the early days of the children of Israel, and who accord a place in the
socialist temple to Moses, in virtue of certain provisions in the Mosaic Law;
and to Isaiah, in virtue of his poetic sensitiveness to the wrongs of this
world.
If we are strict, it is probably to the former of
these views that we should incline. We shall see presently how futile to our
present-day mind is the justice and the equality of a state which attains these
elevated aims by building on the slavery and oppression of the overwhelming
majority of the population. Yet it does not follow that the history of
socialism can exclude all that happened before the 18th century. Lycurgus and
the polity of Sparta may in fact have little to teach us. The community of life
which Minos introduced into Crete may have no point of contact with our modern
needs. Plato, to ascend to higher names, may have dreamed a dream which would
be but a nightmare today, if any attempt were made to realize it. Yet
throughout the ages, somewhat surprisingly, the limitations imposed by the
assumptions of Sparta and Athens have been overlooked. Plato and Lycurgus, to
mention no others, have been permanent influences in molding communist theory.
This is particularly true of Plato, though at times (as in Mably) Lycurgus runs him hard. It
would be an unpardonable exaggeration to say that all communism and
egalitarianism derive from Plato; but on the more visionary and Utopian side,
he is everywhere. Like the fabled tree of the nursery, his evergreen branches
have given support and shelter to all manner of strange birds, great and small: Tous les oiseaux du monde vont y faire leurs nids.
Even if the "socialism" of antiquity has, in
its own right, no claim to be considered as an integral element in a history of
socialism, its representatives demand attention as inspirers of socialism in
others in much later centuries.
This subsequent appeal to Greece, as the presumed
holder of the original title-deeds of socialism, has been made on two grounds.
On the one hand, Greece, in its highly variegated political life, is presumed
to have given examples of the actual functioning of the communistic way of
life. Here, of course, it is pre-eminently Sparta that has fascinated later
ages; though Crete also enters into the picture — and to a much lesser extent,
Lipara. On the other hand, Greece has supplied the theory and the vision of
Communism. On this side, needless to say, it is Plato, in The Republic and The Laws, who
in himself very largely constitutes the legacy of Greece. Before approaching
Plato, the begetter of much socialism which he would have disowned, it may be
advisable to glance, even if hastily, at Greek communism in practice.
According to tradition, Sparta was the handiwork of
Lycurgus; but what may any one profitably or usefully say regarding this
obscure personality, of whom even Plutarch says that there is nothing
concerning him that is not the subject of dispute? This original lawgiver, on
whose persuasive powers the socialist laws of Sparta rested, is indeed a
shadowy figure — a kind of cross between Moses and King Arthur. If we accept
Plutarch's account, Lycurgus was oppressed by the glaring contrast between
riches and poverty, the vast number of poor and landless on the one hand, and,
on the other, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few individuals —
almost a Marxian vision. And so — although surely external circumstances must
have reinforced his arguments — he persuaded the Spartans to agree to a new
distribution of lands on a basis of equality, and by other measures he weaned
them from the love of silver and gold, and led them to adopt that harsh
simplicity of life which the very name of Sparta has come to connote. Plutarch's
description is of interest because, waiving the question of its historical
accuracy, it gives a very adequate definition of the ideal communistic state,
as ideally imagined by countless later generations. In general, he says,
he trained his fellow-citizens to have neither the wish nor the ability to live for themselves; but like bees they were to make themselves always integral parts of the whole community, clustering together about their leader, almost beside themselves with enthusiasm and noble ambition, and to belong wholly to their country.
Thus Plutarch, of the influence of a man who is after
all but the shadow of a shade, and who, it may be, was more or less imagined in
order that his influence might explain what was.
Whether or not Lycurgus succeeded in abolishing
"all the mass of pride, envy, crime and luxury" which flowed from the
previous state of inequality — indeed, whether or not Lycurgus ever existed —
Sparta, with her remarkable system of government and institutions, certainly did
exist, and these are in a way something of a portent. The symmetry of her
constitution, her clear consciousness of the end for which, in Sparta at least,
the state existed, the rigorous discipline imposed on the individual with a
view to the realization of these ends, have, taken together, provoked the
eulogies of many simple-minded enthusiasts. The beauty and the stability of
Sparta became, to take but one example, something of an obsession with the
ineffective Mably. On the other hand, Sir Frederick Pollock has suggested — and
one's heart warms to him — that the Spartans were the most odious impostors in
the whole history of antiquity. In any event, the Spartan state was probably
unique in some respects in the record of political institutions. It is
difficult to recall any other state in which the individual was so completely
subordinated to the general ends of the community — and such subordination is,
of course, of the very essence of socialism in its general sense, as
distinguished from that species of socialism generally referred to as
communism. From the day of his birth, when he might be not merely subordinated
but suppressed for the good of the state, the young Spartan continued to be
disposed of in one way or another until death opened up for him a way of escape.
The common education, which began at the age of seven, was wholly designed to
make good soldiers, to teach men to suffer uncomplainingly the extremes of heat
and of cold, of hunger and of pain, and in each was implanted the conviction
that he belonged not to himself, but to the state.
With this must be taken another fact no less
significant, common indeed to all Greek civilization, although perhaps
specially important in Sparta. When we speak of Sparta, we are not concerned
with a homogeneous population. The problem is complicated, as always, by one
form of the slave question. The Spartan state could continue to exist only so
long as the Helots were kept under. Thus the Spartans had to consider not
merely their enemies beyond their frontier: they also lived as a governing
class amid enemies, vastly more numerous, always sullen, constantly menacing.
This is the ultimate explanation of the socialistic aspect of the Spartan
state. Pöhlmann has a pregnant saying, written long before 1914, and therefore
free from any suggestion that it springs from the misfortunes of the last two
generations, to the effect that "state socialism is the inevitable
correlate of the war-like type of society." Mr. Hawtrey, in our own day,
has explained how Collectivism "emerges as the logical outcome of
militarism when pushed to the extreme limit." A state that is at war, or
that is perpetually organized for war, dare not tolerate individual liberties
which may be in conflict with the general interest; and if the crisis becomes
acute, so that the very existence of the state is in danger, there always has
been, and there always will be, a tendency to sacrifice the individual; and
this means one or other of two things, either despotism or state socialism.
This then explains much in Sparta. She was perpetually
organized for war; inevitably she was organized to subordinate the individual
in the interests of military efficiency. This also, it is probable, discloses
the significance of the common meals, so striking a feature of the civil life
both of Sparta and of Crete. It has been suggested that these common meals, so
familiar in More and Campanella, may here be viewed as the last remnants of an
older and more primitive agricultural communism. Clearly, this is largely a
matter of speculation; but the argument is that if, far back at the beginning
of things, there was a time when men worked together on land held in common,
they would naturally eat in common also. Diodorus of Sicily, speaking of Lipara
(in book 5), says that the people there "enjoyed their estates in common
and fed together in societies," as if the two were bound together as cause
and effect. But indeed no such speculative explanation is necessary. The common
meals were merely another consequence of the fact that Sparta was wholly and
exclusively organized as a military state, which, even in peacetime and at
home, maintained as a symbol and as a discipline the habits of a campaigning
army in taking meals together under arms.
In summary, what does the communism of Sparta amount
to? There is not, it must be confessed, much to support the moral which it has
usually been asked to supply. Despite the original equal division of the soil,
differences in material conditions were not excluded; and contact with the
larger world in time undermined the more characteristic Spartan virtues, if
indeed they were virtues. For the modern communist in search of ensamples there
are, on wider grounds, grave stumbling blocks. In the first place, the Spartan
state was not so much a state as a military machine. Its sole interest was in
training men to suffer and endure, and it pursued this by methods which stand
unique in their revolting barbarity. They may have attained equality and
community in education, but not much is thereby gained if education is directed
to an unholy end. And secondly, to revert to a point which cannot be
overemphasized, if only because the worshippers of Sparta have so frequently
forgotten it, there is the horrible obverse of Spartan communism presented by
the hunted and harried Helot. It is not merely that communism in Sparta was a
communism in use, others having produced. It was a communism of an idle and
boastful people, whose government and whose existence demanded an army of
Helots, who suffered at their hands a ruthless tyranny without parallel in
history. It has too often been forgotten that the Helots also were men. Mably,
in his intoxicated enthusiasm for Lycurgus and all his works, does not seem to
have thought of this aspect of the question. It would be a fitting Nemesis, if
in some reincarnation he were sent to live — as a Helot — in his so greatly
adored Sparta.
No comments:
Post a Comment