WHAT SOCIALISM IS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9689, 13 January 1910, Page 4

WHAT SOCIALISM IS.

The proper meaning of socialism, as ' lecognised now by all the socialist j organisations, is that laid down in | Schaeffle's "Quinessence of Social- 1 ism," and since crystallised in the formula —the socialisation or the col- ; lective ownership uf all the means of < production, distribution, and ex- 1 change. There are minor shades of j expression to which some of the sects , may attach importance, but the broad significance is the same every where, and it is perfectly clear and < definite. What the organised socialist : aims at is the transference of pro- 1 perty from private to public ownership. some would transfer all property, others would draw the line : here or there; but they all want to transfer property. That is the one definite and distinctive criterion; and though any man may call himself a socialist and say that socialism is this, that, or the other, the socialism that matters, that alone has force, coherence, and a recognisable mark, is that which is concerned with the J ownership of property and it 3 trans- l

ference in one way or another. This has qlways been the essence of the thing since the name was invented and adop'ed, which was long before the time of Marx. The confusion has arisen mainly from looking to the underlying motives or principles and the ulterior aims, and then applying the word to anything which shares in any dergee the same motives or aims. Thus, for instance, some people call the Sermon on the Mount socialistic—but what could be further removed from concern about the ownership of property, which is the heart of socialism? If the economic element is taken away from it there is nothing left that is not common to a dozen other and much older | movements. The question is not what its ulterior aims are, for they are of immemorial antiquity, but how it proposes to attain them. And \ the answer is, by the transference of [ property from private to public ow--nership. Anything which promotes that process consciously and on principle may be properly called socialistic in proportion as it does so; and that is the test by which a political measure should be judged if any radical conclusion is to be reached on the point. Every interference with private ownership is necessarily socialism, but unless that element is present the term cannot be properly applied.