That Illusive Socialism

Extract

The general election (conducted with a solemnity and decorum unknown to our forefathers of Eatanswill, the high spirits of age kept in check by the gravity of youth, now for the first time invited to decide the fate of parties and the choice of rulers), having brought the Labour Party into power and given us its leader, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for prime minister, we are assured, with sorrowful shaking of head or with open rejoicing—it all depends on the point of view—that Socialism has triumphed at the polls, and that with a Socialist government responsible for England, the Empire, and things in general, we may expect the worst, or the best, to happen.

So far the ballots cast on Corpus Christi day have neither disturbed the money-changers of the world nor shaken the confidence of the multitude that went to Epsom the following week. The prime minister has chosen his cabinet and formed his government— a ministry of many talents. Socialists of the left, and of the right, veterans of the Fabian Society and the old S.D.F. and I.L.P.; responsible trade union leaders; distinguished university graduates; converts from Liberalism—all are included. Socialists are in office and hold the destinies of Empire in their hands.

But what is this Socialism, which, for better or worse, is the avowed belief, political and economic, of our Labour Government? What in these days does it signify to be called a Socialist? Happily, we may find an answer to these conundrums in the new edition of Mr. Beer’s History of British Socialism, with its complementary chapter bringing the story down to 1928. For the author, an Austrian, long resident in England and an old pupil of the London School of Economics under Professor Hewins, pursued his quest of this illusive British Socialism with conspicuous thoroughness, and his book is of the very greatest value in its interpretation of the facts so carefully set out.