Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

modern life in creating common interests between employers and employed.

Owen's name will ever be associated with this great movement, and we may say, in the words of Mr. Booth, "if he had never contributed anything else to the good of mankind, that alone would entitle him to be classed among our greatest benefactors."

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

CHAPTER VII.

MARLO AND CO-OPERATIVE SOCIALISM IN GERMANY.

IN the same year in which Owen died another champion of co-operative Socialism passed away in Germany, less known as a social reformer, but no less worthy to be mentioned among the number of those who have produced important schemes of social improvement.

Karl Marlo (his real name was Winkelblech) was a Cassel professor, and his work, which he called, with characteristic breadth of view, a "System of Universal Economy," displays all the thoroughness without the proverbial pedantry of the German professor. Not gifted with the glowing imagination of Fourier, wanting entirely the practical business application of Robert Owen, Marlo differs also from both these his contemporaries in not expecting great social changes from a redistribution of property. His social ideal is a confederation of co-operative societies all

over the world, not, however, to the entire exclusion of individual enterprise, with a view of heightening production, and so increasing the prosperity of all classes in society.

He tells us, in one of the prefaces to his work, what led to his own economic inquiries, and proved a turning-point in his intellectual life.

"In the year 1843 I travelled in Northern Europe. Being engaged upon a technological work, I visited among others the well-known Norwegian indigo factory, at Modum, where the lovely environs so fascinated me that I prolonged my stay for several days. As one morning I was from a hill taking a view of the surrounding neighbourhood, which rivals. the Alps in its mountain scenery, a German labourer, undoubtedly recognising in me a fellow-countryman, approached me with the petition to do some commission for him in the fatherland. As I granted his request he became more communicative, and gave me a touching account of his own experience, and the life of penury to which both he and his fellowlabourers were condemned. What is the cause of this, I asked myself, that the paradise spread before me conceals so much hidden misery? Is nature, or man, their real author? Like many other students of nature, I had always given my attention in the workshops of industry to the machinery rather than the

human beings, to the products of human industry rather than the producers themselves. I remained, therefore, entirely ignorant of the vast amount of misery which lies at the foundation of our varnished civilisation. The convincing words of this labourer made me feel the comparative uselessness of my scientific investigations, and I arrived shortly at a determination in my own mind to investigate the sufferings of our race, their causes and their remedies. In the course of many years I continued my researches most conscientiously, and found the extent of prevailing misery far beyond what I was first led to expect. Poverty everywhere! Among wages labourers and those who undertake work on their own account, among nations in the highest as well as those in the lowest state of industrial advancement, in the large manufacturing towns, the capitals of labour, and centres of luxury, as well as in the hovels of villagers, in the salubrious plains of Belgium and Lombardy, as in the barren mountain heights of Scandinavia; everywhere I met wretchedness and poverty. I discovered, moreover, that the causes of all this are not to be found in nature, but our institutions founded on false economic principles, and from this I concluded that in the rectification of these lies the only hope of recovery. I began to feel convinced that in the present modes of production the

eradicating of poverty is impossible, that the utmost improvement in technical skill will by no means secure a diffusion of general prosperity; in short, that our civilisation is in such a stage of development that further progress will entirely depend on the progress of economic science, and that the latter on this account is the most important of all sciences for the times. In the course of my investigations the doctrines of Economists, as well as the efforts of Socialists, were known to me in name only; for I avoided a closer acquaintance with them purposely in order to remain, as far as possible, entirely free from any external influences. It was only after I had arrived at my own conclusions, unaided, that I turned to the study of economic literature. From this I gathered that the results to which my own investigations had led me in all essential points, after numerous corrections (although not containing much that was original), departed entirely from the principles laid down in the existing works on political economy. This led to a comparative examination of my own with the prevailing views of others, which only confirmed me more in my convictions. I thought now I might make the attempt of a new system of economy. This accordingly I began in the year 1847, and the first half of my works has only just appeared."

This work was left unfinished at his death. In

I

« AnteriorContinuar »