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Updated: July 8, 2025
The result is, not that the Socialist Party has ceased to grow, but that a large part of the enthusiasm for Socialism, largely created by the party, has gone to elect so-called "Independent Socialists" to the Chamber and to elevate to the control of the government men like Briand, who, it was agreed by Socialists and anti-Socialists alike, was the most formidable enemy the Socialists have had for many years.
Jaurès began his argument with the proposition that the difference between Socialism and mere reform consisted in the fact that the former alone worked for "a total realization of all reforms" and "the complete transformation of capitalistic property into social property" which is merely the statement of Socialism as an ultimate ideal, now indorsed even by many anti-Socialists.
And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and unquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of human societies from the military type to the industrial type as Saint-Simon had already pointed out a change, a process of adaptation, also takes place in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have us believe is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" of old-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a collectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to the modified social conditions.
At a time when so many professed anti-Socialists are agreeing with the New York Independent that, though it is easy to have too much Socialism, at least "we want more" than we have, it becomes exceedingly difficult for non-Socialists to learn what Socialism is and to distinguish it from innumerable reform movements. Less than a decade ago the pros and cons of Socialism were much debated.
So far we go in common. If Belloc and Chesterton are not Socialists, they are at any rate not anti-Socialists. Their organised Christian State is nearer the organised State I want than our present plutocracy. Our ideals will fight some day, and it will be, I know, a first-rate fight, but to fight now is to let the enemy in.
It disposes of all the dreary doubts of the Anti-Socialists about men not yet being angels, and all the yet drearier hopes of the Socialists about men soon being supermen. I do not admit that private property is a concession to baseness and selfishness; I think it is a point of honour. I think it is the most truly popular of all points of honour.
M. Garofalo's book, which was announced as an assault of science upon socialism, has been, even from this point of view, a complete disappointment, as even the Italian anti-socialists have confessed in several of the most orthodox Reviews.
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