of Ferdinand Lassalle." The reference is to an address given by Lassalle in 1862 to a meeting of workmen of Berlin and his “Open Reply" to an invitation to publish his views in the following year, which led to the foundation of the General German Workmen's Union.

The German Socialists date the origin of their party from that beginning in 1863, which also marks the first revival of Socialism since 1848. Lassalle, like all good German Socialists, had visited Paris in the stormy 'forties and had been particularly impressed by Louis Blanc, whose idea he borrowed. He argued in the " Open Reply " that the only way to effect the emancipation of the working class from the "brazen law of wages" was for them to form free private associations with the assistance of the State. He died in 1864, and though his organization went on for another ten years it was weakened by internal dissensions. In 1875 it amalgamated with the rival Marxian Social Democratic Workmen's Party founded in 1869; and from that time the Lassallean influence waned until it was completely superseded by that of Marx. But among the demands formulated by the united body in 1875 was "the establishment of socialistic productive societies with State assistance under the democratic control of the working population." This 1875 programme was drastically criticised by Marx in a letter to Liebknecht, in which the famous expression dictatorship of the proletariate" first

occurred. It has been the theoretical sheet-anchor of Bolshevism.

The word nationalisation seems to have been introduced in 1878 by Engels in his attack on Dühring, which contains the clearest exposition of the Marxian standpoint. He repeated the prediction of the Communist Manifesto: "The proletariate seizes the power of the State and converts the means of production into State property at once." This is nationalisation as understood by Marxian Socialists. In 1891 the German Socialists formally incorporated the idea, but without any reference to the State, in the celebrated Erfurt programme, which is still the most authoritative statement of Marxian Socialism and the basis of most of the programmes in other countries to this day. It contains the following declaration :

Only the conversion of capitalist private ownership of the means of production-land and soil, mines and quarries, raw materials, tools, machines, means of transport-into social ownership, and transformation of production for the market into socialistic production

carried on for and by society, can bring about the conversion of the large industry and the constantly increasing productivity of social labour from a source of misery and oppression for the hitherto exploited classes into a source of the highest welfare and all-round harmonious perfection.

Such is the pedigree of nationalisation. There is no need to trace it further into other programmes, which are all built on the same model in this respect. But an important point which seems to be very little understood in this country either by Socialists or anti-Socialists is to be noted here: nationalisation in the Marxian sense is not the same thing as nationalisation in the current English sense, according to which the taking over or installation of any enterprise or service by the State or municipality is a piece of Socialism. Indeed almost any intrusion by the State is liable to be denounced as Socialism; but that reading deprives the term of all meaning. If it held good then the very rights of private property, being established by the State, would be socialistic. What people who are subject to this confusion of ideas generally mean, when they call some State interference Socialism, is that they disapprove of it. State interference which they like and demand, as they not infrequently do, meets with no such condemnation at their hands. The actual transference of undertakings to the State or municipality stands on a different footing and may be more legitimately regarded as socialistic. The point is arguable, but it would be very difficult to bring every case under the rubric. For instance, when Prussia nationalised the railways for purely military purposes, was that Socialism? Can the numerous civil activities undertaken by belligerent governments for the purpose of carrying on the late war be properly called Socialism? Some English Socialists thought so and claimed the war industries as a triumph for nationalisation; but most people repudiated that view. They felt that there was a difference; and there was. A very little reflection will show that there are different kinds of nationalisation and that not all of them are socialistic.

The orthodox Marxian view, on the other hand, goes to the opposite extreme and denies that any sort of nationalisation under an ordinary government is Socialism at all. An indispensable preliminary is the abolition of the capitalist State and the establishment of the "proletarian State." Engels, inspired by

Marx, is the chief authority. In the work quoted above he

says:

The existing State is only the organization which bourgeois society gives itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist method of production against the encroachments not only of the workers, but of individual capitalists. The existing State, as its form shows, is an essentially capitalist machine, a State of capitalists, the ideal of the capitalist aggregate. The more productive forces it takes over, the more does it become a real capitalist aggregate, the more does it exploit the citizens. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. The relationship of capital to them is not abolished, but rather consummated.

He thought however that this process would lead up to the desired transformation and did not oppose nationalisation under the existing State as some ultra-Marxian Socialists have done both in France and Germany. Jules Guesde, for instance, the French Marxian leader, maintained that "the nationalisation of private industries by the bourgeois State is not Socialism and has nothing to do with Socialism," and that " so far from simplifying the task of expropriation by the proletariate, by effecting a certain amount of public ownership, it really constitutes a danger to the workers, because it strengthens the enemy-the bourgeoisie-and weakens the working class by paralysing their movements." And again he observes that

private industries on passing to the existing State do not lose the character of capitalist property, that is to say, property from which the working class are excluded. Instead of being the property of such and such a capitalist and inuring to the benefit of X or Y, it becomes the property of the capitalist class as a whole, without distinction between X, Y or Z. That is all. As for the proletarian masses and the body of wage-earners they derive no more benefit from "Statised" plant than from individual plant.

The term " Statisation " has come into use in connection with this controversy in both France and Germany. It marks the distinction between real and sham nationalisation or public ownership according to the Marxian view; the real is socialisation, the sham is statisation. In this country the distinction is not recognised; both forms are covered by the word " nationalisation.” But recently the distinction has been losing force with the advent of Socialist administrations in several countries. The writers on the subject quoted above, and others who might be quoted, seem

never to have considered the problem in the light of that contingency. The proletarian State was so long in coming that it had for them only a hypothetical existence, like "some far-off divine event," to be ushered in with tremendous solemnity and the transformation of all things.

It did not occur to these writers to ask what would happen if the Socialists secured a majority in the legislature anywhere by the simple process of getting more members elected and then formed the Government quite a conceivable event in France and other democratic countries. Would such a State be a "proletarian State" or not? And if not, why not? If the term has any rational meaning surely this kind of State is realised by the installation of a Socialist Government. Indeed one might go further and argue that any State which has adopted adult suffrage becomes proletarian ipso facto, because the majority of the electors belong to that order, as understood by Socialists, and the Government installed by popular vote is their choice and represents them. That has always been the view of Socialist parties in the past, as shown by the demand for adult suffrage, which has regularly been the first item on their programme of reforms, from the English Chartists to the framers of the Erfurt programme and all the other programmes based upon it. Now they have got adult suffrage in most countries, including votes for women, which they have not always demanded; and in several a Socialist Government has been set up by constitutional methods. We have had one here, and others exist to-day in Sweden, Denmark and five Australian States. What more is needed to constitute the proletarian State?

Marxians would probably reply that the proletariate are not the genuine brand because they are not sufficiently classconscious," which merely means that they do not embrace the Marxian faith. This implies that the criterion of the great class distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariate is after all not social or economic status, but the holding of certain opinions. And in truth it has always been so. If status were the criterion, then very few indeed of the most prominent leaders throughout the history of Socialism would qualify. Nor is this attitude confined to Marxians. Our own Socialists, who are for the most part not Marxians, substitute "Labour" for the proletariate, and make their criterion adhesion to the tenets of the Labour Party. Peers, millionaires and capitalists who pass that test are on the

right side of the dividing line; everyone else is on the wrong. Status has nothing to do with it. So, too, the Bolsheviks, who are a sort of Marxians: they have their own views which they make the criterion. Since, then, opinion is the test and since opinions differ irreconcilably, it is obvious that there can be no Socialist State which is universally recognised as the genuine brand. We must therefore look for some point on which all Socialists agree, and accept, as an example of Socialism in practice, any fully democratised State which has set up a Socialist administration holding that article of faith.

There is such an article of faith very pertinent to the question of nationalisation. All Socialists agree in condemning capitalism— that is private ownership of economic utilities-and in demanding its abolition. When a democracy has set up a government holding that faith it can no longer be called a capitalist State, and the Marxian distinction between true and sham nationalisation disappears. The objection to statisation on that ground can no longer be maintained. Nor does the associated Marxian view of the State as an organ of class-oppression any longer hold good. We have got the "proletarian State" in so far as we can ever get it; and the proletarian State spells the abolition of all oppression-according to the theory. It has not done so in Russia, as even the trade union delegates, who were sent to bless, are fain to admit. They have not exactly reversed the part of Balaam the prophet; they have not cursed when they were asked to bless; but neither have they pronounced an unqualified blessing, though the will to do so is evident. Neither in Russia nor in any other country is there a sign that the State is any the less an organ of authority and oppression under a Socialist than under a capitalist administration, but rather the contrary.

We have, in fact, entered on a new stage in regard to all these matters-a stage in which theories and policies hitherto existing only in words are being put to the test of practical experience, as never before; for the communistic experiments in the way of small isolated settlements, which have been numerous in the past, from ancient times down to New Australia thirty years ago, are on a different plane. The State did not enter into them at all and though they are more instructive than Socialists are willing to admit, there is some ground for the objection that they are not examples of Socialism as now understood. That objection