III.

A POINT remains to be considered. The Collectivists have not clearly indicated their conception of the State, as such, nor of Government under a Collectivist Social system, and yet this is the most vital point of all. In Plato's Republic the wise were to rule, the brave to protect the community; in More's Utopia, in like manner, the wisest formed the Government; with the St. Simonians, also Capacity was to direct-who are to be rulers under the new Socialism, and of what kind is to be the Government?

Though the Collectivists are rather reticent on the point, we can see clearly that of logical necessity the government must be essentially democratic: whether the executive authority be delegated to a chosen one,so as to form a kind of Democratic Cæsarism, or whether it be conferred on a body, remains uncertain, though the tendency of their principles is to the latter. That it must be democratic may be inferred further from the principles of Karl Marx, as also from the name of Social Democrats that German, English and American Socialists most affect.

In the Collectivist State an aristocracy resting on the ownership of land will, of course, be impossible: for like reasons a plutocracy could not exist, since capital as well as land will be collectively owned, and the highest salaries only moderate in amount. The Capitalist in all his forms, whether the great employer of labour, the great distributor, the great financier or monopolist, will have disappeared. There will be no

aristocracy, whether of land or money. The classes will have found their level in the masses, the former being brought down, the latter somewhat exalted, and if any distinction of rank remain (and some, it would appear, is to be allowed) it must have reference to difference of capacity.

But there must still be, we should imagine, a governing class, though not hereditary. There must be, if not legislators (the Socialists affirming that few laws will be needed, and that these will require the general sanction), at least administrators as now; an adminis tration let us say, composed of some ten or a dozen Ministers or Secretaries of State for the principal departments of State activity, as War, Finance, Justice, Education, the Colonies (if any connection be retained with them), Trade, Agriculture, etc. There must also be permanent Under-Secretaries of the Executive Government, there must be Judges and a Chief Justice; and as the functions of the State will be greatly extended to embrace all industries—agricultural, mining, manufacturing, carrying-there must be new Ministers and Secretaries, new Heads of Departments,-new Generals, in addition to the officers and private soldiers in the industrial armies. Who are these different Heads to be?

Karl Marx, the founder of Collectivism, has not designated who are to be the governors, nor how they are to be found, but presumably they will be the most capable, as with the St. Simonians. Still it is a pity that neither he nor his followers have been more explicit on this important point.

Mr. Gronlund, indeed, denies that there will be

any governing required, or any governing classes. "The whole people does not want or need any governing at all," he affirms, a proposition that looks anarchical; but, as he adds, "it wants simply administration-good administration," it appears that he is merely using the word government in the narrow sense of class rule and exclusive of administration which, nevertheless, has always been considered as the most important part of government. In the Socialist State the Heads of Departments, according to him, would form the Executive Government for the time being, and as these would be more numerous than now, and besides would have a greater mass of matters, indeed, the totality of human affairs, on their shoulders and depending on their wisdom and virtue, we fear after all, in spite of assurances to the contrary, that there would be a good deal of government and even of issuing of "commands," whether called laws, rescripts, decrees, or whatever name does not matter. The "Omniarchs," as Fourier and Leroy-Beaulieu call them, would have much depending on them: it would be wisdom on the part of the many to let them have a rather free hand. But how, under Socialism, are these important Heads or Chiefs of Departments to be discovered? How to get the wise and virtuous to the top is the real and never yet solved problem. States will never be happy, Plato tells us, till philosophers rule or rulers are philosophers, i.e. wise men. How to get the wise and capable riddled to the top is the question. The author of the "Co-operative Commonwealth" has at least a plan to propose, though he admits that it does not bind other

Socialists. The chiefs are to be the result of a series of selections-the select of the select. In this wise: In a given industry, the ordinary workers choose their foreman, the foremen in like manner their superintendent, or Carlyle's Captain of Industry; all the chiefs in a given district elect a district-superintendent, and the district-superintendents from all parts of the country meet and elect a bureau-chief, and he, with other bureau-chiefs in connected industries, proceed to elect a Chief of Department.

By this process of subtle distillation you surely get your best man in one branch of industry, as bootmaking (to take the example cited); you proceed in the same manner with every other special branch of industry, manufacturing, mining, agricultural. You get a Chief of Department in the cotton trade, in the hosiery, the tailoring, the farming, the mining, and other industries. In the same way you get the wisest one in the teaching body; "then one for the physicians, another for the judges, one or more chiefs for transportation, one or more for commerce— in fact, suppose there is not a social function that does not converge in some way in such Chief of Department."

1

It

Here we have the great secret. These Chiefs, and not too many of them, are to form the executive, greatly widened as it is to be in its functions. would appear that the representatives of the bootmaking, tailoring, and other interests will necessarily be numerous, if we judge by the great number of specialized industries, though we cannot discover any

1 "Co-operative Commonwealth," p. 173.

great qualifications for ruling in their chiefs unless the ruling and directing be confined to what relates to boot-making, tailoring, etc. If there are to be philosophers in the body, perhaps they will be found in the representative of the teachers, or of the judges, or of the literary class, or of the savants; they would, however, be considerably outvoted unless we reduce all the industrial chiefs from many to one or a few in each industry, and then there would be the certainty that such would not be much wiser than any other of the different chiefs in any branch of industry outside their own; that, for instance, the chosen in the leather trade, whether raw, tanned, or made into boots, would know little about the needs of the cotton, the hosiery, the iron and steel, the ship-building, mining, and a hundred other industries, while, as respects interests other than industrial, they would have still less comprehension.

An able man of business you may select in this way, an able administrator of the post-office, the telegraphs, or a minister of agriculture; but hardly, unless from the lawyer or philosophic class, a statesman, who, in addition to natural genius, requires a different previous training; in particular the study of history, of political science, and of human nature.

However this be, at all events a complete political revolution is implied: a revolution in the government of every existing State, and a total change in the conception of the State, in addition to the sweeping economic revolution, and the revolution in private life that the changed economic relations would bring. It is admitted by Socialists