Chapter 65: Economic Ideas (The Many Schools of Socialism)

**Dave Broker** (0:05)
Quote, as no such thing as the labor question is known nowadays, replied Dr. Leit. And there's no way in which it could arise. I suppose we may claim to have solved it. Society would indeed have fully deserved being devoured, if it had failed to answer a riddle so entirely simple. In fact, to speak by the book, it was not necessary for society to solve the riddle at all. It may be said to have solved itself. The solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution, which could not have been terminated otherwise. All society had to do was recognize and cooperate with that evolution, when its tendency had become unmistakable.
That's a passage from the 1888 novel, Looking Backward, 2000-1887, written by American author, Eduard Bellamy. Born in Chikopee Falls, Massachusetts in 1850, Bellamy was the son of a Baptist minister. He studied law before becoming a journalist and later an editorial writer. While still in his twenties, he also began writing fiction, though this work failed to get traction. That is until the release of Looking Backward, which catapulted him to fame. It became one of the best-selling American books of the late 19th century. It's the story of a young Bostonian by the name of Julian West. Put to sleep by a hypnotist in 1887, he wakes up 113 years later. Still in Boston, but it's an entirely different city. This is the Boston of the future. And it's a utopia. His host, Dr. Leit, explains to him the process of how the the ill of the late 19th century, poverty, unrest, waste and more, have been overcome.
The organization of labor and the strikes were an effect merely of the concentration of capital in greater masses than had ever been known before. Looking back, we cannot wonder at their desperation, for certainly humanity was never confronted with a fate more sordid and hideous than would have been the era of corporate tyranny which they anticipated. Meanwhile, without being in the smallest degree checked by the clamor against it, the absorption of business by ever larger monopolies continued. Small businesses, as far as they still remained, were reduced to the condition of rats and mice living in holes and corners, and counting on evading notice for the enjoyment of existence. The railroads had gone on combining till a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land. In manufactures, every important staple was controlled by a syndicate. But, as Dr. Leit explains, it was these combinations which brought about the utopia.
Early in the last century, the evolution was completed by the final consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their caprice and for their profit, were entrusted to a single syndicate, representing the people, to be conducted in the common interest for the common profit. The nation, that is to say, organized as the one great business corporation, in which all other corporations were absorbed. It became the one capitalist in place of all other capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the profits and economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts had ended in the great trust.
He goes on to explain that organizing labor against the forces of capital no longer made sense. After all, labor and capital are now in the same hands. There was no need for revolution, only evolution. And thanks to this evolution, the world is now rid of crime, poverty, political corruption, war and other evils.
Now, if this all sounds a bit farfetched, well, it did to Julian West in the novel too. Thus, the book becomes a Socratic dialogue between the two men, as Dr. Leit explains to West how and why this social order works.
So, unlike the marginalists we discussed last time, Bellamy is siding with the capitalists of the era, the J.P.Morgans and John D. Rockefellers and others, who pushed for pools and mergers to ward off ruinous competition. But make no mistake, Bellamy is advancing a socialist vision of the future.
Today, Looking Backward is little remembered. To what extent it is remembered is largely because of some very bold but surprisingly accurate predictions Bellamy makes. He envisions the introduction of credit cards, public pensions like social security, and even radio broadcasts, albeit they come through a telephone cable, not wireless transmissions. But in its day, Looking Backward was hugely influential for those predictions that did not pan out. Across the world, readers formed dozens, possibly hundreds, of so-called nationalist clubs, associations to advance the cause of consolidating and nationalizing capital, as described in the novel. Bellamy called this movement Solidarism. But unlike the book's predictions of snowballing consolidation, his Solidarism was never really folded into a broader socialist philosophy. In the late 19th century, socialism was undergoing the opposite trend, a trend of ever greater fracturing. Today, we're going to explore some of these fractures, as well as the Second Industrial Revolution's diverse and colorful cast of socialist thinkers.