production and literature are all aspects of Socialism, they are all
interests and developments that lie apart from anything one may
call--except by sheer violence to language--politics.

And since Socialism is an intellectual as well as a moral thing, it
will never tolerate in its adherents the abnegation of individual
thought and intention. It demands devotion to an idea, not devotion to
a leader. No addicted follower of so-and-so or of so-and-so can be a
good Socialist any more than he can be a good scientific investigator.
So far Socialism has produced no great leaders at all. Lassalle alone
of all its prominent names was of that romantic type of personality
which men follow with enthusiasm. The others, Owen, Saint Simon, and
Fourier, Proudhon, Marx, and Engels, Bebel, Webb, J. S. Mill, Jaures,
contributed to a process they never seized hold upon, never made their
own, they gave enrichment and enlargement and the movement passed on;
passes on gathering as it goes. Kingsley, Morris, Ruskin--none are too
great to serve this idea, and none so great they may control it or
stand alone for it. So it will continue. Socialism under a great
leader, or as a powerfully organized party would be the end of
Socialism. No doubt it might also be its partial triumph; but the
reality of the movement would need to take to itself another name; to
call itself "constructive civilization" or some such synonym, in order
to continue its undying work. Socialism no doubt will inspire great
leaders in the future, and supply great parties with ideas; in itself
it will still be greater than all such things.

Sec. 3.

But here, perhaps, before the finish, since the business of this book
is explanation, it may be well to define a little the relation of
Socialism to the political party that is most closely identified with
it in the popular mind. This is the Labour Party. There can be no
doubt of the practical association of aim and interest of the various
Labour parties throughout modern civilized communities with the
Socialist movement. The Social democrats of Germany are the Labour
Party of that country, and wherever the old conception of Socialism
prevails, those "class war" ideas of the Marxist that have been
superseded in English Socialism for nearly a quarter of a century,
there essentially the Socialist movement will take the form of a
revolutionary attack upon the owning and governing sections of the
community. But in Great Britain a