nment would handle
production and distribution better than private enterprise. On the
contrary.

British Socialists claim unanimously that their theories and demands
are founded upon science. "The Socialist doctrine systematises the
industrial changes. It lays down a law of capitalist evolution. It
describes the natural history of society. It is not, therefore, only a
popular creed for the market-place, but a scientific inquiry for the
study. Like every theory in Sociology, it has a political bearing, but
it can be studied as much detached from politics as is Darwinism."[263]
Do the fundamental doctrines of British Socialism bear out the claims
of its champions? The foregoing pages prove that the scientific basis
of Socialism, or rather of British Socialism, consists of a number of
doctrines which cannot stand examination and which are disproved by
daily experience and by common-sense.

The question now suggests itself: "How is it that the British
Socialists base their demands on pseudo-scientific doctrines of
obvious absurdity?"

British Socialism has been imported from Germany. Marx, Engels,
Lassalle, Rodbertus, and various other Germans are the fathers of
modern scientific Socialism. "To German scholars is largely due the
development of Socialism from the Utopian stage to the scientific.
Universality is its distinguishing feature."[264] "Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels in 1847 laid, through the 'Communist Manifesto,' the
scientific foundation of modern Socialism."[265] "And 'Capital,' Karl
Marx's great work, has become the loadstar of modern economic
science."[266] Karl Marx's "Manifesto" appeared in 1847; the first
volume of his "Capital" was published in 1867. Since the appearance of
the former sixty years, and since the publication of the latter forty
years, have passed by. Much has changed in the world, but the Marxian
doctrines have remained unchanged.

The worst about speculative doctrines is that time is apt to disprove
them.

Whilst the German Socialists have thinkers in their ranks who have
adapted the older Communist theories to present conditions, leaving
out those theories which are palpably false, English Socialists have
stood still and are satisfied to repeat those ancient doctrines which
the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose
upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of
the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still