Communistic Socialism

Here is the next section of Roswell Hitchcock's Socialism. If anyone is actually reading this and enjoying it please let me know. Because I think the stuff is really dense and tough to wade through. Don't get me wrong I like it and I think it is good and important to read in this modern age. But if the popular notion is that it stinks then I will find something else. (if all two of my readers don't like it, HA!)

This antiquity of Communism, almost newly 

discovered, certainly never before seen in such 

a light as now, is evidently doing a great deal 

to strengthen the argument for it, even with 

people who have not been in the habit of car- 

ing much for historic precedents. Commun- 

ism, once treated with scorn as a raw and 

recent heresy, now claims for itself the honors 

of age. The ancient Dalmatians, according 

to Strabo (vii. 5, 5), divided their acres every 

seven years ; the Vaccaei in Spain, according 

to Diodorus Siculus (v. 34), every year. The 

♦Sir Henry Maine, first in his lectures at the Middle Tem- 

ple (1854-62), afterward in his " Ancient Law ** (1861), and 

" Village Communities " (1871); Maurer, in his "Einleitung 

zur Geschichte der Mark-Hof-Dorf-und Stadt Verfassung** 

(1854), and "Mark Verfassung" (1856) ; and Laveleye in his 

" De la Propriete et de ses Formes Primitives" (1874), trans- 

lated into English by Marriott (1878). 

ancient Germans, according both to Caesar 

(iff. G, iv. i), and to Tacitus (^Gerni, § 26), 

were Communists. So, also, in Russia, in 

India, in the island of Java, in Mexico, and 

in other countries, traces are found of the old 

joint tenure of land.* Christian people are 

reminded of the Agrarianism of the Mosaic 

legislation, the general basis of which was 

tribal, â–  with a provision for bringing back, 

every fiftieth year, every acre of the land, 

except what belted the Levitical cities, to 

some representative of its original proprietor. 

Still more account is made of the pentecostal 

Communism of the Apostolic Church. It is 

idle to deny it, as some have done. The 

Apostolic Communism, to be sure, was not 

obligatory and absolute, but voluntary, and 

might be partial ; still it was Communism. 

This argument from antiquity — heathen, 

Hebrew, Christian, is not to be brushed 

away by a breath. We must be able to show 

that the earliest and oldest things are only 

sometimes, not always, the best. Blos- 

soms are not better than fruit. The human 

race must have had an infancy ; not as I sup- 

pose of barbarism, but of crude capacity- 

awaiting development. Ideas and institutions 

of every kind — religious, moral, political, 

must have grown ; but especially political 

ideas and institutions, as pertaining more to 

what is outward, mutable, and transient. On 

no other ground can we defend the Patri- 

archal and Jewish economies. 

Communism, we may say then, is not ex-

actly barbarous, though frequently found 

amongst barbarians, but infantile. It was 

admirably suited to the Hebrews — a people 

of nomadic parentage, who were to be held 

back from commerce that they might be held 

back also from heathen contamination. And 

yet, for some reason or reasons, the Mosaic 

jubilee arrangement was so poorly observed, 

that Michaelis doubts whether it was ever 

observed at all. Ewald thinks that after hav- 

ing declined, the observance of it was revived 

by Josiah. On the whole, the Agrarian idea 

appears never to have been very fully realized. 

As for Christian Jerusalem, it was evidently 

an exceptional city in the Apostolic age. Men 

were gathered there out of all countries. 

Their new faith as Christians practically out- 

lawed them. They were poor — very poor ; 

distressed, a great many of them. Some 

were well off. It occurred to them to try the 

experiment of a partial Communism. Whether 

it was proposed, or only consented to, by the 

Apostles, does not appear. It is certainly 

not recommended in any Apostolic Epistle. 

Furthermore, the Jerusalem Church was al- 

ways poor, always an object of charity to 

other Churches ; and the Communistic experi- 

ment was not tried anywhere else. 

Later on, in the fourth century, the Mo- 

nastic Communism makes its appearance. It 

was a good thing for Europe in the perilous 

infancy of its institutions ; a good thing down 

even to the time of Charlemagne ” since then, 

a bad thing. 

*See Woolsey's "Political Science," § 25.