The Ethics of Socialism is the nominal title of the brief 1910 bibliography provided by Harvard social ethics instructor Ray Madding McConnell and transcribed below along with links to digital copies of the items found at archive.org and hathitrust.org. A more accurate title would be “Socialism and Family/Christian Ethical Doctrine”. Dr. McConnell died the year after this bibliography was published, so I have added a dash of biographical material since it is rather unlikely that Economics in the Rear-View Mirror will encounter him again.
In 1910 Harvard published a total of 43 of short bibliographies in the collection “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”, about half of which were dedicated to particular topics in economics and economic sociology. The project was coordinated by Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Francis G. Peabody.
Previously posted bibliographies from Peabody’s “Social Ethics and Allied Subjects”:
Economic Theory by Professor Frank Taussig
Taxation by Professor Charles J. Bullock
Trade Unionism by Professor William Z. Ripley
Social Insurance by Dr. Robert Franz Foerster
Economics of Socialism by Professor Thomas Nixon Carver
Strikes and Boycotts by Professor William Z. Ripley
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From the Prefatory Note:
The present list represents an attempt to make this connection between the teaching of the University and a need of the modern world. Each compiler has had in mind, not a superficial reader, nor yet a learned scholar, but an intelligent and serious-minded student, who is willing to read substantial literature if it be commended to him as worth his while and is neither too voluminous nor too inaccessible. To such an inquirer each editor makes suggestions concerning the contents, spirit or doctrine of a book, not attempting a complete description or a final judgment, but as though answering the preliminary question of a student, “What kind of book is this?” The plan thus depends for its usefulness on the competency of the editors concerned, and each editor assumes responsibility for the section to which his name is prefixed.
Source: Prefatory Note by Francis G. Peabody. A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects, Lists of Books and Articles Selected and Described for the Use of General Readers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1910, p. vi.
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The Short Life of Dr. Ray Madding McConnell (1875-1911)
Born: September 14, 1875. Union City, Tennessee.
Died: June 23, 1911. Cause of Death, Pneumonia—Septic, Tonsillitis. Contributory: Acute Rheumatic Fever. Somerville, Massachusetts. He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ph.D. in Philosophy, 1908
Ray Madding McConnell, A.B. (Southern Univ.) 1899, S.T.B. (Vanderbilt Univ.) 1901, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1902.
Subject, Philosophy. Special Field, Ethics. Thesis, “The Ground of Moral Obligation.” Assistant in Social Ethics.
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard University 1907-1908, p. 140.
Books
Ray Madding McConnell. The Duty of Altruism. New York: Macmillan, 1910.
________________. Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912.
Obituary
Dr. RAY MADDING McCONNELL
Harvard Instructor in Social Ethics Had Made Long Study of Important Problems
Dr. Ray Madding McConnell long active in educational work, died early this morning at a private hospital in Cambridge [sic, the hospital was in Somerville]. Dr. McConnell who was a graduate of Harvard, class of 1802, was born in Tennessee in 1875, and had been since his college days a great student of sociological problems and recently instructor in social ethics at Harvard.
Dr. McConnell received numerous honorary degrees, including his A.B. from Southern University In Alabama, in 1899, his S.T.B. from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in 1901, his A.M. from Harvard in 1901, and from that university his Ph. D. in 1908. He was a writer on the subject to which he had given so many years of earnest study and research, and last year his book on “The Duty of Altruism” was brought out and he had at this time another book in preparation, “Philosophy of Crime.” He had contributed frequently to the International Journal of Ethics, and at Harvard he had given courses of lectures on “Moral Obligations of the Modern State.”
Dr. McConnell was married, in 1807, to Miss Phoebe Estes Bedlow of Ithaca, N. Y. by whom he is survived, as well as by a young son, Frank McConnell.
Source: Boston Evening Transcript, 24 June 1911, page 14.
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IV.6. THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM
RAY M. McCONNELL
I. SOCIALISM AND THE FAMILY
A. The Socialist Attitude
Upon questions of marriage and the family, individual socialists, like other people, have diverse opinions. It would of course be folly to try to saddle all socialism with the utterances of one or even of many socialists. The following references must be understood, therefore, not as indicative of the necessary attitude of socialists, but only as indicative of the proposals of those writers who do advocate socialization of the family.
Perhaps the most important book on this subject. It is an exceedingly good exposition of socialism, both in the economic order and in the family. “The gratification of the sexual impulse is as strictly the personal affair of the individual as the gratification of every other natural instinct. No one has to give an account of him or her self, and no third person has the slightest right of intervention. Intelligence, culture and independence will direct and facilitate a right choice. Should in compatibility, disappointment and dislike ensue, morality demands the dissolution of a tie that has become unnatural and therefore immoral…. The state of society will have removed the many drawbacks and disturbing elements which influence the married life of to-day and so often prevent it from reaching its full development.”
A most radical and thoroughgoing advocacy of liberty in the sexual relations and of the independence of woman. “The free common-sense conception of marriage, and with it also of divorce, is everywhere still suppressed by the theological conception of the relationship between man and woman. According to the theological conception, marriage is in itself a hallowed relationship, and this abstract relation in itself, not the real happiness and interest of those who constitute it, is the chief object. Marriage is to be upheld even if the married persons perish in it. Adherents of the official and theological morality will feel in duty bound to grow indignant over the claim that in reality there is no such thing as adultery.”
A plea, beautiful in tone, for freedom in sex-relations. “The narrow physical passion of jealousy, the petty sense of private property in another person, social opinion, and legal enactments, have all converged to choke and suffocate wedded love in egoism, lust and meanness. The perfect union must have perfect freedom for its condition. Marriage must not be hampered by legal, conventional or economic considerations. Odious is the present law which binds people together for life, without scruple, and in the most artificial and ill-assorted unions. When mankind has solved the industrial problem so far that the products of our huge mechanical forces have become a common heritage, and no man or woman is the property slave of another, human unions will take place according to their own inner and true laws. The family will expand into the fraternity and communism of all society, losing its definition of outline, and merging with the larger social groups in which it is embedded.”
Contains a good chapter on “Would socialism destroy the home ?” Shows the thorough failure of the present order to maintain home and social purity and to rear children. Advises strict state regulation of marriage. “Children must not be casually born; their parents must be known and worthy, that is to say, there must be deliberation in begetting children, marriage under conditions.”
Contains a good chapter on “Women in a modern utopia.” “For the marriage contract the socialist state will define in the completest fashion what things a man or woman may be bound to do, and what they cannot be bound to do. Marriage is the union of a man and woman in a manner so intimate as to in volve the probability of offspring, and it is of primary importance to the state, first in order to secure good births, and secondly good home conditions, that these unions should not be free, nor promiscuous, nor practically universal throughout the adult population.”
The subject is well discussed in the two chapters, “The woman’s question” and “Socialism and sex.” “Such, then, seems to me the socialistic solution of the sex-problem: complete freedom in the sex-relationship left to the judgment and taste of an economically equal, physically trained and intellectually developed race of men and women; state interference if necessary in the matter of child-bearing, in order to preserve intersexual independence on the one hand, and the limit of efficient population on the other.”
Finds in the economic dependence of woman the cause of most of the evils of society. Sexuo-economic specialization has made of woman a slave, and this has reacted on man for ill. With the attainment of full economic independence by woman will come her freedom from domestic servility in its various forms.
“Many people take refuge in deliciously vague declamation on the nobility, on the loftiness, of the ideal which handcuffs one man and one woman together for life. We cannot see exactly where the nobility and the loftiness come in. The mere commonplace man, if left to himself, would probably think that it rested entirely upon circumstances, upon character, temperament, etc., whether the perpetual union of two persons was desirable. Socialism will strike at the root at once of compulsory monogamy and of prostitution by inaugurating an era of marriage based on free choice and intention, and characterized by the absence of external coercion. Monogamic marriage and prostitution are both based essentially on commercial considerations. The one is purchase, the other hire. The only really moral form of the marriage relation is based neither on sale nor hire.”
Contains several able chapters on the woman question, very interesting on account of their strong denunciation of the common socialist espousal of the “Woman’s Rights” cause. Maintains that in nearly all matters there is a strong sex-prejudice against the man because he is man and in favor of the woman because she is woman. Woman is steeped in sex prerogative. Socialism demands relative economic and social equality between the sexes, but not female privilege and female domination, — the real demands of the clamorers for “Woman’s Rights.” After the class-struggle has passed away, the sex question will probably become more burning, and will be the first question that the socialist state will have to solve. “If social democrats allow themselves to be caught by the feminist fallacy, they are only injuring their own cause.”
B. Adverse Criticisms of the Socialist Attitude
The following books contain good chapters setting forth and criticising adversely socialists’ teachings concerning the family.
II. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION
A. Books maintaining that Socialism and Religion are essentially Hostile to Each Other
A careful comparison of the principles and promises of socialism with the teachings of Scripture and the principles of Christianity. The author always sticks closely to his subject and accomplishes the thorough contrast which he set out to make. He maintains that in many essential matters socialism is diametrically opposed to the principles of Christianity.
Contains a chapter showing the hostility of socialism towards Christianity.
Contains a chapter giving quotations from many socialists to show their opposition to, and contempt for, religion and the church.
Devotes a long and very able chapter to a consideration of socialism and religion. Gives a thorough exposition of the attitude of the socialist leaders towards religion, and maintains that socialism and Christianity are natural opponents.
An able attack on socialism by a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. Discusses the character and aims of socialism, advocates social reform but not socialism, and portrays the Catholic movement in behalf of social reform.
“The Catholic Church sees that socialism strikes at the roots of man’s moral freedom; that it dechristianizes the working man; that it would confiscate her churches and secularize her schools; that it would destroy the Christian family and substitute a materialistic philosophy for her doctrine of the supernatural.”
Maintains that atheism is not a mere personal opinion of some socialists, but the bed rock of socialist philosophy. The author has made a thorough canvass of socialist literature, and has brought together the socialist utterances that bear on religion. He maintains that atheistic forces take political form in socialism, and necessitate a closer association of those organizations which stand for the propagation and enforcement of religious law.
“Modern Protestantism is woefully ignorant of its most formidable rival. The Catholic Church has been painfully awakened in France, Belgium and Italy. Protestantism awaits its awakening.”
B. Christian Socialism
A splendid discussion of Christian socialism in France, England and Germany. It desires to show that an intimate connection exists between socialism in the best sense of the word and Christian philanthropy. While maintaining that there is genuine kinship between Christianity and socialism, the author acknowledges certain lines of demarcation and devotes an interesting chapter to a consideration of “Unchristian Socialism.”
Gives a very interesting sketch of the early Christian socialist movement, in especial connection with the life of Kingsley, and shows the great influence of that theologian upon later developments of church life and thought.
Traces the historical development of Christian socialism from its origin under Maurice and Kingsley to its present form in the Christian Social Union and shows the connection between the two. Contains a good bibliography of Christian socialism from earliest times to 1900.
A very learned statement of the theories of the Catholic socialists of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, England, Spain, Italy and America. It shows how “Catholic socialism, while unlike the other systems of socialism it seeks to reform society in the name of God, does not on that account seek to modify it any the less profoundly.” The discussion is sympathetic yet impartial.
The author believes that the socialist movement represents a return to the primitive Christian evangel, freed from its limitations and illusions, and is destined to rescue the true Christianity from ecclesiasticism in its various forms. The main purpose of the book is to show that the practical aims which primitive Christianity set out to realize are nearly identical with those of modern socialism.
Aims to bring Christianity and socialism “into more intelligible and more friendly relations.”
An able and interesting argument, based on Christianity, for nearly all the ends desired by the socialist.
Sets out to answer (1) what is socialism, (2) what are the causes of socialism, (3) what is the relation of Christianity to socialism, and (4) how can the great social and economic changes involved in socialism be gradually brought about by just and orderly methods.
A powerful combination of scriptural quotations and economic statistics.
Upwards of sixty pamphlets have been published. A good many of these are very valuable from the standpoint of Christian socialism. As among the best may be mentioned the following: [No. 26] “Christian Socialism,” by Frederick Denison Maurice; “The Church and Scientific Socialism,” by James T. Van Rensselaer; “The Christian Law,” by Brooke Foss Westcott; and [No. 30] “Christian Socialism and the Social Union,” by George Hodges.
Source: Teachers in Harvard University, A Guide to Reading in Social Ethics and Allied Subjects, Lists of Books and Articles Selected and Described for the Use of General Readers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1910, pp. 174-182.