st but a
temporary improvement of their condition, while only a small,
privileged, 'protected' minority was permanently benefited, what will
it be when this dazzling period is brought finally to a close; when
the present dreary stagnation shall not only become intensified, but
this, its intensified condition, shall become the permanent and normal
state of English trade?

"The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly
the English working-class have, to a certain extent, shared in the
benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally
parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but
even the great mass had, at least, a temporary share now and then. And
that is the reason why, since the dying-out of Owenism, there has been
no Socialism in England. With the breakdown of that monopoly, the
English working-class will lose that privileged position; it will find
itself generally--the privileged and leading minority not excepted--on
a level with its fellow-workers abroad. And that is the reason why
there will be Socialism again in England."

To this statement of the case, as that case appeared to me in 1885, I
have but little to add. Needless to say that to-day there is indeed
"Socialism again in England," and plenty of it--Socialism of all shades:
Socialism conscious and unconscious, Socialism prosaic and poetic,
Socialism of the working-class and of the middle-class, for, verily, that
abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable,
but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room
_causeuses_. That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot
of "society," middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the
contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that
public opinion. At the same time, we have no reason to grumble at the
symptom itself.

What I consider far more important than this momentary fashion among
bourgeois circles of affecting a mild dilution of Socialism, and even
more than the actual progress Socialism has made in England generally,
that is the revival of the East End of London. That immense haunt of
misery is no longer the stagnant pool it was six years ago. It has
shaken off its torpid despair, has returned to life, and has become the
home of what is called the "New Unionism;" that is to say, of the
organisation