Social Environment and Moral Progress

by Alfred Russel Wallace

existence, the remedy for which is equally universal co-operation.

(2) It may be also defined as a system of economic antagonism, as of enemies, the remedy being a system of economic brotherhood, as of a great family, or of friends.

(3) Our system is also one of monopoly by a few of all the means of existence: the land, without access to which no life is possible; and capital, or the results of stored-up labour, which is now in the possession of a limited number of capitalists and therefore is also a monopoly. The remedy is freedom of access to land and capital for all.

(4) Also, it may be defined as social injustice, inasmuch as the few in each generation are allowed to inherit the stored-up wealth of all preceding generations, while the many inherit nothing. The remedy is to adopt the principle of equality of opportunity for all, or of universal inheritance by the State in trust for the whole Community.

These four statements of the existing causes of all our social evils cannot, I believe, be controverted, and the remedies for them may be condensed into one

general proposition: that it is the first duty (in importance) of a civilised Government to organise the labour of the whole community for the equal good of all; but it is also their first duty (in time) to take immediate steps to abolish death by starvation and by preventable disease due to insanitary dwellings and dangerous employments, while carefully elaborating the permanent remedy for want in the midst of wealth.

I myself have pointed out how these two ends may be best achieved, and hope to elaborate them. In the meantime, I call attention to Mr. Standish O'Grady's letter "To the Leaders of Labour" in The New Age of November 21st, 1912, in which, after referring to the very natural dread by the rich of any such radical reorganisation of Society, as leading to their own financial ruin (which it certainly need not do), he makes the following suggestive statement, with which I hope all my readers will agree:

"But what they fail to perceive is, that, in a world like this, made by infinite goodness and wisdom, Right is always the great stand-by for men and for Nations, and for the rich as well as for the poor; and that Wrong, sooner or later, ends in misery and destruction."

That is sound moral teaching. We have been doing the Wrong for the past century, and we have reaped, and are reaping, "misery and destruction." It is time that we changed our methods, which are all (as I think I have sufficiently pointed out) fundamentally Wrong, radically Unjust, wholly Immoral.

We have ourselves created an immoral or unmoral Social Environment. To undo its inevitable results we must reverse our course. We must see that all our economic legislation, all our social reforms, are in the very opposite direction to those hitherto adopted, and that they tend in the direction of one or other of the four fundamental remedies I have suggested. In this way only can we hope to change our existing immoral environment into a moral one, and initiate a new era of Moral Progress.