Under this system, every man, instead of working for all, is working only for himself, and he who has most acquisitiveness becomes master of those who have less, society being by this single quality divided into a series of classes or castes, at the top of which are a few millionaires, and at the bottom the large contingent that after a life of misery end their lives in the almshouse, the prison, or the lunatic asylum—a contingent that has been determined by carefully prepared statistics to constitute one-fifth of the entire population in the richest country in the world.[204]
Private property has played an essential rôle in the slow enfranchisement of the people. But just as the cocoon serves an essential purpose in protecting the worm during its slow development, but becomes a prison which the butterfly discards when it attains its final freedom, so private property may turn out to have already served its purpose if we can demonstrate ourselves so far developed as to be fit to cast it aside.
Let us recall what rôle private property plays in our human environment to-day:
It is the great stimulus which sets each one of us to work for himself, and by working for himself to accumulate wealth that contributes to the maintenance of all the rest. It furnishes (in theory) a method under which the man who works most effectually gets the highest reward.
Now, as it is essential in every community that every man should contribute to the maintenance of all, and as justice seems to demand that the workers should be rewarded according to results, it is claimed that private property solves the problem of production in a manner both effectual and just.
The competitive system, however, and the false notion of property to which the competitive system gives rise by setting every man to work for himself regardless of all the rest, prevents men from proceeding upon the far more economical plan of coöperation.
§ 3. The Effect of the Competitive System on Type
We have seen that under the law of evolution type tends to adapt itself to environment. It must so adapt itself or perish. There is no escape from this iron law. If the climate change from warm to cold, animals must put on blubber or fur; if the climate change from cold to hot, they must throw off blubber or fur. Those who adapt themselves to the change survive; those who do not adapt themselves die.
So also, if in a given community the individual can secure the necessaries of life only on the condition of outdoing his neighbor, it is those who most successfully outdo their neighbors who prevail; those who are outdone sink deeper and deeper into poverty and ultimately join the irreclaimable fifth.
The effect, then, of the competitive system on type is to stimulate the qualities that go to make up acquisitiveness; selfishness and all the necessary results of selfishness—avarice, greed, envy, injustice, hardness of heart.