Twentieth Century Socialism: What It Is Not; What It Is: How It May Come

by Edmond Kelly

Let us now turn from the civilized garden to the civilized community. Here, too, we find the cosmic process in some respects reversed; in other respects, allowed to run riot. It is reversed in the sense of the word that prudence created by the ownership of property limits the propagation of the educated; but it remains unreversed by the fact that despair created by absence of property leaves propagation unchecked in the uneducated. So that if it be admitted that it would be better for type that the educated should propagate than the uneducated, the human type is tending to degenerate owing to the fact that there is unlimited propagation of the least desirable types; whereas there is limited propagation of the more desirable.

When we turn to competition, we find it almost unrestrained. Indeed, it was the deliberate policy of the government and of political economists a century ago to let it proceed absolutely without restraint. Such was the doctrine of laissez faire and such is the doctrine which to-day is expressed by business men in the request to be "let alone." But the experience of the past one hundred years has demonstrated that humanity cannot afford to let competition go unrestrained; that it leads to such fatal consequences that all—even the most educated and carefully nurtured—are exposed to the contagion of disease engendered by unrestrained competition; witness the cholera scare and the hygienic laws to which this cholera scare gave rise.[222] Competition has been controlled in various manners: by laws such as factory acts, child labor acts, women labor acts; second, by trade unions which the community and the law have had to protect in order to keep workingmen from the danger of having to work for less than starvation wages; and last of all, by trusts, which discovered that competition involves a waste which, could it be saved, would roll up enormous dividends to stockholders. But trusts have occasioned evils against which to-day the whole nation is crying out. So that the cry now abroad is to control monopolies, trusts, and corporations; and if the efforts to control corporations have not already sufficiently demonstrated that such laws are bound to result in more blackmail than control, no reasonable man can doubt that they must in the end so result in view of the fact that the prizes offered by business attract first-class talent to business whereas the smaller prizes offered by politics or the government can only draw to it second-or third-rate ability.

I trust it has been shown that the confusion that results from the competitive system is due to false notions of property; that property as an institution is, and must always be, essential to the economic structure of the state in the sense that the original and beneficial purpose of property is to secure to men as nearly as possible the full product of their toil. This is the ideal distinctly expressed by Mr. Roosevelt, and is the ideal of every mind that has distinct notions about property at all.

Our social structure, therefore, should be so organized as to assure to men the full product of their toil by the adoption of some such system as has been described in the chapter on the Economic Construction of the Coöperative Commonwealth.

In such a social structure, competition would be limited so that we should reserve its stimulus and eliminate its sting, and propagation would be limited not only by prudence, but by the economic independence of women, who ought to have most to say on the subject. In such a social structure, we should for the first time have an environment that would discourage vice and encourage virtue. And here comes, as I have already said, the crowning glory of Socialism that reconciles religion, economics, and science.

For the Church teaches: "Man is born in sin; his passions are sinful; unaided by God he is their slave. If, however, he chooses to make the effort necessary to secure the aid of God, he can master his passions and earn salvation. But although the Grace of God will secure to him some happiness in this world, this world is a place of unhappiness and purgation; the reward of the faithful is not in this world, but in the world to come."

The Economist teaches: "Man is born in sin; his passions are sinful; in matters so practical as bread and butter we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by the promises of the Church, as to the fulfilment of which no evidence has ever been furnished. A practical system of economics then must be built on the undoubted fact that the 'average man' is 'sensual' and will always act in accordance with what he believes to be his material interest. It must be founded on human selfishness; let every man be driven by selfishness to make wealth primarily for himself and incidentally for the community at large. This is the only practical system for the accumulation of wealth."

Science says: "Man is born with passions, but are these passions sinful? They are sinful when uncontrolled, because they may then act injuriously to the neighbor. When controlled they act beneficially to the neighbor. The problem is not how to suppress passion, but how to control it. Man must indeed obey his greater inclination; but Man has the power to mould his own environment; to make his own habits; to make his own inclination; Man therefore is master—not slave. There is too in evolution a power which from the creation to this day has persistently worked toward progress, justice, and happiness; but we are still ignorant as to what this power is except in so far as we see it working in Man. In Man we can see and study the working of this power. And we find it in Man's capacity to mould his own environment by resisting Nature instead of yielding to it. And so science teaches to-day—not the gospel of evolution alone—but also the gospel of effort and Art."

In Nature we observe two systems of social existence: one competitive, one coöperative. Both are attended by evils; both by advantages. Man can frame his social and economic conditions so as to eliminate the evils and secure the advantages of both. This is Socialism.

Socialism leaves the church free to proceed along the lines of its faith; but it furnishes the church with the inestimable advantage of creating economic conditions that make the practice of religion for the first time possible. To-day economic conditions by ignoring the soul of Man and appealing only to his appetites make the practice of the Golden Rule impossible.