But experience has shown that the economic interests of the individuals in a community are only partly very rarely are they wholly, in harmony. There are three species of competition in every market: that between sellers, that between buyers, and that between sellers on the one hand and buyers on the other.[12] If at any point free competition is hindered, even the disciple of economic harmony must, from the very nature of his doctrine, expect a discordant result. In reality competition is rarely quite complete on both sides, and when it is not the weak usually suffer. Men do not start with fair opportunities. All that they may be entitled to have under competition may be so little that social sympathy seeks to better the results; hence poor relief, public and private. Society as a whole has an interest in the outcome of the individual's economic struggle. It cannot see men starving or driven into crime. Moreover, when competition is the rule of valuation, it, like all valuations, partakes of the quality of those choosing—wise or foolish, good or evil.[13] And tho competition is the rule of democracy in economics, yet democracy cannot permit the economic vote of a vicious or of a foolish group to stand, where the goods, services, and prices resulting offend the prevailing public judgment and social conscience.
§ 10. #Competition modified by charitable distribution.# In practice the competitive method of distribution always has been modified or supplemented in varying degrees by the other methods. Important among these is charitable distribution. Charitable is here used in its original sense, as synonymous with benevolence and affection. First is parental love, the root and type of all the forms of charity. There is a complete lack of economic equivalence in the relation of parent and child in early years. The helpless infant does nothing for the parent, the parent gives all and does all for the child. Gradually, however, the balance is regained; as the years go on, not only do children repay in affection but in many cases they repay in material ways. Especially in the factory districts and on the farm the child sooner or later begins to reestablish the balance, becomes a worker, and contributes to the family income as much as the cost of his support, and finally more. A student of modern English town life has traced the curve of poverty traversed by the average poor family as the children are first an economic burden, and later an aid to their parents. In the middle, or propertied, classes the children do not for many years cease to be a financial burden to their parents, and in most eases the economic balance is never reestablished. It is not to the parents, but to the succeeding generation, that the debt is tardily paid.
Friendship widens the range of generosity and multiplies the mass of gifts. Broad sentiments of humanity lead to gifts outside the range of personal affection and personal interest, to the beggar on the street, to institutions devoted to charity. In New York state alone a sum of more than $20,000,000 a year is expended by institutional charities. About $512,000,000 in public benefactions were given in the United States by private donors in the year 1915, and in this respect that year was not exceptional. An enormous and increasing body of property is thus being year by year socialized, largely through bequests from persons without direct heirs. Great public subscriptions to the sufferers from great disasters, such as the Irish and the Indian famines, the Chicago fire, the Galveston flood, the San Francisco earthquake, the great European war, bespeak a widening generosity. Religion impels to the building of churches, to the support of priests, missions, and manifold religious undertakings. Charity in this connection is the expression of a sentiment that varies from the most intense personal, affection to the broadest and most general humanitarian sentiment.
§ 11. #Competition modified by authoritative distribution.# Authority is, after force, the oldest and was the earliest widely operative method of distribution. It shades into force, status, and charity in manifold ways, but it is essentially the assignment of a common, or social, income to individuals by some person or persons chosen, or accepted, by the society to perform this function. Thus it may be distinguished from force, which takes for itself what belongs to another; and from charity, which gives to another what belongs to one's self; and from status, which transmits claims to income from one generation to another by a fixed impersonal rule, not by a personal judgment in the particular case.
Authoritative distribution is the dominant method in patriarchal tribes, in communal societies, and in monastic and other religious orders. Each person works at what he is commanded to do, and some one in authority (patriarch, head of the community, father of the monastic order) portions out the tasks and the rewards. In the family this rule largely prevails, and even after the children have come to years of discretion they not infrequently accept, from habit or affection, the will of the parents, and give up their entire wages to receive back a portion. The method of charitable distribution while the child is young gradually changes to authoritative distribution after the child becomes a worker. The untrained and indocile youth, however, is made the subject of compulsory distribution.
The collection and distribution of taxes is by public authority. No attempt is made to give back an exact equivalent to each taxpayer. The money is taken and spent by authority. The new forms, or at least the new extensions, of taxation, especially of incomes and inheritances at progressive rates, are very important examples of authoritative distribution.[14] The courts sometimes find themselves obliged to apply the method of authoritative distribution, altho they do it unwillingly. They try to confine their efforts to interpreting the contracts men have voluntarily entered into, and they avoid, so far as possible, the making of contracts or the fixing of rates. Authoritative distribution is exemplified in the work of many commissions appointed by law to fix rates or settle disputes, such as boards of conciliation and arbitration and railway commissions.
§ 12. #Meanings of socialism.# Our reason for leaving to the last the discussion of authority as a method of distribution is not that it appeared last in historical development, but that it now is the most strongly advocated as an alternative of competition. One of the most striking developments of opinion in the nineteenth century was that favoring an increasing use of authority in distribution. This was meant not merely to supplement and modify competition, but to displace it completely, or (in the more moderate program) in large part. This opinion, or plan, has appeared under a variety of names, the main ones being communism, collectivism, social-democracy, and socialism, of which the last name has just now the greatest vogue. Socialism is a word of manifold meanings no one of which is generally accepted. Discussion is therefore often a Babel of tongues.
Socialism designates (1) a social[15] philosophy (2) a mode of social action, (3) a particular political party. There is thus philosophic, active, and partisan socialism. Each of these may be taken either in an absolute or in a more or less relative sense. The first meaning is the most fundamental, the second less so, and the last the least fundamental, but just now the most frequently used.
§ 13. #Philosophic socialism.# As a philosophy socialism is related to social just as individualism is related to individual. Socialism is faith in the group motive and group action rather than in self-interest and competitive action. Instead of social philosophy we may say social faith, or social ideals. This faith may be absolute, or radical, to the rejection of all economic competition; or it may be moderate, and leave more or less place for self-interest and competition. Every man of conscience and of ideals has moods that are socialistic (in this sense) and dreams of a world without toil, competition, or poverty.
This social philosophy has taken form as "Christian Socialism" among men of strong religious natures, in various religious denominations. Great secular dreamers—Plato in his "Republic," Sir Thomas More, in his "Utopia," Edward Bellamy, in "Looking Backward," William Morris, in "News from Nowhere," and others—have painted beautiful pictures of ideal economic states from which all of the great evils and problems of our society have been banished.