Either from the standpoint of natural rights or from that of utilitarianism it is proper, according to this school, that all the increasing wealth of society, now and in all future time, should go to the few. For, on the one view, it belongs to the few since they have produced it; and, on the other, it must be given them if society is to have their services. It is possible they may not claim it all for their exclusive possession. They may be pleased to distribute some of it in gifts. But this is for them to say. The logical method for carrying out this programme would require an absolute abandonment by the people as a whole, or by their representatives, or the courts, of any attempt to control economic conditions. The courts would be limited to enforcing contracts and would cease to recognize considerations of public interest except in so far as these were accepted by the able minority. All such legislation as imposes any check upon the freedom of the individual is mischievous. Under this head would presumably come regulation of child labor, of hours, of sanitary conditions, of charges by railroads, gas companies, and other public service corporations. Graded income or inheritance taxes are also to be condemned from this standpoint. It should in fairness be added that while its upholders do not allege as their main argument that individualism is for the interest of the many, they hold, nevertheless, that the many are really better off under individualism than under socialism. For since all the increase in wealth is due to the able few whom individualism produces, and since some of this increase, in cases where the few compete for the custom or labor of the many, may fall to the share of the many or else be given them outright by the more generous, it appears that the only hope for the many lies through the few.
The general naturalistic theory has been discussed in Chapter XVIII. Here it is only necessary to point out that it is a misreading of evolution to suppose unregulated competition to be its highest category of progress, and that it is a misinterpretation of ethics to assume that might is right. With the dawn of higher forms of life, coöperation and sympathy prove stronger forces for progress than ruthless competition. The "struggle" for any existence that has a claim to moral recognition must be a struggle for more than physical existence or survival of force. It must be a struggle for a moral existence, an existence of rational and social beings on terms of mutual sympathy and service as well as of full individuality. Any claim for an economic process, if it is to be a moral claim, must make its appeal on moral grounds and to moral beings. If it recognizes only a few as having worth, then it can appeal only to these. These few have no moral right to complain if the many, whom they do not recognize, refuse to recognize them.
Summary of the Ethics of Individualism.—Individualism provides well for production of quantity and kinds required of goods and services; for activity and formal freedom. Under present conditions of organization and modern methods it cannot be made to serve a democratic conception of justice, but inevitably passes over into a struggle for preëminence, in which the strong and less scrupulous will have the advantage. It can be treated as just only if justice is defined as what is according to contract (formal freedom); or if the welfare of certain classes or individual members of society is regarded as of subordinate importance; or, finally, if it is held that this welfare is to be obtained only incidentally, as gift, not directly through social action. The criticism on individualism is then that under a collective system like that of the present, it does scant justice to most individuals. It leaves the many out from all active participation in progress or morality.[239]
LITERATURE
Individualism and Socialism are discussed in the works of Hadley, Veblen, Hobson, Spencer, Marx, George, already cited; cf. also Menger, The Right to the Whole Produce of Labor, 1899; Ely, Socialism and Social Reform, 1894; Bosanquet, Individualism and Socialism, in The Civilization of Christendom, 1893; Fite, The Theory of Democracy, International Journal of Ethics, xxviii. (1907), pp. 1-18; Huxley, Administrative Nihilism, in Essays; Godwin's Political Justice, 1793, raised many of the fundamental questions. Recent representative Individualistic works are: Spencer, Social Statics, The Man versus the State, various essays in Vol. III. of Essays; Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, 1883; Donisthorpe, Individualism, 1889; Harris, Inequality and Progress, 1897; Mallock, Socialism, 1907. On Socialism: Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by Shaw, London, 1890, New York, 1891; Spargo, Socialism, 1906; Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Eng. tr.; Reeve, The Cost of Competition, 1906; Rae, Contemporary Socialism, 1891; Hunter, Socialists at Work, 1908; Wells, New Worlds for Old, 1907.
FOOTNOTES:
[234] See above, pp. 428 f., 471-6, 483.
[235] In his later years Mill had much more confidence in the value of social agency.
[236] See above, p. 437 f.
[237] See above, pp. 368 ff.