(8) Finally, Jonathan, I want to consider your objection that Socialism is impossible until human nature is changed. It is an old objection which crops up in every discussion of Socialism. People talk about "human nature" as though it were something fixed and definite; as if there were certain quantities of various qualities and instincts in every human being, and that these never changed from age to age. The primitive savage in many lands went out to seek a wife armed with a club. He hunted the woman of his choice as he would hunt a beast, capturing and clubbing her into submission. That was human nature, Jonathan. The modern man in civilized countries, when he goes seeking a wife, hunts the woman of his choice with flattery, bon-bons, flowers, opera tickets and honeyed words. Instead of a brute clubbing a woman almost to death, we see the pleading lover, cautiously and earnestly wooing his bride. And that, too, is human nature. The African savages suffering from the dread "Sleeping Sickness" and the poor Indian ryots suffering from Bubonic Plague see their fellows dying by thousands and think angry gods are punishing them. All they can hope to do is to appease the gods by gifts or by mutilating their own poor bodies. That is human nature, my friend. But a great scientist like Dr. Koch, of Berlin, goes into the African centres of pestilence and death, seeks the germ of the disease, drains swamps, purifies water, isolates the infected cases and proves himself more powerful than the poor natives' gods. And that is human nature. Outside the gates of the Chicago stockyards, I have seen crowds of men fighting for work as hungry dogs fight over a bone. That was human nature. I have seen a man run down in the streets and at once there was a crowd ready to lift him up and to do anything for him that they could. It was the very opposite spirit to that shown by the brutish, snarling, cursing, fighting men at the stockyards, but it was just as much human nature.
The great law of human development, that which expresses itself in what is so vaguely termed human nature, is that man is a creature of his environment, that self-preservation is a fundamental instinct in human beings. Socialism is not an idealistic attempt to substitute some other law of life for that of self-preservation. On the contrary, it rests entirely upon that instinct of self-preservation. Here are two classes opposed to each other in modern society. One class is small but exceedingly powerful, so that, despite its disadvantage in size, it is the ruling class, controlling the larger class and exploiting it. When we ask ourselves how that is possible, how it happens that the smaller class rules the larger, we soon find that the members of the smaller class have become conscious of their interests and the fact that these can be best promoted through organization and association. Thus conscious of their class interests, and acting together by a class instinct, they have been able to rule the world. But the workers, the class that is much stronger numerically, have been slower to recognize their class interests. Inevitably, however, they are developing a similar class sense, or instinct. Uniting in the economic struggle at first, and then, in the political struggle in order that they may further their economic interests through the channels of government, it is easy to see that only one outcome of the struggle is possible. By sheer force of numbers, the workers must win, Jonathan.
The Socialist movement, then, is not something foreign to human nature, but it is an inevitable part of the development of human society. The fundamental instinct of the human species makes the Socialist movement inevitable and irresistible. Socialism does not require a change in human nature, but human nature does require a change in society. And that change is Socialism. It is perhaps the deepest and profoundest instinct in human beings that they are forever striving to secure the largest possible material comfort, forever striving to secure more of good in return for less of ill. And in that lies the great hope of the future, Jonathan. The great Demos is learning that poverty is unnecessary, that there is plenty for all; that none need suffer want; that it is possible to suffer less and to live more; to have more of good while suffering less of ill. The face of Demos is turned toward the future, toward the dawning of Socialism.
XI[ToC]
WHAT TO DO
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute.
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it!
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Only engage and then the mind grows heated;
Begin, and then the work will be completed.—Goethe.
Apart from those convulsive upheavals that escape all forecast and are sometimes the final supreme resource of history brought to bay, there is only one sovereign method for Socialism—the conquest of a legal majority.—Jean Jaurès.