“This desire is strongest in the most capable men—the men of genius. Therefore, under Socialism the principal incentive to great work will be the same as now—Honour and Praise. But, under the present system, Honour and Praise can be bought with money, and it does not matter much how the money was obtained.
“Under Socialism it will be different. The Cross of Honour and the Laurel Crown will not be bought and sold for filthy lucre. They will be the supreme rewards of Virtue and of Talent.”
“Anyone else like to be flattened out?” inquired Philpot.
“What would you do with them what spends all their money in drink?” asked Slyme.
“I might reasonably ask you, ‘What’s done with them or what you propose to do with them now?’ There are many men and women whose lives are so full of toil and sorrow and the misery caused by abject poverty, who are so shut out from all that makes life worth living, that the time they spend in the public house is the only ray of sunshine in their cheerless lives. Their mental and material poverty is so great that they are deprived of and incapable of understanding the intellectual and social pleasures of civilization... Under Socialism there will be no such class as this. Everyone will be educated, and social life and rational pleasure will be within the reach of all. Therefore we do not believe that there will be such a class. Any individuals who abandoned themselves to such a course would be avoided by their fellows; but if they became very degraded, we should still remember that they were our brother men and women, and we should regard them as suffering from a disease inherited from their uncivilized forefathers and try to cure them by placing them under some restraint: in an institute for instance.”
“Another good way to deal with ’em,” said Harlow, “would be to allow them double pay, so as they could drink themselves to death. We could do without the likes of them.”
“Call the next case,” said Philpot.
“This ’ere abundance that you’re always talking about,” said Crass, “you can’t be sure that it would be possible to produce all that. You’re only assoomin’ that it could be done.”
Barrington pointed to the still visible outlines of the “Hoblong” that Owen had drawn on the wall to illustrate a previous lecture.
“Even under the present silly system of restricted production, with the majority of the population engaged in useless, unproductive, unnecessary work, and large numbers never doing any work at all, there is enough produced to go all round after a fashion. More than enough, for in consequence of what they call ‘Over-Production’, the markets are periodically glutted with commodities of all kinds, and then for a time the factories are closed and production ceases. And yet we can all manage to exist—after a fashion. This proves that if productive industry were organized on the lines advocated by Socialists there could be produced such a prodigious quantity of everything, that everyone could live in plenty and comfort. The problem of how to produce sufficient for all to enjoy abundance is already solved: the problem that then remains is—How to get rid of those whose greed and callous indifference to the sufferings of others, prevents it being done.”