The Socialists are as far from proposing anything resembling a system of mechanical and absolute equality as they are from attacking personal or industrial liberty. Ninety-nine and one half per cent of the product of the men of the different social classes, says Edward Bellamy, "is due in every case to advantages afforded by modern civilization."[302] So that if one man is twice as capable as another, it merely raises the proportion of the product due to his personal efforts from one half of one per cent to one per cent. International Socialism realizes with Bellamy that the product is social in far greater proportion than is at present recognized, but it does not deny that there are cases in which the contribution of the individual is more important even than everything that can be attributed to his social advantages. It does not propose, therefore, to level incomes. It is true that this communist principle of Bellamy's has a wide practical application both in the Socialist scheme of things and in present-day society, as, for example, in free schools and parks, and in the "State Socialist" program. But the extension of such communism, the distribution of services to the general public without charge, is due to-day, not to any acceptance of the general principle, but to the fact that it is inconvenient or impossible to attempt to distribute the cost of many services among individuals in proportion as they take advantage of them.
Kautsky expresses the prevailing Socialist view when he says that the principle of equality, if distinguished from mere artificial leveling, will play a certain rôle in a Socialist society. Without any definite legislation in that direction the natural economic forces of such a society will tend to raise low wages, and at the same time, by the increase of competition for higher positions, to lower somewhat the highest salaries. For if Socialists are opposed to any kind of artificial equality or leveling, they are still more opposed to artificial inequality, and all the initial advantages that arise out of the possession of wealth or privileges in education will be done away with.[303]
On the supposition that Socialism proposes a communistic leveling of income, it has been stated very often by Socialists that it would be necessary to abolish wages, but there is no authority for this either from Karl Marx or from any of his most prominent successors. It is "wage slavery" or "the wage system" that is to be abolished. In his letter on the Gotha Program written in 1875 Marx said that there will be applied to wages "the principle which at present governs the exchange or merchandise to that degree in which identical values are being exchanged"; that is to say, supply and demand, when it operates freely, will give us a standard also in a Socialist system. There will be no starvation wages, no inflated salaries, no "rent" of educational advantages, no unearned income and no monopoly prices, but automatically adjustable prices and wages will continue. In 1896 Jules Guesde, perhaps the best known disciple of Marx in France, expressed nearly the same idea in the Chamber of Deputies—"The play of supply and demand," he said, "will have sufficed to determine without any arbitrary or violent act, that problem of distribution which had seemed insoluble to you before."
Here again we see that Socialism, in its aversion to all artificial systems and every restriction of personal liberty is far more akin to the individualism of Herbert Spencer than it is to the "State Socialism" of Plato. Socialists expect their children to be far wiser and more fortunate than themselves, and do not intend to attempt to decide anything for them that can well be left undecided. They intend only that these children shall have the freedom and power necessary to direct society as they think best. The few principles I have mentioned are perhaps the most important of those they believe to be the irreducible minimum needed to insure this result.
FOOTNOTES:
[292] H. G. Wells, "This Misery of Boots," pp. 29-32.
[293] Alfred Russell Wallace, "The Railways and the Nation," the Arena, January, 1907.
[294] Anton Menger, "L'État Socialiste" (Paris, 1904), p. 348.
[295] Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 121-123.
[296] Karl Kautsky, "The Social Revolution," pp. 165-167.