Socialism & the Family

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Socialism and the Family (from The Case Against Socialism: A Handbook for Speakers and Candidates By the London Municipal Society 1908)

That Socialism is to be accompanied by sweeping and drastic changes as regards the existence of the home, the rights and duties of parents, and the upbringing of children, in view of Socialist writings and utterances, can admit of no doubt.

Mr. H. M. Hyndman predicts under Socialism "the complete change in all family relations," which must issue in "a widely extended communism." [The Historical Basis of Socialism, p. 452]

Anything approaching to family life draws down the fiercest denunciations on the part of some of the Socialists. For example, Mr. Belfort Bax writes: "We defy any human being to point to a single reality, good or bad, in the composition of the bourgeois family. It has the merit of being the most perfect specimen of the complete sham that history has presented to the world." [The Religion of Socialism, p. 141]

"Let us take another 'fraud' of middle-class family life,'" continues Mr. Bax, "the 'family party.'"

All that partakes of family life is under Socialism to be summarily consigned to complete and immediate destruction.

"The transformation of the current family-form . . . must inevitably follow the economic revolution. . . . The bourgeois 'hearth' . . . will then be as dead as Roman Britain."

Reasons Accounting For The Socialist's Hatred Of Family Institutions

There can be little doubt that one of the principal reasons which serves to account for the Socialist hatred of family institutions is that, in their minds, family life partakes essentially of "monopoly." What right, argues the Socialist, has any small group of persons to seek their life and happiness apart from the rest of the community? What right has any man to usurp one woman? again asserts the Socialist. What right, further, have parents to regard their offspring as private property, or in any way as belonging to themselves and not to the State? Once again, what right has a family to home joys not shared in equally by the community at large?

One and all of these sentiments inherent to Socialism are begotten of malignant jealousy, and spring from that ultra-individualism which, as Dr. Schaffle has so frequently stated, is one of the fundamental characteristics of Socialism.

The Family Under Socialism

The family, to quote the opinion of one of the great leaders of International Socialism—M. Jules Guesde—was useful and indispensable in the past, but is now only an odious form of property. It must be either transformed or totally abolished. M. Guesde conjectures that the time may come when the family relationship will be reduced to the relation of the mother to her child "at the period of lactation, and that, moreover, the sexual relations between man and woman, founded on passion or mutual inclination, should be enabled to become as free, as changeable, and as diverse as the intellectual or moral relations between individuals of the same or different sexes." [See Le Cathlchisme Socialiste, by M. Jules Guesde, pp. 72-79, quoted n Prof. Lecky's Democracy and Liberty, Cabinet edition, vol. ii. p. 350.]

Mr. H.G. Wells, the well-known English Socialist, in an article on Socialism published in The Fortnightly Review for November 1906, thus summarises the position of the family under Socialism: "My concern now is to point out that Socialism repudiates the private ownership of the head of the family as completely as it repudiates any other sort of private ownership. . . . Socialism, in fact, is the State family."

To much the same effect write Mr. William Morris and Mr. Belfort Bax. They inform us that under Socialism "property in children would cease to exist. . . ." "Thus," state these two writers, "a new development of the family would take place. . . ." [Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, p. 299.]

Mr. O'Brien in the following passage directs attention to one of the fundamental differences which exists between Socialism and the present system: "According to Socialism, the family exists for the State. According to individualism, the State exists for the family." [Socialism Tested by Facts, p. 129.]

The consequences which flow from this essential difference between the two systems are many and far-reaching.

Under Socialism the individual is "to think, speak, train his children or even beget them, as the State directs or allows, in the interest of the common good." [Mr. Rae's Contemporary Socialism, 3rd edition, p. 16.]

That these two latter restrictions are to be imposed on the individual under Socialism, vitally though they interfere with individual liberty, will be sufficiently evident from what follows.

In place of the present home life, which has hitherto been regarded as one of the institutions on which the British have most cause to pride themselves, there is to be substituted under Socialism a universal system of Foundlings' Hospitals for the children, and not improbably a sort of barrack accommodation for the parents.

Mr. Robert Blatchford, for example, in his celebrated Merrie England, provides us with kaleidoscopic views of Socialist life spent in public dining-rooms, in public this and public that. "... We set up one great kitchen, one general dining-hall, and one pleasant tea-garden."

Such conditions Mr. Blatchford describes as "much more sociable and friendly."

Similarly Mrs. Annie Besant in Industry under Socialism furnishes us with a picture of "public meal-rooms," "large dwellings," which are to "replace old-fashioned cottages; " [Fabian Essays, p. 155.] in fact, to all the paraphernalia of the barracks, if not of the workhouse.

What is this but a sort of resurrected Socialist State of Peru, where "the people were required to dine and sup with open doors, that the judges might be able to enter freely." [See Mr. Herbert Spencer's article in The Contemporary Review for September 1881, vol. xl. p. 345. See further as to this the chapter on the" Socialist State," p. 161.]

This, then, according to the accounts of many Socialists, is to be the life of the adult population in the Socialist State. So far as the youth of the community are concerned, their upbringing from almost their very entry into life is to take place in the glorified Foundlings' Hospitals which Socialism is to establish throughout the country.

"The Socialist mothers," states the Socialist writer, Mrs. Snowden, in regard to the upbringing of children, "will take charge of the very early years." [The Woman Socialist, p. 88]

Other Socialist writers, as, for example, M. Guesde, would reduce the custody by the mothers of their children to a still shorter period from the date of birth.

Plato, in depicting his Socialistic State, speaks of the State taking every precaution to prevent any woman from recognising her own child.

From this, modern Socialist teaching appears to differ but little, if at all. Mr. William Morris and Mr. Belfort Bax, writing in conjunction, in Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome, assure us that under Socialism, "... property in children would cease to exist. . . ."

Socialism would, consequently, impose the support of the children upon the State in substitution for the liability of the parents. In so doing Socialism would, in fact, replace the existing obligation by a system infinitely less just than that which to-day prevails. No one, in a word, is to be called upon to maintain his own children, while from every one there is to be exacted the support of the children of the other members of the community.

One of the fundamental changes in connection with this branch of the present subject which Socialism would effect concerns the education of children.

In lieu of supplementing family education by State education, Socialism would bring about an entire substitution of the former by the latter. The Socialist regime "would not simply supplement family upbringing; it would of necessity weaken and ultimately supersede it." [The Impossibility of Social Democracy, by Dr. SchSffle, translated by Mr. Bosanquet, p. 153.] This would result, to quote again the words of Dr. Schaffle, in robbing "the overwhelming majority of the people, whose well-being it is designed to secure, of the highest and purest form of happiness, and of that very form which differences of outward circumstances down to the very lowest conditions almost entirely fail to touch. . . ."

Further, "it would tend either to make parents indifferent to the lot of their children, which would be prejudicial both to the child's happiness and to its good upbringing, or to set the parents constantly in arms against the organs of public education. . . ." In addition, "it would destroy the love of parents for their children, and of children to their parents, and by sapping all the springs of individuality would prevent all possibility of an individualising system of education on the part of the State."

Such a system would, in short, profoundly alter for the worse the characters of both children and parents alike.

Professor Woolsey in his valuable history treating of Communism [Communism and Socialism, p.71], specially calls attention to the fact that the history of the communistic societies goes to show that "family affections—one essential means by which man rises above the brute, and religion with all human improvements finds a home in the world—are nearly undeveloped."

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Capitalism and Calvinism

Calvinism and Capitalism, article in The Nation 1910

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CALVINISM IN THE BUSINESS WOULD.
The intimate relations between Protestantism and the spirit of modern business enterprise have been clearly recognized. The lead taken in the development of industry, commerce, and finance during the last three centuries by Holland and Great Britain, and by the Protestant sections of the population of Germany, Switzerland, and France, the peculiar aptitude for business emanating from the Independents, Baptists, Unitarians, Quakers, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, establish the strongest reason for supposing that Protestantism brought a new driving force into the world. The very title Protestant implies a certain grit and independence of character, favoring other than merely religious enterprise, and bringing into each schismatic church a large proportion of thoughtful, thriving families. For self-protection and the furtherance of their strongly-realized spiritual mission, these heretical minorities will naturally be drawn into unusually close co-operation for social and political purposes. When economic evolution has reached the stage in which "credit" is the soul of business, their personal confidence in one another will acquire a first-rate importance as a commercial asset. These are obvious factors making for the economic success of earnest, energetic minorities, quite independently of the particular spiritual creed which animates them. But there are certain forces of Protestantism which, emerging by peculiarly apt coincidence just when the appropriate economic system was ready for the operation, have been of paramount importance in the modern business world.

In two articles of profound and delicate analysis in the "Contemporary Review." Dr. Forsyth sets forth the distinctive part which the tenets and the regimen of Calvinism have played in energizing business life. At once ascetic in its ethical code, and rationalistic in its stress upon private judgment and personal responsibility in matters both of faith and of external activity, Calvinism moulded a personality closely adapted to the needs and opportunities of a business world which required tough, reliable, industrious, honest, self-assertive, enterprising men for its new methods. Calvinism certainly educated and supplied such men, the thrifty, self-contained entrepreneurs of the modern economic order. The Lutheran faith was too mild and too reposeful in its piety, too respectful to traditions. Calvinism was "the most anti-traditional and revolutionary of all the forces of Protestantism." In matters not only of faith and of church organization, but of political and civic government, it furnished organs and leaders of revolt and reformation everywhere, in Geneva, Scotland. England, America. The doctrine of election engendered a spirit of high personal confidence and of a dignity whose absolute submission to a Higher Power made its votaries restive to the claims of earthly potentates. The eternal value that it stamped on inner personality evoked all the moral individualism needed for the breakdown of feudal traditions in the arts of government and business, and for the most liberal experiments in both fields of enterprise.

But this spirit of democratic individualism, complete self-reliance, could not itself supply the conquering power. Calvinism was a democratic aristocracy. It was the co-operative confidence of a Company of Saints, with a spiritual destiny, aye, and even temporal rights, superior to those of the rest of mankind, that made Calvinism a ruling power. But the main propelling force lay in a stress upon works, the duty of realizing the will of God in personal and social conduct upon this earth. There seems no logical necessity why the doctrines of Predestination and Election should have generated practical energy. The Oriental kismet exhibits itself more in sterile passivity than in active fanaticism. One may suspect that what is called the temperament, the natural proclivity, was responsible for the practical development of Calvinistic fatalism. "If you are sure, in predestination, of your destiny and your eternity, you can exploit the world with immense freedom and confidence. It is the ethical part of your religious duty, of your response to elect grace. And you can do it in the natural way of personal gain, without succumbing to an inordinate affection for your gain. Fixed in your eternal seat, your limbs are loose and free for the occupations and possibilities around you." Such a Christian will rise early, work hard, keep sober, and stint himself so as to save and get a nest-egg; he will be keen to seize, and industrious to improve, a business opportunity; he will bargain ably and hardly, asserting all his "rights"; he will be known to keep his word; he will put most of his rising income into his business; a formidable, a fearless competitor, he will secure the survival of the fittest; where combination displaces competition, his fidelity and efficiency as a colleague will be equally serviceable and profitable. As a religious man. he will regard all his activities as "auxiliary to that lifework in which a man was called to glorify God." He will half-consciously realize the economic importance of maintaining the reality of this conviction of an unselfish and a higher purpose in his business life. So he will never recognize quite clearly the largeness of the alloy of materialism and mere profit-seeking which will often have displaced the spiritual aim.

There can be no doubt whatever that this hard, forceful creed, impelling its votaries to conquer this world for the sake of the other, and all the while deceiving themselves as to the relative strength and genuineness of the two appeals, has given spiritual nutriment to Capitalism. It has not merely formed the good business manager; it has inspired those great religious and political missionary movements which have, quite incidentally, as naive historians suppose, opened up new markets and developed great hidden natural resources in distant quarters of the earth. Calvinism still gives the stiffening to the modern doctrine of efficiency, by virtue of which the Anglo-Saxons claim authority over heathen and backward peoples to work their railways and mines and supply them with good government. Liberal Imperialism, resolved into its ethical and intellectual premises, is little else than pure Calvinism, with Kipling and Roosevelt for its priests and prophets.

The economic services have been great and incontestable. Capitalism could hardly have run its course without this inner light and leading. We may, perhaps, be disposed to dispute the question how far the initiative belongs to Calvinism. There are those who will contend that the causative energy proceeded from Capitalism, and that the demand for the thrifty and energetic entrepreneur determined and moulded the creed and doctrines of Calvinism, rather than the converse. Probably the two processes were interactive, Calvinism and Capitalism evoking one another by a spiritual affinity, and so forming the natural partnership which has occurred.

Not the least interesting portion of Dr. Forsyth's essay consists in his recognition that the partnership has done its work. It has, indeed, outlasted its proper time, yielding to certain corruptions of worldliness. "Capitalism announces its own end in becoming de-ethicized in a plutocracy." It were strange indeed had this not been so. For the fundamental notion of a business exploitation of the world, not merely for the production, but for the accumulation of wealth in the possession of an exploiting class, which at the same time should preserve ascetic habits, is self-contradictory. An ethic which made against luxury, while it accumulated wealth, proved self-destructive. A life of charity or philanthropy seemed to offer an escape from the dilemma, but this escape is shown ever more clearly to be illusory.

All this Dr. Forsyth appears to recognize. He sees in the new claims of labor to displace capital as the central factor in the economic system, and the searching after a more equitable system of distribution, the opening of a new economic era. If Christianity is to do for this what Calvinism did for the capitalistic era, the creed and policy must be accommodated to the new situation. The old exclusiveness must disappear from "election," which must expand so as to include all men. Moral personality must remain its absorbing practical concern, but the conception of an inner society of "the elect," or even of "a favored people," must give way to the wider conception of "a world of moral personality."

So Dr. Forsyth leads us to the verge of a great issue, perhaps of a rich land of promise. He is clear that some large expansion of religious doctrine is required to enable the Church to furnish a soul to the new social organization. He is convinced that "the Church will stand or fall by its success or failure with the social question." Liberal thinkers in all the churches stand shivering on this brink. Perhaps they half recognize that the very economic structure of the churches themselves with their professional clergy and their finance, largely the peculiar product of the passing age of capitalism, may have to undergo a transformation before a really effective, impassioned creed of labor can arise to offer light and inspiration to a new social order.

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Economics as the Queen of all Sciences

Economics is the Queen of all Sciences By Henry Dunning Macleod 1896

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Economics as a Liberal Science.

Some idiot nick-named Economics the "dismal science." It would be impossible to conceive a more complete misnomer. Economics is the Queen of all sciences, it is in itself a complete liberal education.

To comprehend Economics it is indispensable to have:

1. An adequate knowledge of Latin and Greek, so as to read the classical writers in the original: because they abound in notices of Economical questions, and they contain most of the fundamental concepts of Economics.

2. But a mere knowledge of classical Latin and Greek is not sufficient, it is necessary to have a knowledge of Juridical Latin and Greek, because in the Pandects of Justinian and the Basilica, which are the sources of our Mercantile Law, there is a class of words which, in classical Latin and Greek, mean material commodities, but in Juridical Latin and Greek, and in modern Mercantile Law, mean only abstract Rights and Duties.

3. A general knowledge of the Law of Property, because Economics deals with property of every description.

4. But modern Commerce is carried on almost exclusively by Credit, consequently it is necessary to have a thorough knowledge of the Juridical principles of Credit, the most abstruse and profound branch of Mercantile Law.

5. A thorough knowledge of the principles and mechanism of Commerce, both agricultural and mercantile.

6. A thorough knowledge of the principles of Natural Philosophy and modern Algebra, and the capacity of seeing how they are to be applied to the phenomena of Economics.

7. A knowledge of the history of all nations, because it supplies the materials for Economics.

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There are numberless Mercantile Lawyers who are perfectly well versed in special points of Mercantile Law, but very few have any knowledge of the actual mechanism of Commerce.

There are multitudes of Bankers who have a perfect knowledge of practical business, but who were never trained in the abstruse principles of Mercantile Law on which their business is based.

Some Mathematicians have attempted to apply mathematics to Economics; but as they never had the slightest knowledge of Mercantile Law nor of practical business, their attempts are mere midsummer madness.

And those who have undertaken to write general treatises on Economics never had the slightest knowledge of Mercantile Law, nor of practical business, nor had the faintest knowledge of the fundamental principles of Natural Philosophy, nor how to apply them to the phenomena of Economics.

Every science is greater than any of its cultivators. Astronomy is greater than Hipparchus, than Ptolemy, than Copernicus, than Kepler, greater even than Newton himself. So Economics is greater than Turgot, than Quesnay, than Smith, than Ricardo, than Say, than Mill.

To every one who has done good service let us pay rational respect, but not abject idolatry. He who studies Philosophy must be a freeman in mind. No one, however eminent, is now permitted to be a despot in science, and chain up the human intellect, or arrest the progress of thought.

Economics is the noblest and grandest creation of the human intellect. It is the crown and the glory of the Baconian Philosophy. No one can thoroughly realise the awful sublimity of the genius of Bacon until he studies Economics, because it is the literal realisation of his matchless discovery that the same principles of Mathematical and Physical Science which govern the phenomena of nature equally govern the practical business of life.

Time's noblest offspring is its last.

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10 Things You Never Knew About Orwell's "1984"

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George Orwell’s novel 1984 was incredibly popular at the time it was published, and it remains incredibly popular to this day. With multiple stars citing the book as one of their favorites – including Stephen King, David Bowie, Mel Gibson, and Kit Harrington – 1984 has been growing in popularity in recent years. The book reappeared on best-seller lists in early 2017, as some argued Orwell’s dystopian vision had finally arrived.

Below are 10 facts you might not know about Orwell’s dark novel.

1. Before he wrote 1984, Orwell worked for the British government during World War II as a propagandist at the BBC. (Perhaps seeing the propaganda industry up close led to his critical portrait in 1984.)

2. Orwell initially named the novel 1980, and then 1982 before settling on 1984. Since it was written in 1948, some think that Orwell devised the title by inverting the year the book was written. Additionally, he thought about naming the novel The Last Man in Europe.

3. While writing the novel, Orwell fought tuberculosis. The disease ultimately consumed him and he died seven months after 1984 was published, with tuberculosis as the sole cause of death.

4. In addition to fighting tuberculosis, Orwell almost died while writing the novel. On a recreational boating trip with his children, he went overboard. Fortunately, neither this episode nor the tuberculosis prevented him from finishing his novel.

5. On an ironic note, Orwell himself was under government surveillance while writing his novel warning about government surveillance. The British government was watching Orwell because they believed he held socialist opinions. This surveillance started after he published The Road to Wigan Pier, a true story about poverty and the lower class in England.

6. The slogan “2 + 2 = 5” originated from Russia, where the Communist regime used it as a motto of sorts in an effort to help them accomplish the goals of their five-year plan in only four years. Though the slogan is still used to point out the ills of totalitarian brainwashing today, it was not coined by Orwell.

7. In addition to borrowing a piece of Russian propaganda, Orwell also borrowed some Japanese propaganda for his novel. The “Thought Police” are based on the Japanese wartime secret police who literally arrested Japanese citizens for having “unpatriotic thoughts.” Their official name was the Kempeitai, and they officially named their pursuit the “Thought War.”

8. When Orwell worked as a propagandist for the BBC, there was a conference room there numbered 101. This room was the room of which he based the location for some of his more horrifying scenes, making the scenes themselves all the more horrifying.

9. According to Orwell’s friends and families, his second wife Sonia Brownell was the model off of which he based the love interest (Julia) of the book’s main character, Winston Smith.

10. Though his book may be popular, Orwell’s novel also makes the list of the world’s top ten most frequently banned books. Some ban it for what they claim are pro-communist points of view, and others have banned it because it is anti-communist. Regardless, it is ironic that a book warning against totalitarianism is often an item for censorship.

Reprinted from Intellectual Takeout. 

Anna Mathews

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Utopia: Dream into Nightmare

A former lecturer in philosophy at Tufts College, Dr. Winston has written extensively in the field of history. His most recent book is No Man Knows My Grave: Privateers and Pirates, 1665-1715.

Plato fathered the first blueprint of a planned society, and his descendants still clasp us in a sticky embrace while they rifle our freedoms. His Republic mapped out a spartan state run by benevolent philosophers, defended by a secondary caste of warriors, and supplied with the necessities of life by a mass of farmer artisans whose only political role was to obey. He did away with two obstacles to the ordered state: private property and the family. In the Republic each citizen performs that task for which he is fitted; the lowly toiler’s ignorance is his bliss; and all parts of the body politic function together in well-oiled harmony.

Thomas More’s Utopia (Greek for "noplace") in 1516 gave the name to this whole type of literature. A spate of others followed: Andreae’s Christianopolis (1619), Campanella’s City of the Sun (1623); Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), to cite a few; then a growing flood rising from the French Revolution and spreading amidst the industrial turmoil of the nineteenth century (Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 1888, being the most popular); and on to our own day in such projections of the future as H.G. Wells’ Modern Utopia (1905) and B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two (1948).

They number by the score, and their variety in detail is as great. The majority rely on rule by an aristocracy of merit, a few try to preserve a modicum of democracy; most are communistic, but one at least (Hertzka’s Freelands, 1890) recognizes self-interest as basic and aims to save capitalism by restraint on overproduction. They may be secular or religious, agricultural or industrial, favorable to education or distrustful of it, resolutely egalitarian or frankly hierarchical.

Common Assumptions

However, certain elements of these multiform visions emerge with such frequency that they deserve our attention. The utopian pictures a static society in which careful planning solves every major problem of human life. Faith is placed in a collectivity that owns or controls all property. Competition for markets or jobs vanishes. Family ties diminish, and the rearing of children by the state is taken for granted. Everything is rationally ordered by those most capable of doing so: Plato’s guardians, More’s king and his advisers, Bacon’s Solomon’s House scientists, Bellamy’s industrial council, Wells’ austere samurai, Saint-Simon’s Council of Newton, Campanella’s quartet of superior men, Skinner’s panel of psychologists.

In utopia everyone works, the women on equal terms with the men. Hours are short — four to six daily—and retirement as early as age fifty, but the wants of the people have a stoic simplicity, and all enjoy a decent living. There is little to quarrel over, the atmosphere is uniformly brotherly, crime is almost unknown and disease rare — a perfect whole of perfect parts, all supremely content. "Utopia," the noplace, is plainly "eutopia" the happy place.

But how to get there? Utopians had no answer to that, and avoided the question. They sprang their flawless states fullarmed from the inkpot, always somewhere else — a distant island, an obscure wilderness, another planet — or at a dim future time. The transition from a callous, exploitive society, its people already deformed by prevalent evil, to one of affection and universal sharing, struck the utopians dumb. Their residue of hope rested in a double view of human nature. They mixed these two elements at will, for each one favored a regeneration of man’s sorry existence. In one they saw man fundamentally good (but perverted by a debasing environment); in the other they saw man quite plastic, molded to the last detail by his surroundings. Either way, the right society would very quickly set men right.

A combination of circumstances after 1800 convinced social idealists that the time was ripe for bringing heaven to earth. The French Revolution had produced a new crop of theorists, the long hours and short pay of the early factory system promised to grind down the poor, and overseas the American republic offered a haven for all who wanted to try something better than mankind had ever known. "Our fathers have not seen it," said Saint-Simon; "our children will arrive there one day, and it is for us to clear the way for them."

American Experiments

The result was more than 130 attempts to establish utopian societies in the United States during the nineteenth century. A ferment of change filled the air, even in staid New England. "We are all a little wild here with numerous projects of social reform," Emerson wrote to Carlyle. "Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket." Many of the settlements were European in origin as well as theory; some seeking escape from religious persecution, others imbued with recent secular plans for utopia; but all drawn by the cheap land of the American frontier and the easy tolerance of the young republic that had thrown off the shackles of old Europe and considered itself the vehicle of the new age. At last the utopians had before them something very like the fabulous island of the old dreamers. In America they could found minuscule states, as self-sufficient as possible, based on common ownership of property, filled with the brotherly spirit, and isolated from contamination by the outside world. "Our ulterior aim," said young Charles Dana of Brook Farm, "is nothing less than heaven on earth."

As might be expected, some of these starry-eyed experiments were simply preposterous. At Fruitlands that "tedius archangel" Bronson Alcott would not harness workhorses to the plow (unnatural), nor allow sugar (reaped by slaves), nor wear woolen cloth (robbed from sheep), nor spread manure on the fields (filthy stuff), nor burn whale-oil lamps (from slaughtered whales). Shakers led by an illiterate factory girl hailed as "Ann the Word" were strictly celibate, and regulated the lives of the faithful down to such details as what shoe to put on first in dressing, and which trouser leg to step into. An irresistible little fellow in Michigan got himself proclaimed James I of Zion by 2,000 adherents and five wives; "King Benjamin" of the House of David announced that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ; the final verdict in the early days of the Amana settlement rested with an oracular Werkzeug whose utterances came straight from God; the ruler of a Florida colony taught that we all live inside the earth, our feet on its inner surface. The Lake Erie  Brotherhood of the New Life gave major attention to the sisterhood, in the belief that: "Soul-life and sex-life are at one, In the Divine their pulses run."

Robert Owen and Charles Fourier

Founders of other perfectionist settlements were more sincere and a bit less silly. Robert Owen, a successful English textile manufacturer, believed community of property essential to the good life, and was sure that the individual is totally shaped by his environment. In 1825 he bought up the extensive holdings of a religious community that was moving from Harmony, Indiana. The 900 who flocked in at his open invitation seemed to Owen’s son a "heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic devotees to principle, honest latitudinarians and lazy theorists, with a sprinkling of unprincipled sharpers thrown in." Owen’s communal system gave full vent to their shabby ways. They couldn’t run anything properly—flour mill, saw mill, tannery or smithy—and their only solution to problems of production was to write another constitution or make another speech. The industrious soon tired of supporting the idle. From the Nashoba, Tennessee Owenite settlement, leader Frances Wright informed Owen that "cooperation has nigh killed us all," and departed. Within two years every Owenite venture, fourteen in all, disintegrated.

Disciples of the unsmiling Frenchman Charles Fourier set up no less than twenty-seven American experiments. Fourier based his utopian ideal less on man’s malleability than on his fundamental goodness. The twelve passions, which he carefully listed and classified, would act in perfect harmony with each other and with society as a whole if given a chance. Let people gather into phalanxes" of some 2,000 members, housed communally in one huge "phalanstery" lying in a spread of 1,600 acres owned in common. Let each choose the work he wished to do. Pay the highest wage for disagreeable but necessary labor, less for the more attractive, and least for work that was downright pleasurable. Bring all goods produced to a single warehouse, where they could be purchased with worktickets. In Fourier’s ample vision all mankind would finally be gathered into three million phalanxes, coordinated by an Omniarch in Constantinople.

Fourier-inspired communes quickly died of dissension, ineptitude, and sheer tomfoolery. An attempt to use some Fourier principles dealt the final blow to the most charming and humane of all the utopian experiments, Brook Farm. The Farm was owned in shares; it intended to support itself by voluntary labor at an equal wage for all (ten cents an hour), and have plenty of time left over for culture. Some choice souls sought refuge there: The Rev. George Ripley, founder; Nathaniel Hawthorne, who soon discovered that forking manure ten hours a day was not conducive to literature; George Curtis, later to edit Harper’s; and Isaac Hecker, a humble German who became a priest and instituted the Paulist Fathers. Good families sent their boys down to be prepared for Harvard at the Farm school.

Into this idyllic but financially precarious community of like minds swept a voluble enthusiast for Fourier, Albert Brisbane. He convinced them that their happy anarchy wouldn’t work. They must organize. Tasks were specialized on Fourier principles; a Sacred Legion took on the dirtier jobs; unequal wages replaced equal pay; work became compulsory; uneducated artisans came in with their ignorant and sharp-tongued wives; and before long the genial spirit that had held Brook Farm together evaporated. Six years after its beginning in 1841 the Farm was sold to West Roxbury (Mass.) for an alms house, thus passing, in the words of one observer, from "the highest ideal" to "the lowest actual."

Two That Remain

Two utopian communes have the distinction of remaining, though much altered, to the present day. In 1848 John Humphrey Noyes settled fifty one Perfectionists along Oneida Creek near Utica, New York, an area so filled with fiery religious fanatics that wits called it "the burned over district." A slab chinned fellow with a scraggly beard and bleating voice, Noyes was nevertheless personally impressive, and a canny manager of people. He quipped that too many agricultural communes had "run aground," and set out to make Oneida industrial. The growing membership (an average of 250) canned farm produce for the market, made traveling bags and a special type of steel trap, spun silk, silver plated dinnerware, and prospered.

Noyes’ word was law. He rested it on divine inspiration, and exerted pressure so gently that no one thought him despotic. The individual at Oneida had no life apart from the community — property in common, personal acts under common scrutiny, sexual sharing on the theory that monogamy was un-Christian "claiming." The women said that they belonged to God first and Noyes next, an order of precedence that they in fact reversed. A system of selective breeding called "stirpiculture" admitted only the most fit to parenthood. Children lived apart, rarely seen by their parents.

For thirty years Oneida adhered to the original plan. By 1880 Noyes had aged; the religious spirit that he had evoked flickered; the young revolted at the idea of sharing spouses and surrendering their children. The commune converted to a joint stock company in an effort to avoid collapse, but its old habits were too ingrained. In 1890 P.B. Noyes, one of the founder’s "stirpiculture" sons (he sired ten) saved the community by transforming it into a typical well run American business. He concentrated on silverware, cut costs, emphasized teamwork, hustled, advertised, and competed. Today Oneida differs in no essential from any other enlightened manufacturing firm.

Where Oneida chose industry, the Amana community of Iowa remained rural, and even more pervasively religious. Eight hundred Germans of the "True Inspiration" sect established it in 1854 on 26,000 choice acres, seven villages spread in a circle around the central one. Every member surrendered all his capital to the common fund (if he left, he got it back with interest) and in return was guaranteed his necessities for life. Under the rule of church elders the maxim, "obey, without reasoning, God, and through God your superiors," kept members in line. Amana supplied its own needs — weavers, cobblers, tailors, watchmakers, pharmacies, print shop — and exported only high grade woolen cloth. As much as possible the members ignored the world around them, even hiring outsiders to serve in the hotel lest their own girls be corrupted.

By 1900 Amana’s piety had waned. Without the invigorating spur of competition the economy lagged badly. In 1932 it became a joint stock company intent on profit. A business manager brought in from the outside trimmed the labor force of its hired hands, closed shops that had run at a loss for years, eliminated fifty two inefficient dining halls, sold businesses into private hands and houses to their occupants. Still quaint and quiet today, Amana is a producing and marketing cooperative, without a vestige of its former communism.

American experiments that went under in two years, as many did, had too large a proportion of misfits whose record outside was one of steady failure. Intimacy bred discord, as people living too close together bumped each other at every turn. The absence of competition resulted in lethargy. None of these eccentrics had any business sense; the purchase of a 300-acre tract in Pennsylvania, for example, was made in midwinter snows by an artist, a doctor and a cooper, and turned out to be rocklands and that had to be abandoned in a year. The Ruskin colony in Tennessee (1894) was ruined by an agent who took such pleasure in making a sale that he sold regularly at a loss. Occasionally plain chicanery was too much for the innocent: the Rev. Adin Ballou lost his "miniature Christian republic" at Hopedale when one of his Christians bought up enough shares to force everyone else out. Worse, the utopians misread human nature. "If men were angels," remark the Federalist Papers, "no government would be necessary." The utopians discovered to their sorrow that men are not angels now, nor can be so shaped.

Displaced by the Welfare State

While these sad little failures gathered dust, Americans awoke to the fact that in the welfare state of the western democracies, and more explicitly in communist Russia, utopia had already arrived on a massive scale. The results in this country stirred up a general unease. Every step that added to the individual’s security detracted from his liberty; every move toward the better life exacted its toll. The United States government assumed vast new powers to tax, spend — and regulate the affairs of its citizens. Mass production and the communications media created a bland uniformity, with the flesh and blood breadwinner converted into a Social Security number. Welfare programs that averted gross poverty also robbed the individual of his initiative. Women’s equality did much to skyrocket divorce. The same technological advance that increased abundance polluted the landscape. Nuclear energy was more bomb than blessing. Parents did all they could to make a heaven on earth, and their children kicked them in the stomach for the effort.

The West edged piecemeal toward the planned society; Russia made it in a leap. Marx had revived the utopian dream and promised its fulfillment: abundance of consumer goods, universal happiness, absolute equality, peace at home and abroad, government that would hardly need to govern — a perfect whole of perfect parts. Liberals who had been beguiled by this splendid vision shuddered at the actuality. In Russia the government clamped an iron grip on the people and showed no inclination to let go. Everything was in short supply except armaments. The mildest critic of the regime was branded a traitor, and shipped off to Siberia. Art and science became tools of the Party; news media spewed nothing but the official line; and the calculated lie became a habit. The planned society, dreamed of through the ages, turned out to be the police state.

Americans who had believed in a steady march to the promised land now quailed at the prospect. Once they had yearned for utopia; now they asked themselves, "What can we do to prevent it?"

Antiutopian novels clanged like warning bells in the night. Eugene Zamiatin’s We (1920) was among the first, and dozens followed (if we include science fiction), notably Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Vladimir Nabokov’s Bend Sinister (1947) and George Orwell’s 1984 in 1949. They draw a frightening picture of the planned society: its ruthless manipulation by the rulers of the ruled, its grey-faced homogeneity, its stifling of creative change, its reduction of man to a producing and consuming animal, its hideous distortion of truth. Once the masters of this nightmare society are in the saddle, few can escape or even want to.

Human nature, in these anti-utopias, is infinitely malleable; men can be taught to kiss their chains.

Are we all doomed to this? There is reason to doubt it. The anti-utopian sounds a needed alarm, but he badly overplays his hand. He regards the individual as an empty sack into which any rubbish can be poured. Even the lonely rebels of anti-utopian novels are spineless, stupid, or both. D503 of We can build a cosmic machine, but is otherwise a bumbling idiot; Bernard in Brave New World is a sniveling coward; Smith in 1984 is a perverter of truth by vocation and a lovesick ninny on the side; the renowned philosopher Kruger in Bend Sinister has a backbone of rope. In anti-utopia western man has thrown away every vestige of his hard-won rights, to gain a bovine placidity. All the world is content to chew its cud.

Common Sense May Prevail

Such a view undoes history. Western man has shown himself far too stubborn, restless and plain cussed for any such fate. Once the common man has had a full taste of speaking his mind, no one can shut him up for long. Once he is used to the ballot, and the exhilarating experience of throwing the rascals out, he can be deprived of it only under the most extraordinary conditions. Once real power is firmly established at the base of the political pyramid (as it never was in Russia or China), tyranny from the top becomes an outside chance.

This may be faith, but it is a faith worth having. A man’s essence is his hazardous freedom. It is built in, inexpugnable. For it he has fought wars, rioted, hidden in catacombs, gone to the stake, killed kings, languished in prison, and he does not forget. Freedom disrupts old orders, and sometimes gives the impression that everything nailed down is coming loose, but as long as Americans demand it as their right, the horrors of the police state will stay beyond our borders.

***

Umpire

In general, nothing happens except a change in the weather, unless somebody makes it happen. Under a free economic system, the man who makes things happen is called an enterpriser. With his own savings or savings borrowed from others, he goes into farming, manufacturing, mining, or banking, and begins producing goods or moving them around. That much is basic.

Thomas Nixon Carver, the economist, said the reason many countries are backward is that there was nobody who cared to invest in them. Either the government itself was predatory, or thieves and robbers roamed unmolested. In such countries the rich keep their wealth in the form of unproductive goods — gold and jewels — which they can hide and easily transport when things get too tough.

If a nation wants production and prosperity, the persons to encourage are the enterprisers. Not only should they be encouraged to build and produce, but they should be assured that their property and a decent part of their gains are protected against confiscation. If they lose part or all of their savings in the competitive game, they must take the loss and shut up. Government’s main job is to see that the rules are fair and are enforced.

FROM The William Feather Magazine, November, 1971 

Alexander Winston

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My Favorite Libertarian Books (Milton Friedman)

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I am one of the many millions of beneficiaries of Andrew Carnegie’s public libraries. The one in the small town in which I grew up (Rahway, New Jersey) fed my early interest in books, providing a range of reading matter that was available in no other way, since there were few books at home. That started me on a lifelong addiction.

I have been asked what was my first introduction to libertarian thought. I find that hard to answer, involving as it does looking back nearly three quarters of a century. But if I had to make a guess, I would conjecture that it was John Stuart Mill ‘s Essay on Liberty, which I must have read in my first or second year of college.

Herewith are my five favorite libertarian books.

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations

First, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. This book, published in 1776, founded economic science. It introduced the notion of the “invisible hand” and explained how free trade could produce cooperation among people in achieving economic productivity. It remains a book well worth reading, full of wonderful comments to warm a libertarian’s
heart.

Mill’s Essay on Liberty

Second, John Stuart Mill’s Essay on Liberty. The most concise and clearest statement of the fundamental libertarian principle, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others …. ”

Dicey’s Lectures on Law and Public Opinion

Third, A. V. Dicey’s Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century. A remarkable work initially presented as lectures at Harvard in the 1890s and reprinted with a new and very important preface in 1914. Dicey saw clearly the ultimate outcome of initial social welfare measures in the first decade of the twentieth century. He essentially predicted the emergence of the full-fledged welfare state. More than a century ago, Dicey explained why the rhetoric in terms of the general interest is so persuasive: “The beneficial effect of state intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak, visible while its evil effects are gradual and indirect and lying out of sight …. Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favor upon governmental intervention.”

Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

Foutth, F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. This profound book was highly influential in the immediate post-World War II period when it was a lone voice presenting the case for libertarian philosophy and pointing out the consequences of an increase in the role of the state. It was certainly one of the most effective works leading people to take libertarian principles seriously.

My Own Favorite: Capitalism and Freedom OR Free to Choose?

Fifth, I have been asked to include one of my own books. I am torn between Capitalism and Freedom, published in 1962 with the assistance of Rose D. Friedman, and Free to Choose, published in 1980 jointly with Rose D. Friedman. Both present the same philosophy and cover many of the same topics. Capitalism and Freedom is more succinct, scholarly, and abstract; it was a product of a series of lectures that I gave in June 1956 at a conference at Wabash College directed by John Van Sickle and Benjamin Rogge [a long-time FEE trustee] and sponsored by the Volker Foundation.
Free to Choose, based on the television program of the same title, is more popular, less abstract, more concrete. It presents a fuller development of the philosophy that permeates both books; it has more nuts and bolts, less theoretical framework. The TV program on which Free to Choose is based is available in videocassette and, if I were to consider it as a book, would clearly be my favorite.
*Excerpted from an insert that appeared in the April 2002 issue of The Freeman.

Milton D. Friedman

Milton Friedman (1912-2006), recipient of the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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The Benefits of a Capitalist Society By James E. Le Rossignol 1921

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The Benefits of Capitalism By James Edward Le Rossignol 1921

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CAPITALISM has been the chief cause of the vast improvement in social conditions that has made the nineteenth century notable in the history of mankind. It has explored and settled the wilderness, has improved land, and developed mines. It has built roads, bridges and canals. It has unified the world by steamships, railroads and telegraph lines. It has built great cities where millions of people are fed, clothed and sheltered in a degree of comfort unknown to the aristocrats of former times. It has created schools, colleges, libraries, hospitals, parks, playgrounds, and a thousand agencies for the betterment of social conditions.

Capitalism has increased wages, decreased hours and improved conditions of labor in many ways. It has greatly reduced the death-rate, thus increasing the average duration of human life. It has improved morality, abolished famine and pestilence, and mitigated the horrors of war. It has elevated the working class to the level of the middle class of two hundred years ago, and the middle class it has raised to the level of the nobles and princes of those days.

The countries where capitalism has most prevailed are the countries where the laboring man receives the highest wages and maintains the highest standard of living. The countries where capitalism has done least, such as China, India and Russia, are the countries whose wages are lowest, where the laboring man is ever on the verge of starvation, and where he is most exploited by the merchant, the money lender and the government official.

Capitalism, with all its faults, has done great things for the western world, and will do still more, unless the social revolutionists, running amuck, succeed in breaking up the great machine. If they do, there will be no land owners, no capitalists, no business men, neither rent, interest, profits, nor surplus value of any other kind. The old economic order, the product of centuries of industrial evolution, will be gone, and the proletariat will set itself to the laborious, slow, and painful task of creating a new social order out of the ruins of the old. While this work of reconstruction is going on, doubtless millions of people will die of starvation, but, as the revolutionists would say, what will that matter in a thousand years?

If, on the other hand, the working class listens to counsels of moderation and prudence, they will refuse to destroy what they may not be able to build again. They will watch and wait for the outcome of the great Russian experiment, and for the results of governmental and co-operative effort in their own countries. If governments and co-operative societies show themselves able to compete with private enterprise in producing better results at a lower cost, then these associations, controlled, no doubt, by the working class, will possess the field, by virtue of superior efficiency, and the socialist ideal will be realized by a process of slow and continuous evolution.

But if not, capitalism will continue to exist, and the working class will find it to their advantage to preserve and foster it, while at the same time doing their utmost to remove abuses and to secure as large a share in the joint product as they can without injury to the industrial system of which they are a part. The working-class, no longer the exploited, will become the exploiters, and will protect and cherish capitalism as they would a cow for its milk, or the fabled goose for its golden eggs.

"The nineteenth century was the ultimate product and expression of the intellectual trend of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, which means: of a predominantly Aristotelian philosophy. And, for the first time in history, it created a new economic system, the necessary corollary of political freedom, a system of free trade on a free market: capitalism.

No, it was not a full, perfect, unregulated, totally laissez-faire capitalism-as it should have been. Various degrees of government interference and control still remained, even in America-and this is what led to the eventual destruction of capitalism. But the extent to which certain countries were free was the exact extent of their economic progress. America, the freest, achieved the most.

Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism. They were all that the national economies of the time could afford. Capitalism did not create poverty-it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof-the enormous growth of the European population during the nineteenth century, a growth of over 300 per cent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 per cent per century." ~Ayn Rand

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Socialism Means Complete Disaster by Florence Parbury 1893

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Socialism Equals Complete Disaster by Florence Parbury 1893

Three thousand words are allowed for the enthusiast to criticise or discuss Socialism and the effect it would have upon the nation's welfare were it put into practice! Surely two words will suffice to describe the ultimate result of Socialism—i.e., Complete Disaster.

And now for some of the remainder of those three thousand words! The Socialist ideal is that all means of production shall be owned by the State for the benefit of the community, and that there shall be no social differences. All men shall be equal—working only for the State and Community at large, and in return receiving an equal share with their fellow-men, in the provision for their needs, which the State would make.

This would mean that no individuality would be permitted—there would be regulation food and clothes dealt out to each man by State officials. The man with delicate digestion would not be permitted to work harder that he might obtain better food, as he does to-day, for that would be putting forth his vitality for his own benefit. Likewise the strong individual would not be permitted to satisfy his healthy hunger—because the State would decide that he was eating more than his fair share—in other words, more than the man with the small appetite. Food being one of the most important necessities of life, I have naturally tackled it first, upon a purely Socialistic basis.

Next, we come to clothing and that nice State uniform we shall all be forced to wear. Here is a fearful problem: A, being 6ft. 6in., requires far more material for his uniform than B, who is only 5ft. 2in. Because A needs more, and may work 18 hours a day with the hope of getting it, no recognition of this could be made by a fair-minded State, based upon lines of equality. It would be so unfair to poor little B. The State could not even settle the matter by giving them an equal amount of cloth, because A would use all his and B would have some to spare. This would be abominable from A's point of view, because B would have enough for his State uniform and a piece over.

Now comes the awkward point of argument. What will the State do concerning B's surplus material? B certainly could not keep it because it would be private property, and if B was allowed to hoard his share like that he would have enough to keep a shop on in time. B would not permit the State to take it away from him, for it was only his equal share, actually, with A and all the rest of his fellow-workers. The only way to settle the matter would be for the State to make one stock size—which would be little B's size of course—and there could be no unfairness then. The only trouble would be that thousands of A's would suffer when the cold weather came on, just as they do now.

Perhaps, knowing that the State had given them their fair share, they would be perfectly satisfied to see B looking spruce and snug in his comfortable kit—but to be satisfied with personal discomfort is not in human nature. Besides, the Socialists reckon that their aim is to do away with all the sufferings and discomforts of human nature, by means of a State with the famous motto "Equality" as its guiding law.

The above instances of equality I have given because they concern the primary necessities of existence—all other things, great or small, follow on in like manner—to prove the utter impossibility of running a State and dealing with human nature upon lines of equality.

If we were a community of godlike beings living in a land of promise, under ideal climatic conditions, there would be some possibility of equality, but unfortunately for us we are not, and day by day we have to face the stern reality that human nature is about the worst thing to deal with that it is possible to imagine. Unless we can eliminate human nature—Socialism is impossible.

Everyone attacks Socialism from the economic side of the question, which is quite a waste of time, for if it ever came into power there would very shortly be no economic side to discuss. The labourer cries out now that he creates the wealth which enables the rich minority to hoard and save their gold, and continue to live their idle lives. He does not see that if there are no capitalists there will be no one to buy, and therefore no one for whom to create. With equality as the great national check to progression, no man will have the right to desire anything more valuable than that possessed by his fellow-man—and if he does, he will not have the means to purchase it. Thus, we may safely presume that the manufacture of things of value or beauty or luxury, which could not be made for the general use of the community, would be strenuously forbidden by the State, for the excellent reason that there would be no market for them. Oh! what a dead-lock in the wheel of progression! All evolution would be crushed under the heel of so-called Equality.

As things stand the individual indulges his theories of progression, whatever they may be, at the risk of success or failure to himself and maybe a few others. If he fails the world pities or laughs, but if he succeeds, the world benefits by the fact that he, and perhaps others, have risked much to achieve that which was hitherto undreamed of by the Community or the State.

A Socialist Government, having a hold upon all means of production, could not, under laws of equality, be permitted to dole out material and wealth to an inventor who wanted to experiment, and might fail several times before achieving success. It would be wasting the money of the Community, and the said Community would have an equal voice in the matter, and would say "No." The great majority of beings are possessed of pygmy intellects and because they have no bump of originality in their small minds, they scout all the inventive capacity of others.

Governments are notoriously sceptical and Socialists notoriously cynical—where would individual initiative get a chance with a combination of the two?

But as far as invention and progression are concerned, I am inclined to think those would gradually cease to exist. Human nature being the same all the world over, it is only reasonable to suppose that no man of ingenuity, thrift or self-denial, will think it worth his while to practise those qualities, if the produce of his brain and hard endeavour is to go to any but his own posterity. As I have said before, we are not godlike beings, but human beings, and to crush out ambition, enthusiasm and enterprise by depriving all men of their right to gain, is to bring about mental inertia.

All progression will cease under Socialism, and the only important work and object of the State will be to see that all men work equally hard in order to produce enough food and clothing for the general need of the community—and then we come back to my first argument concerning the equal division of food and clothing. The need of all other things would cease to exist and daily enterprise would be devoted to creating enough food, etc., and dividing it up. So far from improving conditions, we should gradually revert to living the lives of savages.

But enough of the economic and domestic side of the question.

The mental side is the most important, for all the enterprise of a nation is run by mind and imagination. Under Socialism everyone will be provided for, hence irresponsibility will increase. It is the knowledge of responsibility for the well-being of himself, or of his family, which makes a man call forth all the active power of his mind. It is the anxiety which sharpens his wits and fires his ambition and eventually calls into play nerve and brain-force which enable him to achieve some great success, by which not only does he benefit himself and family but probably hundreds and thousands of others. Take away responsibility from that man and you rob him of the cause which brought about the effect. You steal away from him his motive and the universe is robbed, in consequence, of the result of that motive. The spark of mental electricity is left unused, because the necessity of using it is dulled by the encouragement of irresponsibility. The driving power of the human race is that unseen, mental force which is responsible for' all invention and all enterprise. Remove responsibility from the human race and the brain power will be about as actively useful as the electric current would be to a lighting apparatus when disconnected. Responsibility is so to speak, the human sparking plug, and without it no one is very much use.

A Socialist State would, by submerging the individualist in its great desire to equalize things for the collectivist, create a breed of "shirkers" whose main object in life would be no higher than that of daily turning to the State for maintenance. And what kind of State would exist with such a half-hearted nation of supporters. Responsibility, either to the Great Unknown, or to themselves, is quite the last thing Socialists wish to recognise. The "idle rich" are, from all accounts, responsible for all the misery in the world, and yet, if it were not for the prospect of one day becoming either idle or rich or both, mental and physical endeavour would be more or less at a standstill; self-sacrifice would be non-existent, and individual initiative would be crushed into inactivity.

There would be no encouragement for improvement, and little by little it would come to pass that there would be no desire for it.

A Socialist does not, as a general rule, ask himself why he is discontented with his lot, and search for the fault in himself; he merely blames other people and holds them responsible for his misfortune or incapacity. He does not conscientiously ask himself if his reason for becoming a Socialist is really the outcome of a deep longing to give all his time and the fruit of his energy to those less fortunate than himself. At any rate among all the Socialists one hears of very few who actually put this desire into practice, and one can have very little faith in following those who do not practise what they preach.

While giving beautiful descriptions of what would happen if Socialism could be realised, they never hide, or attempt to hide, the vindictive hatred they bear towards the "idle rich," who must be plundered in order to find the money for the working of the Socialist doctrines. What do they offer in exchange for the present conditions of the labourer? They offer a State which will provide each individual if possible with the necessaries of existence and which, in return, will be forced to adopt a slave-driving principle in order to maintain itself and its dependents. Should it come to pass, man will exchange his liberty for so-called equality, and partial servitude for perpetual servitude. Instead of Socialism let us inaugurate "Reformitis" and teach it in the home, in the school and in our daily life. Encourage among our children as well as among ourselves a system of self-analysis, and mental cross-examination upon our motives and our responsibility to God and afterwards to ourselves in all things. As all the ills and sorrows of life are directly caused by some bygone act of selfishness, let us study and teach in our schools a little more self-abnegation even at the cost of the time a little more useless or unnecessary knowledge would require, and there would be less misery in the world—less need of State maintenance for the offspring of the irresponsible parent.

No State can rectify the misery caused by the indulgence of self.

The State may confiscate all private property and all man's liberty, but this would mean ruin to the country's genius, industry and enterprise— far worse still, it would crush out the individual initiative, to which abstract quality, fundamentally, all nations owe their prosperity.

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