John Atkinson Hobson

“ No socialist community could fail to recognize that marriage and production of children were the most important social acts; that society had a clear right to determine what sort of children should be born, seeing that society had both to support them and to depend upon them for support. I do not mean that such society need unduly and vexatiously interfere with freedom of individual choice, so as to say what marriages should take place, but it would certainly claim to say what marriages should not take place. ”

“ Kidd's conception of the struggle for existence. The struggle for the life of others is as essential a part as the struggle for one's own life — and what is more the sentiments and forces which make for the two are not really separable, because our own life is organically related to the life of others, the family, the generation, the race. Just as the mother does not really sacrifice her own good for the good of others, but seeks her good in the good of others, so it is with the struggle in its wider form. ”

“ Rivalry in its fiercest form is essential to the progress of the race, and religion stands with the sword of justice in her hand, a divine executioner of the unfortunate.
But what practical conduct does religion enjoin? In order to intensify the rivalry of life it is desirable that population should constantly outrun the means of comfortable subsistence. Hence, the first practical behest of religion is "increase and multiply." ”

“ This society in which rivalry of life on lower planes is repressed can alone become socially efficient and coherent, because here alone will the bonds of common interest between individual and individual be numerous and strong. The way for a society to become socially efficient is to economize all force spent upon rivalry of physical life, so as to divert it into the maintenance of higher and more profitable forms of rivalry. ”

“ But he has neglected to recognize that all other motive forces are equally "irrational," and that those which incite a man to selfish conduct are just as irrational as any other. Our likes and dislikes, our estimate of pleasures and pains, that aggregate valuation of vital forces which forms the active character of a man or a race, are irrational in the sense that the intellect (Mr. Kidd's reason) only enables one to see correctly the results which attend the pursuit of likes and dislikes. Moral force can never be directly generated by intellectual machinery. ”

“ Socialism, by putting an end to this rivalry, is retrogressive. But is reason to have her way, and is social progress to be checked by this suicidal policy?
There is another force in eternal strife with reason—that is, religion—the eternal repository of the race-preserving instincts in all ages and all races. Scientific evolution, by ignoring religion—Mr. Kidd says it has ignored it—has neglected the one truly progressive force in history. Intellectual ascendency has never succeeded in maintaining the power and integrity of a race. ”

“ Socialism is unethical because he has chosen, in the teeth of history, to identify it with rationalism and, an equally unwarrantable assumption, to exclude from rationalism all that belongs to ethics. ”

“ Instead of being a "grotesque fungoid growth," these religions are the husks in which the seed of social progress is preserved and lies hid. They are the clothing of the race-preserving instincts. Let us clearly understand this position. ”

“ The primary object of religion is thus to intensify competition—not competition on a moral plane—but such competition as shall crush out of physical existence the least efficient members. Incidentally religion, as a factor in democratic and humanitarian movements, has made for abstract justice, but with the object of sharpening antagonism among the individuals of a society and among the races of the world at as many points as possible. ”

“ Kidd's religion is wholly irrational. The systems it sets up are quite independent of all standards of intellectual truth. For religion is with him no mere vague instinct or sentiment of awe. It means religious systems with set dogmas, ordinances and ritual. Owing to this irrational impulse man everywhere is "possessed by the desire to set up sanctions for his individual conduct, which would appear to be supernatural against those which were natural, sanctions which would appear to be ultra-rational against those which were simply rational." ”

“ But when man emerges it is different. "Now at last, science stands confronted with a creature differing in this important respect from all that have gone before him. He is endowed with reason."
Now, when reason begins to look into this "struggle," it can find no justification for the pain and misery and brutality of such a mode of progress. "To the great mass of the people, the so-called lower classes, in the advanced civilizations of today, the conditions under which they live and work are still without any rational sanction." ”

“ Social evolution is not engaged in raising the intellectual caliber of man: the Greeks in the age of Pericles, the Romans of the early empire, the men of our own Elizabethan era were intellectually as high and probably much higher than we are; there is no evidence that men of different races and degrees of civilization differ in individual intellectual power; social evolution is engaged in producing social efficiency, and it does this work by the exclusive agency of religion. ”

“ For when the popular reason is got into play, finding no rational justification for the struggle with its "natural selection," it may proceed to put a stop to it, organizing the natural resources of the race so as to secure a comfortable competence for all alike, and thus sacrificing the progress of the future of the race in the interest of the existing generation. This tendency Mr. Kidd finds to be taking shape in modern socialism. Socialism, he urges, is, in spite of some woolly-headed advocates, eminently rational; intellectual criticism cannot break down its main positions ”

“ Here he begs a very important question, the question whether society cannot secure the rejection of the unfit much more effectually than it is now secured, by sternly repressing the anti-social conduct which produces the physically unfit. Might not a society which knew how to look after its own interests and the interests of future generations protect itself more effectively by enjoining on its members the command: "Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive officiously to make alive." ”

“ Kidd posits between the individual and race implies a conception of society as a mere aggregate of absolutely severed selves, ignoring the common life or treating it as something separate from the life of the individuals and requiring a separate provision for its sustenance. ”

“ Kidd is correct in his interpretation of the progressive movement as a voluntary concession of power by the classes, and that religion is the name of the force which induces the classes to act contrary to the dictates of rational self-interest, how far can this movement proceed? A good many of these progressive steps tend to socialism. Will religion lead to socialism? "No!" says Mr. Kidd, emphatically, "No!" Socialism he conceives as a mechanical organization of society with the special object of putting down the struggle for life and therefore stopping the spring of progress. ”

“ Now these people, morally weak because they have relied upon dogmatic supports of conduct, are ready to grasp eagerly at a theory which shall save their religious systems in a manner which seems consistent with the maintenance of modern culture.
If reason can only be induced to make a voluntary cession of a certain sphere of territory to religion—give a rational sanction to religion to be irrational—then all is achieved. ”

“ But leaving this point for the present let us look more closely at the nature of the work religion is said to do in modern social progress. Religion, which Kidd, when convenient, chooses to identify with altruistic feeling and with humanitarianism in general, is the one important force in modern progressive movements. Under the influence of this growing altruism, the power-holding classes, those who are in possession of government, of land, and of capital, have made concession after concession to the masses. ”

“ A socialistic state will insist on securing the best terms for all members of the present and next generation. It will effect this by suspending the struggle for existence upon the physical plane. Weaklings will no longer be weeded out, population will be regulated within the bounds of comfortable subsistence; rejection of the unfit being taken away the race will lapse into decay. Here we must observe that Mr. Kidd shows no grasp of the evolutionarv character of socialism. An antagonism similar to that between reason and religion he finds between equalization of opportunity and socialism. ”

“ Kidd may be thus briefly summarized. Modern physiological science establishes as the first condition of all progress the maintenance of that struggle among the individuals of a race which continually eliminates the less efficient and enables the more efficient to survive and multiply. Any successful attempt to suspend the struggle and to secure the survival of the unfit members will not merely check further progress but will inevitably cause a deterioration of the race. Among the lower animals, nature, acting blindly and instinctively, insures the maintenance of the struggle. ”

“ Kidd packs the cards in favor of social efficiency, which means ethics, which means a fund of altruism, which means supernatural sanctions, which means religious dogmatism, which means Protestantism. The great discovery that the real aim of social evolution is the development of higher social efficiency and the survival of races in proportion to their social efficiency, is nothing else than a purely verbal proposition. It does not need a big book to tell us that the object of social development is to develop social qualities. ”

“ To speak of the Acts of Parliament which register various progressive steps in English history as voluntary concessions of the power-holding classes, is a monstrous perversion of history. Even the abolition of slavery, both for this country and for America, was not brought about until it had been demonstrated that as an industrial system slavery was uneconomical. ”

“ The race-preserving sentiment is, he rightly recognizes, analogous to the instinct by which a mother sacrifices herself for her child, only operating over a far wider sphere. Of the existence of this race-preserving force there can be no question. ”

“ The man who reasonably seeks his own interest will (in a socially efficient race) , conform to such rules of conduct as make for the welfare of the race, because such conduct will give him most satisfaction, or, to use the language of a school who mistrust utilitarian language, because such conduct contributes to the realization of his rational self. ”

“ Kidd accepts it, stands upon the miraculous position that a portion of the human organism, to wit, the germ plasm, can be in organic connection with the rest of the body and yet can remain wholly unaffected by the chemical and physiological experiences that body undergoes during a life time—that this germ plasm is sustained by the body and is yet untouched by the influences which affect the quality of its sustenance, an assumption which for pure effrontery has no parallel outside the Athanasian creed, and which no amount of direct inductive evidence could establish or even render conceivable. ”

“ They are not rationalists, most of them have never seriously examined the rational basis of their creed, but the disturbing influences of rational criticism have reached them in the shape of this vague uneasy feeling. ”

“ But this equalization of opportunity, by educating the intelligence of the masses and by placing an increased portion of political and social power in their hands, raises up an enemy of social progress. ”

“ But the social will expressing itself either by public opinion or through an act of parliament is just as much a natural force as any other, and by a favorable disposition of physiological conditions is capable of securing physical progress. ”

“ The deep current of religious feeling which marks the Anglo-Saxon races makes for social efficiency and enables us to obtain the ascendency over an increasing proportion of the habitable world. France, on the other hand, though more highly developed in intellectual attainments, is defective in those moral factors which make for social efificiency, and under the impulse of reformation has decreased in population, losing the degree of ascendency she once had among the nations. ”

“ Nay further, even race life does not present a complete and isolated whole; the history of the complete race is determined by its contribution to the larger total of humanity, which again is a tributary to the vast cosmic life. Mr. Kidd's book deserves high praise for the vigorous assertion of the claim of the wider social organism upon the conduct of the several generations, and of the existence of the sentiment which supports this claim. ”

“ Kidd still seems to incline to the belief that "the anti-social qualities of men and not their social qualities, are what furnish the cohesive force of society." His arguments repose upon a sliding scale of phrases, by means of which he passes unseen from one position to another and thence to a third. ”

“ The power-holders have never made a concession which was not wrung from them by threats, though after fear has compelled them to give way they have frequently attributed the act to their native generosity, reminding one of the story of the small boy who, when he was knocked down by a bigger comrade, remarked as he lay on the ground, that he was "just agoin' to fall down." The moral weakness of the position of the power-holding classes is a condition of the success of popular agitation and popular force, but it is not the cause ”