Leonard Courtney

“ To protest against the world by secession from it is one thing, to reconstruct it is another. It is easy to organize on the basis of a community of goods a household, a family, a village, but the process lends no help to the organization of a county or a nation, and if it cannot be extended to these larger limits it stands condemned. A monastery, a nunnery, a Shakers' settlement may be all Socialist societies, but their existence taken alone would furnish arguments against rather than in favour of the possibility of a Socialist resettlement of mankind. ”

“ It would seem as if the judgment of an organized community must necessarily be commonplace; there would be repression of originality, instead of that encouragement it now receives from single voices; and neglect, if not extinction, will await the makers of the future. Yes, it will be retorted, but you forget how the whole character of society will be changed. A real academy of the elect will be one of the institutions of the new world, ever ready with open eyes and open hearts to welcome the epiphany of genius. ”

“ If we are to judge aright the programme of Socialist promise we must compare it not merely with the society that exists, but with society as it too might become, though remaining based on the principles that now underlie it, as its units grew in morality and wisdom. I have tried to show the difficulties that beset the theory of Socialism. In my judgment they are insuperable. The organization suggested by it of a national, still more of an international, economy is impossible. ”

“ All may, in truth, be summed up in the declaration that an industrial community is a palpitating, living organism, the corpuscles of which are in perpetual movement with reciprocal action and reaction among themselves, shifting their relations from causes so manifold and so obscure that the wit of man is not competent to forecast, to train, and to direct its growth and its life. ”

“ If the acquisition on behalf of the public of certain properties hitherto held by private undertakers constituted such a strong illustration of the coming substitution of Socialism for Individualism, it would be strange that almost, if not quite, the last act of one who has just left us—a most stubborn adherent of Individualism—should have been the achievement of a triumph in the first stage, and a certain prelude to triumphs all along the line, in the municipalization of local markets. ”

“ It is of a perfect order, where there is no wasted labour nor clashing toil; a harmony where no man struggles for another man's part, but each fulfils his allotted work; and the outcome of the whole is redistributed again, with an utter absence of jealous greed, to the satisfaction of every member of the redeemed universal family. What wonder is it that the fascination of such a dream can never pall, or that mankind should refuse to believe it cannot be realized? ”

“ If we know what man will be we may have some confidence as to the character of his activity in art and literature. Yet it may be pointed out that the recognition of the highest work in these spheres, if not its inspiration, has depended upon the freedom of the individual, and upon the infinite variety that has been developed under this freedom. The great artist or singer dwells apart, and few are those found fit to appreciate his gifts when first made known to the world. ”

“ Yet in this lurks the germ of individualism which a more rigorous organization would stamp out. To carry on our conception we must contemplate our new society as a 'going concern,' taken over in full swing with strictly regilated interchanges and distribution of products. It must at the same time be capable of improvement as an industrial machine. No one will think we have come to an end of invention or of the development of economy and efficiency in the processes of production. ”

“ In the face of the savage realities of Ages of Stone, of Brass, and of Iron, we may be forced to surrender the fabled Age of Gold; but the future is still ours, and faith, falsified by experience, lives once more to believe that a more searching and successful analysis of the defects of to-day is itself evidence of the possibility of the new order of to-morrow. ”

“ I have not dwelt upon the moral difficulties that would impede the acceptance of Socialism, but it must be plain that the moral difficulties in the education of the individual must be less than those of the education of a community; it is easier to raise up units than to raise up masses of men ”

“ For renunciation is the death of self and kills the very spirit of appropriation which is the strength of confiscation. It may be said that no one dreams of putting such a strain as has been suggested upon the moral judgment of the world, and that these difficulties in the way of Socialism are imaginary giants which are not even metamorphosed windmills. ”

“ To lead a whole nation by the method of persuasion to renounce individual possessions, and to accept instead a distributed quota—be it an equal or a graduated share—in the annual product, is a project so unpromising that it has been rarely contemplated as practical. The plan actually regarded as feasible is that of converting a preponderant mass of the possessors of political power to the principle of a community of goods, so that the desired result may be brought about by confiscation and not by renunciation. ”

“ Art and literature are essentially communicative. If any order of Socialism could be established, they would probably uproot it because they would show by their activity and productiveness that the new order was insufficient for the satisfaction and fulfilment of the highest nature of man; and we know by experience, however unfriendly the phases of society in the past, art and literature have always prevailed through individual effort and individual voices to give new life and new gladness to the world. ”

“ Take, again, the fact of experience that industries shift their habitats within the area of the same political society; the work done in pursuit of a particular result waxes in one spot and wanes in another as local circumstances are favourable or unfavourable, and tends at any time to settle where the desired result can be accomplished with least labour. In a Socialist state the central brain must discover the proper situation of each industry and direct it to be planted there at the peril of losing the advantage of the change. ”

“ Municipal indebtedness has in fact increased in spite of sinking funds and other processes of reducing debt. The purchase of a gas undertaking or of a telegraphic system may be wise or unwise, and it may be expedient or not to engage in similar transactions, but these precedents do not in any degree lead up to that organization of Socialism in which private enterprise and private property disappear. What they amount to at the most is this, that taxpayers and ratepayers by processes of unconscious and involuntary saving have acquired a little common capital, whereat we may all rejoice ”

“ He will not have resources of his own, nor can he go to friends or speculators to help his fortunes. A bureau of inventions will be necessary, or perhaps a series of them for different branches of industry. Here we get a glimpse of the greatest difficulty of organized Socialism. The moral obstacles are overcome; the common good is the paramount aim of all; but where is the brain to order, direct, modify, control the working of the great machine? ”

“ The Socialist passion thus severely condemning palliatives is a craving for new life, manifested in many forms. The ideas and plans of Socialists are numerous, varied, and changeable; but every Socialist is in some fashion or other struggling after a new society, organized in a different manner from that to which we are accustomed—not a modification of it, resting on the same principles as before, but a re-formation out of which may commence a new career and a new fulfilment of humanity. And of these Socialist visions, as of philanthropic endeavour, the succession has been endless. ”

“ A young man whose earlier years have been spent among happy conditions awakens in the fulness of time to a new revelation, and the vividness of the present knows no past. He is consumed, and rightly consumed, by the passion of indignation he feels at the spectacle of degradation he sees for the first time. The complacency of his seniors irritates him. He is impatient of their ignoble content. The pity is that as he grows wiser in his estimates of past and present, his zeal to better the present may too probably abate. ”

“ Yet this acquisition by the community must somehow be made, at least as far as regards what I may call vitalized capital—that is, capital which is employed in the prosecution of industry, if a régime of Socialism is to be established. Here we are not dealing with property in land, which might have been disallowed from the beginning without otherwise deranging the economic social organism, but with property in things the disallowance of which is the destruction of self-ownerships and the establishment of communism ab initio. ”

“ Purify as we may the vision of the commonalty it must still be common; and by no process of free evolution can an academy be established whose acting judgment shall he far removed from that of the mass out of which it has sprung. Elevation and distinction are by the very necessity of things, the characteristics of a few. The words themselves imply a contrast between individuals and the majority, and a strict Socialist might detect in them the obnoxious principle of separation. ”

“ We are dealing with long periods of time, and I would rather not set a limit to the extent to which the doctrine of renunciation may be carried. Free surrender to the common good may spread, and there is nothing to be said against it, except in respect of its wisdom or unwisdom, regard being had to the effect of such surrender on the character of those intended to be benefited. But the moral difficulties of the principle of confiscation deserve more careful attention. It is generally proposed to be first applied to property in land, and to this extent it has secured many adherents. ”

“ It is said, with truth, of literature that much that is now classed as such is unworthy of the name; and somehow, but how or why we can scarcely discern, it would be purified and renovated in a reconstructed society. And the nature of man, of which these are but expressions, would be regenerated in a like manner under the new conditions of social life. ”

“ A trusty measure of the well-being of successive swarms of men is not easily discoverable, but very little reflection is necessary to convince us that neither is this generation the most pitiable of all, nor are we among the forerunners of philanthropy. Although we have not, and cannot have, an exact scale of comparison with the past, literature and history alike prove that the average condition of the mass of men has slowly risen ”

“ They have again and again impelled chosen lovers of their kind to strong and sustained efforts to lift the poor out of the mire, to establish a higher standard of life below which none should be degraded. ”

“ The socialized community would be a slowly moving, if not stagnant, organism. Another consideration may be thrown out following the same line of thought. We have not only experienced improvements in processes of production; the products themselves have been presented to us in endless variety. Differences of colour, differences of shape, differences of material, have abounded in our dress. Even in so simple a matter as the making of bread we have a large range offered to our choice. Variety has degenerated into the monstrosities of fashion ”

“ There will be a consideration paid for each transfer—a consideration possibly declining in amount as the process of absorption continues, for with avenues of investment closing one by one, capital will he worth less and less; and then, by-and-by, readjusted schemes of taxation will quietly, but effectually, by sure if tender instalments, withdraw to the national use the interest on all investments supported by and (to use the appropriate language) oppressing the industries of the people. ”

“ Strong men and free men, with personal independence unabated, yet imbued with mutual respect, would associate and dissociate and re-associate themselves as occasion offered and reason suggested, working out an elevation of the common life through individual advancement. ”

“ The promises have not been realized; peace and brotherhood have not been set up; but with another generation faith revives. The mistakes which caused the failures of the past will this time be avoided; there is no longer a loophole of error in the scheme of social regeneration. ”