Socialism
Nicholas Paine Gilman
Socialism is an appropriate subject, I must
think, to bring before an audience like this. It is a great scheme for social improvement.
Where can one find a body of men more likely to be rationally interested in
such a matter than the clergy of the
"To the solid ground
Of nature trusts the
mind that builds for aye,
Convinced that there,
there only, she can lay
Secure
foundations."
Interest in social reform has characterized
Unitarianism from the first. Naturally, because of our long interest, we have
never been hysterical. As we have believed in reason in religion, so we have
believed in reason in reform. Trusting to human nature in constructing our
theology, we trust to human nature in laying out our programme of philanthropy
and progress. Our ideal is always a realizable ideal: the methods we accept are
rational and naturally progressive. The spirit to which we bow is one of
fairness all around, of justice to all sorts and conditions of men. Every
friend of the ideal is, inevitably, a critic of the actual. We of the clergy
are professional critics every Sunday, as well as helpers, of mankind. We can therefore
sympathize with those who criticise human life sharply. But there is no true
criticism which is not, at the same time, appreciation. We have a right,
therefore, to criticise the critics, if only we have behind us reason, science,
philosophy. If our criticism is scientific, philosophic, above all, reasonable,
it will stand. May this spirit characterize this hour!
We are living in a world where capital, the
means of production, is mainly private. We are invited by the socialist to
transform this world into one wherein all capitals shall be united into one
public, non-competing means of production, a collective capital. The modern
socialist who thus invites us is, obviously, a severe critic of existing
society. He paints a very black picture of the world as it is, and gives us a
very rosy view of the world that might he. In the process of reformation human
nature might need to undergo great change. Its motives for action might need to
be transformed in large degree, and its scale of values might often need to be
revised. Great credulity is required to accept the revolutionary socialistic
faith. Vast confidence would be necessary to risk the throw upon the
productivity of a socialistic regime. This is often called an unbelieving age,
but it is in fact an age of Christian Science, of Spiritism, of Socialism: all
these make an unprecedented demand upon man's capacity for belief. This demand
is cheerfully met by many an optimistic soul, for whom facts have few terrors
and strict reasoning no attractions. But the critical spirit invoked against
the present order by the socialist, with the utmost harshness and lack of
proportion, may turn and attack those who raise it so bitterly. Only a small
part, probably, of the keenness and acerbity which they display would suffice
to destroy their own ideal construction.
Socialism, like pragmatism, is, comparatively
speaking, a new name for an old thing. The name is hardly seventy-five years
old: the thing, that is to say, the idea for which the word stands, is as old
as Plato. In the world of ideas, socialism is very venerable,—as venerable as
discontent is natural. Both the "Lord Christ's heart and Plato's
brain" have known it. But in the world of external facts it is as yet
unborn: many attempts have been made to bring it to the birth, but so far they
have been attended with little success. The socialist is, therefore, an
impassioned advocate, not of things as they are, but of things as they are not:
he is an orator of the ideal, an ambassador from Utopia. That fair land, never
yet realized, has all the attractions of the non-existent, and none of the
faults and defects of the actual. Checks may be drawn to any amount on the Bank
of Utopia. These who wish to pass them need never be afraid that these checks
will be protested on the ground that they have no funds in the bank; but such
currency is valid only in the sphere of the ideal. To reach this sphere, so
familiar to the imagination, the boldest aviators have not yet flown high
enough. Let us try to keep to the solid earth for an hour, in our discussion. I
may only remind you that many things need not be said, but may be taken for
granted on the part of any one who loves his kind. Those who wish to do simple
justice to the society that has the great virtues of having lived many
centuries, and of working passably well still, need not get angry with the
advocates of untried panaceas. The brute force of the existing is with the
conservative: reason will be on their side if they are reasonable.
Modern socialism dates from Karl Marx. It is
some seventy years old. It began with the "Communist Manifesto" of
1848. Marx's notable treatise, "Das Kapital" (1867) has been its
Bible. Frederick Engels was the Barnabas of this Paul. All preceding socialisms
were authoritatively set down by him as "Utopian;"
this one is exalted as "scientific," the highest word of praise in
the month of the socialist; while Utopian is to him, as to the Philistine, a
synonym for impossible and irrational. The great preachers of the gospel of
Utopian socialism were Plato and Sir Thomas More, Saint-Simon and Fourier, with
others in recent time. "To all these," says Engels, "Socialism
is the expression of absolute truth, reason, and justice." But
"absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of
each different school." For all these "pocket versions of the New
Jerusalem," as he called them, Marx held supreme contempt. "To make a
science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis. This basis
in reality is due to Marx. Two great discoveries, the materialistic conception
of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalistic production through
surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these discoveries socialism became a
science." (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, by F. Engels, p. 44.)
Let us examine briefly the bases of this
scientific socialism. First, let us look at "the materialistic conception
of history." The phrase "the materialistic conception of
history" should be discarded in favor of one free from a misleading word.
Marx was, in truth, a philosophical materialist; but this fact should not
prejudice one against the very important truth in his theory. As Professor
Seligman says, in his eminently fair and scientific treatment of the matter,
"The Economic Interpretation of History" is the proper phrase for the
idea. As Marx gives the definite statement in the third volume of his
"Capital": "It is always the immediate relation of the owner of
the conditions of production to the immediate producers—a relation each of
whose forms always naturally corresponds to a given stage in the methods and
conditions of Labor, and thus in its social productivity—in which we find the
innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and thus
also of the political forms" (III. 2, pp. 324, 325.) Now, "if
originality can properly he claimed only for those who not alone formulate a
doctrine, but first recognize its importance and its implications, … there is
no question," says Professor Seligman, "that Marx must be recognized
as, in the truest sense, the originator of the economic interpretation of
history." He continues: "We understand, then, by the theory of
economic interpretation of history, not that all history is to be explained in
economic terms alone, but that the chief considerations in human progress are
the social considerations, and that the important factor in social change is the
economic factor. Economic interpretation of history means, not that the
economic relations exert an exclusive influence, but that they exert a preponderant
influence, in shaping the progress of society." For the extreme vigor and
ability with which Karl Marx treated this theory he must be ranked high among
economists. But his socialism is not bound up with the application of the
theory to existing society. History shows us that economic changes take place
slowly, as in the case of feudalism advancing into modern society. As Rodbertus
said, correcting one error in Marx's application of his theory, socialism, if
it is to triumph at all, can only triumph in a distant future. The expectation
of a cataclysm of our society at some undated time is very naive, and very
unscientific, and very contradictory of a true economic interpretation of
history.
Again, Marx was certainly in error when he made
the chief phenomenon in history, the class struggle, the conflict of classes.
No reasonable person can doubt the existence of class-conflict in our day. One
great strike is sad proof enough of its reality. Even the peaceful actions of
the trade unions are a steady reminder of the probability of long-continued
class struggle. But it is altogether untrue to fact to make the conflict of
classes the one important matter in the economic interpretation of history, as
Marx proceeded to do. The co-operation of employer and employee is a far more
important and constant factor in the history of civilization, and this
co-operation is steadily becoming more steadfast and unbroken, as methods of
industrial peace are being perfected all over the world. An irreconcilable
conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat belongs only to the Hegelian
dialectic, which pervades so much of Marxian socialism. This dialectic is the
source and reason of its simplicity and clear-cut antagonisms. The workman
represents the thesis of the always developing idea; the capitalist represents
the antithesis; the synthesis will be socialism, the complete triumph of the
proletariat. Now the multiplicity and complexity of the actual world are
entirely missed by such philosophy. Lines of division and union, instead of
being few and broad, are very many and very intricate: the classes are
variously made up on the different lines.
When one reads the literature of socialism,
nothing is more striking than the monotony of its all-too-simple division of
the world of man into two classes only, the poor and the rich, the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie. But look around you here in
In this country more than in any other socialism
must go to school to democracy, not to class, but to Demos, if it is to make
any headway. Democracy is over a hundred years old here. Socialism has scarcely
cut its eye-teeth. This tuition is likely to be severe and unrelenting. The
distinction is at once to be made between the social programme and the
democratic programme of the social-democratic party of
In every scheme of economics the conception of
value is central. What is the source of value? Adam Smith answered,
"Labor," and he held to this view throughout his great treatise,
though with some modifications. Ricardo, his great successor as an economist,
held the same general view, but with essential modifications; which have been
well stated by Professor Marshall and Professor Conner, the latest editor of
Ricardo. "When he [Ricardo] speaks of Labor with a capital, including under
it the exertion of capital, they [modern socialistic schools] speak of labor
with a small initial, meaning plain toil, often plain manual toil. When he
introduces the important modifications consequent no alterations in the
Standard of Comfort, into the law of wages, they omit the modifications, and
often cite his authority to justify what he denied…. The modern socialistic
schools, we are told, base themselves on Ricardo. It is quite true. They do,
and they do so justly, we are assured by writers who ought to know better. As a
matter of fact, this claim is based on a series of misunderstandings"
(Conner, p. lvii, I.)
Marx's demonstration that value is due to labor
begins with the statement that, when any two commodities are exchanged, this
shows that there is in them a third something which the two commodities possess
in common. Using his dialectic method of straining out all other properties, he
finds only one common property left, that both are the products of labor. The
broad proposition is that "the magnitude of value contained in a commodity
is measured by the quantity of abstract human labor embodied in it, and this
quantity is measured again by the duration of the effort." Now, in the
search for the common quality which is the cause of value, Marx begins, as
Böhm-Bawerk says, by carefully putting into the sieve only "those
exchangeable things which contain the property which he desires finally to sift
out as a common factor. . . . He acts as one who urgently desiring to bring a
white ball out of the urn takes care to secure this result by putting in white
balls only." He limits his inquiries to commodities, and "adopts,
without explicit warning, a definition of commodities which includes only
products of labor and excludes virgin soil, natural meadows, and all other
gifts of nature." But, passing over this, we know that goods upon which
very different amounts of labor have been spent have the same price. So Marx,
to meet this objection, declares that the labor, which is the cause of value is
"not the actual effort put forth by any specific individual, but a
homogeneous funded quantity, socially necessary labor, the labor required under
normal conditions of skill, intensity, and up-to-date appliances." The
unit in this homogeneous fund is a quantum of unskilled labor, simply average
labor, the labor power, which on the average, apart from any special
development, exists in the organism of every individual. Skilled labor counts
only as multiplied "simple labor." Without quoting here any of the
economists who object to this extraordinary statement, it may be enough to say
that abstract human labor is a thing with which most people may safely be said
to have no acquaintance, while the "actual effort put forth by a specific
individual," which Marx rejects, is precisely what the ordinary man means
by labor. It does not require so keen a mind as Böhm-Bawerk's to detect the
metaphysical juggling which Marx here practices. His "homogeneous funded
quantity" exists nowhere, outside of the sophistical pages of "Das
Kapital." It is not, you see, the amount of labor actually put into a
commodity that makes its value, but the amount of "socially necessary
labor." If one stupid man takes a day to make a chair of wood and a
capable man makes three in the same time, Marx says only one-third of a day's
work is "socially necessary," shifting the whole matter of the
determination of value upon society. The fact is, of course, that the amount of
labor used in making the chair is only one item in the account: the amount of
intelligence is another item—the amount not of work of hand, but skill of mind.
Here, as elsewhere, the socialist disciple will
point out that Marx says, or implies, precisely the opposite thing on another
page. This is true, and it marks a constant habit of his mind. On scarcely any point has he failed to assume
directly contradictory positions: the only thing the economist can do is to
take the most frequent, the most emphatic assertions on a given point, and get
what harmony he can out of them. Obviously, the proof of such a statement as
this would be out of place in an address like this. Be it enough for me to say
that here is the most common of objection on the part of the economists. Having
assumed an indefensible definition of value as due to labor only, Marx shifts
from one line of defence to another, usually without warning. If labor is the
cause of value, where does society come in with its "socially
necessary" judgment? Society is to pass this judgment, and this judgment
is not an ascertainment of how many hours men actually spend on a job or a
commodity, but a statement of society's own feelings as to the necessity or
desirability of the thing; that is to say, its utility.
Utility Marx has ruled out; but now he brings it
in by the side door, raising a good deal of metaphysical dust to cover the
transaction, telling us, e. g., that the value of each single yard of linen
cloth "is the materialized form of the same definite and socially fixed
quantity of homogeneous human labor." "Homogeneous human labor,"—'tis
a fine phrase; but what can it mean, except that all human effort is reducible
to a statement, in hours or days, of simple muscular exertion? So the labor of
Raphael on his Sistine Madonna is just so many times that of the hod-carrier on
the palace which holds it! This being conceded, Marx has to answer only two
demands made upon him by the inquisitive mind. How many times is the labor of
the artist superior to that of the workman? And how do you ascertain their
proportions scientifically? To such reasonable inquiries, Marx replies, in
substance, "Society determines how much 'socially necessary' labor goes
into each work." The plain man will be content to call this pure claptrap.
In his innocence he will say that valuation is a social judgment; that society
recognizes the general importance of the amount of labor of hand or head spent
upon a commodity as a factor in fixing its price, but that this is far from
being the only factor; and, as for human labor being homogeneous, it is highly
heterogeneous, and the higher forms are not capable of being stated in terms of
day labor on the street. Shakespeare's "Hamlet" differs in kind from
the corn and potatoes of the ordinary farmer. How many days' labor in
bricklaying can be called equal to one day's work of the Chief Justice of the
But, says the Marxian, labor is not labor except
when applied to making a useful object in the quantity required by society.
"This," says Prof. O. D. Skelton, in his very clever "Critical
Analysis of Socialism," recently issued, "is as though one should
assert that the air is the sole factor in the growth of a tree, and afterwards
hedge by explaining that air is not air unless certain conditions of soil and
sunshine be present." It is not uncommon, one may say here, for the
enthusiastic disciple of Marx to speak of him as on a par with
On the side of theory the standing of so-called
"Scientific Socialism" with the leading economists of today, who
represent the only science in question, is a lack of standing. The manner in
which the ablest and most candid of them speak of it may be seen in quotations,
which I must make brief, from two or three. Prof. Alfred Marshall is the
foremost of English economists today. In his unfinished "Principles of
Economics" he thus speaks of the "surplus value" doctrine of
Marx, which Engels declared to be his second great contribution to Scientific
Socialism (pp. 630-631): Marx and his followers argue "that labor always
produces a surplus above its wages, and the weal and tear of capital used in
aiding it; and that the wrong done to labor lies in the exploitation of this
surplus by others. But this assumption that the whole of this surplus is the
product of labor already takes for granted what they ultimately profess to
prove by it; they make no attempt to prove it, and it is not true. It is not
true that the spinning of yarn in a factory, after allowance has been made for
the wear and tear of the machinery, is the product of the labor of the
operatives. It is the product of their labor (together with that of the
employer and subordinate managers) and of the Capital; and that Capital itself
is the product of labor and waiting; and therefore, the spinning is the product
of labor (of many kinds), and of waiting.... The strength of Rodbertus' and
Marx's sympathies with suffering must always command our respect; but what they
regarded as the scientific foundations of their practical proposals appears to be
little more than a series of arguments in a circle to the effect that there is no
economic justification for interest, while that result has been all along
latent in their premises; though in the case of Marx, it was shrouded by the
mysterious Hegelian phrases with which, to us his own phrase, he 'coquetted.'
I will quote Prof. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the
famous Austrian economist, a little more fully. Marx, he says, "has not
proved his fundamental proposition that labor alone governs exchange relations
either objectively from the external, tangible, objective world of facts, with
which, on the contrary, they are in opposition; or subjectively, from the
motive of the exchanging parties; but he gives it to the world in the form of
an abortive dialectic, more arbitrary and untrue to facts than has probably ever
before been known in the history of our science" ("Karl Marx and the
Close of his System," p. 216.) "What will be the final judgment of
the world? Of that I have no manner of doubt. The Marxian system has a past and
a present, but no abiding future. Of all sorts of scientific systems those which,
like the Marxian system, are based on a hollow dialectic, are most surely
doomed. A clever dialectic may make a temporary impression en the human mind,
but cannot make a lasting one. In the long run, facts and the secure linking of
causes and effects win the day. In the domain of natural science, such a work
as Marx's would even now be impossible. Socialism will certainly not be
overthrown with the Marxian system, neither practical nor theoretic Socialism.
As there was a Socialism before Marx, so there will be one after him. Marx will
retain a permanent place in the history of the social sciences for the same
reasons, and with the same mixture of positive and negative merits as his
prototype, Hegel. Both of them were philosophical geniuses. Both of them, each
in his own domain, had an enormous influence upon the thought and feeling of
whole generations, one might almost say upon the spirit of the age; the
specific theoretical work of each was a most ingeniously conceived structure
built up by a magical power of combination, of numerous storeys of thought held
together by a marvellous mental grasp, but—a house of cards" (Ibid., pp. 220-221 ) .
Prof. E. R. A. Seligman, perhaps our ablest
living American economist, certainly one of the fairest-minded of them, in his
treatment of socialism thus sums up: "The economic theory of 'scientific
socialism', as we have seen, is completely erroneous. It starts out with the
defective labor theory of value; it unjustifiably restricts labor to manual
labor; it misconceives the theory of profits; and it erects into a veritable
fetish the doctrine of class-conflict." "Socialism as a movement,
however," he adds, like Professor Böhm-Bawerk," is not bound up with
any such• scientific or unscientific theories. Practical discontent, not
scientific formulae, has engendered modern socialism. To Lasalle, and not to
Marx, must be ascribed the real paternity of socialism, as a practical
movement" ("Principles of Economics," first ed., PP. 561-562.)
The case, then, for Marxian socialism, which is
socialism distinctively, stands in brief thus. It is largely a
closet-philosophy, drawn not from study of real life, but from a vicious
dialectic. It omits factors in value which are important, and hence it distorts
and misrepresents the actual situation. Every now and then it comes into fatal
collision with ordinary effort. It mistakes the nature of profits. It omits in
its rewards the all-important employer, or entrepreneur, and gives to manual
labor a primacy which in the real world it never has held. Its sympathies for
the poor are strong, but its sense of justice for all others is very deficient.
In a word, it is a theory forced upon facts, not a theory drawn from them. It
is not strange, therefore, that acute observers consider the days of Marxian
socialism numbered.
In
The second cause of the halt in the high tide of
socialist success in
A further and powerful cause of the temporary
eclipse of German socialism in 1907 was the comparative barrenness of its
parliamentary activity. "No political party in
On one point, of the first political importance,
there is an open break between these revisionists and the main body of the
socialist "stand-patters," to give them an American name. The
Socialist Congress has voted repeatedly in late years that socialist members of
the legislature shall not "vote the budget,"—that is, help to pass
appropriation bills,—as this would he equivalent to indorsing the existing
system. The inconsistency of such an order with voting, holding seats, and
various other acts of all the socialists, is very evident. In spite of this
order, however, the socialist deputies in
"It is not likely, that the uncompromising
attitude which has doomed the party to barrenness and failure in the past will
long he allowed to continue, . . . but the concessions which will have to be
made will weaken some of the characteristics of Socialism which are most
pernicious in the eyes of the burgher parties. An alliance between Radicalism
and Social Democracy no longer seems inconceivable today." "Looking
to the immediate future, therefore, it seems less likely that the existing
divisions within the Socialist ranks upon questions of doctrine and policy will
lead to disintegration, than that they will be resolved by such modifications
in the party's attitude toward questions of practical politics as will facilitate
action with other groups equally interested in the welfare of the people. No
renunciation of ultimate aims will be required of the idealists of the party,
but they will probably see the wisdom of joining their 'realist' colleagues in
concentrating attention upon reforms realizable in the present, and making each
of these a starting-point for new effort" (Evolution of Modern Germany, p.
466.)
German socialism has passed through various
stages of evolution toward a rational and energetic political party, and there is
no good reason for supposing that the evolution has ended. In 1848 Marx and
Engels called upon the proletarians of all countries to unite. "The
Communists seek not to conceal their views and purposes. They declare openly
that their aims can be attained only by a violent overthrow of the existing
social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a counter-revolution. The
proletariat have nothing to lose except their chains they have a world to
gain." We may allow Mr. Spargo, writing in 1909, to claim that these
words, written in the revolutionary year 1848, meant only a peaceful
revolution. Sixty years ago to the men of 1848, there was probably more blood
and iron in them. However that may be, the new conditions of 1871 made armed
revolution very unwise. The grant of universal suffrage in 1871 called for new
tactics, for new weapons. Twenty years later the Erfurt Congress declared that
the Social Democratic party is "henceforth a political and parliamentary
party." A future revolution was discountenanced, as well as violent
revolution in the past; and the socialist State is to evolve gradually, from
the present State. Marx abandoned the "iron law of wages," and
Liebknecht called it "unscientific" in the Halle Congress of 1890.
Referring in 1900 to the doctrine, "Labor is the source of all
wealth," Bebel says, "We know better now." This process of
learning to know better continues steadily in the field of German socialism: as
Bebel says, the party has its moultings. It has had them in the past, and it
will have them in the future. Enough, perhaps too much, of Marxian socialism.
Let those who will read the recent crushing analyses of the doctrines by
Professor Skelton and by Professor Simkhovich (in the Political Science Quarterly for 1908-09.)
But, as there was socialism before Marx, so
there will be socialism after his day is gone by. State socialism, as they call
it in
It seems to me very probable that here, as in
Marxian socialism is the most formidable attempt
yet made to establish socialism on a foundation of logic and science. Compared
with it, all other recent systems of socialism lack foundation and backbone.
They spring out of a warm heart for the sorrows of man, but in their
constructive work they lack connection with fact, and justice to the men who
represent the established order' at its best is conspicuously absent. Most of our
popular socialists do not suffer from the "intolerable disease of
thought." An epigrammatic clergyman of our body, in the last half of the
last century, used to say that Radicalism had two great friends, Death and
Thought. They are the two great enemies of socialism. Death is gradually
removing the pillars of the old orthodox socialism, and Thought is destroying
the validity of their so-called scientific claims. The places of Bebel and
Liebknecht will be poorly supplied by such men as H. C. Wells and John Spargo,
with all their merits. These agreeable writers have no powerful and consistent
scheme to offer us, and they cannot play fast-and-loose for long with the logic
of the accepted order. It is in vain for one to attempt to smuggle under Marx's
cloak the opportunism which Marx rejected, or for another to slip gradually
away from all that is most characteristic of reasoned socialism, and retain the
name. Socialism, for most people who lightly take the name nowadays, means
nothing tangible or expressible. You read Mr. Wells' books, for example, with
much sympathy. After you have read several of them, you are told that the news
is that he is no longer a socialist, but has left even the Fabians! Such is the
latest phase of one who has been telling us that our economic system might
become "almost infinitely more productive than it is, if we took the
socialist path."! Pleased with the poetry of socialism (in Rev. C. R.
Brown's excellent antithesis), you call yourself, perhaps, a Christian
socialist, forgetting that its prose has to reckon with the economists and to answer
the hard question, "Who shall pay the bills of socialism?" Abroad,
socialism has had occasionally to reckon with the acceptance of Power and
Responsibility in high places by its members. But John Burns and M. Millerand
soon cease to be orthodox. Their statesmanship soon swallows, up their extreme
socialistic theories.
Moderation, then! I would suggest to all who
commend to us the historic example of our Abolitionists, that the actual remedy
for slavery was not found by them. History should be read more wisely. A truer
analogy might say that, as the Abolitionists did not abolish slavery, so the
socialists will not abolish capitalism. Instead of taking a name which marks a
theory already decadent and discredited among thinking men, let our
philanthropists consider the vast possibilities of persistent social reform. It
is a process always needed, never ended,—a work demanding all our wisdom, all
our patience, all our discrimination, all our zeal, all our consecration. Many
are the special problems of our present day. Each of us will do his best by
turning his hand, by preference, to a single task instead of simply shouting
one remedy for all our ills. Socialism is an exploded cure-all, foreign to our
genius as a people, not taught by our past, not indicated as our probable
future. An indication of its probable future in our country may be seen by the
vote taken by the socialists in 1908 to drop the public ownership of land from
its programme. I believe in opportunism, but not in such opportunism, for the simple
purpose of catching votes. A party capable of taking such action as this just
mentioned ought to write over its shop-windows the sign, "Our convictions
altered while you wait."
Individualism is but the name of one tendency in
our life. In our present civilization we are all socialists when Together in the word of the hour. So we
are all individualists when the single soul is called to do its best. As our
sound psychologists tell us, society is as unreal as the individual: both are
but aspects of the one reality, human life. Let us cease, then, to contend
about partial theories, and unite on the common life, which needs all the
wealth of our secular power, all the force of our common sense, the strength of
our general mind, the power of our entire nature. The right way is the way of
natural evolution, which we are largely following now. Let us seek to moralize
the rich, that they may increase the Common wealth by fair taxes and by
generous gifts. Let us try to moralize the poor out of the worship of wealth
and into the fuller practice of cooperation. Let us all increase fraternity,
while retaining liberty. More of humane interest, more of the brotherly touch,
more of reasonableness! So shall we reach and practice the enduring
individualism and the persistent socialism that are but two aspects of man
thoroughly socialized.