Differing from all these are those for whom I would
speak. Believing that the rights of true property are
sacred, we would regard forcible communism as robbery
that would bring destruction. But we would not be
disposed to deny that voluntary communism might be the
highest possible state of which men can conceive. Nor do
we say that it cannot be possible for mankind to attain
it, since among the early Christians and among the
religious orders of the Catholic Church we have examples
of communistic societies on a small scale. St. Peter and
St. Paul, St. Thomas of Aquin and Fra Angelico, the
illustrious orders of the Carmelites and Franciscans, the
Jesuits, whose heroism carried the cross among the most
savage tribes of American forests, the societies that
wherever your communion is known have deemed no work of
mercy too dangerous or too repellent — were or are
communists. Knowing these things we cannot take it on
ourselves to say that a social condition may not be
possible in which an all-embracing love shall have taken
the place of all other motives. But we see that communism
is only possible where there exists a general and intense
religious faith, and we see that such a state can be
reached only through a state of justice. For before a man
can be a saint he must first be an honest man.
With both anarchists and socialists, we, who
for want of a better term have come to call ourselves
single-tax men, fundamentally differ. We regard them as
erring in opposite directions — the one in ignoring
the social nature of man, the other in ignoring his
individual nature. While we see that man is primarily an
individual, and that nothing but evil has come or can
come from the interference by the state with things that
belong to individual action, we also see that he is a
social being, or, as Aristotle called him, a political
animal, and that the state is requisite to social
advance, having an indispensable place in the natural
order. Looking on the bodily organism as the
analogue of the social organism, and on the proper
functions of the state as akin to those that in the human
organism are discharged by the conscious intelligence,
while the play of individual impulse and interest
performs functions akin to those discharged in the bodily
organism by the unconscious instincts and involuntary
motions, the anarchists seem to us like men who would try
to get along without heads and the socialists like men
who would try to rule the wonderfully complex and
delicate internal relations of their frames by conscious
will.
The philosophical anarchists of whom I speak are few
in number, and of little practical importance. It is with
socialism in its various phases that we have to do
battle.
With the socialists we have some points of agreement,
for we recognize fully the social nature of man and
believe that all monopolies should be held and governed
by the state. In these, and in directions where the
general health, knowledge, comfort and convenience might
be improved, we, too, would extend the functions of the
state.
But it seems to us the vice of socialism in all its
degrees is its want of radicalism, of going to the root.
It takes its theories from those who have sought to
justify the impoverishment of the masses, and its
advocates generally teach the preposterous and degrading
doctrine that slavery was the first condition of labor.
It assumes that the tendency of wages to a minimum is the
natural law, and seeks to abolish wages; it assumes that
the natural result of competition is to grind down
workers, and seeks to abolish competition by
restrictions, prohibitions and extensions of governing
power. Thus mistaking effects for causes, and childishly
blaming the stone for hitting it, it wastes strength in
striving for remedies that when not worse are futile.
Associated though it is in many places with democratic
aspiration, yet its essence is the same delusion to which
the children of Israel yielded when against the protest
of their prophet they insisted on a king; the delusion
that has everywhere corrupted democracies and enthroned
tyrants — that power over the people can be used
for the benefit of the people; that there may be devised
machinery that through human agencies will secure for the
management of individual affairs more wisdom and more
virtue than the people themselves possess. This
superficiality and this tendency may be seen in all the
phases of socialism. ... read the whole
letter
IN socialism as distinguished from individualism there
is an unquestionable truth — and that a truth to
which (especially by those most identified with
free-trade principles) too little attention has been
paid. Man is primarily an individual — a
separate entity, differing from his fellows in desires
and powers, and requiring for the exercise of those
powers and the gratification of those desires individual
play and freedom. But he is also a social being, having
desires that harmonize with those of his fellows, and
powers that can only be brought out in concerted
action. There is thus a domain of individual
action and a domain of social action — some things
which can best be done when each acts for himself, and
some things which can best be done when society acts for
all its members. And the natural tendency of advancing
civilization is to make social conditions relatively more
important, and more and more to enlarge the domain of
social action. This has not been sufficiently regarded,
and at the present time, evil unquestionably results from
leaving to individual action functions that by reason of
the growth of society and the developments of the arts
have passed into the domain of social action; just as, on
the other hand, evil unquestionably results from social
interference with what properly belongs to the
individual. Society ought not to leave the telegraph and
the railway to the management and control of individuals;
nor yet ought society to step in and collect individual
debts or attempt to direct individual industry. —
Protection or Free Trade, Chapter 28
econlib
... go to "Gems
from George"