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"