A Critical Examination of SocialismMallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Philosophy
A Critical Examination of Socialism
Mallock, W. H. (William Hurrell)
Communism; Socialism
We started with supposing the establishment of a system of education
which would offer to all the same books and teachers, and also--for this
was part of our assumption--equal leisure to profit by them; and we
noted how soon opportunities would cease to be equal on account of the
different uses which would be made of them by different students. What
must now be noted is that as matters have been conducted hitherto,
attempts to make educational opportunities equal do tend to produce an
equality of a certain kind. Though they have no tendency to equalise
powers of achievement, they tend to produce an artificial equality of
expectation. In order to elucidate the nature of this fact, and its
significance, I cannot do better than quote a passage from Ruskin,
admirable for its trenchant felicity, which, since it occurs in a book
much admired by socialists, may be commended to their special
attention.[29] Economic demand, Ruskin says, is the expression of
economic desires; but the constitution of human nature is such that
these desires are divisible into two distinct kinds--desires for the
commodities which men "need," and desires for commodities which they
"wish for." The former arise from those appetites and appetencies in
respect of which all are equal. They are virtually a fixed quantity, and
the economic commodities requisite for their healthy satisfaction
constitute a minimum which is virtually the same for all men. The
latter, instead of being fixed, are capable of indefinite variation, and
in these--the desires for what men "wish for" but do not "need"--we have
the origin "of three-fourths of the demands existing in the world."
"These demands are," he proceeds, "romantic. They are founded on
visions, idealisms, hopes, and affections, and the regulation of the
purse is, in its essence, regulation of the imagination and the heart."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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