In point of fact socialism is one of the most elastic and protean phenomena of history, varying according to the time and circumstances in which it appears, and with the character and opinions and institutions of the people who adopt it. Such a movement cannot be condemned or approved _en bloc_. Most of the current formulæ to which it has been referred for praise or censure are totally erroneous and misleading. Yet in the midst of the various theories that go by the name of ‘socialism’ there is a kernel of principle that is common to them all. That principle is of an economic nature, and is most clear and precise. The central aim of socialism is to terminate the divorce of the workers from the natural sources of subsistence and of culture. The socialist theory is based on the historical assertion that the course of social evolution for centuries has gradually been to exclude the producing classes from the possession of land and capital, and to establish a new subjection, the subjection of workers who have nothing to depend on but precarious wage-labour. Socialists maintain that the present system (in which land and capital are the property of private individuals freely struggling for increase of wealth) leads inevitably to social and economic anarchy, to the degradation of the working man and his family, to the growth of vice and idleness among the wealthy classes and their dependants, to bad and inartistic workmanship, to insecurity, waste, and starvation; and that it is tending more and more to separate society into two classes, wealthy millionaires confronted with an enormous mass of proletarians, the issue out of which must either be socialism or social ruin. To avoid all these evils and to secure a more equitable distribution of the means and appliances of happiness, socialists propose that land and capital, which are the requisites of labour and the sources of all wealth and culture, should be placed under social ownership and control.