Mankind in the MakingWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Philosophy
Mankind in the Making
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Social problems; Social sciences
fluctuating origins into which new elements can be quietly inserted. An
English writer cannot estimate how dear the sacred brace of Senators for
each State may or may not be to the American heart. But the possibility
of Congress delegating the power to appoint additional Senators to
certain non-political bodies, or to juries of a specific constitution,
is at least thinkable as the beginning of a movement that would come at
last into parallelism with that in the British Empire.]
When these issues of public honour and efficient democratic
administration have begun to move towards a definite solution, the
community will be in a position to extend the operation of the new
methods towards a profounder revolution, the control of private
property. “We are all Socialists nowadays,” and it is needless,
therefore, to argue here at any length to establish the fact that beyond
quite personal belongings all Property is the creation of society, and
in reality no more than an administrative device. At present, in spite
of some quite hideous and mischievous local aspects, the institution
of Property, even in land and the shares of quasi-public businesses,
probably gives as efficient a method of control, and even it may be
a more efficient method of control than any that could be devised to
replace it under existing conditions. We have no public bodies and
no methods of check and control sufficiently trustworthy to justify
extensive expropriations. Even the municipalization of industries
needs to go slowly until municipal areas have been brought more into
conformity with the conditions of efficient administration. Areas too
cramped and areas that overlap spell waste and conflicting authorities,
and premature municipalization in such areas will lead only to the
final triumph of the private company. Political efficiency must precede
Socialism. [Footnote: See Appendix I. ] But there can be no doubt that
the spectacle of irresponsible property is a terribly demoralizing force
in the development of each generation. It is idle to deny that
Property, both in Great Britain and America, works out into a practical
repudiation of that equality, political democracy so eloquently asserts.
There is a fatalistic submission to inferiority on the part of an
overwhelming majority of those born poor, they hold themselves cheap in
countless ways, and they accept as natural the use of wealth for wanton
pleasure and purposes absolutely mischievous, they despair of effort in
the public service, and find their only hope in gambling, sharp greedy
trading, or in base acquiescences to the rich. The good New Republican
can only regard our present system of Property as a terribly
unsatisfactory expedient and seek with all his power to develop a better
order to replace it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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