New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialismWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialism
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Socialism
And all this immense publicly sustained organization will be doing
greatly and finely what now our scattered line of Socialist
propagandists is doing under every disadvantage, that is to say it
will be developing and sustaining the social self-consciousness, the
collective sense of the State.
§ 5.
I am naturally preoccupied with the Mind of that Civilized State we
seek to make; because my work lies in this department. But while the
writer, the publisher and printer, the bookseller and librarian, and
teacher and preacher must chiefly direct himself to developing this
great organized mind and intention in the world, other sorts of men
will be concerned with parallel aspects of the Socialist synthesis.
The medical worker or the medical investigator will be building up the
body of a new generation, the Body of the Civilized State, and he will
be doing all he can not simply as an individual, but as a citizen, to
_organize_ his services of cure and prevention, of hygiene and
selection. And the specialized man of science--he will be concerned
with his own special synthesis, the Knowledge of the Civilized State,
whether he measure crystals or stain microtome sections or count
stars. A great and growing multitude of men will be working out the
Apparatus of the Civilized State; the students of transit and housing,
the engineers in their incessantly increasing variety, the miners and
geologists estimating the world's resources in metals and minerals,
the mechanical inventors perpetually economizing force. The scientific
agriculturist, again, will be studying the food supply of the world as
a whole, and how it may be increased and distributed and economized.
And to the student of law comes the task of rephrasing his intricate
and often quite beautiful science in relation to the new social
assumptions we have laid down. All these and a hundred other aspects
are integral to the wide project of Constructive Socialism as it
shapes itself now.
And to the man or woman who looks at these issues not as one
specialized in relation to some constructive calling but as a common
citizen, a mere human being eager to make and do from the standpoint
of personal liberty and personal affections, the appeal of this great
constructive project is equally strong. You want security and liberty!
Here it is, safe from the greed of trust and landlord; here is
investment with absolute assurance and trading with absolute justice;
this is the only safe way to build your own house in perfect security,
to make your own garden safe for yourself and for your children's
children, the only way in which you can link a hundred million kindred
wills in loyal co-operation with your own, and that is to do it not
for yourself alone and for your children alone, but for all the
world--all the world doing it also for you--to join yourself to this
great making of a permanent well-being for mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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