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 what I have said of the middle-class parent is true with certain
modifications of all the classes above it, except that in a monarchy
you reach at last one State-subsidized family--in the case of Britain
a very healthy and active group, the Royal family--which is not only
State supported, but also beyond the requirements of any modern
Socialist, State bred. There are enormous handicaps at every other
social level upon efficient parentage, and upon the training of
children for any public and generous end. Parentage is treated as a
private foible, and those who undertake its solemn responsibilities
are put at every sort of disadvantage against those who lead sterile
lives, who give all their strength and resources to vanity and
socially harmful personal indulgence. These latter, with an ampler
leisure and ampler means, determine the forms of pleasure and social
usage, they "set the fashion" and bar pride, distinction or relaxation
to the devoted parent. The typical British aristocrat is not parent
bred, but class bred, a person with a lively sense of social
influences and no social ideas. The one class that is economically
capable of making all that can be made of its children is demoralized
by the very irresponsibility of the wealth that creates this
opportunity. This is still more apparent in the American plutocracy,
where perhaps half the women appear to be artificially sterilized
spenders of money upon frivolous things.
No doubt there is in the richer strata of the community a certain
proportion of families with a real tradition of upbringing and
service; such English families as the Cecils, Balfours and Trevelyans,
for example, produce, generation after generation, public-spirited and
highly competent men. But the family tradition in these cases is an
excess of virtue rather than any necessary consequence of a social
advantage; it is a defiance rather than a necessity of our economic
system. It is natural that such men as Lord Hugh and Lord Robert
Cecil, highly trained, highly capable, but without that gift of
sympathetic imagination which releases a man from the subtle mental
habituations of his upbringing, should idealize every family in the
world to the likeness of their own--and find the Socialist's
Over-Parent of the State not simply a needless but a mischievous and
wicked innovation. They think--they will, I fear, continue to
think--of England as a world of happy Hatfields, cottage Hatfields,
villa Hatfields, Hatfields over the shop, and Hatfields behind the
farmyard--wickedly and wantonly assailed and interfered with by a band
of weirdly discontented men. It is a dream that the reader must not
share. Even in the case of the rich and really prosperous it is an
illusion. In no class at the present time is there a real inducement
to the effectual rearing of trained and educated citizens; in every
class are difficulties and discouragements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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