But if low motives are mixed with high ones in the mind of the champions of socialism, they certainly have never stopped assuring us that it is worse with their opponents. Marx himself declared passionately that greed was the deepest spring, that “the most violent and malignant passions of the human breast, the furies of private interest” are whipping men into the battle against socialism. However that may be, the discussions in the clubroom and in the political hall perhaps oftener suggest a less malignant motive, a persistent carelessness, which keep the friends of the capitalistic order from making the effort really to find out at what the socialists are aiming. The largest part of the private and public accusations of socialism starts from the conviction that socialism means that all men must have equal property, and in consideration of the fact that no real socialist demands that, and that the socialists have always insisted that this is not their intention, there indeed seems to be some psychology necessary to understand why the antisocialists do not take the trouble to find out first what socialism is. But here we are not engaged in the mental analysis of those who fight about socialism. We want rather to ask whether the human minds are rightly understood by those who tell us that socialism is, or is not, the solution of our social problems. And if we turn to this fundamental question whether socialism ought to become the form of our society, the chief thing will be to avoid a mistake in the discussion which pervades the largest part of our present-day literature. The problem is no longer, as it was in the childhood days of socialistic debate, whether the historical necessities must bring socialism. We know that socialism will come, if we like it, and that we can avoid it, if we hate it, and that everything therefore depends upon the decision of the community whether it wants to work for or against the great economic revolution. It is thus not a question of facts, but of preferences, of judgments, of ideals. We do not simply have to exchange wise words as to that which will come anyhow, but we have to make up our mind whether it appears to us desirable or not desirable, and that means, whether it is in harmony with our purpose or not.