Social Forces in England and AmericaWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Social Forces in England and America
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
England -- Social conditions -- 20th century; Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
I believe that these distinctions I have made cover practically every
clear form of contemporary thinking, and are a better and more helpful
classification than any now current. But, of course, nearly every
individual nowadays is at least a little confused, and will be found to
wobble in the course even of a brief discussion between one attitude and
the other. This is a separation of opinions rather than of persons. And
particularly that word Socialism has become so vague and incoherent that
for a man to call himself a socialist nowadays is to give no indication
whatever whether he is a Conservator like William Morris, a
non-Constructor like Karl Marx, or a Constructor of any of half a dozen
different schools. On the whole, however, modern socialism tends to fall
towards the Constructor wing. So, too, do those various movements in
England and Germany and France called variously nationalist and
imperialist, and so do the American civic and social reformers. Under
the same heading must come such attempts to give the vague impulses of
Syndicalism a concrete definition as the “Guild Socialism” of M. Orage.
All these movements are agreed that the world is progressive towards a
novel and unprecedented social order, not necessarily and fatally
better, and that it needs organised and even institutional guidance
thither, however much they differ as to the form that order should
assume.
For the greater portion of a century socialism has been before the
world, and it is not perhaps premature to attempt a word or so of
analysis of that great movement in the new terms we are here employing.
The origins of the socialist idea were complex and multifarious, never
at any time has it succeeded in separating out a statement of itself
that was at once simple, complete, and acceptable to any large
proportion of those who call themselves socialists. But always it has
pointed to two or three definite things. The first of these is that
unlimited freedoms of private property, with increasing facilities of
exchange, combination, and aggrandisement, become more and more
dangerous to human liberty by the expropriation and reduction to private
wages slavery of larger and larger proportions of the population. Every
school of socialism states this in some more or less complete form,
however divergent the remedial methods suggested by the different
schools. And, next, every school of socialism accepts the concentration
of management and property as necessary, and declines to contemplate
what is the typical Conservator remedy, its refragmentation. Accordingly
it sets up not only against the large private owner, but against owners
generally, the idea of a public proprietor, the State, which shall hold
in the collective interest. But where the earlier socialisms stopped
short, and where to this day socialism is vague, divided, and
unprepared, is upon the psychological problems involved in that new and
largely unprecedented form of proprietorship, and upon the still more
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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