Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist PrinciplesSpargo, John
History
Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles
Spargo, John
Socialism
freedom together with the minimum of social authority would be possible
in the union of the sexes, they would still insist upon the necessity of
that minimum of legal control.
The abolition of the legal marriage tie, and the substitution therefor
of voluntary sex union, which so many people believe to be part of the
Socialist programme, is not only not a part of that programme, but is
probably condemned by more than ninety-five per cent of the Socialists
of the world, and favored by no appreciable proportion of Socialists
more than non-Socialists. There is no such thing as a Socialist view of
marriage, any more than there is a Republican or Democratic view of
marriage; or any more than there is a Socialist view of vaccination,
vivisection, vegetarianism, or homeopathy. The same may be said of the
drink evil and tobacco smoking. Some Socialists would prohibit both
smoking and drinking; others would permit smoking, but prohibit the
manufacture of intoxicating liquors; most Socialists recognize the
evils, especially of drunkenness, but believe that it would be foolish
at this time to state in what manner the evils must be dealt with by the
Socialist state.
Our hasty summary by no means exhausts the category of personal
liberties, nor does it rigidly define such liberties. To presume to do
that would be a piece of charlatanry, social quackery of the worst type.
It is not for the Socialist of to-day to determine what the citizens of
a generation hence shall do. The citizens of the future, like the
citizens of to-day, will be living human beings, not mere automatons;
they will not accept places and forms imposed upon them, but make their
own. The object of this phase of our discussion is simply to show that
individual freedom would by no means be crushed out of existence by the
Socialist state. The intolerable bureaucracy of collectivism is wholly
an imaginary evil. There is nothing in the nature of Socialism as it is
understood to-day by its adherents which would prevent a wide extension
of personal liberties in the social regime.
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