Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movementWalling, William English
History
Socialism as it is : $b a survey of the world-wide revolutionary movement
Walling, William English
Socialism
"If practical workers for social and industrial reforms continue to
ignore principles, the inevitable logic of events will nevertheless
drive them along the path of Collectivism here indicated. But they
will have to pay the price which shortsighted empiricism always
pays; with slow, hesitant, and staggering steps, with innumerable
false starts and backslidings, they will move in the dark along an
unseen track towards an unseen goal. Social development may be
conscious or unconscious. It has been mostly unconscious in the
past, and therefore slow, wasteful, and dangerous. If we desire it
to be swifter, safer, and more effective in the future, it must
become the conscious expression of the trained and organized will
of a people not despising theory as unpractical, but using it to
furnish economy in action."[134]
Practically all "State Socialists" hold a similar view to that of Shaw
and Webb. Mr. Wells even, in his "First and Last Things," has a lengthy
attack on what he calls democracy, when he tells us that its true name
is "insubordination," and that it is base because "it dreams that its
leaders are its delegates." His view of democracy is strictly consistent
with his attitude toward the common man, whom he regards as "a
gregarious animal, collectively rather like a sheep, emotional, hasty,
and shallow."[135] Democracy can only mean, Mr. Wells concludes, that
power will be put into the hands of "rich newspaper proprietors,
advertising producers, and the energetic wealthy generally, as the
source flooding the collective mind freely with the suggestions on which
it acts."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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