We only disapprove of monopolists: we _hate_ masters.
Then, since we are too dishonest for Communism without taxation or
compulsory labor, and too insubordinate to tolerate task work under
personal compulsion, how can we order the transition so as to introduce
just distribution without Communism, and maintain the incentive to
labor without mastership? The answer is, by Democracy. And now, having
taken a positive attitude at last, I must give up criticizing the
Anarchists, and defend Democracy against _their_ criticisms.
Democracy.
I now, accordingly, return to Mr. Tucker's criticism of State
Socialism, which, for the sake of precision, had better be called
Social-Democracy. There is a Socialism--that of Bismarck; of the
extinct young England party; of the advocates of moralized feudalism;
and of mob contemners generally--which is not Social-Democracy,
but Social-Despotism, and may be dismissed as essentially no more
hopeful than a system of Moralized Criminality, Abstemious Gluttony,
or Straightforward Mendacity would be. Mr. Tucker, as an American,
passes it over as not worth powder and shot: he clearly indicates a
democratic State by his repeated references to the majority principle,
and in particular by his assertion that "there would be but one article
in the constitution of a State Socialistic country: 'The right of
the majority is absolute.'" Having thus driven Democracy back on its
citadel, he proceeds to cannonade it as follows:
"Under the system of State Socialism, which holds the community
responsible for the health, wealth and wisdom of the individual,
the community, through its majority expression, will insist
more and more on prescribing the conditions of health, wealth,
and wisdom, thus impairing and finally destroying individual
independence and with it all sense of individual responsibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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