The existing great inequalities in the distribution of wealth have revived doctrines the object of which is to redress such injustice. For more than a century, different forms of socialism have claimed to formulate rules for the amelioration of mankind. They agree in a verdict against existing conditions, but follow different paths in their proposals for the reformation of society. The varieties of socialism are so numerous that it is difficult even to define the word. Although collectivist theories have lost much of their early thoroughness, they are still far from admitting the just claims of the individuals constituting the society. At socialist assemblies and congresses the resolutions adopted frequently proclaim aggressively the sacrifice of the rights of the individual. The members of one socialist party have been seen refusing the collaboration of newspapers which are not the official organs of the party, or declining any co-operation with a government they have proscribed. In strikes organised by socialists, work is forbidden to men who ardently desire it. Recently printers have refused to set up newspapers the opinions of which they did not share, and even doctors have been known to decline to treat those belonging to another political party. It is no new charge against collectivists that they would encroach too much on individual liberty. They reply that “in social-democratic society of the future, tyranny and oppression will be impossible. The secret of the bond will reside in a discipline totally different from the inanimate obedience of the soldier, a discipline depending on a willing submission of the individual to the group because of the common object.”[170] But such discipline and submission may go so far that the conscience of the individual is seriously offended. And so amongst the socialists themselves there has arisen a small group which declines to accept this submergence of the individual in the whole. This group is composed of anarchists, who, in the name of liberty and the individual, attack the property and sometimes the lives of their opponents. It appears that there has been a notable evolution of collectivist theories in the century or more in which the abolition of human misery has been an accepted problem. Whilst there was formerly advocated the total abolition of private property and the establishment of phalansteries for communal life, at the present time the demand is limited to the nationalisation of the means of production, leaving housing and food to be provided by individual property.[171]