Through a publication, of M. Kautsky, one of their best known representatives, the social democrats have announced that “the nationalisation of the land does not necessarily bring with it the abolition of private dwellings. The customary attachment of the dwelling to agricultural employment will cease, but there is no reason why the peasants’ houses should become collective property.” “Modern socialism does not exclude individual property in food. One of the most important, perhaps the most important factor, in making human life happy and adding to its pleasures is the possible attainment of a private house. Collective ownership of the land does not exclude this.” It is very difficult to separate house and garden, especially from the point of view of considering the pleasures of life. A garden furnishes the opportunity for endless improvements, many of which cannot be separated from the idea of individual property. The concessions which collectivists have been compelled to make show conclusively the importance of private property. Notwithstanding such modifications, many voices have been raised against the prospect of the socialisation of the means of production and the concomitant limitations of individual enterprise. The great English philosopher, Herbert Spencer,[172] against whom narrowness of view or conservatism could be urged, energetically attacked collectivist doctrines as tending to reduce human individuality to a dead level. By a series of cogent instances, he showed the evil results of the best intentioned efforts to equalise opportunities and to abolish poverty. He foretold that slavery would be the real outcome if the State interfered too much in spheres that ought to be left to individual enterprise. He believed that the institution of a collectivist State would bring great dangers. Nietzsche has attacked socialism with his customary exaggeration. “Socialism,”[173] he wrote, “is the fanatical younger brother of dying despotism, whose goods he wishes to inherit; his efforts are, in the deepest sense of the word, reactionary. He wishes a wealth of power in the State greater than despotism ever enjoyed, but he goes beyond all the past inasmuch as he strives absolutely to stifle the individual; for him the individual is a useless efflorescence of nature to be tamed into a useful organ of the community.” Further, “Socialism at least teaches brutally and convincingly the danger of concentrating power in the State, for it is a covert attack on the State itself. When its harsh voice raises the war-cry ‘Let the State control as much as possible,’ the cry will at first become louder; but soon another phrase will grow equally clamant, ‘Let the State control as little as possible.’”