The truth about socialismBenson, Allan L. (Allan Louis)
General
The truth about socialism
Benson, Allan L. (Allan Louis)
Socialism
Socialists contend that under Socialism, everybody could not only have
work all the time, but that everybody could live as well as now does the
man whose income is $5,000 a year. They point to the fact that the man
who now spends $5,000 a year on his living, does not consume the
products of very much human labor. He has a comfortable house, but
comfortable, sanitary houses are not hard to build. Machinery makes
almost all of the materials that go into them, and makes them cheaply.
And a house properly built lasts a lifetime.
The $5,000–a-year man and his family also eat some food. But the flour
is made with machinery at low cost, as are also many other articles. The
raw materials come from the earth at the cost of human labor, but the
profits that are added to them by capitalists represent no sort of
labor.
So is it with clothing, furniture and everything else that the
$5,000–a-year man and his family consume. Everything is made cheaply and
rapidly with machinery. The workers who make these things get little.
The consumer pays much. The difference between the cost of making and
the selling price is what eats up a large part of the $5,000. Socialists
believe that by cutting out all of this difference and cutting out
enforced idleness, everybody could live as well as the $5,000–man now
lives. This is only an approximation, of course.
Now we come to the question of rising. What chance would a man have to
rise under Socialism?
Let us see, first, what is meant by rising. A man can rise with his
fellows or he can rise without them. I am speaking now, of course, only
of rising in the financial scale. Habits of thought have been inculcated
in us which too often prevent us from thinking of rising in any other
way. When we think of bettering our condition, we usually think in terms
of money. We seldom think in terms of greater leisure and greater
freedom to do the things that make life really worth while; knowing that
rich men are usually the slaves of their money, we nevertheless want to
be slaves.
Socialism is not intended to help the man who wants to rise financially
above his fellows. It throws out no bait to him. A few men will
undoubtedly rise a little above their fellows during the early stages of
Socialism, but they will not rise very much and there will not be very
many of them. Socialism is for all, not for a few. It is devoted to the
task of raising the financial standing of everybody who does useful
labor and lowering the financial standing of everybody who does not.
Socialists say that if Socialism were otherwise, it would be no better
than the lottery which is provided by the capitalist system. Socialists
do not believe in the lottery principle. They have observed that the
gentlemen who run lotteries, rather than the ones who play them, wear
the diamonds. Nor does the fact that an occasional washerwoman draws
$22,000 with which she knows not what to do, change their minds about
the game.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account