It is needless to specify a number of other important questions
affecting the mode of employing the productive resources of the
association, the conditions of social life, the relations of the body
with other associations, &c., on which difference of opinion, often
irreconcilable, would be likely to arise. But even the dissensions
which might be expected would be a far less evil to the prospects of
humanity than a delusive unanimity produced by the prostration of all
individual opinions and wishes before the decree of the majority. The
obstacles to human progression are always great, and require a
concurrence of favorable circumstances to overcome them; but an
indispensable condition of their being overcome is, that human nature
should have freedom to expand spontaneously in various directions,
both in thought and practice; that people should both think for
themselves and try experiments for themselves, and should not resign
into the hands of rulers, whether acting in the name of a few or of
the majority, the business of thinking for them, and of prescribing
how they shall act. But in Communist associations private life would
be brought in a most unexampled degree within the dominion of public
authority, and there would be less scope for the development of
individual character and individual preferences than has hitherto
existed among the full citizens of any state belonging to the
progressive branches of the human family. Already in all societies the
compression of individuality by the majority is a great and growing
evil; it would probably be much greater under Communism, except so far
as it might be in the power of individuals to set bounds to it by
selecting to belong to a community of persons like-minded with
themselves.