would be prodigious, by diverting to useful occupations that which is
now wasted on things useless or hurtful, and by dispensing with the
vast number of superfluous distributors, the buying and selling for the
whole community being managed by a single agency. The free choice of
individuals as to their manner of life would be no further interfered
with than would be necessary for gaining the full advantages of
co-operation in the industrial operations. Altogether, the picture of a
Fourierist community is both attractive in itself and requires less
from common humanity than any other known system of Socialism; and it
is much to be desired that the scheme should have that fair trial which
alone can test the workableness of any new scheme of social life.[9]
The result of our review of the various difficulties of Socialism has
led us to the conclusion that the various schemes for managing the
productive resources of the country by public instead of private
agency have a case for a trial, and some of them may eventually
establish their claims to preference over the existing order of
things, but that they are at present workable only by the _elite_ of
mankind, and have yet to prove their power of training mankind at
large to the state of improvement which they presuppose. Far more, of
course, may this be said of the more ambitious plan which aims at
taking possession of the whole land and capital of the country, and
beginning at once to administer it on the public account. Apart from
all consideration of injustice to the present possessors, the very
idea of conducting the whole industry of a country by direction from a
single centre is so obviously chimerical, that nobody ventures to
propose any mode in which it should be done; and it can hardly be
doubted that if the revolutionary Socialists attained their immediate
object, and actually had the whole property of the country at their
disposal, they would find no other practicable mode of exercising
their power over it than that of dividing it into portions, each to be
made over to the administration of a small Socialist community. The
problem of management, which we have seen to be so difficult even to a
select population well prepared beforehand, would be thrown down to be
solved as best it could by aggregations united only by locality, or
taken indiscriminately from the population, including all the
malefactors, all the idlest and most vicious, the most incapable of
steady industry, forethought, or self-control, and a majority who,
though not equally degraded, are yet, in the opinion of Socialists
themselves as far as regards the qualities essential for the success
of Socialism, profoundly demoralised by the existing state of society.
It is saying but little to say that the introduction of Socialism
under such conditions could have no effect but disastrous failure, and
its apostles could have only the consolation that the order of society