What is Socialism?
What is Socialism? Socialism is a new form of society; a form in which the whole of the people of the world will own in common the means to produce wealth and will distribute it according to the needs of each.
All that people want is the satisfaction of their needs, but private ownership has given its own particular slant to what some people need today. To be wealthy today not only means to live in comfort and security, it also means to be the subject of social approbation. Hence the wealthy ostentatiously display their wealth, live in huge mansions, attend lavish balls bespattered with jewels, own numerous motor cars and so forth in order to inspire the admiration of their fellows. Millionaires without a trace of artistic culture accumulate quantities of pictures and other works of art, as well as patronising artistic movements, for the same purpose. When the possession of jewels, motor cars, and pictures is open to anyone who wishes to weigh themselves down with these things the desire to accumulate them will vanish because society will only look upon the accumulator as a lunatic. Water is one of the most precious things in the world to the human race yet no one attempts to hoard up and display huge tanks of fresh water, nor do they carry air balloons to balls and Command Performances. Water and air, except under extreme circumstances, have not been denied to all but those that can purchase them. Under Socialism the products of human ingenuity will be as free to all as water and air are now, and the badges of vanity and superiority will vanish.
One of the fundamental needs of humanity is occupation for the mental and physical faculties. As work at present is a badge of inferiority most of those who belong to the privileged section of society try to find other means of employing their energies; of these sports, dancing, dinners and philandering appear to be the most popular. But a surfeit of aimless pleasures becomes wearying and there is an endless search for new thrills. Under Socialism this wasted energy would he directed towards objects that would bring permanent enjoyment to the individual and to his fellows.
Socialism would not be a dull, dreary, state-regulated system as so many of its opponents suppose. As the whole of the people in free association would control the conditions of existence the aim would be to make that existence as satisfying as human ingenuity could contrive. Productive operations would be carried out under the best conditions that could be devised and harmful occupations would be abolished; people would be prepared to do without those few. things that could only he obtained at the cost of evil consequences to the producers. Humanity is essentially reasonable and where free to act reasonably does so. Educational facilities would be of the best, open to all, and not clouded by the necessity of learning in order to find the right road to employment and social security.
There are workers who, while agreeing that Socialism is desirable, despair of its accomplishment because they believe it would not work owing to the evil propensities which they think Capitalism has bred into the mass of the people. The basis of this view is “I am alright, but the other fellow is hopeless”; it is unconscious vanity. The evils about which complaints are made are the direct product of Capitalist conditions and will dissappear with the latter. For example it does not require much imagination to appreciate that when money is no longer needed no one will sell his self respect for it; when bread and other things are as free to all as air is now no one can become a thief; when each participates equally in arranging social affairs no one can become a despot; when all the avenues of happiness are open to everybody no one can gain by bribery or corruption. And so one could go through the whole of the evils that have a corrupting influence today and lead to social misery.
Today the workers of the world produce the wealth of the world but they do so under oppressive conditions on behalf of a privileged class—the Capitalist class. In return for their labours the workers only receive, at best, on an average what it costs them to live meagrely ; but even this condition is doubtful, and the workers follow their occupations with shadow of unemployment darkening their lives and threatening to cast them into the depths of poverty. When the workers desire to cast off their backs the idle and privileged class that lives in comfortable security upon the results of the workers’ labours they will be able to so organise society that essentials of life will be produced with ease and all will he able to live in comfort and security. Then mankind will be on the road to universal happiness, but not before.
GILMAC