[Footnote 1:  The English-Speaking Peoples, p. 203.]

SOCIALISM—­IS IT AMERICAN?

I

ITS CONFLICT WITH THE IDEA OF EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

One of the main difficulties in discussing Socialism is to find a working definition; for this political or social movement is based upon a system of a priori reasoning which often is vague and lacking in deductions from practical experience.  Socialism also is unreal in its assumptions and impractical in its conclusions, so that a person finds it almost impossible to give a definition that will include within its scope all the Socialistic vagaries and explain all the suppositions based upon nonexistent facts.  Bearing this difficulty in mind, perhaps the following will serve as a working definition for the purposes of the present discussion.  Socialism is the collective ownership (exerted through the government, or society politically organized) of the means of production and distribution of all forms of wealth.  This means wealth not alone in mere terms of money but in the economic sense of everything that is of use for the support or enjoyment of mankind.  Of course “production and distribution” means the manufacture and transportation of all forms of this economic wealth.

Inevitably this system would imply the substitution of the judgment of the government, or of governmental officials, for individual judgment, and for individual emulation and competition in all forms of human endeavor.  Dr. David Jayne Hill recently has remarked that “if the tendency to monopolize and direct for its own purposes all human energies in channels of its own [i.e., the government’s] devising were unrestrained, we should eventually have an official art, an official science and an official literature that would be like iron shackles to the human mind."[2] The Socialist probably would object that this statement is extreme, but at least it is logical, and if Socialism be reasonable it must be logical, and it must be both reasonable and logical if it is to be popularly accepted.

The above might be stated in another way by saying that Socialism means the substitution of governmental judgment for that of the individual and for individual ambition as well.  This is one of the strongest arguments against Socialism.  Individual ambition is not only justifiable but also an absolute necessity for the integrity and growth of the human mind.  Like everything else, ambition may be wrongly used or directed.  It only goes to prove that the greater the value of anything the greater is the wrong when it is abused and not rightly used.  In fact, proper ambition is the desire for greater opportunity for service according to the dictates of individual conscience and it lies at the basis of all religion and morality.  Without ambition the individual mind goes to seed, so to speak,—­there is no further growth or progress.  This desire for greater service is the thing that produces patriotism, that causes men and women to work at the expense of personal interest for Liberty Loans, the Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., etc.