A Critical Examination of Socialism

The meaning of Christian socialism, as restated to-day by a typical writer.

His just criticism of the fallacy underlying modern ideas of democracy. The impossibility of equalising unequal men by political means.

Christian socialism teaches, he says, that the abler men should make themselves equal to ordinary men by surrendering to them the products of their own ability, or else by abstaining from its exercise.

The author's ignorance of the nature of the modern industrial process. His idea of steel.

He confuses the production of wealth on a great scale with the acquisition of wealth when produced.

The only really productive ability which he distinctly recognises is that of the speculative inventor.

He declares that inventors never wish to profit personally by their inventions. Let the great capitalists, he says, who merely monopolise inventions, imitate the self-abnegation of the inventors, and Christian socialism will become a fact.

The confusion which reigns in the minds of sentimentalists like the author here quoted. Their inability to see complex facts and principles, in their connected integrity, as they are. Such persons herein similar to devisers of perpetual motions and systems for defeating the laws of chance at a roulette-table.

All logical socialistic conclusions drawn from premises in which some vital truth or principle is omitted. Omission in the premises of the earlier socialists. Corresponding omission in the premises of the socialists of to-day.

Origin of the confusion of thought characteristic of Christian as of all other socialists. Temperamental inability to understand the complexities of economic life. This inability further evidenced by the fact that, with few exceptions, socialists themselves are absolutely incompetent as producers. Certain popular contentions with regard to modern economic life, urged by socialists, but not peculiar to socialism, still remain to be considered in the following chapters.