Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/319

Rh rational self-interest, how far can this movement proceed? A good many of these progressive steps tend to socialism. Will religion lead to socialism? "No!" says Mr. Kidd, emphatically, "No!" Socialism he conceives as a mechanical organization of society with the special object of putting down the struggle for life and therefore stopping the spring of progress.

A socialistic state will insist on securing the best terms for all members of the present and next generation. It will effect this by suspending the struggle for existence upon the physical plane. Weaklings will no longer be weeded out, population will be regulated within the bounds of comfortable subsistence; rejection of the unfit being taken away the race will lapse into decay. Here we must observe that Mr. Kidd shows no grasp of the evolutionarv character of socialism. An antagonism similar to that between reason and religion he finds between equalization of opportunity and socialism. Now no such an tagonism exists. Socialism in its philosophical limitation is nothing else than the progressive equalization of opportunities. Beginning by equalizing opportunities to live and to get a fair start in food and other physical requirements, it proceeds to the equalization of opportunity for good work and good wages, for higher education, and for the attainment of intellectual and spiritual wealth; it achieves this equalization of opportunity by putting down some lower form of struggle, in order that the struggle may take a higher and intenser form. When all mankind was placed upon absolutely equal terms of competition in the rivalry of life, the ideal of socialism would be attained.

The policy of equalization of opportunity hitherto pursued is not antagonistic to socialism, but simply marks the early stages in the continuous march of mankind toward a higher organic social life.

But Mr. Kidd might urge, "You admit that the struggle for physical life is likely to be suspended; that admission is fatal, involving the necessary deterioration of the race." But here I think Mr. Kidd's position is open to a twofold criticism. He approves the modern democratic humanitarian movement, on