Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/189

 SOCIAL DISCONTENT AND LABOR TROUBLES 1 75

desires vary greatly ; and if such a formula were acted upon, some people's needs would increase enormously, and their efficiency would decrease in proportion.

There is a large propaganda of collectivism, which means the abolition of private property and the wage system, and the col- lection into a common fund of all the products of society, and its distribution among all its members according to some arbi- trary method, usually by a government agent, who would be a dictator, and might be a political boss or a labor delegate. This would mean an interference with individual liberty and the tyranny of an organized section of the community, to which strong, self-reliant, liberty-loving Americans will never submit. Herbert Spencer speaks of collectivism as the coming slavery. Emile Vandervelde, in his recent book Collectivism, urges, as a means of bringing about this system and the abolition of private property, "the expropriation of the expropriators" including in the latter class (according to the apostles of socialism) all those who, by thrift and industry, have saved in order that they might not want in sickness and old age, and that they might rear and provide for their children.

There are many people who do not believe in injustice or vio- lence, and yet think there must be something wrong in an order which admits of such disparities in social conditions as are every- where apparent; "which permits one class to live in compara- tive ease or luxury, while another suffers in poverty or is forced to incessant toil." They are groping, honestly no doubt, for some remedy through socialism, paternalism, semi-collectivism, state socialism, or a large increase of the functions of govern- ment, and the assumption or confiscation by the state, forcibly or by statute, of land, means of production, transportation, and communication.

It is easy to see the many evils and inequalities in social con- ditions, which all deplore ; but to demonstrate clearly the cause of these conditions, to state definitely which section of society is most to blame for their existence, and to point out a remedy, is more difficult. The great social and economic questions of our modern complex life cannot be settled upon a sentimental