Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/242

225 production to individuals and groups of individuals justly and equitably; but the state itself should undertake all measures of great social importance, in order to ensure that they be carried out for the benefit, not of any one class or section of the community, but of the citizens as a whole. Socialism magnifies the office of the state and extends the range of its activities.

However lofty the ideals of such a socialism, it is apt to be defective or positively mischievous in practice. It tends to destroy the sense of personal responsibility in its citizens and weaken their initiative, energy, and individuality. If the citizens regard the state as simply an institution to do this for them and provide that for them, they will be apt to live not for the state but on the state. Such a socialism will make the citizens dependent on the state in spirit and will as well as in material circumstances.

Socialism and individualism, in the form in which they have been stated above, necessarily come into conflict. An individualism whose ideal is the jealous preservation and vigorous assertion of the natural rights of the individual resents what it regards as the encroachments of the state, and a socialism whose purpose is the extension of state enterprise at the expense of private initiative condemns any expansion of individual power.

But a true individualism does not necessarily clash with a true socialism. They are not inconsistent. A true individualism and a true socialism recognise that the interests of the state and the individual are not divergent; and that it does not follow that the