Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/57

 economical, social, and political, save that they would no longer possess the freedom to enslave and embrute their fellow men. Individuality is crushed to-day in every direction. The poor slave to the machine, the overworked hind or domestic drudge have no time for individuality, no strength left for their own education or development. Under our present system there is no individuality for the mass of mankind.

For re-construction and re-organisation, therefore, we Socialists continually strive, looking to the completest physical, moral and intellectual development of every human being as the highest form of the social state, as the best and truest happiness for every individual and for every class, where, as none need overwork, so none shall be able to force others to work for their profit. And this is Utopian! Nay; it was utopian perhaps, when the powers of man over nature were trifling compared with what they are to-day, and mere division of labour almost necessarily involved the formation of castes and classes. But now steam, electricity, the forces growing daily under our hand, render equality a necessity unless barbarism and bootless destruction are to come upon us in our very midst. For as ideas grow, as education spreads, so does the knowledge of how to turn the increasing powers of devastation to account increase among the needy and the oppressed. Gunpowder helped to sweep away feudalism with all its beauty and all its chivalry, when new forms arose from the decay of the old; now far stronger explosives are arrayed against capitalism; while the ideas of the time are as rife with revolution as they were when feudalism fell. To avoid alike the crushing anarchy of to-day and the