Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/120

 116 poverty being largely social, being a recurring breakdown of the productive and distributive machinery of society, has created a sociological problem with economic, political and moral aspects. In short, the Socialist sees a machine that will not work, an engine which is always slowing up and breaking down, and he studies its mechanism to discover its faults. He finds that its parts do not work together, that its driving force is not properly distributed, that it generates an enormous amount of friction, and that all this arises because the machine has been thrown together by minds which had no conception of the complete plan of the mechanism, but which made a cylinder, and a wheel, and a piston separately and apart, and then tried to beat and hammer them all together into something like co-operative action. Such a machine cannot work, and such is modern industrial society.

The next step follows naturally upon the first. I have been using mechanical similes, but they are imperfect when applied to society, because they do not reflect that social characteristic of steady and consistent adaptation which is rather organic than mechanical in its likeness. In society, the Socialist discovers this tendency of readjustment to secure economy in the expenditure of energy. The law of readjustment pervades all life. The deaf develop the faculty of quick vision or sensitive touch, the blind of keen hearing. The plant in new surroundings, either by adaptation or by natural selection, changes