Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/137

 Rh by its, laws, regulations and uniformities. Those who take this view look upon Socialism as a ponderous organisation under which the state will own everything and prescribe how people are to do things, what trades they are to follow, and how they are to employ their leisure moments.

The first answer—and indeed it is the only one worth making—to these objectors is that if they really know what Socialism means, and if their description of it is not a caricature, it is so absurdly irrational and so contrary to human nature and purpose that no one can advocate it except those with twists in their minds, and no community of men will ever adopt it. Socialism would then be but an aberration of the human intellect, and so far from being a serious movement, it would only be a curiosity. This conclusion, however, is so inconsistent with what we know of the intellectual strength of the Socialist ranks, so inconsistent too with its power upon the minds of men, that it must be drawn from premises of error. And that is so. The critical description of Socialism to which I have just referred is a mere clumsy caricature.

I have just explained the Socialist position regarding property, and from that it must have been clear that one of the specifically declared intentions of Socialists is to create the conditions of liberty. Hitherto our ideas of liberty have been narrowed and misled by the pursuit of political liberty. We are just at the end of the liberal epoch, and the liberal epoch is that of the middle and the