Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/152

 148 general ready to defend all their incomes, and to announce that if they are attacked, the whole of the social fabric is threatened. This is nothing but a class war so far as it goes.

The Socialist, however, has to consider what is the value of these facts for his propaganda and for the realisation of his ideal state. What do they mean and how much do they mean? One thing is quite evident. The existence of a class struggle is of no importance to Socialism unless it rouses intellectual and moral antagonism, for it is only that antagonism which leads to progressive change. And this explains best why the Socialist condemns this struggle which has become repulsive because it creates conditions of injustice, because it results in chaos and because it defeats the realisation of the ideal state of peace and comfort which the leading spirits of mankind have always placed before them as a goal. The motive force of Socialism is therefore not the struggle, but the condemnation of the struggle by the creative imaginative intelligence and by the moral sense. The conflict is an incident in an evolution towards complete social harmony, and the motive for the evolution is not economic but intellectual and moral. The Socialist, therefore, cannot consistently address himself to class sentiment or class prejudice. He, ought, indeed to look away from it, because any victory won as the result of siding with one party in the struggle only perpetuates what he desires to eliminate.