Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/16

xii approaching it down political pathways, the Christian Socialist section, like the Church Socialist League, approaching from religious quarters, scientific Socialist groups, coming by way of biological or other scientific roads, and soon. As time goes on and our industrial experience gets fuller and more accurate some of the forecasts made by the earlier Socialists, and some of the forms in which they cast their theories, have had to be modified. Also, advance in one direction opens out other ways of advance hidden until then, and methods change in response. For instance, the Socialists of half a century ago lived when revolution was in the air in Europe and this coloured their statement of the Socialist position. The atmosphere has changed and so the colour has faded, but Socialism itself remains that conception of the social organisation which I have indicated above.

It may save some misunderstanding if I make it clear at the very outset that Socialists do not attack individuals. When they criticise capitalism or commercialism they do not condemn capitalists or business men. On the contrary, they consider that the capitalist is as much the victim of his system as the unemployed, and that he has to conform to its evil pressure in the same way as the poverty stricken have to do so. The results are not the same, but they are products of the same social mechanism. Socialism deals primarily with the evolution of economic relationships and not with the moral nature of man.