Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/174

170 Thus, worked out into its consequences and translated into a social policy and programme, the Right to Work illustrates in a definite and practical form the intention and meaning of the Socialist's immediate demands.

of the critics of Socialism insist that its advocates should not only supply every detail in its working, but even the most minute particulars of these details. There is a certain ephemeral controversial advantage in this. One of the greatest difficulties which the propaganda of Socialism has to encounter is the incapacity of people to imagine any different state of society to that in which they live. A new social relationship, a new combination of human motives, a new mode of wealth production, is at once set aside as something beyond their vision, and consequently something that bears the stamp of the impractical. Their consideration of Socialism therefore ends where it began.

The utopian Socialist had to produce these details because his New Harmony was supposed to work straight away like a patented invention. Also, if the modern Socialist proposed to adopt revolution as the means to his end, he would require to produce his whole plan, because it would be required on