Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/182

 178 for some of them to begin walking the streets. Historical references must be used with some discrimination.

Now I can complete my argument. Under Socialism there will be more ability, there will be more opportunities for its exercise, and a heartier welcome will be given to its results than under the present system.

The mechanism of production will not stand still, but will steadily improve under Socialism. Production will be cheapened. There will be a larger volume of national wealth to enjoy; labour will be more efficiently directed and be more productive; non-producers will be reduced to a minimum; and the common incentive to which every one will respond will be the steady reduction of the necessary drudgery labour, so that the free time during which a man's will has full play may be as ample as possible. All that means industrial progress.

I now come to another department of the same survey. The arts will die, it is said, when Socialism comes, because there will be no intellectual freedom under this "coming tyranny," and no encouragement to. the imagination under this "reign of materialism." This objection approaches as nearly to the unthinkable as it can do. That, in a community organised industrially as I have just described, the mind of man must become servile and dull is impossible. Surely, rather,