Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/23

 Rh Political power, in the nature of things, must, then, be used for economic (amongst other) ends. For, whilst the political aim of a class may be power, or honour, or wealth, for the mass of the people there is but one aim possible, a general raising of the standard of life. It has been customary, especially since Maine's time, to consider Democracy as nothing but a form of government. That is totally wrong. It is a kind of government. With a social democracy polities really become national for the first time, and community consciousness takes the place of class consciousness.

From this point of view historical evolution assumes a meaning and an interest of special import. We start with the group—originally a family. The solitary individual must have been more brute than man—indeed, the creature that became man had ceased to be solitary. The human group is not the creation of thought but of instinct and habit. Love is historically older than reason. But the group as it becomes older, more fixed and better organised has a double life and function. It protects itself as a group; and in this way it develops a system of government, of ethics, of religion, of defence; it also protects the individual. "For," as Aristotle, who is sometimes. claimed as the father of Individualists as Plato is claimed as the father of Socialists, wrote, "as the State was formed to make life possible, so it exists to make life good" (The Politics, Welldon, p. 5). These two purposes run through history, sometimes