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106 present state of society, to maintain a similar union between several distinct families. Although the difficulties which oppose socialism may be patent to all, yet it is well to consider some of the evils which it seeks to remedy. In a state of society like our own, established on the basis of private property, everything tends to heighten the disadvantages which result from comparative defects in natural endowments. The strong and able are permitted through life to appropriate to themselves all the fruits of their own labour, and the weak and less able are constantly, as it were, borne down in the struggle. But in order to remedy these evils by any form of socialism, an amount of virtue is required which is rarely possessed at the present time. The utmost self-denial and the widest charity will also be needed; in fact, men must become a higher order of beings, before they will work through life, not for the benefit of themselves, but for the purpose of contributing their labour to the advantage of the community to which they belong. Some of the practical difficulties, however, here suggested were partly obviated in two systems of modified socialism which were propounded with great ability by St. Simon and Fourier, who both proposed that the enjoyment of private property should not be altogether forbidden.

St. Simon's scheme was specially intended to provide some machinery for the arrangement of the labour in a socialistic society, for without some such arrangement all would be in confusion; there would be no security that individuals would be employed on the labour for which they were best adapted, and every one would be anxious to avoid all disagreeable work. St. Simon, therefore, proposed that chiefs of the community should be appointed, who should equitably distribute the labour which had to be performed, and should also determine who were to be ordinary labourers, and who were to be skilled artisans. These chiefs not only distributed the labour, but also distributed the results of the labour; they allotted to each individual the share of the wealth to which they considered he was fairly entitled; and the share which an individual thus obtained he was permitted to enjoy as his own private property. But