Page:May Walden - Woman and Socialism (1909).pdf/3



We hear people say, "Yes, Socialism is a beautiful dream; it would be all very well if you could change human nature, but since you can't, the dream is impossible." And you hear others say, when some colony has failed whose members tried to co-operate end make life on earth more bearable, "There's an experiment in Socialism for you; it never can succeed; it is too impractical." But Socialism is neither a dream, nor a colony of Utopians. And Utopians, you must know, are people who think out a plan of ideal living; a society where everyone and everything is perfect, and try to live up to it.

Ever since the division of society into classes there have been people who have tried to fashion an ideal state. Plato, who was a Greek, and lived 400 years before Christ was born, was one of the greatest of these dreamers. He wrote "The Republic," which is considered today to be one of the most instructive and charming of books. Sir Thomas More, an Englishman, born in 1480, was another of these dreamers; he wrote "Utopia," a book that has given its name to all these impractical seekers after an ideal commonwealth. Rousseau, a Frenchman, in 1763 gave a picture in his "Social Contract" of an ideal middle class society. Babeuf, another Frenchman, in 1796 wrote that "the aim of society is the happiness of all." He was active in the French Revolution and