Page:Philosophical Review Volume 26.djvu/109

Rh, pragmatic; above all, a movement instinct with the moral enthusiasm that is fundamental in America at its best.

It is this large, forward-looking movement of modern life that Dr. Sellars describes in his book. The book apparently is a treatise on socialism; but it is on socialism of this broader kind. "Socialism is the democratic movement whose purpose it is to secure an economic organization which will give the maximum possible at any time of justice and liberty." That definition will fit any serious minded American progressive. Indeed the criticism that will be made upon Dr. Sellars's book by the dyed-in-the-wool Marxian will be that it isn't a book on socialism at all but only a more or less sugar-coated account of bourgeois progressivism. And there is some justification of this criticism from the Marxian point of view, for the reason that Dr. Sellars's handling of the great central theme of socialistic theory—capitalism—is exceedingly gingerly. Indeed the word does not even appear in the index. Nor is there any clear-cut discussion of such problems as banking, investment, interest, etc. By reason of this the chapter on Some Principles of Pecuniary Reward is vague and unsatisfactory.

We should indeed have welcomed a more penetrating approach to these central economic matters on the part of the author; and yet we must not fail to be grateful for the kind of thing that he has done. He has, as a matter of fact, pioneered in the above mentioned new development of American socialism. He has broadened socialism's foundations. He has linked it up with our modern ethical enthusiasms. He has exorcised its old Hegelian spirit of absolutism and brought to it the fresher American spirit of trial and error. Above all he has made it not the antagonist but the ally the somewhat more far-seeing ally—of American progressivism. This is sufficiently clear from the author's enumeration of what socialism is and what it is not. Socialism (1) is not the same as anarchism; (2) is not identifiable with syndicalism as such, though it welcomes certain tendencies contained in syndicalism; (3) is not bureaucratic; (4) is not communism. Socialism, in its constructive purpose, hopes (1) to reduce the disorder characteristic of the market as at present organized; (2) to lessen the waste characteristic of present methods; (3) to eliminate all degrees of competition that are obviously antisocial in their consequences; (4) to eliminate unmerited poverty; (5) to tap new energies which are now latent and are not elicited by our social arrangements; (6) to make labor-saving devices really saving of labor; (7) to procure a fair degree of leisure for each individual; (8) to achieve a better distribution of human costs; (9) to bring in its wake a society, healthier physically and morally, and one ever more capable of developing sane and progressive institutions.

All these are the hopes of forward looking Americans. The latter may, indeed, make wry faces at having their hopes classed as socialistic; but when they read Dr. Sellars's book and note his fine freedom from most of the mordant elements of the older socialism, they may be less disturbed in spirit. As one reads the book, indeed, one wonders whether socialism is not dying to its doctrinal separateness and living more broadly and richly into the democratic life of the day.