Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/383

 DIFFICULTIES OF INDIVIDUALISM 361 divines and barristers--the so-called 'Christian Socialists' of 1850 to bring about a reversion to the Individualist method of production by starting little associations of producers, whilst he entirely omits to notice the essentially Socialist structure of the great modern co-operative movement, with its elimination of private profit and its democratic control over industry. Indeed, all the developments of social life which brought about Mill's conversion to Socialism, and which are so strongly influencing contemporary economists, appear to lie altogether outside Mr. Courtney's ken. He ignores the rapid progress of the collective control over the capitalist system of industry, by factory and other leslation on the one hand, and by Trade Unions on the other; whilst the steady supersession of that system by our largely unconscious Municipal Socialism. the means of production owned by local authorities already exceeding the whole industrial capital of Ireland--is apparently without significance to this painstaking student of Looking Back- ward, and the picturesque descriptions of American Communist societies. This method of dealing with Socialism is not unusual in England, and needs no comment. It may, however, serve to explain why the following pages are devoted, not to a detailed ex- amination of Mr. Courtney's misconceptions, but to an attempt to set forth the main difficulties which are leading so many of Mr. Courtney's friends to abandon the individualist ideal. It may be suggested that there is little to be gained either by the' elaboration or by the criticism of ideal states of society. It cannot, indeed, be too often repeated that Socialism, to Socialists, is not a Utopia which they have invented, but a prin- ciple of social organization which they ssert to have been dis- covered by the patient investigators into sociology whose labours have distinguished the present century. That principle, whether true or false, has, during a whole generation, met with an ever- increasing, though often unconscious, acceptance by political administrators. It is, indeed, one of the initial ' difficulties ' to be overcome by Individualists that so many of them receive(] their economic and historical training before we had learnt to think of social institu- tions and economic relations as being as much the subjects of constant change and evolution as any biological organism. The main outlines of social organization, based upon the exact sphere of private ownership in England to-day, appear to them as fixed and immovable as if they had ' come down from the Mount.'