Page:The International Socialist Review (1900-1918), Vol. 1, Issue 1.pdf/14

14 which obviously those three subjects are of greatest importance. At present these are indispensable to the pursuit of private wealth. No man can hope to succeed in the commercial world—in a plutocracy—unless he can count money, compute interest, reckon profit and loss, read the market quotations, and write his name on checks and other commercial documents. Under a democracy for the first time in human history education will be free to follow the natural lines which the real needs of men would dictate. The man will be the chief concern, and therefore he will not be a money counter nor a money getter. That will no longer be an aim of life. It will be possible then for men to live a true and ennobling life. Those words of the immortal declaration will then have some meaning: "All men are created free and equal and have certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Neither life, nor liberty, nor the pursuit of happiness has any real meaning under a plutocratic government.

I fancy the objection will be raised that in a democracy you may have any sort of conditions that the people by majority vote shall prescribe. If it is the will of the people that the present system of education continue, such will be the law. If it is their will to perpetuate the present industrial system, that system will go on. There may be people who are still laboring under the delusion that we have democracy In answer to these and other objections I would simply say that democracy can be inaugurated only by a revolution in the character of our economic system. No body of people anywhere can introduce democracy by passing a resolution to that effect. A democracy is the joint product of economic and political evolution. Political action cannot produce democracy until the industrial evolution is finished. And the transition cannot finally be made except by the utter destruction of the profit system. Democracy is a matter of education. No people is capable of ushering it in until the necessary process of enlightenment has been undergone. Democracy and special privilege, or, in other words, the profit system cannot coexist, no matter what a nation's action might be. They are mutually exclusive. So long as it is possible for one man to exploit his fellows, exploitation will go on. Environment is the one factor which men have the power to determine. With the dawn of reason, man began the process of changing his environment. The possession of that power has been one of the important and determining factors in his career. A vegetable has no power to change its environment, and so no great change in a vegetable is possible—no change at all except by the aid of man. Animals have some power to change their environment, and therefore greater changes in their structure and development have been possible. Man alone has practically unlimited power to change