Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society
These milder Socialists and true Social Reformers distrust violent revolutions, which they think take one step forward and two back ward. They think that no sudden revolution is ever possible in fundamental social institutions without a previous change and preparation in men's minds that Private Property and Inheritance, the oldest and most universal institutions, are the mere legal expression Of our inmost human nature 5 that Freedom of Contract and Interest, the other two things chie?y attacked by the Socialists, are necessary consequences of man's social circumstances and his nature conjointly, and that in consequence the first two cannot be abolished unless man's nature is wholly changed, nor the second unless you alter his social environment as well as his nature that the true course, therefore, for the State, is to let Private Pro perty and Inheritance remain, but to modify the conceptions and to limit the rights connected with them, and to interfere with Free dom of Contract only so far as it is an engine for working injustice, as it may be, or so far as it demonstrably or evidently works a social mischief. Finally, they think that without attempting to abolish these institutions or social principles, which would be impossible to effect, and anarchic to try, their worst incidents may be gradually corrected, while their better parts, which have stood so long and worked so well, may remain 5 and for these reasons they may be called state-socialists, though they only differ from past social and political reformers in having aims more concentrated, and these chie?y of an economical and social character.
A few words as to the history of Socialism. Socialism is not a new thing. The word is new, and the chief forms Socialism now assumes are new, but the thing - the struggle for greater equality of condition - is old. There are the outlines of a remarkable Socialistic polity in the Book of Leviticus. Moses, or whoever was the author of the book, was a Socialist. Isaiah was a Socialist, and a decided one. There is Socialism in the Gospels, going even to the extreme of Communism. Plato was a Communist and Socialist, at least theoretically 5 so was Sir Thomas More, the author Of Utopia. I am not sure about Lord Bacon, another famous Lord Chancellor, nor about Hobbes, Locke, or Adam Smith, though there are arguments for the Socialist's use in the writings Of all of them, especially the two latter. At most they were unconscious Socialists. But Rousseau was something more, and perhaps more emphatically the source of modern Socialism than any other single individual. He it was who first set men thinking about the Social Problem generally. He it was who rediscovered and strongly preached the doctrine of equality, which had been long hidden away in the books of jurists and philosophers.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
