INDIVIDUALISM AND SOCIALISM

The controversy between Individualism and Socialism, the claim of the personal unit as against the claim of the collective community, is of ancient date. Yet it is ever new and constantly presented afresh. It even seems to become more acute as civilization progresses. Every scheme of social reform, every powerful manifestation of individual energy, raise anew a problem that is never out of date.

It is inevitable, indeed, that with the development of social hygiene during the past hundred years there should also develop a radical opposition of opinion as to the methods by which such hygiene ought to be accomplished. There has always been this opposition in the political sphere; it is natural to find it also in the social sphere. The very fact that old-fashioned politics are [382]becoming more and more transformed into questions of social hygiene itself ensures the continuance of such an opposition.

In politics, and especially in the politics of constitutional countries of which England is the type, there are normally two parties. There is the party that holds by tradition, by established order and solidarity, the maintenance of the ancient hierarchical constitution of society, and in general distinguishes itself by a preference for the old over the new. There is, on the other side, the party that insists on progress, on freedom, on the reasonable demands of the individual, on the adaptation of the accepted order to changing conditions, and in general distinguishes itself by a preference for the new over the old. The first may be called the party of structure, and the second the party of function. In England we know the adherents of one party as Conservatives and those of the other party as Liberals or Radicals.

In time, it is true, these normal distinctions between the party of structure and the party of function tend to become somewhat confused; and it is precisely the transition of politics into the social sphere which tends to introduce confusion. With a political system which proceeds ultimately out of a society with a feudalistic basis, the normal attitude of political parties is long maintained. The party of structure, the Conservative party, holds by the ancient feudalistic ideals which are really, in the large sense, socialistic, though a socialism based on a foundation of established inequality, and so altogether unlike the democratic socialism promulgated [383]to-day. The party of function, the Liberal party, insists on the break-up of this structural socialism to meet the new needs of progressive civilization. But when feudalism has been left far behind, and many of the changes introduced by Liberalism have become part of the social structure, they fall under the protection of Conservatives who are fighting against new Liberal innovations. Thus the lines of delimitation tend to become indistinct.

In the politics of social hygiene there are the same two factors: the party of structure and the party of function. In their nature and in their opposition to each other they correspond to the two parties in the old political field. But they have changed their character and their names: the party of structure is here Socialism or Collectivism, [248] the party of function is Individualism. [249] And while the Tory, the Conservative of early days, was allied to Collectivism, and the Whig, the Liberal of early days, to Individualism, that correspondence has ceased to be [384]invariable owing to the confused manner in which the old political parties have nowadays shifted their ground. We may thus see a Liberal who is a Collectivist when a Collectivist measure may involve that innovation to secure adjustment to new needs which is of the essence of Liberalism, and we may see a Conservative who is an Individualist when Individualism involves that maintenance of the existing order which is of the essence of Conservatism. Whether a man is a Conservative or a Liberal, he may incline either to Socialism or to Individualism without breaking with his political tradition. It is, therefore, impossible to import any political animus into the fundamental antagonism between Individualism and Socialism, which prevails in the sphere of social hygiene.

We cannot hope to see clearly the grave problems involved by the fundamental antagonism between Socialism and Individualism unless we understand what each is founded on and what it is aiming at.

When we seek to inquire how it is that the Socialist ideal exerts so powerful an attraction on the human mind, and why it is ever seeking new modes of practical realization, we cannot fail to perceive that it ultimately proceeds from the primitive need of mutual help, a need which was felt long before the appearance of humanity. [250] If, however, we keep strictly to our immediate mammalian traditions it may be said that the earliest socialist community [385]is the family, with its trinity of father, mother, and child. The primitive family constitutes a group which is conditioned by the needs of each member. Each individual is subordinated to the whole. The infant needs the mother and the mother needs the infant; they both need the father and the father needs both for the complete satisfaction of his own activities. Socially and economically this primitive group is a unit, and if broken up into its individual parts these would be liable to perish.

However we may multiply our social unit, however we may enlarge and elaborate it, however we may juggle with the results, we cannot disguise the essential fact. At the centre of every social agglomeration, however vast, however small, lies the social unit of the family of which each individual is by himself either unable to live or unable to reproduce, unable, that is to say, to gratify the two fundamental needs of hunger and love.

There are many people who, while willing to admit that the family is, in a sense, a composite social unit to which each part has need of the other parts, so that all are mutually bound together, seek to draw a firm line of distinction between the family and society. Family life, they declare, is not irreconcilable with individualism; it is merely un égoïsme à trois. It is, however, difficult to see how such a distinction can be maintained, whether we look at the matter theoretically or practically. In a small country like Great Britain, for instance, every Englishman (excluding new immigrants) is related by blood to every other Englishman, as would become clearer if every man possessed his pedigree for a thousand years back. When [386]we remember, further, also, that every nation has been overlaid by invasions, warlike or peaceful, from neighbouring lands, and has, indeed, been originally formed in this way since no people has sprung up out of the soil of its own land, we must further admit that the nations themselves form one family related by blood.

Our genealogical relation to our fellows is too remote and extensive to concern us much practically and sentimentally, though it is well that we should realize it. If we put it aside, we have still to remember that our actual need of our fellows is not definitely to be distinguished from the mutual needs of the members of the smallest social unit, the family.

In practice the individual is helpless. Of all animals, indeed, man is the most helpless when left to himself. He must be cared for by others at every moment during his long infancy. He is dependent on the exertions of others for shelter and clothes, while others are occupied in preparing his food and conveying it from the ends of the world. Even if we confine ourselves to the most elementary needs of a moderately civilized existence, or even if our requirements are only those of an idiot in an asylum, yet, for every one of us, there are literally millions of people spending the best of their lives from morning to night and perhaps receiving but little in return. The very elementary need of the individual in an urban civilization for pure water to drink can only be attained by organized social effort. The gigantic aqueducts constructed by the Romans are early monuments of social activity typical of all the rest. The primary needs of the individual can only [387]be supplied by an immense and highly organized social effort. The more complex civilization becomes, and the more numerous individual needs become, so much the more elaborate and highly organized becomes the social response to those needs. The individual is so dependent on society that he needs not only the active work of others, but even their mere passive good opinion, and if he loses that he is a failure, bankrupt, a pauper, a lunatic, a criminal, and the social reaction against him may suffice to isolate him, even to put him out of life altogether. So dependent indeed on society is the individual that there has always been a certain plausibility in the old idea of the Stoics, countenanced by St. Paul, and so often revived in later days (as by Schäffle, Lilienfeld, and René Worms), that society is an organism in which the individuals are merely cells depending for their significance on the whole to which they belong. Just as the animal is, as Hegel, the metaphysician, called it, a "nation," and Dareste, the physiologist, a "city," made up of cells which are individuals having a common ancestor, so the actual nation, the real city, is an animal made up of individuals which are cells having a common ancestor, or, as Oken long ago put it, individuals are the organs of the whole. [251] Man is a social animal in constant action and reaction with all his fellows of the same group—a group which becomes ever greater as civilization advances—and socialism is merely the formal statement of this ultimate social fact. [252]

[388]There is a divinity that hedges certain words. A sacred terror warns the profane off them as off something that might blast the beholder's sight. In fact it is so, and even a clear-sighted person may be blinded by such a word. Of these words none is more typical than the word "socialism." Not so very long ago a prominent public man, of high intelligence, but evidently susceptible to the terror-striking influence of words, went to Glasgow to deliver an address on Social Reform. He warned his hearers against Socialism, and told them that, though so much talked about, it had not made one inch of progress; of practical Socialism or Collectivism there were no signs at all. Yet, as some of his hearers pointed out, he gave his address in a municipally owned hall, illuminated by municipal lights, to an audience which had largely arrived in municipal tramcars travelling through streets owned, maintained, and guarded by the municipality. This audience was largely educated in State schools, in which their children nowadays can receive not only free education and free books, but, if necessary, free food and free medical inspection and treatment. Moreover, the members of this same audience thus assured of the non-existence of Socialism, are entitled to free treatment in the municipal hospital, should an infective disease overtake them; the municipality provides them freely with concerts and picture galleries, golf courses and swimming ponds; and in old age, finally, if duly qualified, they [389]receive a State pension. Now all these measures are socialistic, and Socialism is nothing more or less than a complicated web of such measures; the socialistic State, as some have put it, is simply a great national co-operative association of which the Government is the board of managers.

It is said by some who disclaim any tendency to Socialism, that what they desire is not the State-ownership of the means of production, but State-regulation. Let the State, in the interests of the community, keep a firm control over the individualistic exploitation of capital, let it tax capital as far as may be desirable in the interests of the community. But beyond this, capital, as well as land, is sacred. The distinction thus assumed is not, however, valid. The very people who make this distinction are often enthusiastic advocates of an enlarged navy and a more powerful army. Yet these can only be provided by taxation, and every tax in a democratic State is a socialistic measure, and involves collective ownership of the proceeds, whether they are applied to making guns or swimming-baths. Every step in the regulation of industry assumes the rights of society over individualistic production, and is therefore socialistic. It is a question of less or more, but except along those two lines, there is no socialism at all to be reckoned with in the practical affairs of the world. That revolutionary socialism of the dogmatically systematic school of Karl Marx which desired to transfer society at a single stroke by taking over and centralizing all the means of production may now be regarded as a dream. It never at any time [390]took root in the English-speaking lands, though it was advocated with unwearying patience by men of such force of intellect and of character as Mr. Hyndman and William Morris. Even in Germany, the land of its origin, nearly all its old irreconcilable leaders are dead, and it is now slowly but steadily losing influence, to give place to a more modern and practical socialism.

As we are concerned with it to-day and in the future, Socialism is not a rigid economic theory, nor is it the creed of a narrow sect. In its wide sense it is a name that covers all the activities—first instinctive, then organized—which arise out of the fundamental fact that man is a social animal. In its more precise sense it indicates the various orderly measures that are taken by groups of individuals—whether States or municipalities—to provide collectively for the definite needs of the individuals composing the group. So much for Socialism.

The individualist has a very different story to tell. From the point of view of Individualism, however elaborate the structure of the society you erect, it can only, after all, be built up of individuals, and its whole worth must depend on the quality of those individuals. If they are not fully developed and finely tempered by high responsibilities and perpetual struggles, all social effort is fruitless, it will merely degrade the individual to the helpless position of a parasite. The individual is born alone; he must die alone; his deepest passions, his most exquisite tastes, are personal; in this world, or in any other world, all the activities of society cannot suffice to save his soul. Thus it is that the individual must bear [391]his own burdens, for it is only in so doing that the muscles of his body grow strong and that the energies of his spirit become keen. It is by the qualities of the individual alone that work is sound and that initiative is possible. All trade and commerce, every practical affair of life, depend for success on the personal ability of individuals. [253] It is not only so in the everyday affairs of life, it is even more so on the highest planes of intellectual and spiritual life. The supreme great men of the race were termed by Carlyle its "heroes," by Emerson its "representative men," but, equally by the less and by the more democratic term, they are always individuals standing apart from society, often in violent opposition to it, though they have always conquered in the end. When any great person has stood alone against the world it has always been the world that lost. The strongest [392]man, as Ibsen argued in his Enemy of the People, is the man who stands most alone. "He will be the greatest," says Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, "who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent." Every great and vitally organized person is hostile to the rigid and narrow routine of social conventions, whether established by law or by opinion; they must ever be broken to suit his vital needs. Therefore the more we multiply these social routines, the more strands we weave into the social web, the more closely we draw them, by so much the more we are discouraging the production of great and vitally organized persons, and by so much the more we are exposing society to destruction at the hands of such persons.

Beneath Socialism lies the assertion that society came first and that individuals are indefinitely apt for education into their place in society. Socialism has inherited the maxim, which Rousseau, the uncompromising Individualist, placed at the front of his Social Contract: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." There is nothing to be done but to strike off the chains and organize society on a social basis. Men are not this or that; they are what they have been made. Make the social conditions right, says the thorough-going Socialist, and individuals will be all that we could desire them to be. Not poverty alone, but disease, lunacy, prostitution, criminality are all the results of bad social and economic conditions. Create the right environment and you have done all that is necessary. To some extent that is clearly true. But the individualist insists that there are definite [393]limits to its truth. Even in the most favourable environment nearly every ill that the Socialist seeks to remove is found. Inevitably, the Individualist declares, because we do not spring out of our environment, but out of our ancestral stocks. Against the stress on environment, the Individualist lays the stress on the ascertained facts of heredity. It is the individual that counts, and for good or for ill the individual brought his fate with him at birth. Ensure the production of sound individuals, and you may set at naught the environment. You will, indeed, secure results incomparably better than even the most anxious care expended on environment alone can ever hope to secure.

Such are the respective attitudes of Socialism and Individualism. So far as I can see, they are both absolutely right. Nor is it even clear that they are really opposed; for, as happens in every field, while the affirmations of each are sound, their denials are unsound. Certainly, along each line we may be carried to absurdity. The Individualism of Max Stirner is not far from the ultimate frontier of sanity, and possibly even on the other side of it; [254] while the Socialism of the Oneida Community involved a self-subordination which it would be idle to expect from the majority of men and women. But there is a perfect division of labour between Socialism and Individualism. We cannot have too much of either [394]of them. We have only to remember that the field of each is distinct. No one needs Individualism in his water supply, and no one needs Socialism in his religion. All human affairs sort themselves out as coming within the province of Socialism or of Individualism, and each may be pushed to its furthest extreme. [255]

It so happens, however, that the capacity of the human brain is limited, and a single brain is not made to hold [395]together the idea of Socialism and the idea of Individualism. Ordinary people have, it is true, no practical difficulty whatever in acting concurrently in accordance with the ideas of Socialism and of Individualism. But it is different with the men of ideas; they must either be Socialists or Individualists; they cannot be both. The tendency in one or the other direction is probably inborn in these men of ideas.

We need not regret this inevitable division of labour. On the contrary, it is difficult to see how the right result could otherwise be brought about. People without ideas experience no difficulty in harmonizing the two tendencies. But if the ideas of Socialism and Individualism tended to appear in the same brain they would neutralize each other or lead action into an unprofitable via media. The separate initiative and promulgation of the two tendencies encourages a much more effective action, and best promotes that final harmony of the two extremes which the finest human development needs.

There is more to be said. Not only are both alike indispensable, and both too profoundly rooted in human nature to be abolished or abridged, but each is indispensable to the other. There can be no Socialism without Individualism; there can be no Individualism without Socialism. Only a very fine development of personal character and individual responsibility can bear up any highly elaborated social organization, which is why small Socialist communities have only attained success by enlisting finely selected persons; only a highly organized social structure can afford scope for the play of individuality. [396]The enlightened Socialist nowadays often realizes something of the relationship of Socialism to Individualism, and the Individualist—if he were not in recent times, for all his excellent qualities, sometimes lacking in mental flexibility and alertness—would be prepared to admit his own relationship to Socialism. "The organization of the whole is dominated by the necessities of cellular life," as Dareste says. That truth is well recognized by the physiologists since the days of Claude Bernard. It is absolutely true of the physiology of society. Social organization is not for the purpose of subordinating the individual to society; it is as much for the purpose of subordinating society to the individual.

Between individuals, even the greatest, and society there is perpetual action and reaction. While the individual powerfully acts on society, he can only so act in so far as he is himself the instrument and organ of society. The individual leads society, but only in that direction whither society wishes to go. Every man of science merely carries knowledge or invention one further step, a needed and desired step, beyond the stage reached by his immediate predecessors. Every poet and artist is only giving expression to the secret feelings and impulses of his fellows. He has the courage to utter for the first time the intimate emotion and aspiration which he finds in the depth of his own soul, and he has the skill to express them in forms of radiant beauty. But all these secret feelings and desires are in the hearts of other men, who have not the boldness to tell them nor the ability to [397]embody them exquisitely. In the life of man, as in nature generally, there is a perpetual process of exfoliation, as Edward Carpenter calls it, whereby a latent but striving desire is revealed, and the man of genius is the stimulus and the incarnation of this exfoliating movement. That is why every great poet and artist when once his message becomes intelligible, is acclaimed and adored by the crowd for whom he would only have been an object of idle wonderment if he had not expressed and glorified themselves. When the man of genius is too far ahead of his time, he is rejected, however great his genius may be, because he represents the individual out of vital relation to his time. A Roger Bacon, for all his stupendous intellect, is deprived of pen and paper and shut up in a monastery, because he is undertaking to answer questions which will not be asked until five centuries after his death. Perhaps the supreme man of genius is he who, like Virgil, Leonardo, or Shakespeare, has a message for his own time and a message for all times, a message which is for ever renewed for every new generation.

The need for insisting on the intimate relations between Socialism and Individualism has become the more urgent to-day because we are reaching a stage of civilization in which each tendency is inevitably so pushed to its full development that a clash is only prevented by the realization that here we have truly a harmony. Sometimes a matter that belongs to one sphere is so closely intertwined with a matter that belongs to the other that [398]it is a very difficult problem how to hold them separate and allow each its due value. [256]

At times, indeed, it is really very difficult to determine to which sphere a particular kind of human activity belongs. This is notably the case as regards education. "Render unto Cæsar the things that be Cæsar's, and unto God the things that be God's." But is education among the things that belong to Cæsar, to social organization, or among the things that belong to God, to the province of the individual's soul? There is much to be said on both sides. Of late the Socialist tendency prevails here, and there is a disposition to standardize rigidly an education so superficial, so platitudinous, so uniform, so unprofitable—so fatally oblivious of what even the word education means [257]—that some day, perhaps, the revolted Individualist spirit will arise in irresistible might to sweep away the whole worthless structure from top to bottom, with even such possibilities of good as it may conceal. The educationalists of to-day may do well to remember that it is wise to be generous to your enemies even in the interests of your own preservation.

[399]In every age the question of Individualism and Socialism takes on a different form. In our own age it has become acute under the form of a conflict between the advocates of good heredity and the advocates of good environment. On the one hand there is the desire to breed the individual to a high degree of efficiency by eugenic selection, favouring good stocks and making the procreation of bad stocks more difficult. On the other hand there is the effort so to organize the environment by collectivist methods that life for all may become easy and wholesome. As usual, those who insist on the importance of good environment are inclined to consider that the question of heredity may be left to itself, and those who insist on the importance of good heredity are indifferent to environment. As usual, also, there is a real underlying harmony of those two demands. There is, however, here more than this. In this most modern of their embodiments, Socialism and Individualism are not merely harmonious, each is the key to the other, which remains unattainable without it. However carefully we improve our breed, however anxiously we guard the entrance to life, our labour will be in vain if we neglect to adapt the environment to the fine race we are breeding. The best individuals are not the toughest, any more than the highest species are the toughest, but rather, indeed, the reverse, and no creature needs so much and so prolonged an environing care as man, to ensure his survival. On the other hand, an elaborate attention to the environment, combined with a reckless inattention to the quality of the individuals born to live in that environment can [400]only lead to an overburdened social organization which will speedily fall by its own weight.

During the past century the Socialists of the school for bettering the environment have for the most part had the game in their own hands. They founded themselves on the very reasonable basis of sympathy, a basis which the eighteenth-century moralists had prepared, which Schopenhauer had formulated, which George Eliot had passionately preached, which had around its operations the immense prestige of the gospel of Jesus. The environmental Socialists—always quite reasonably—set themselves to improve the conditions of labour; they provided local relief for the poor; they built hospitals for the free treatment of the sick. They are proceeding to feed school children, to segregate and protect the feeble-minded, to insure the unemployed, to give State pensions to the aged, and they are even asked to guarantee work for all. Now these things, and the likes of them, are not only in accordance with natural human impulses, but for the most part they are reasonable, and in protecting the weak the strong are, in a certain sense, protecting themselves. No one nowadays wants the hungry to hunger or the suffering to suffer. Indeed, in that sense, there never has been any laissez-faire school. [258]

[401]But as the movement of environmental Socialism realizes itself, it becomes increasingly clear that it is itself multiplying the work which it sets itself to do. In enabling the weak, the incompetent, and the defective to live and to live comfortably, it makes it easier for those on the borderland of these classes to fall into them, and it furnishes the conditions which enable them to propagate their like, and to do this, moreover, without that prudent limitation which is now becoming universal in all classes above those of the weak, the incompetent, and the defective. Thus unchecked environmental Socialism, obeying natural impulses and seeking legitimate ends, would be drawn into courses at the end of which only social enfeeblement, perhaps even dissolution, could be seen.

The key to the situation, it is now beginning to be more and more widely felt, is to be found in the counterbalancing tendency of Individualism, and the eugenic guardianship of the race. Not, rightly understood, as a method of arresting environmental Socialism, nor even as a counterblast to its gospel of sympathy. Nietzsche, indeed, has made a famous assault on sympathy, as he has on conventional morality generally, but his "immoralism" in general and his "hardness" in particular are but new and finer manifestations of those faded virtues he was really seeking to revive. The superficially sympathetic man flings a coin to the beggar; the more deeply sympathetic man builds an almshouse for him so that he need no longer beg; but perhaps the most radically sympathetic of all is the man who arranges that the beggar shall not be born.

[402]So it is that the question of breed, the production of fine individuals, the elevation of the ideal of quality in human production over that of mere quantity, begins to be seen, not merely as a noble ideal in itself, but as the only method by which Socialism can be enabled to continue on its present path. If the entry into life is conceded more freely to the weak, the incompetent, and the defective than to the strong, the efficient, and the sane, then a Sisyphean task is imposed on society; for every burden lifted two more burdens appear. But as individual responsibility becomes developed, as we approach the time to which Galton looked forward, when the eugenic care for the race may become a religion, then social control over the facts of life becomes possible. Through the slow growth of knowledge concerning hereditary conditions, by voluntary self-restraint, by the final disappearance of the lingering prejudice against the control of procreation, by sterilization in special cases, by methods of pressure which need not amount to actual compulsion, [259] it will be possible to attain an increasingly firm grip on the evil elements of heredity. Not until such measures as these, under the controlling influence of a sense of personal responsibility extending to every member of the [403]community, have long been put into practice, can we hope to see man on the earth risen to his full stature, healthy in body, noble in spirit, beautiful in both alike, moving spaciously and harmoniously among his fellows in the great world of Nature, to which he is so subtly adapted because he has himself sprung out of it and is its most exquisite flower. At this final point social hygiene becomes one with the hygiene of the soul. [260]

Poets and prophets, from Jesus and Paul to Novalis and Whitman, have seen the divine possibilities of Man. There is no temple in the world, they seem to say, so great as the human body; he comes in contact with Heaven, they declare, who touches a human person. But these human things, made to be gods, have spawned like frogs over all the earth. Everywhere they have beslimed its purity and befouled its beauty, darkening the very sunshine. Heaped upon one another in evil masses, preying upon one another as no other creature has ever preyed upon its kind, they have become a festering heap which all the oceans in vain lave with their antiseptic waters, and all the winds of heaven cannot purify. It is only in the unextinguished spark of reason within him that salvation for man may ever be found, in the realization [404]that he is his own star, and carries in his hands his own fate. The impulses of Individualism and of Socialism alike prompt us to gain self-control and to learn the vast extent of our responsibility. The whole of humanity is working for each of us; each of us must live worthy of that great responsibility to humanity. By how fine a flash of insight Jesus declared that few could enter the Kingdom of Heaven! Not until the earth is purified of untold millions of its population will it ever become the Heaven of old dreamers, in which the elect walk spaciously and nobly, loving one another. Only in such spacious and pure air is it possible for the individual to perfect himself, as a rose becomes perfect, according to Dante's beautiful simile, [261] in order that he may spread abroad for others the fragrance that has been generated within him. If one thinks of it, that seems a truism, yet, even in this twentieth century, how few, how very few, there are who know it!

This is why we cannot have too much Individualism, we cannot have too much Socialism. They play into each other's hands. To strengthen one is to give force to the other. The greater the vigour of both, the more vitally a society is progressing. "I can no more call myself an Individualist or a Socialist," said Henry George, "than one who considers the forces by which the planets are held to their orbits could call himself a centrifugalist or a centripetalist." To attain a society in which Individualism and Socialism are each carried to its extreme point would be to attain to the society that lived in the [405]Abbey of Thelema, in the City of the Sun, in Utopia, in the land of Zarathustra, in the Garden of Eden, in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a kingdom, no doubt, that is, as Diderot expressed it, "diablement idéal." But to-day we hold in our hands more certainly than ever before the clues that were imperfectly foreshadowed by Plato, and what our fathers sought ignorantly we may attempt by methods according to knowledge. No Utopia was ever realized; and the ideal is a mirage that must ever elude us or it would cease to be ideal. Yet all our progress, if progress there be, can only lie in setting our faces towards that goal to which Utopias and ideals point.