A Critical Examination of Socialism | Page 3

the only alternative to which is a system of legal coercion.
Other socialists advocate the continued use of wage-capital as the
implement of direction, but they imagine that the situation would be
radically changed by making the "state" the sole capitalist.
But the "state," as some of them are beginning to realise, would be
merely the private men of ability--the existing employers--turned into
state officials, and deprived of most of their present inducements to
exert themselves.
A socialistic state theoretically could always command labour, for
labour can be exacted by force; but the exercise of ability must be
voluntary, and can only be secured by a system of adequate rewards
and inducements.

Two problems with which modern socialism is confronted: How would
it test its able men so as to select the best of them for places of power?
What rewards could it offer them which would induce them
systematically to develop, and be willing to exercise, their exceptional
faculties?
CHAPTER VII
PROXIMATE DIFFICULTIES. ABLE MEN AS A CORPORATION
OF STATE OFFICIALS
How are the men fittest for posts of industrial power to be selected
from the less fit?
This problem solved automatically by the existing system of private
and separate capitals.
The fusion of all private capitals into a single state capital would make
this solution impossible, and would provide no other. The only
machinery by which the more efficient directors of labour could be
discriminated from the less efficient would be broken. Case of the
London County Council's steamboats.
Two forms which the industrial state under socialism might
conceivably take: The official directors of industry might be either an
autocratic bureaucracy, or they might else be subject to elected
politicians representing the knowledge and opinions prevalent among
the majority.
Estimate of the results which would arise in the former case.
Illustrations from actual bureaucratic enterprise.
Estimate of the results which would arise in the latter case. The state, as
representing the average opinion of the masses, brought to bear on
scientific industrial enterprise. Illustrations.
The state as sole printer and publisher. State capitalism would destroy
the machinery of industrial progress just as it would destroy the

machinery by which thought and knowledge develop.
But behind the question of whether socialism could provide ability with
the conditions or the machinery requisite for its exercise is the question
of whether it could provide it with any adequate stimulus.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY. SPECULATIVE ATTEMPTS TO
MINIMISE IT
Mr. Sidney Webb, and most modern socialists of the higher kind,
recognise that this problem of motive underlies all others.
They approach it indirectly by sociological arguments borrowed from
other philosophers, and directly by a psychology peculiar to
themselves.
The sociological arguments by which socialists seek to minimise the
claims of the able man.
These founded on a specific confusion of thought, which vitiated the
evolutionary sociology of that second half of the nineteenth century.
Illustrations from Herbert Spencer, Macaulay, Mr. Kidd, and recent
socialists.
The confusion in question a confusion between speculative truth and
practical.
The individual importance of the able man, untouched by the
speculative conclusions of the sociological evolutionists, as may be
seen by the examples adduced in a contrary sense by Herbert Spencer.
This is partially perceived by Spencer himself. Illustrations from his
works.
Ludicrous attempts, on the part of socialistic writers, to apply the
speculative generalisations of sociology to the practical position of
individual men.

The climax of absurdity reached by Mr. Sidney Webb.
CHAPTER IX
THE ULTIMATE DIFFICULTY, CONTINUED. ABILITY AND
INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE
The individual motives of the able man as dealt with directly by
modern socialists.
They abandon their sociological ineptitudes altogether, and betake
themselves to a psychology which they declare to be scientific, but
which is based on no analysis of facts, and consists really of loose
assumptions and false analogies.
Their treatment of the motives of the artist, the thinker, the religious
enthusiast, and the soldier.
Their unscientific treatment of the soldier's motive, and their fantastic
proposal based on it to transfer this motive from the domain of war to
that of industry.
The socialists as their own critics when they denounce the actual
motives of the able man as he is and as they say he always has been.
They attack the typically able man of all periods as a monster of
congenital selfishness, and it is men of this special type whom they
propose to transform suddenly into monsters of self-abnegation.
Their want of faith in the efficacy of their own moral suasion and their
proposal to supplement this by the ballot.
CHAPTER X
INDIVIDUAL MOTIVE AND DEMOCRACY
Exaggerated powers ascribed to democracy by inaccurate thinkers.
An example from an essay by a recent philosophic thinker, with special

reference to the rewards of exceptional ability.
This writer maintains that the money rewards of ability can