The Altruist in Politics | Page 4

present world, where some at least are
well-to-do and happy, the communist holds before us a world where all
alike are poor. For the activity, the push, the vigor of our modern life,
his substitute is a life aimless and unbroken. And so we have to say to
communists what George Eliot might have said: Be not blinded by the
passions of the moment, but when you prate about your own wrongs
and the sufferings of your offspring, take heed lest in the long run you
make a worse time of it for your own generation, and leave a bad
inheritance for your children.
Little thought has been taken by these altruistic reformers for the
application of the doctrines they uphold. To the question how one kind
of labor can be measured against another, how the labor of the artisan
can be measured against the labor of the artist, how the labor of the
strong can be measured against the labor of the weak, the communists
can give no answer. Absorbed, as they are, in the principle of equality,
they have still forgotten the equality of work in the equality of pay;
they have forgotten that reward, to be really equal, must be
proportionate to effort; and they and all socialists have forgotten that
we cannot make an arithmetic of human thought and feeling; and that
for all our crude attempts to balance recompense against toil, for all our
crude attempts to determine the relative severity of different kinds of
toil, for all our crude attempts to determine the relative strain on
different persons of the same kind of toil, yet not only will the ratio,
dealing, as it does, with our subjective feelings, be a blundering one,
but a system based upon it will involve inequalities greater, because
more insidious, than those of the present system it would discard.
Instances, indeed, are not wanting to substantiate the claim that
communism, by unduly exalting our altruistic impulses, proceeds upon
a false psychological basis. Yet if an instance is to be chosen, it would
be hard to find one more suggestive than that afforded by the efforts of
Robert Owen. The year 1824 saw the rise of Owen's little community
of New Harmony, and the year of 1828 saw the community's final
disruption. Individuals had appropriated to themselves the property
designed for all; and even Owen, who had given to the enterprise his
money and his life, was obliged to admit that men were not yet fitted
for the communistic stage, and that the moment of transition from

individualism to communism had not yet arrived. Men trained under
the old system, with its eager rivalry, its selfish interests, could not
quite yet enter into the spirit of self- renunciation that communism
demands. And Owen, therefore, was led to put his trust in education as
the great moulder of the minds of men. Through this agency, he hoped,
the eager rivalry, the selfish interests, the sordid love of gain, might be
lost in higher, purer, more disinterested ends; and, animated by that
hope-the hope that in the fullness of time another New Harmony, free
from contention and the disappointments of the old one, might serve to
immortalize his name-animated by that hope, Owen passed the last
thirty years of his life; and with that hope still before his eyes he died.
But years now have passed since Owen lived; the second New
Harmony has not yet been seen; the so-called rational system of
education has not yet transformed the impulses or the aims of men; and
the communist of today, with a history of two thousand years of failure
behind him, in the same pathetic confidence still looks for the
realization of his dreams to the communism of the future.
And yet, granting that communism were practicable, granting that
Owen's hopes had some prospect of fulfillment, the doctrine still
embodies evils that must make it forever inexpedient. The readers of
Mr. Matthew Arnold's works must have noticed the emphasis with
which he dwells on the instinct of expansion as a factor in human
progress. It is the refutation alike of communism and socialism that
they thwart the instinct of expansion; that they substitute for individual
energy the energy of the government; that they substitute for human
personality the blind, mechanical power of the State. The one system,
as the other, marks the end of individualism. The one system, as the
other, would make each man the image of his neighbor. The one system,
as the other, would hold back the progressive, and, by uniformity of
reward, gain uniformity of type.
I can look forward to no blissful prospect for a race of men that, under
the dominion of the State, at the cost of all freedom of action, at the
cost, indeed, of