The Soul of Man Under Socialism | Page 4

man is fine.
But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less
dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will
benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very
simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have
had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning,
Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their
personality more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a
single day's work for hire. They were relieved from poverty. They had
an immense advantage. The question is whether it would be for the
good of Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away.
Let us suppose that it is taken away. What happens then to
Individualism? How will it benefit?
It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions Individualism will
be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am not
talking of the great imaginatively-realised Individualism of such poets
as I have mentioned, but of the great actual Individualism latent and
potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private property
has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man
with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has
made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important
thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be.
The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man
is.

Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an
Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community
from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part
of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong
road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man's
personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has
always treated offences against a man's property with far more severity
than offences against his person, and property is still the test of
complete citizenship. The industry necessary for the making money is
also very demoralising. In a community like ours, where property
confers immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and
other pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious,
makes it his aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and
tediously accumulating it long after he has got far more than he wants,
or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by
overwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the
enormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised.
One's regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that
man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop
what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him--in which, in
fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under
existing conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant
may be-- often is--at every moment of his life at the mercy of things
that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or
the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship
may go down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a
poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be
able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a
man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of
him should be a matter of no importance.
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true,
beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in
accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live
is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a
personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never
have. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But

how tragically insecure was Caesar! Wherever there is a man who
exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. Caesar was
very perfect, but his perfection travelled by too dangerous a road.
Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes; the great
emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were the endless
claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the empire. He was
conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the weight of that Titan
and too vast orb. What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops
under perfect conditions; one who is not