The Co-Operative Commonwealth; An Exposition of Socialism

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III. THE CULMINATION "Real history is a history of tendencies, not of events." -- Buckle. "Nothing would lead the mass of men to embrace socialism sooner than the conviction that this enormous accumulation of capital in a few hands was to be not only an evil in fact if not prevented, but a necessary evil beyond prevention. . . . "If such a tendency should manifest itself, it would run through all forms of property. A Stewart or a Claflin would root out small trades-people. Holders of small farms would sink into tenants. The buildings of a city would belong to a few owners. Small manufacturers would have to take pay from mammoths of their own kind or be ruined. ... If this went to an extreme in a free country, the - expropriated - could not endure it. They would go to some other country, and leave the proprietors alone in the land, or they would drive them away. A revolution, slow or rapid, would certainly bring about a new order of things." --" Communism and Socialism" by Dr. T. D. Woolsey. THAT capital -- not "wealth," not "property," but capital -- in private hands involves spoliation of the masses; that our established order is nothing but established anarchy, are the conclusions at which I have arrived. Will such a state of things last forever? Here we meet with one of the greatest obstacles with which socialists have to contend: the notion that whatever is, is the immutable order of nature. Because the wagesystem and the "let-alone" policy now prevail and have prevailed as far back as any one can remember, people, even well-informed people, fancy that this policy and that system constitute the necessary conditions for civilized society. Socialists hold that this is a fundamental error. They say, with all advanced scientists,...