<SPAN name="chap10"></SPAN>
<h2>CHAPTER X </h2>
<h2>PROHIBITION AND SOCIALISM </h2>
<p>In the foregoing chapter I have said that while absorption in the idea
of democracy has had a tendency to impair devotion to the idea of liberty,
yet that in democracy itself there is no inherent opposition to liberty.
The danger to individual liberty in a democracy is of the same nature as
the danger to individual liberty in a monarchy or an oligarchy; whether
power be held by one man, or by a thousand, or by a majority out of a hundred
million, it is equally possible for the governing power on the one hand
to respect, or on the other hand to ignore, the right of individuals to
the free play of their individual powers, the exercise of their individual
predilections, the leading of their individual lives according to their
own notions of what is right or desirable. A monarch of enlightened and
liberal mind will respect that right, and limit his encroachments upon
it to the minimum required for the essential objects of reasonable government;
so, too, will a democracy if it is of like temper and intelligence. But
it is not so with Socialism. Numerous as are the varieties of Socialism,
they all agree in being inherently antagonistic to individualism. It may
be pleaded, in criticism of this assertion, that all government is opposed
to individualism; that the difference in this respect between Socialism
and other forms of civil organization is only one of degree; that we make
a surrender of individuality, as well as of liberty, when we consent to
live in any organized form of society. It is not worth while to dispute
the point; the difference may, if one chooses, be regarded as only a difference
of degree. But when a difference of degree goes to such a point that what
is minor, incidental, exceptional in the one case, is paramount, essential,
pervasive in the other, the difference is, for all the purposes of thinking,
equivalent to a difference of kind. Socialism is in its very essence opposed
to individualism. It makes the collective welfare not an incidental concern
of each man's daily life, but his primary concern. The standard it sets
up, the regulations it establishes, are not things that a man must merely
take account of as special restraints on his freedom, exceptional limitations
on the exercise of his individuality; they constitute the basic conditions
of his life. When the Socialist movement was in its infancy in this country--though
it had made great headway in several of the leading countries of Europe--the
customary way of disposing of it was with a mere wave of the hand. Socialism
can never work; it is contrary to human nature--these simple assertions
were regarded by nearly all conservatives as sufficient to settle the matter
in the minds of all sensible persons That is now no longer so much the
fashion; yet I have no doubt that a very large proportion of those who
are opposed to Socialism are still content with this way of disposing of
it. But Socialism has steadily--though of course with fluctuations --increased
in strength, in America as well as in Europe, for many decades; and it
would be folly to imagine that mere declarations of its being "impracticable,"
or "contrary to human nature," will suffice to check it. Millions
of men and women, here in America--ranging in intellect all the way from
the most cultured to the most ignorant--are filled with an ardent faith
that in Socialism, and in nothing else, is to be found the remedy for all
the great evils under which mankind suffers; and there is no sign of slackening
in the growth of this faith. When the time comes for a real test of its
strength--when it shall have gathered such force as to be able to throw
down a real challenge to the conservative forces in the political field--it
is absurd to suppose that those who are inclined to welcome it as the salvation
of the world will be frightened off by prophecies of failure. They will
want to make the trial; and they will make the trial, regardless of all
prophecies of disaster, if the people shall have come to believe that the
object is a desirable one--that Socialism is a form of life which they
would like after they got it. The one great bulwark against Socialism is
the sentiment of liberty. If we find nothing obnoxious in universal regimentation;
if we feel that life would have as much savor when all of us were told
off to our tasks, or at least circumscribed and supervised in our activities,
by a swarm of officials carrying out the benevolent edicts of a paternal
Government; if we hold as of no account the exercise of individual choice
and the development of individual potentialities which are the very lifeblood
of the existing order of society; if all these things hold no value for
us, then we shall gravitate to Socialism as surely as a river will find
its way to the sea. Socialism--granted its practicability, and its practicability
can never be disproved except by trial, by long and repeated trial--holds
out the promise of great blessings to mankind. And some of these blessings
it is actually capable of furnishing, even if in the end it should prove
to be a failure. Above all it could completely abolish poverty--that
is, anything like abject poverty. The productive power of mankind, thanks
to the progress of science and invention, is now so great that, even if
Socialism were to bring about a very great decline of productiveness--not,
to be sure, such utter blasting of productiveness as has been caused by
the Bolshevik insanity--there would yet be amply enough to supply, by equal
distribution, the simple needs of all the people. Besides the abolition
of poverty, there would be the extinction of many sinister forms of competitive
greed and dishonesty. To the eye of the thinking conservative, these things-poverty,
greed, dishonesty--while serious evils, are but the blemishes in a great
and wholesome scheme of human life; drawbacks which go with the benefits
of a system in which each man is free, within certain necessary limits,
to do his best or his worst; a price such as, in this imperfect world,
we have to pay for anything that is worth having. But to the Socialist
the matter presents itself in no such light. He sees a mass of misery which
he believes--and in large measure justly believes--Socialism would put
an end to; and he has no patience with the conservative who points out--and
justly points out-- that the poverty is being steadily, though gradually,
overcome in the advance of mankind under the existing order. "Away
with it," he says; "we cannot wait a hundred years for that which
we have a right to demand today." And "away with it" we
ought all to say, if Socialism, while doing away with it, would not be
doing away with something else of infinite value and infinite benefit to
mankind, both material and spiritual; something with which is bound up
the richness and zest of life, not only for what it is the fashion of radicals
to call "the privileged few," but for the great mass of mankind.
That something is liberty, and the individuality which is inseparably bound
up with liberty. The essence of Socialism is the suppression of individuality,
the exaltation of the collective will and the collective interest, the
submergence of the individual will and the individual interest. The particular
form--even the particular degree--of coercion by which this submergence
is brought about varies with the different types of Socialism; but they
all agree in the essential fact of the submergence. Socialism may possibly
be compatible with prosperity, with contentment; it is not compatible with
liberty, not compatible with individuality. I am, of course, not undertaking
here to discuss the merits of Socialism; my purpose is only to point out
that those who are hostile to Socialism must cherish liberty. And it is
vain to cherish liberty in the abstract if you are doing your best to dry
up the very source of the love of liberty in the concrete workings of every
man's daily experience. With the plain man--indeed with men in general,
plain or otherwise--love of liberty, or of any elemental concept, is strong
only if it is instinctive; and it cannot be instinctive if it is jarred
every day by habitual and unresented experience of its opposite. Prohibition
is a restraint of liberty so clearly unrelated to any primary need of the
state, so palpably bearing on the most personal aspect of a man's own conduct,
that it is impossible to acquiesce in it and retain a genuine and lively
feeling of abhorrence for any other threatened invasion of the domain of
liberty which can claim the justification of being intended for the benefit
of the poor or unfortunate. So long as Prohibition was a local measure,
so long even as it was a measure of State legislation, this effect did
not follow; or, if at all, only in a small degree. People did not regard
it as a dominant, and above all as a paramount and inescapable, part of
the national life. But decreed for the whole nation, and imbedded permanently
in the Constitution, it will have an immeasurable effect in impairing that
instinct of liberty which has been the very heart of the American spirit;
and with the loss of that spirit will be lost the one great and enduring
defense against Socialism. It is not by the argumentation of economists,
nor by the calculations of statisticians, that the Socialist advance can
be halted. The real struggle will be a struggle not of the mind but of
the spirit; it will be Socialism and regimentation against individualism
and liberty. The cause of Prohibition has owed its rapid success in no
small measure to the support of great capitalists and industrialists bent
upon the absorbing object of productive efficiency; but they have paid
a price they little realize. For in the attainment of this minor object,
they have made a tremendous breach in the greatest defense of the existing
order of society against the advancing enemy. To undermine the foundations
of Liberty is to open the way to Socialism.<br/>
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