Socialism and its Critics

 Mr. Wallace Nelson lectured in the Centennial Hall on Sunday to a good audience, his subject being "Socialism and its Critics; a reply to Father Moore and W. H. Mallock," The lecturer said that Father Moore had attempted to combine theism with economics —an attempt which always ended in disaster. In declaring that it was an absurdity to consider men as equal he was uttering a truism which no school of Socialism in existence would ever dream of disputing. Socialism did not say that all men were equal. But it did say that Labour was capable of winning for all the common comforts and decencies of life, and that if some had not enough to-day it was because others had too much. Socialism admitted most cheerfully that some men are intellectually superior to others, but it held that intellectual superiority, like intellectual inferiority, was determined by forces outside the control of the individual. We were all the products of the race—the community. No doubt in the present stage of culture even genius had a selfish side, and it might for some time be needful to specially reward ability. But a Socialistic state would be more likely to do that than the present one, where ability was too often exploited by the cunning man of business. But, as a matter of fact, the wealthy men of the present age were not the men of the greatest ability. The landed aristocracy of England were remarkable for neither moral nor intellectual superiority and yet they possessed millions. If we could divide the rich and poor into two separate classes we should find among the rich a very large proportion of incapables. In a word, wealth to-day was distributed according to no principle of justice ; indeed its distribution was absolutely non-ethical. The aim of Socialism was to remedy this evil. The Social and Democratic movement was founded on sympathy—the very root of morality. And sympathy, as Herbert Spencer had assured us, would grow stronger generation by generation until it would be impossible for any to be happy while others were undergoing preventable suffering. The criticisms of Mr. W. H. Mallock were far more formidable than those of Father Moore. Mr. Mallock was without question a man of great capacity, and he commanded a most powerful and effective literary style. His was essentially a critical intellect ; he devoted his life to criticising the two great modern movements —Democracy and Rationalism. His arguments against Socialism for these reasons were likely to be the most effective that could be advanced, and were worthy of serious consideration. Now what was the great argument he urged against Socialism and in defence of the present wealth distribution ?

Here it was: Ability had a greater share than labour in the production of wealth. Therefore ability should get more than labour. Therefore the present unequal distribution of wealth was fortified. Now nothing could be more shallow than that argument, and nothing could better prove the weakness of the capitalistic case than that such a man should seek to defend it by such a sophisms. If every rich man was a genius and every poor man an ass—if the gold a man had in his pocket was a measure of the ideas he had in his head—if Jay Gould had been a greater poet than Shakspeare, and Robert Burns a drivelling idiot —then, perhaps, Mr. Mallock's position had been invulnerable. But as a matter of fact genius frequently walked in rags while incapacity lived in a palace. The unequal distribution of wealth resulted, not from the unequal distribution of ability, but from the fact that land and capital were in the hands of a class. In the case of land this was clear enough. If a person of the most ordinary type had purchased for a song some of the land on which Brisbane is built thirty or forty years ago his very ordinary abilities would not have prevented him from being a very rich man at the present moment. The value of land increased with the growth of a community, irrespective of whether the holders of the title deeds were fools or philosophers. Even in business it was the greedy, grasping unscrupulous man rather than the man of real ability who was successful. Mr. Mallock was quite right in declaring that labour and ability (which was only another form of labour) produced all wealth. What the Socialists contended was that a large proportion of the joint product of labour and ability went to an idle class which neither exerted the first nor manifested the second, and the end of Socialism was to remedy this evil by making it for ever impossible for those who work neither by brain nor by hand to live on the labour of others.

Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), Tuesday 10 April 1894, page 7