making provision for the common welfare? Manifestly, this is not a question of what society may be able to do, but what it may most wisely do in order to best secure these ends. Society is not only a collectivity, but is a collection of individuals, each individual being an organ of the social organism. Society cannot protect itself, nor provide for its welfare, except as it provides for the safety and comfort of the individuals who make up the collectivity of which society is composed. Government may not exist, then, for any purpose which is not for the safety and welfare of the individuals who make up society.

371. The Abuse of Power.-To use the public authority to impoverish a portion of society in order to enrich another portion of society would be, manifestly, an abuse of power.

To use the public authority to deprive any member of society of the opportunity to live a full, human life would be to use the public power to do the very wrong in order to prevent which the government exists, and hence would be an abuse of power.

To use the public authority to do for an individual anything for his advantage, and yet a thing which he can do better, or, at least, as well, for himself, is an unnecessary burden on all for the benefit of a single individual, and hence would be an abuse of power.

To use the public authority to compel any member of society to speak, or act, or dress, or live in any particular manner, when no serious social harm may come from leaving him to his own choice in all such matters, is for the collectivity to invade the domain of the most sacred personal liberties of the individual. It would

There is no coercive force without organization. And this organization is the state."-[System der Rechtsphilosophie, p. 296].-Lasson quoted by Lily: First Principles in Politics, p. 28.

be substituting persecution for protection, and would be a most serious abuse of power.

For the public authority to require the individual to maintain any fixed standard of living or to regularly engage in any fixed calling or occupation, as to require one to be a blacksmith, another a farmer, and another a soldier contrary to the wishes of the person involved, would not be consistent with the true function of government; that is, to secure the safety and welfare of society, the sole ground on which government has a right to exist and hence, would be an abuse of power.

372. Class Rule and Self-Government.-"Is not that government best which governs least?" If government is a superior, enacting and enforcing laws for the control of inferiors, then that government is best which governs not at all. But if government is a necessary co-operative organization, composed of those who are political equals, then that government is best which best protects the individual and most perfectly provides for all matters of common interest. Certainly that government cannot be best which ignores the principal task of life, namely, making a living.

373. Public Powers Controlled to Be Abused.-Government ownership is a term used only with offense among most Socialists; but if the government is only that function of society, of the whole of society, which provides for itself in all collective affairs and protects

4. The claim that the aggregate of governmental expenditures is largely determined by the industrial development finds support, also, in the general theory of social evolution. It is a fundamental law of social development that human wants are capable of indefinite expansion; but that their expansion will conform to the order of their relative importance. The conscious ability to satisfy a want which previously lay dormant gives to it a vitality that raises it from the rank of a simple desire to the rank of a vital principle capable of giving direction to social activity. As expressed by Bentham, 'Desires extend themselves with the means of satisfaction; the horizon is enlarged in proportion as one advances, and each new want equally accompanied by its pleasure and its pain becomes a new principle of action.' Now, it is evident that,

all its members from interference in all private affairs, then the government is the public; is society at work; is the collectivity, and there would be no difference between government ownership, public ownership and collective ownership, in such a case.

But any government which is more or less than this whole body of society, this general public, this social collectivity, acting in its own behalf, must be a government exercising public power not to protect all, nor to provide for the general welfare of all; but instead, to use the authority of all to specially serve a part and to protect this group of favorites from the just wrath of the rest of society. From government ownership by such a government little or no advantage can come to the workers. For government ownership by such a government it is as impossible to find any very effective words of defense as it is to find grounds for defending the existence of such a government.

The fact that every government on earth is administered for purposes which are here condemned does not make the condemnation any less deserved. It

for the orderly development of society, new collective wants as well as new individual wants must emerge as development proceeds, from which it follows that industrial growth opens up to society ever-expanding possibilites, which, in part, will be reflected in a corresponding expansion of those functions which government alone can perform."Adams: Finance, p. 38.

"It is hard to believe in the wisdom of an economic regime under which scarcity and want are the result of an over-production of necessary commodities. It is hard to believe that human wealth is increased and the social purpose furthered by committing the natural resources of a country, the gold and silver, copper and iron, coal and oil, field and forest, into the private keeping of a few individuals, instead of administering this bounty for the good of all.

"The carrying out of the social purpose requires that a man shall have adequate food and shelter and clothing, air and water, light and heat, education and amusement, beauty and social opportunity. And further, it requires that the necessary material part of his life shall be won at the least possible expenditure of labor and time."-Henderson: Education and the Larger Life, p. 78.

"Employers will get labor cheap if they can; it is the business of the state to prevent them getting it so cheaply that they imperil the future of the race by the process."-Rogers: Work and Wages, p. 528.

only emphasizes how serious is the demand for such a control of governmental powers as shall make these powers the servants of all, not the masters of any."

374. The Government and Business Enterprises.— Is it consistent with the purposes for which the state exists for it to undertake any business or industrial enterprises? If the state is a superior, guiding, controlling and robbing the masses then such a state would bring no advantage to the masses whom it now robs without government business enterprises by going into business on its own account. It can make no difference to the workers whether they be robbed by a private shop, protected by the state, or by a shop owned as well as protected by the state.

If the state is to conduct lines of business, is to hire its workers in the market, is to employ them at the rates for which the labor market can furnish them, and is to sell the products for a profit, like other producers, while the workers have no voice in the management of the industries in which they are employed, nor direct ownership in the products of their own labors, then the benefits which could come to the workers from such government enterprises are of so little importance as to be hardly worth the trouble of securing them. Government railways, gas works, water works, street railways, electric power plants, and the postoffice are

5. "Since the time of Locke there has been practically no development of political thought. There is really nothing on which the English race can base the claim they so often make, that they have a peculiar aptitude for the development of political institutions. They have been too conservative to develop institutional life beyond the needs of a primitive society. Peace and security come not from Anglo-American institutions, but from the instincts inculcated during the supremacy of the Church, the favorable economic conditions, and that spirit of compromise which has been forced on the race by the presence of opposing types of men. Given these instincts and conditions, almost any institutions would be successful. Where these conditions are lacking, the failure of our institutions is lamentably apparent, and the inability to remedy them even more obvious."-Patten: Development of English Thought, p. 188.

illustrations of this sort of government ownership. Such government ownership solves none of the political or economic problems connected with these great industries.6

Whether such a state should establish industries to compete with the private enterprises, which such a government is supposed to specially protect, is a question for the capitalists who are running the government to settle with the capitalists who are running the private enterprises.

375. Industrial and Political Self-Government.-It will be impossible to enthrone the workers in shops of their own without at the same time making the workers the masters of the state. When the workers are made the masters of the shops and of the government which is to protect the shops, then the state will cease to be the representative of any portion of the people, existing to protect this portion while this portion proceeds to exploit the rest of society. With the workers once made the masters of the state, then the state, that is, the function of society by which it protects itself and provides for its own common welfare, will at once be recovered from the control of the few who use its power to rob the many, and will become simply the organic expression of all the people in the direct control of all matters of common concern.

376. Socialism and the Government.-If the state is understood to be one part of society, using the strength of all to rob another part of society, then Socialism will abolish the state. If the state is understood to be the whole people, using their own collective strength and collective wisdom in order to protect and to provide for themselves, then all that Socialism will abolish will be the abuses of the state."

6. "The statesmanship of our rulers consists simply, not alone internally, but also externally, in placing every question upon the shelf and thereby increasing the number of unsolved problems."-Kautsky: Social Revolution, p. 95.

7. "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of