Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/20

For dramatic purposes we think of some Adamic beginning—a desert island, a solitary man, an enemy's footprint on the sand. But whether we are explaining economic or political or ethical laws, we immediately proceed to bring a second man into friendly contact with the first so as to create barter, a market, subdivision of labour, an alliance, mutual interest, for one or other of these things is the driving wheel of progressive change. The wattles are set up and the mound and ditch made, but for the village not for the individual; the castle is built, but to protect the retainers as well as the lord; the king is chosen, but he is the representative man of his people. Personal power is representative. It is the centre of mass power. Laws are passed and obeyed for the good of the whole, to repress the strong and protect the weak, to punish the dishonest and reward the honest, not at first that individuals may have justice done to them, but that the community may exist and flourish. Conceptions of individual rights and of justice come much later. The conflict of nations and clans brings feudalism—the organisation of a mass whose existence is threatened and which is threatening the existence of other masses. The subdivisions of labour and responsibility, of power and of honour; the relations of clansman and chief, of baron and king; the economic structure of slave, chattel slave and lord of the manor, were not the creation of individual will and forethought, but the response to a law of mutual aid as imperative as that law which