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still too few to have exerted any great influence upon the general condition of the labor class, they are not chiefly to be judged by a mere money standard. The work- men themselves do not judge them thus. What they have sought above all else is mdependence and security; and these boons on the whole they have gained, the latter by permanence of employment and old-age pensions. These associations, as industrial experiments, possess a scientific interest of the highest importance, since they are vig- orous and often successful efforts to achieve a working solution of the problem of the division of profits between capitalist and employ^ by making the two one, and to vindicate the right of self-control on the part of the workman. — Ch.'\rles Gide. "Productive Cooperation in France," in Quarterly Journal of Economics. November, 1899.
The Socialist Ideal. — Socialism is the principle and method of democracy applied to the social and economic sphere. ' It is the subordination of the materials of civilization to the common weal. It is not only a superior method of business, but also, and because of that fact, a superior idea of morality. A moral idea is not any arbi- trary notion about life, such as may exist in this or that man's consciousness, but a work- ing plan of life which has the capacity actually to organize life as a whole. This test socialism challenges. We need, therefore, in considering socialist programs, to ask what the ideal presuppositions behind them are which give life and force to them.
1. Socialism is nothing if not an ideal. This is not an unscientific opposition to laissez-Jaire. The very existence of an economic problem is itself a witness to the fact that growth in man's life is increasingly the result of conscious and deliberate action. If no man can escape the tendencies of his age, he can at least be their intelligent ser- vant, and not their slave.
2. The ideal of socialism would be nothing if it were not a moral ideal ; i. e., it must be just to an idea of human life as a whole, or it tends to become partial and inef- fective. Individualism and socialism, regarded as exclusive principles of social life, are futile and meaningless abstractions. They are limited by and relative to the con- ception of social welfare as a whole. Socialists have been peculiarly liable to "the fallacy of the abstract ideal." Socialism is more than a mere collection of miscel- laneous programs. These are but the body of socialism without the soul ; the life- giving, impelling spirit is the democratic idea. And this is necessary, for if ideas without machinery are helpless, machinery without ideas is purposeless.
3. The ethical ideal must be a social ideal ; ;'. e., an ideal of human relationships. Morality not only has no reference, but has no existence, apart from veritable human relationships. And in trying to understand and control these relationships we must not be sidetracked by abstractions. Competition and cooperation are two such delu- sive abstractions. They are complementary aspects of all association. A cooperation that does not call out individual competition in its service is self-defeating; and a competition that does not develop efficiency in furthering the aids of cooperation is also self-defeating, and has no social value. This, then, is the fundamental postulate of socialism : that society is organic ; that its unity consists, not in any aggregation of individual units seeking private ends, but in a common good or purpose, in which all members share, both as givers and receivers. On this formal basis socialism lays its fundamental axiom : that the only logical and consistent basis of social organization is a basis of labor or work. A community is socialistic in so far as it is organized on a basis of labor in such a way that there is no place in it for those who would live on the work of others. There must be a community of duties with rights proportioned on them. Socialism is thus a moral idea in the strict sense, because it is based on the only complete idea of human association. The whole drift of socialism is " so to organize life as to make its responsibilities much more definite and direct, and a good deal less easy to escape."
4. Thus the economic ideal of socialism is a direct deduction from its ethical and social ideal — the idea of a common life. Socialism, as a movement, is the attempt to give visibility and actuality to this idea. It is a protest against an unsubstantial ideal- ism or spiritualism. If an economic order cannot be realized except in and through a moral order, a moral order cannot be realized except in and through an economic order. It is thus for the recognition of the social question, as distinguished from partial social questions, that socialism stands. And this social question is the problem of putting an
