PROHIBITION AND SOCIALISM
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.