THE FUTURE OF SOCIALISM: Ill
The Perspective Now
ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.
T
HE
SoviET
EXPERIENCE
has put the century-old debate between
capitalism and socialism
in
a useful new perspective. Before the
First World War, the case against socialism was generally made in
terms of efficiency, the case against capitalism in terms of morality:
that is, socialism was conceded to be good
in
principle but not to
work; capitalism was conceded to work but not to be good in prin–
ciple. After the Second War, we see a reverse tendency-a disposition
to admit the inefficiency of capitalism and justify it as providing the
margin on which liberty and democracy may subsist; a disposition
to believe that the very efficiency of socialist management necessarily
squeezes out freedom. After all, which system has more successfully
dehumanized the worker, fettered the working class, and extinguished
personal and political liberty?
The very shift in polemics suggests that both arguments have
indulged in what Whitehead has called the fallacy of misplaced con–
creteness-the error of mistaking· abstractions for concrete realities.
The fact probably is that a great many of the criticisms urged against
the abstractions "capitalism" and "socialism" alike are actually the
defects, not of a particular system of ownership, but of industrial
organization and the postindustrial state whatever the system of
ownership. Industry and government are the basic evils; they insti–
tutionalize the pride and the greed, the sadism and the masochism,
the ecstasy in power and the ecstasy in submission, which are the
abiding causes of the troubles of the world.
In this light anarchism becomes the only faith for a moral man.
Organization is man's solution to his sense of guilt. The very fact
of organization attenuates personal moral responsibility; and, as
organization becomes more elaborate and comprehensive, it becomes
increasingly the instrumentality through which moral man indulges
his natural desire to commit immoral deeds. "A crime which would
press heavily on the conscience of one man, becomes quite endurable
when divided among many." The state is only the climax of secular
