SOCIALISM AND THE FARMING INTEREST 



engage in industry is simply, What is best? 



If the question were merely whether or 

 not it is desirable for government to possess 

 and administer certain indispensable public 

 utilities, it would not be worth discussion. 

 The thoughtful people are few, however 

 opposed to socialism, who do not believe 

 that government will in time take over a 

 great many of the productive agencies now 

 in private hands. Government might go a 

 long way in this without even an approach 

 to socialism. Socialism would not be 

 reached until all material instrumentalities 

 for the production of wealth had passed into 

 the state's hands, or at least so many of them 

 that individual initiative in its present and 

 historic form had ceased to have play. 



Nor need anti-socialists have any radical 

 quarrel with socialists over Fabianism. Call 

 the Fabians socialists, if you will, they are 

 socialists of a very innocuous stripe. The 

 three great tenets of orthodox socialism 

 that economic conditions absolutely deter- 

 mine social, moral and political ones; that 

 profits are always and inevitably iniquitous; 



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