POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE POLICIES 465 



stir a finger to telp those wlio are in " shallows and miseries " at 

 home. There are abundant signs — and Spencer recognised them 

 — ^that Liberahsm is abandoning the laissez-faire for the ethical 

 element, and that it is abandoning Adam Smith and Ricardo, 

 Mill and Spencer, in order to return to the idea of the Rechtsstaat 

 of Kant and Fichte. But if Liberalism candidly adopt as its 

 creed the pohcy of social intervention in favour of the economi- 

 cally weak, of social legislation for the working classes ; if it 

 adopt the ethical maxim of considering every individual as an 

 individual — that is to say, as an end in himself, and not as a means 

 to an end — ^in this case Liberahsm must cease to be Liberalism ; 

 it must become Sociahsm or a form of Communist Anarchism. 

 For Sociahsm and Communist Anarchism, let it be remarked, 

 are pohtieal and social doctrines which are consistent with the 

 ethical imperative which commands us to treat the individual 

 as an end in himself, and not as a means to an end. And 

 it is notable that the founder of philosophic Liberalism, Kant 

 himself, individuahst though he was nominally, was in reality the 

 precursor of modern Socialism.^ Kant was a Socialist, because 

 his ethical creed was essentially a Gemeinschaftsethih — an ethic, 

 that is to say, which transcended the individual, and gave to 

 individual duty the sanction of a social imperative. It would 

 lead us too far were we to examine Kant's social ethics in detail. 

 It suffices, for our present purpose, to reiterate the statement that, 

 if Liberahsm is to remain true to the idea of the Rechtsstaat, if 

 it is going to inaugurate an era of social polity based on the 

 fundamental idea that the individual is an end in himself, and that 

 therefore each individual's activity is to be limited by the con- 

 ception of the liberty of each other individual — in this case it is 

 not an individuahst but a sociahst polity with which Liberalism 

 wOl be identifying itself ; and this sociahst polity means the end 

 of laissez-faire and of the whole doctrine of Liberal economics. 



' Vide K. Vorlander, Kant und der Sozialismus in Kantstudien, iv. 362- 

 404. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1900. 



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