GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OF COMMUNISM 723
who suggests that economic justice is unimportant and
material prosperity vulgar. That the existing economic
basis for society is unjust, is self-evident. It is a fact to which
no believer in democracy and representative government
can afford to blind himsel It must also be conceded
that, until it can contrive to concede some measure of
economic security and equality to those who work for it,
a democratic State is incompletely democratic. The views
expounded and the positions maintained in the ensuing
two chapters, and especially in the last, represent more
nearly than any other of the political contents of tJiis book
the views of the author. Both arguments and conclusions
owe much to the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. It will,
therefore, be appropriate that I should at this stage quote
Mill's strictures upon the economic injustice which Communism
seeks to remedy, strictures which, but for their
eloquence, might have been penned by the present writer.
"If the choice were to be made between Communism with
all its chances, and the present stat? of society with all its
sufferings and injustices;
if the institution of private
property necessarily carried with it as. a consequence that
the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now
see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour the largest
portions to those who have never worked at all, the next
largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a
descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work
grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most
fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count
with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries
of life; if this, or Communism, were the alternative, all
the difficulties, great and small, of Communism, would be
as dust in the balance.' 1
Books
The literature of Communism is enormous. Among the most
important books are:
Classical Works.
. and ENOKLS, F. The Communist Manifesto.
F* Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.