484 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
regular repetition increases sympathy. This sympathy is then founded on the desire for self-preservation, and is really egoistic. Some idealistic socialists claim that at a certain stage of economic-social development society will become altruistic ; this is an hypothesis of ignorance. To be egoistic is every man's duty. Everyone obeys this law. Individual development becomes the basis of security of society.
Socialism is a movement of workingmen and seeks their class interests. The few socialists who are not of the working class are shrewd fellows, seeking the quick- est way to obtain a halo of popularity. What does the party ask ? The Belgian socialist press began in 1890 to demand government ownership of mines. Official sta- tistics show that since 1851 wages in coal production have increased every year but one, while the profit of capital has decreased steadily and rapidly. If the state bought these works to give the workmen what they call for, the full product of their labor, their wages would be increased, at most, 6 per cent., and this only if state man- agement proved no dearer than private management.
Socialists speak of renouncing individual for general progress. This would check the development of production. Suppose in Bellamy's state some one makes an invention producing yearly 45,000,000 francs. The share of the inventor would be one franc. Would a second fool be found to study long, to make tiresome experiments, to devote perhaps his whole life to get an addition of one franc to his yearly income? Socialism aims at an equality contrary to human nature, a robbery of the intellectu- ally or physically strong for the weak and lazy. The Christian church, because it arose in a time of oppression, announces the same principle ; so Chrysostom says : " The rich man is a thief." For further comfort to the poor and wretched was set up the dogma of personal immortality, the good to be rewarded, the wicked punished. The religion of Christ takes no care about earthly well-being, and the papacy opposes freedom. Some do not believe this. De Laveleye says, " I cannot understand what has misled the socialists to take up the theories of Darwin, which deny their claims, and to turn their backs on Christianity, which has the same path as they and which acknowledges their claims." So, too, a French bishop lately said, " The wishes and claims of the socialists are also those of the Christian religion. How can one, sad- dened by the great difference in men's circumstances, seeing the frightful abyss between rich and poor, help but accept a theory which recognizes and tries to reduce to action the principle of equality and the brotherhood of all as children of one Father." If De Laveleye and the bishop are right we must consider Christianity the gospel of socialism, a class religion, with a deadly hate of the well-to-do. The special weakness of socialist morality is that, led astray by more or less lasting class contrasts, it proposes to repress the intellectual and moral power of gifted individuals. It is artfully increasing the blind egoists who fancy that the way to be rich is to plun- der the little store of the well-to-do. Socialism is the ideal of parasites. GIUSEPPE FIAMINGO, Deutsche Revue, September 1896.
