THE SOCIAL GOAL
INother words, the multiplication of activities in a highly civilized and complex community is such that the enormous increase in collective activity is really obtained not as a substitute for, but as an addition to, an almost similar increase in the sphere of individual initiative and activity. There are, of course, cases of substitution; but, speaking roughly and on the whole, the statement as above made is accurate. The increase of collective activity for social and industrial purposes does not mean in any shape or way a deadening of individual character and initiative such as would follow on the effort virtually to apply the doctrines of the Marxian socialists; for “socialist” is a term so vague, and includes so many men working wisely for justice, that it is necessary to qualify it in order to define it. We are striving in good faith to produce conditions in which there shall be a more general division of material well-being, to produce conditions under which it shall be difficult for the very rich to become so very rich, and easier for the men without capital, but with the right type of character, to lead a life of self-respecting and hard-working well-being. The goal is a long way off, but we are striving toward it; and the goal is not socialism, but so much of socialism as will best permit the building thereon of a sanely altruistic individualism, an individualism where self-respect is combined with a lively sense of consideration for and duty toward others, and where full recognition of the increased need of collective action goes hand in hand with a developed instead of an atrophied power of individual action.
Now, it is fairly easy to gain a more or less half-hearted acceptance of these views as right in the abstract. All that the Progressive party is endeavoring to do is to apply them in the concrete.