f I could,
altogether to extinguish it. But I am anxious, I confess, to temper
it; for in colour, to my taste, it is a little ghastly; and I fear that
if it increased in intensity, it might even become too hot, though I do
not suggest that that is a present danger. To drop the metaphor, my
objections to collectivism are not as fundamental as my objections to
anarchy, nor are they based upon any lack of appreciation of the
advantages of that more equitable distribution of the opportunities of
life which I take to be at the bottom of the collectivist ideal. I do
not share--no man surely who has reflected could share--the common
prejudice that there is something fundamental, natural, and inevitable
about the existing organization of property. On the contrary, it is
clear to me that it is inequitable; and that the substitution of the
system advocated by collectivists would be an immense improvement, if
it could be successfully carried out, and if it did not endanger other
Goods, which may be even more important than equality of opportunity.
Nor do I hold that in a collectivist state there need be any dangerous
relaxation of that motive of self-interest which every reasonable man
must admit to be, up to a point, the most potent source of all
practical energy. I do not see why the state should not pay its
servants according to merit just as private companies do, and make the
rewards of ambition depend on efficiency. In this purely economic
region there is not, so it seems to me, anything absurd or chimerical
in the socialist ideal. My difficulty here is of a different kind. I
do not see how, by the democratic machinery contemplated, it will be
possible to secure officials sufficiently competent and disinterested
to be entrusted with functions so important and so difficult as those
which would be demanded of them under the socialist regime. In a
democracy the government can hardly rise above--in practice, I think,
it tends to fall below--the average level of honesty and intelligence.
In the United States, for example, it is notorious that the whole
machinery of government, and especially of local government, where the
economic functions are important, is exploited by the more unscrupulous
members of the community; and this tendency must be immensely
accentuated in every society in proportion as the functions of
government become important. A socialist state badly administered
would, I believe, be worse than the state