The bourgeois' excuse for such conditions is that no better can be devised. Here is the whole issue of Socialism raised; for Socialism contends that these conditions are totally unnecessary; that it does not need any imagination or invention to substitute for them a system that will put an end to such evils as pauperism, prostitution, and, in great part, crime; that we have but to adopt as a community the principles already adopted by the men--the makers of the trusts--to whom the whole business world looks up as infallible on these subjects; and that this can be accomplished by ridding the institution of property of the fallacies with which it has been industriously defaced. Just indeed as the truly religious have during all ages sought to rescue religion from the crafty who tend to use it for their own ends--Christ from the Pharisee, Plato from the Sophist, Luther from the Borgias, so Socialists are now seeking to rescue property from the few who, under a mistaken theory of happiness, use property to injure their fellow creatures when these very few can attain happiness only by so using property as to benefit those they now injure.
It must, however, be specifically stated that Socialism does not involve the concentration of all wealth in the state. No sane Socialist proposes to vest in the state the things which a man uses, his personal apparel, his personal furniture, his objects of art, his musical instruments, his automobile, or even his private yacht.
There is no intention to suppress private property except so far as it is used for exploitation. Light is thrown upon this subject in another paragraph, which indicts the capitalist system for making the production of the necessaries of our lives the object of their competitive enterprises and speculations.
What the Socialist party proposes to do is not to abolish property, but to abolish the capitalist system, as it expressly states; and it proposes to do this not only in the interest of the proletariat, but also in the interest of the capitalist himself, who, to quote the words of the platform, is "the slave of his wealth rather than its master." The extent to which this last is true will be discussed in a subsequent chapter and ought to constitute an impressive argument for all--even millionaires--who have become the slaves of the very fortunes they have made. And the moral tendency to restore property to its original intention by abolishing the capitalist system is expressly stated in the platform as not an attempt "to substitute working-class rule for capitalist-class rule, but to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man." If this be immoral, then a great many of us do not know what morality is.