Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: aiming at the introduction of the greatest possible equality; therefore the terms socialism and social democracy may be regarded as synonymous. In French and English socialism is also often spoken of as collectivism. Section II. DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIALISM. § I. Socialism of Antiquity and o] the Middle Ages. From the most ancient times we meet with certain partially communistic systems and institutions. On the island of Crete we find a certain kind of communism introduced as early as 1300 B.c., which in later times Lycurgus took as his model for the constitution of Sparta. This constitution seems to have been Plato's ideal when he composed his work entitled "The Republic," as also, though in a more moderate form, in the work on "Laws;" for in these works he commends community of goods, community of education, and even community of meals. Aristotle,1 who accurately describes these economic systems, has also clearly demonstrated their untenableness. While the communistic attempts of antiquity suppose a large portion of the population to be in the condition of slavery, there arose in the first Christian community in Jerusalem a higher kind of communism, based upon true charity and equality. Among the early Christians those who chose could retain their possessions; but most of them, of their own accord, sold all they possessed and gave the proceeds to the apostles for the common support of all.2 In voluntary poverty the first Christians wished to devote themselves wholly to the service of God and of their neighbor. Such acondition, however, in its very nature, considering men as they generally are, could not be obligatory, universal, permanent—a circumstance which was overlooked by the Apostolics, Albigenses, Anabaptists, and other sects which in the course of centuries fell off...