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: CHAPTER HI WHAT SOCIALISM HOPES TO ACCOMPLISH We have seen how socialism has gradually formed out of a criticism of society by a part of itself. The more concrete and vital this criticism, the more expressive of new forces and values, the less Utopian it has been. All movements have a similar history. There comes, first of all, the dawning sense that something is wrong. The natural impulse is to advocate extreme measures, to employ generalities, to meet the situation in some spectacular way. This first reaction is emotional and imaginative. The intentions are good but there is not as yet sufficient knowledge of the actual problem. After this attitude has endured for some time, there arises an effort to define the trouble, to see what exactly is wrong, to pass from generalities and emotional solutions to an accurate analysis of the situation. Very little is actually accomplished until this second stage ensues. There must be a satisfactory diagnosis of the sickness and a fair body of knowledge about the organism before there can be much hope of a good prescription. Now all this takes time and time is very precious. It is, therefore, no wonder that the most interested parties get impatient. It is senseless for the more fortunate to scold them, just as it would be cruel for the healthy to chide the sick. It would be well if those who have a good seat at life's table would remember this analogy. Now Utopian socialism represents the first stage, that of a sense of something wrong with a quick appeal to general chapter{Section 4ities and vague imaginings. And sometimes these imaginings were pretty keen. Everyone should read some of the great Utopias just to lift himself for a moment out of the rut of use-and-wont. Marxian socialism, on the other hand, represents just the beginni...