Socialism for me is a common step we are all taking in the great
synthesis of human purpose. It is the organization, in regard to a great
mass of common and fundamental interests that have hitherto been
dispersedly served, of a collective purpose.
I see humanity scattered over the world, dispersed, conflicting,
unawakened... I see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion.
I see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere
parasites on their own pigs and cows; I see shy hunters wandering in
primaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial
production; I see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible
creatures of luxury, and some leading lives of shame and indignity; tens
of thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and unsatisfying
trivialities, hundreds of thousands meanly chaffering themselves, rich
or poor, in the wasteful byways of trade; I see gamblers, fools, brutes,
toilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the spectacle of futility,
fills me with a passionate desire to end waste, to create order, to
develop understanding.
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