But the Socialist may
attack poverty for ever, disregarding the intellectual and moral factors
that necessitate it, and he will remain until the end a purely economic
doctrinaire crying in the wilderness in vain.
And if I antagonize myself in this way to the philanthropic Socialism of
kindly prosperous people on the one hand and to the fierce class-hatred
Socialism on the other, still more am I opposed to that furtive
Socialism of the specialist which one meets most typically in the Fabian
Society. It arises very naturally out of what I may perhaps call
specialist fatigue and impatience. It is very easy for writers like
myself to deal in the broad generalities of Socialism and urge their
adoption as general principles; it is altogether another affair with a
man who sets himself to work out the riddle of the complications of
actuality in order to modify them in the direction of Socialism. He
finds himself in a jungle of difficulties that strain his intellectual
power to the utmost. He emerges at last with conclusions, and they are
rarely the obvious conclusions, as to what needs to be done.
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