We are of one blood and substance with our
antagonists, even with those that we desire keenly may die and leave no
issue in flesh or persuasion. They all touch us and are part of one
necessary experience. They are all necessary to the synthesis, even if
they are necessary only as the potato-peel in the dust-bin is necessary
to my dinner.
So it is I disavow and deplore the whole spirit of class-war Socialism
with its doctrine of hate, its envious assault upon the leisure and
freedom of the wealthy. Without leisure and freedom and the experience
of life they gave, the ideas of Socialism could never have been born.
The true mission of Socialism is against darkness, vanity and cowardice,
that darkness which hides from the property owner the intense beauty,
the potentialities of interest, the splendid possibilities of life, that
vanity and cowardice that make him clutch his precious holdings and fear
and hate the shadow of change. It has to teach the collective
organization of society; and to that the class-consciousness and intense
class-prejudices of the worker need to bow quite as much as those of the
property owner.
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