The whole development of civilization, it seems to me, consists in the
development of adequate tests of survival and of an intellectual and
moral atmosphere about those tests so that they shall be neither cruel
nor wasteful. If the test is not to be 'are you strong enough to kill
everyone you do not like?' that will only be because it will ask still
more comprehensively and with regard to a multitude of qualities other
than brute killing power, 'are you adding worthily to the synthesis by
existence and survival?'
I am very clear in my mind on this perpetual need of competition. I
admit that upon that turns the practicability of all the great series of
organizing schemes that are called Socialism. The Socialist scheme must
show a system in which predominance and reproduction are correlated with
the quality and amount of an individual's social contribution, and so
far I acknowledge it is only in the most general terms that this can be
claimed as done. We Socialists have to work out all these questions far
more thoroughly than we have done hitherto. We owe that to our movement
and the world.
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