#passivist

Grumblers may blame Western civilization for its materialism and may assert that it gratified nobody but a small class of rugged exploiters. But their laments cannot wipe out the facts. Millions of mothers have been made happier by the drop in infant mortality. Famines have disappeared and epidemics have been curbed. The average man lives in more satisfactory conditions than his ancestors or his fellows in the noncapitalistic countries. And one must not dismiss as merely materialistic a civilization which makes it possible for practically everybody to enjoy a Beethoven symphony performed by an orchestra conducted by an eminent master.

Social utility is the only standard of justice. It is the sole guide of legislation. Thus there are no irreconcilable conflicts between selfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics, between the concerns of the individual and those of society.

The truth is that the concept of socialism did not originate from the "proletarian mind." No proletarian or son of a proletarian contributed any substantial idea to the socialist ideology. The intellectual fathers of socialism were members of the intelligentsia, scions of the "bourgeoisie." Marx himself was the son of a well-to-do lawyer. He attended a German Gymnasium, the school all Marxians and other socialists denounce as the main offshoot of the bourgeois system of education, and his family supported him through all the years of his studies; he did not work his way through the university. He married the daughter of a member of the German nobility; his brother-in-law was Prussian minister of the interior and as such head of the Prussian police. In his household served a maid, Helene Demuth, who never married and who followed the Marx menage in all its shifts of residence, the perfect model of the exploited slavery whose frustration and stunted sex life have been repeatedly depicted in the German "social" novel. Friedrich Engels was the son of a wealthy manufacturer and himself a manufacturer; he refused to marry his mistress Mary because she was uneducated and of "low" descent; he enjoyed the amusements of the British gentry such as riding to hounds. The workers were never enthusiastic about socialism.

passivist said: skeletonkeys was better. get it back