The social life of the present day presents grave and far-reaching problems. We are confronted by demands for social reconstruction, which shew that the solution of these problems must be sought along paths unthought-of hitherto. Borne out by the actual events of the hour, the time has perhaps come for someone to gain a hearing, who is forced by life’s experience to maintain, that the neglect to turn our thoughts into the paths that are now needed has stranded us in confusion and perplexity. It

This involves attacking very widespread errors. That the State should take over the whole system of education, has long been regarded as a beneficial step in human progress; and persons of a socialistic turn of mind find it difficult to conceive of anything else, than that society should educate the individual to its service according to its own standards. People are loathe to recognise, what nevertheless, in this field, it is absolutely necessary should be recognised; namely, that in the proces

People have talked a great deal about the evolution of modern technical science and modern capitalism. They have studied the rise of the present working-class in the process of this evolution, and how the developments of economic life in recent times have led on to the workers’ present demands. There is much that is to the point in what has been said about all this. But there is one critical feature which is never touched on, as one cannot help seeing, if one refuses to be hypnotised by the theo

Now, since Schäffle wrote his book on the structure of the social organism, all sorts of attempts have been made to trace out analogies between the organic structure of a natural creature,—a human being, say,—and of a community of human beings. People have tried to map out the body social into cells, network of cells, tissues and so forth. Only a little while ago, there was a book published by Méray , “World Mutations,” in which various natural science facts and laws were simply transferred to w

One of the main questions raised by the practical criticisms of the times is this:—How is a stop to be put to the oppression which working-class humanity suffers under private capitalism. The owner, or controller, of capital is in a position to press other men’s bodily labour into the service of any work he takes on hand? In the social relation that arises in the co-operation of capital and human labour-power, there are three elements to be distinguished: the enterprising activity , which must r

Anyone, watching what was going on in the life of peoples and of States during the last 30 or 40 years from a point of view such as given in these pages, could see how the State-structures that had been built up in the course of history, with their blending of spiritual life, “rights” and industrial economy, were becoming involved in international relations that were heading for catastrophe. At the same time, it was equally plain, that the opposite forces at work within mankind’s unconscious imp

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