let us be clear about one thing: that socialism means revolution, that it means a change in the every-day texture of life. it may be a very gradual change, but it will be a very complete one. you cannot change the world, and at the same time not change the world. you will find socialists about, or at any rate men calling themselves socialists, who will pretend that this is not so, who will assure you that some odd little jobbing about municipal gas and water is socialism, and back-stairs intervention between conservative and liberal the way to the millennium. you might as well call a 48gas jet in the lobby of a meeting-house, the glory of god in heaven!
socialism aims to change, not only the boots on people’s feet, but the clothes they wear, the houses they inhabit, the work they do, the education they get, their places, their honours, and all their possessions. socialism aims to make a new world out of the old. it can only be attained by the intelligent, outspoken, courageous resolve of a great multitude of men and women. you must get absolutely clear in your mind that socialism means a complete change, a break with history, with much that is picturesque; whole classes will vanish. the world will be vastly different, with a different sort of houses, different sorts of people. all the different trades and industries will be changed, the medical profession will be carried on under different conditions, engineering, science, the theatrical trade, the clerical trade, schools, hotels, almost every trade, will have to undergo as complete an internal change as a caterpillar does when it becomes a moth. if you are afraid of so much change as that, it is better you should funk about it now than later. the whole system has to be changed, if we are to get rid of the masses of dull poverty that render our present state detestable to any sensitive man or woman. that, and no less, is the aim of all sincere socialists: the establishment of a new and better order of society by the abolition of private property in land, in natural productions, and in their exploitation—a change as profound as the abolition of private property in slaves would have been in ancient rome or athens. if you demand less than that, if you are not prepared to struggle for that, you are not really a socialist. if you funk that, then you must make up your mind to square your life to a sort of personal and private happiness with things as they are, and decide with my other friend that “it doesn’t do to think about boots.”
it is well to insist upon one central idea. socialism is a common-sense, matter-of-fact proposal to change our conventional admission of what is or is not property, and to re-arrange the world according to these revised conceptions. a certain number of clever people, dissatisfied with the straightforwardness of this, have set themselves to put it in some brilliant obscure way; they will tell you that socialism is based on the philosophy of hegel, or that it turns on a theory of rent, or that it is somehow muddled up with a sort of white bogey called the overman, and all sorts of brilliant, nonsensical, unappetising things. the theory of socialism, so far as english people are concerned, seems to have got up into the clouds, and its practice down into the drains; and it is well to warn inquiring men, that neither the epigram above nor the job beneath are more than the accidental accompaniments of socialism. socialism is a very large, but a plain, honest, and human enterprise; its ends are to be obtained neither by wit nor cunning, but by outspoken resolve, by the self-abnegation, the enthusiasm, and the loyal cooperation of great masses of people.
the main thing, therefore, is the creation of these great masses of people out of the intellectual confusion and vagueness of the present time. let me suppose that you find yourself in sympathy with this tract, that you, like my second friend, find the shabby dullness, the positive misery of a large proportion of the population of our world, make life under its present conditions almost intolerable, and that it is in the direction of socialism that the only hope of a permanent remedy lies. what are we to do? obviously to give our best energies to making other people socialists, to organising ourselves with all other socialists, irrespective of class or the minor details of creed, and to making ourselves audible, visible, effectual as socialists, wherever and whenever we can.
we have to think about socialism, read about it, discuss it; so that we may be assured and clear and persuasive about it. we have to confess our faith openly and frequently. we must refuse to be called liberal or conservative, republican or democrat, or any of those ambiguous things. everywhere we must make or join a socialist organisation, a club or association or what not, so that we may “count.” for us, as for the early christians, preaching our gospel is the supreme duty. until socialists can be counted, and counted upon by the million, little will be done. when they are—a new world will be ours.
above all, if i may offer advice to a fellow-socialist, i would say: cling to the simple essential idea of socialism, which is the abolition of private property in anything but what a man has earned or made. do not complicate your cause with elaborations. and keep in your mind, if you can, some sort of talisman to bring you back to that essential gospel, out of the confusions and warring suggestions of every-day discussion.
for my own part, i have, as i said at the beginning, a prepossession with boots; and my talisman is this:—the figure of a badly fed but rather pretty little girl of ten or eleven, dirty, and her hands coarse with rough usage, her poor pretty child’s body in ungainly rags, and, on her feet, big broken-down boots that hurt her. and particularly i think of her wretched sticks of legs and the limp of her feet; and all those phantom owners and profit-takers i spoke of, they are there about her martyrdom, leech-like, clinging to her as she goes....
i want to change everything in the world that made that; and i do not greatly care what has to go in the process. do you?
h. g. wells
[here is just a bit of hard fact to carry out what i say. it is a quotation from a letter from a workman to my friend mr. 55chiozza money, one of the best informed writers upon labour questions in england:
“i am a railway man, in constant work at 30s. per week. i am the happy, or otherwise, father of six healthy children. last year i bought twenty pairs of boots. this year, up to date, i have bought ten pairs, costing £2; and yet, at the present time, my wife and five of the children have only one pair each. i have two pairs, both of which let in the water; but i see no prospect at present of getting new ones. i ought to say, of course, that my wife is a thoroughly domesticated woman, and i am one of the most temperate of men. so much so, that if all i spend in luxuries was saved it would not buy a pair of boots once a year. but this is the point i want to mention. during 1903 my wages were 25s. 6d. per week; and i then had the six children. my next-door neighbour was a boot-maker and repairer. he fell out of work, and was out for months. during that time, of course, my children’s boots needed repairing as at other times. i had not the money to pay for them being repaired, so had to do what repairing i could myself. 56one day i found out that i was repairing boots on one side of the wall, and my neighbour on the other side out of work, and longing to do the work i was compelled to do myself....”
the wall was a commercial organisation of society based on private property in land and natural productions. these two men must work for the owners or not at all; they cannot work for one another. food first, then rent; and boots, if you can, when all the owners are paid.]
