The idea of socialism is a wonderful idea.
It's the idea of a world very different from our world,
in which conditions are in all respects
much more agreement to the individual than they are in our world.
The only problem with socialism is that this construction, this ideal construction of a socialist world is an ideal that cannot be put into practice.
The socialist ideal describes a state of affairs that cannot be put into real, practical reality.
It assumes that everybody knows in what way he could in the best possible way contribute
to the economic efforts of the whole world and of every part of the world.
And it raises the question, why are people so bad or so ignorant or something else, that
they do not accept this wonderful idea of a socialist state, of a socialist world, in
In which nothing else happens than what is fit to improve the economic and moral conditions of everybody, of everybody else.
One assumes, one asks the question, why should not people behave in this, in such a way?
And one forgets that the problem of social organization of mankind is not a problem that can be solved by making a plan and adjusting people, every individual, to the functions which the plan makes.
The great plan-maker assigned to everybody.
People were once living in perfect economic self-sufficiency of small groups,
of the smallest group, of the family, then of a group of families and so on.
and out of these original conditions, they are developed, as people say, something very unsatisfactory.
Unsatisfactory because there are people in our world who enjoy much more of the good things of the world than the others.
There are people who live under conditions of wealth,
And while this is only a small minority of people living, and there are masses of people who are living under very unsatisfactory conditions.
What people do not realize in dealing with this problem, with this ideal problem,
The truth is that this system or any system of social organization of mankind is not something
that existed or could be thought of having existed from old times on and will exist always
in the same way.
The truth is that there is a historical evolution of mankind, a historical evolution that started
from very low conditions of one's satisfaction and improved more and more over the world.
I think the result of this development, of this, as people say, slow development, I don't
know how they know that this was slow because they do not know anything about something
which would have brought about this development in a shorter time, they assumed that mankind
is something given that has by some reasons which we do not understand, not attained already
and the State of Affairs which it could act in.
And people look upon groups of men who are living under better conditions
and other groups that are living under poor conditions and are asking,
why is there such difference?
And they do not realize that what they have, what they are describing and what they are dealing with
is a state of affairs that emulates the most important factor, the historical evolution,
The historical changes from some kinds of human cooperation and human operation to other kinds.
And they have in mind people construct a world that never existed,
which we could construct because there are small parts of the present-day world in which
similar conditions to some extent can be assumed to exist, and they are asking the questions
Why is not this the case? Why is A the case and not B? Also, the conditions of B are more satisfactory from the point of view of many people.
And what they don't realize is that the problem we are dealing with is not a static problem,
it is not a problem of a society, of human cooperation, of human men that existed from
from old times, from the far beginning of human history, and will exist to the end in
the same way.
The truth is that people at the beginning, in the early ages of human history, were hardly
are different in their living conditions from the groups of animals, that they lived separate,
in separate small groups, and in these groups also they were not proud with what the people
People are criticizing as the evils of capitalism that these rules have a standard of living
which from our point of view is considered as highly unsatisfactory.
The theory began at, or let us say, men developed out of pre-human beings, and the early condition
of men, the natural condition of men, as some people want to say and to call it, this natural
The condition of men was hardly different from the conditions of the animals.
And step by step they developed better conditions.
And these better conditions did not fall from heaven, they were a development, a slow development
of the Human Mind.
And we have to realize that it is not so long ago
that many things which we consider today as simply given
was and that one did not exist. And if we are asking why,
then we have to answer because people had not yet
discovered, had not yet developed them.
Most of the diseases from which people used to suffer and they destroyed the lives of people
very early with a much greater number of infant mortality,
Much of these conditions were, once, the real state of human affairs, and what developed
was that some individuals, groups of individuals or greater or smaller groups of families improved
the state of their living conditions slowly, step by step, and in just way brought about
and what we call today human civilization.
If one says there are many people in our neighborhood, in our countries, in the western world which
is considered as the world of the highest civilization today, that are still very unsatisfactory
And there are people who are not even enjoying these, the poorest conditions of the people of the other groups.
Then we are forgetting that there is a historical evolution of the living beings in the whole world.
And leaving aside all problems that do not refer to human beings, we have to say, there are groups of people, nations, parts of the world, races, who are on a much lower level still today.
And those who are under better conditions, living under better conditions, are the descendants of people who want to live under conditions which we consider as very unsatisfactory from our present point.
Civilization is an effect of small minorities.
That means that it is the people who improve the conditions of mankind
by improving the kind of ways of life, the methods of work,
And the ideas, first of all, the ideas that are guiding their work, they are unequally distributed throughout the world.
And if we say this is unsatisfactory in present day, let us say, England or the United States,
needs, then we must say, and it is nevertheless more satisfactory from the point of view of
the individuals living there than conditions in other countries, and certainly also much
are much more satisfactory than the conditions for mankind were in the past.
If we say the usual criticism of the socialist parties and ideas is, they say, there is something
which is more satisfactory from the point of view of human life
and there is something which is less satisfactory.
Why is this so?
This is due to the fact that those who enjoy a better life
are preventing by the mere fact that they are consuming more
to other people from improving their own conditions.
What we do not realize is that every step forward breaks about, although an increase
It's not only in the number of people as such, but it brings about also an increase of those
who can survive in spite of the fact that they themselves and their ancestors did nothing
contribute or very little contribute to the improvement of conditions.
or let us say this, we had once in a country that has today a population of 5 million people,
a population of 5,000 people, and the individuals of these 5,000 people live under much poorer
more conditions than those ten times or hundred times greater number of people who are living
in this country.
And this emerge under the system which we have, under the system which is working now.
And this system is a system in which everybody is free to try to improve his own standard
of living in the best possible way that is accessible to him.
In this way, we have, of course, developed great differences.
There are enormous differences in the standard of living.
We have rich people and we have poor people and we have very poor people.
We have still people dying, I wouldn't say from starvation, but dying from the fact that
the conditions, the material conditions for their survival were less fortunate.
We are only to look around into various parts of the world and we will see the groups of
And to answer the question, why is this country more dangerously populated than in other countries?
Why are the people living on a higher standard of living in this country than in other countries?
Then we have to say, because the people are different.
Because these are groups of people that developed methods of improving the state of health and the length of life of their members in a better way than it was done in other countries.
And therefore, people who were in advance of other groups, we have to take into account the fact that there is no such thing as a life
and the standard of life given to people by nature.
Every improvement has been brought about by the ideas and actions
according to these ideas of men who brought about a higher standard of living.
If we say therefore all people are equal and it is not very unfair and just that there are people living at the highest standard of living in some parts of the world
and on the lower standard of living in other parts of the world, then we want to substitute
for the world as it exists and other world which is inhabited by different kind of people.
We would complain of the inequality of the standard of living of people, but we do not
realize that if there were not such a difference, the people would have remained on the original
on the standard hardly different from the standard of animals.
We are dreaming of a world of equality.
We say, and repeat it again and again, men are equal, and the truth is, men are unequal.
And precisely because men and groups of men and families and tribes are unequal, there
is progress and improvement in the world.
If the people, when people are criticizing today that there are countries in which the
The standard of living is more satisfactory than in other countries.
But they are forgetting that 1000 years ago, 2000 years ago, or even 500 and only 50 years
ago, there were also great differences between the various groups and tribes of men.
and that these differences would not have disappeared if it had been considered as a law, as a principle of existence, as a principle of human management,
that every improvement must be given at the same time to all of them.
First of all, you have to realize this would require the spotting government.
If we have no government that says, you must do these things,
that we have a world in which the individuals are unequal,
and these unequal individuals are free to search for the best possible satisfaction of their
We consider it, lots of people have written books in this sense, we consider it as very
unfair that there are nations and families who are living at a higher standard of living
of Living, the other groups. But what we are forgetting is that the fact that people have
found out some methods for the improvement of the standard of living could be realized
at the same time by everybody in the whole world. We have to realize that the world of
progress, the world which we did not create, but the world in which we were born, that
this world is a world in which conditions are improving only step by step by the work
of people, and that in this regard, in improving the conditions, the various people are very
unequal.
Nothing is more erroneous than the idea to assume that people are equal in this regard.
So, the equality does not include equality of the mind, equality of energy, equality
of many other qualities that are necessary in order to improve the standard of living,
of one's own standard of living, as well as the standard of living of other people, you know.
It would be a quite different world which these socialist ideologues have in mind.
A world in which every change for the better would be prevented by the fact that it cannot be
put into practice at the same day or in the same year, in the same age for all other people.
The fact that there were people who had, let us say, invented some protection for the feet,
who invented the shoes and the stockings.
The fact that the invention of shoes or something, which we have to consider as the technological
predecessor of modern shoes, was not available at the same time to everybody, was not something
that deprived somebody, it was something that opened the way for future improvement.
We are looking at everything in the world from the point of view, why is it not given to everybody?
We do not realize that the progress, the improvement of conditions,
is something that goes step-by-step beginning with those people who are gifted in order to invent these new things and to put these inventions into practice and so on,
and just step-by-step brings about an improvement.
Socialism is a wonderful idea, wonderful. Everybody should get the same thing, same people.
Why should one man have more or better things than another man?
There is no answer, no other answer, than this is not a why, this is, the question is wrong, that the people have to ask, is it permitted to men to improve their conditions, or have they the same way to remain at the same level?
of Life that their ancestors had already ages ago, many, many ages ago.
This is the difference between the animals and man.
I will leave aside all the problems, how there is also some development in the animal kingdom
implementing the life of these animals.
But if we are asking why is it that the people in the western part of Europe and in America
are at a higher standard of living than the others, we have to realize that this is not due, first, that this is not due to the fact that these more benefited people have exploited the others,
and secondly that the mere fact that they have improved their conditions will in the course of the further development also benefit the other ones.
The idea of socialism was fundamentally wrong on account of the fact that people believed that improvement of conditions
He comes, falls from heaven, and that therefore everybody should get it at the same time.
Then they say, if it is really true that to have a pocket watch is an enormous progress,
Why did not heaven give one night to everybody in the world a pocket watch?
If we see this, we can learn these truths every day.
If we see how some new invention comes, or some new method of healing diseases, or so on, you know.
Human abilities and effects of these abilities are different,
And we must realize that the opposite is only socialism, that means a state of affairs in which a dictator tells to everybody what to do and what not to do.
And this dictator will ask, why should we get something that will be nothing if we can't give to everybody everything at the same time, then let us better not to give anybody anything.
And this is the alternative of socialism.
The alternative to capitalism would have been a state of affairs in which you wouldn't get anything that would create a difference between you and all the other people living on Earth.
If we had retained the state of affairs, the population of the world would still be what it was 5,000 million years ago.