SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY.
[To Tile EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Your correspondent Mr. Dobell in the Spectator of October 5th endeavours to establish a sharp antithesis between Christianity and Socialism. " The active principle," he says, " of Christianity is give '; whereas the active principle of Socialism is 'take.' " He fails to observe that there is a formula which to some extent laps over the two, "Distribute justly." This is surely a Christian principle, and that is a Christian commonwealth in which social institutions are so ordered as to produce such a distribution. And under popular government we are all of us responsible for the social institutions under which we live. In the last resort we make the laws which either establish or sanction, or at least tolerate, the social arrangements which inflict injustice on the oppressed sections of the community; and therefore we inflict, or take part in inflicting, that injustice. Further, Mr. Dobell's crude proposition involves the idea that a Socialist is necessarily a poor man who stands to gain by Socialism. As a matter of fact, nearly all the prominent leaders of Socialism are middle- class persons who have, at any rate, not much obviously to gain by it, and some are decidedly rich men. The latter at least are, in advocating Socialism, moved by the impulse to " give." And even when we come much lower down the social scale, though a man may, as a Socialist, obviously stand to gain, yet there are nearly always others still more unfortunate who would gain still more. The Trade-Unionist on thirty or forty shillings a week, if he is a Socialist, is advocating the cause of the street-sweeper on twenty-one shillings a week, and the Socialist street-sweeper is the champion of the old woman in a sweated industry who works night and day to earn four or five shillings a week. And even apart from this, since the Socialist is in any case working for all his mates in his own class or grade (to say nothing of his own wife and children) as well as for himself, his motives may be almost entirely unselfish. In any case, to claim one's own just rights is not un-Christian, though it may not be a Christian duty. Further, Socialism has nothing to do with "forcing thy neighbour to share with thee his earnings." Under Socialism a man's earnings would be his own as much as now, and certainly every one's earnings would not be equal. The only things which Socialists desire to wrench out of the hands of private owners are those great means of production which are so vitally necessary to the whole life of the community in general that it cannot be well for them to be left under irresponsible private control.—I am, Sir, &c., N. E. EGERTON SWANN,
Curate of St. Mary's, Paddington Green.
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