[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—In answer to
Mr. Burnell in the issue of October 12th allow me to say—(1) Socialism does not say to the individual, You must sacrifice yourself for the society. It merely says to him, You must not exploit your neighbour for your own profit. (2) If it is an objection to Socialism that it is compulsory, that is an objection to all government, to all forms of organised society, to all private property. We could only get rid of compulsion by means of Communistic Anarchism (which does not really stand for any thinkable or intelligible scheme of society). If those Christians who deprecate compulsory Socialism were really serious, they would be con- ducting a vigorous propaganda in favour of Communistic Anarchism: There is at least as much compulsion under the present system as would be involved by- Socialism. But now the compulsion is used to exclude the great mass of the people from adequate access to the means of production; Socialists propose to use it to secure those means for the whole people. I leave your readers to judge which of these two is the more Christian purpose for which to employ compulsion.—I am,
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