V

MECHANISM AND THE INDIVIDUAL


Is it possible to effect a fundamental reform of the existing economic
system by any other method than that of Bolshevism? The difficulty of
answering this question is what chiefly attracts idealists to the
dictatorship of the proletariat. If, as I have argued, the method of
violent revolution and Communist rule is not likely to have the
results which idealists desire, we are reduced to despair unless we
call see hope in other methods. The Bolshevik arguments against all
other methods are powerful. I confess that, when the spectacle of
present-day Russia forced me to disbelieve in Bolshevik methods, I was
at first unable to see any way of curing the essential evils of
capitalism. My first impulse was to abandon political thinking as a
bad job, and to conclude that the strong and ruthless must always
exploit the weaker and kindlier sections of the population. But this
is not an attitude that can be long maintained by any vigorous and
temperamentally hopeful person. Of course, if it were the truth, one
would have to acquiesce. Some people believe that by living on sour
milk one can achieve immortality. Such optimists are answered by a
mere refutation; it is not necessary to go on and point out some other
way of escaping death. Similarly an argument that Bolshevism will not
lead to the millennium would remain valid even if it could be shown
that the millennium cannot be reached by any other road. But the truth
in social questions is not quite like truth in physiology or physics,
since it depends upon men's beliefs. Optimism tends to verify itself
by making people impatient of avoidable evils; while despair, on the