156. DANGERS OF A SOCIALIST BUREAUCRACY.--Governmental power would
have to be very highly centralized if a socialist state were
effectively to administer the nation's economic activities as a unit.
But this very concentration of power might easily result in the
development of a bureaucracy. Waste and the possibility of corruption
have unfortunately characterized even those governments over which the
people exercise considerable control; it seems probable that the
greater centralization of authority demanded by socialism would
increase rather than decrease these dangers.

It is to be noted here that the socialists, who might be supposed to
consider as paramount the interests of society or of the public, are
the very people who are least inclined to do anything of the kind.
[Footnote: This concept was suggested to me by Professor Thomas Nixon
Carver of Harvard University.] Socialists look upon the state only as
an agency for benefiting particular groups of individuals. The
emphasis of political socialism upon class struggle, the frank
admissions of the I.W.W. that they seek to suppress all but the
laboring class, and the establishment by the bolshevists of a
dictatorship of the proletariat, all these facts indicate that
socialists seek the welfare of particular groups rather than the
welfare of the general public.

But class legislation is repugnant to the principles of American
democracy. We believe in government by the masses and for the masses;
furthermore, we are committed to the ideal of as much individual
freedom and as little governmental compulsion as is compatible with
the good of both individual and community. The concept of a socialist
bureaucracy, administered in the interests of particular groups, runs