he community, just as before the French Revolution,
people feast and dance whilst others live on the border-line of
starvation.

But let us see how far the Socialist movement can be regarded as the
spontaneous revolt of the "people" against this condition of things.
Dividing the people after the manner of Marx into the non-revolutionary
and the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find that the former
category, by far the larger, combines with a strong respect for
tradition a perfectly reasonable desire for social reform. Briefly it
asks for adequate wages, decent housing, and a fair share of the good
things of life. For State interference in the affairs of everyday life
it feels nothing but abhorrence. The ideal of Communism as formulated by
Lenin, wherein "the getting of food and clothing shall be no longer a
private affair,"[731] would meet with stronger opposition from working
men--and still more from working women, to whom "shopping" is as the
breath of life--than from any other section of the population. Even such
apparently benign Socialist schemes as "communal dining-rooms" or
"communal kitchens" appeal less to the working-class mentality than to
the upper-class mind that devises them.

Turning to the "revolutionary proletariat," we shall find this
individualistic instinct quite as strongly developed. It is not the
Socialist idea of placing all wealth and property in the hands of the
State, but the Anarchist plan of "expropriation," of plunder on a
gigantic scale for the benefit of the revolutionary masses, which really
appeals to the disgruntled portion of the proletariat. The Socialist
intellectual may write of the beauties of nationalization, of the joy of
working for the common good without hope of personal gain; the
revolutinary working man sees nothing to attract him in all this.
Question him on his ideas of social transformation, and he will
generally express himself in favour of some method by which he will
acquire something he has not got; he does not want to see the rich man's
motor-car socialized by the State--he wants to drive about in it
himself. The revolutionary working man is thus in reality not a
Socialist but an Anarchist at heart. Nor in some cases is this
unnatural. That the man who enjoys none of the good things of life
should wish to snatch his share must at least appear comprehensible.
What is not comprehensible is that he should wish to renounce all hope
of ever possessing anything. Mo