st be regarded as a principle, namely, the
efficient organization of wealth production and distribution to the end
that the exploitation of the wealth producers by a privileged class may
be rendered impossible. Whatever contributes to that end is a
contribution to the fulfillment of the Socialist ideal.

Still, it is natural and inevitable that earnest Socialists and
students of Socialism should seek something more tangible by way of a
description of the future state than the bald statement that it will be
free from the struggle between exploiting and exploited classes. The
question is, can we go further in our attempt to scan the future without
entering the realms of Utopian speculation? If Socialism is, objectively
considered, a state of society which is being developed in the womb of
the present, are there any signs by which its peculiar form and spirit,
as distinguished from the form and spirit of the present, may be
visualized? Within certain limits, an affirmative answer seems possible
to each of these questions. There are certain fundamental principles
which may be said to be essential to the existence of Socialist society.
Without them, the Socialist state cannot exist. Regardless of the fact
that Karl Marx never attempted to describe his ideal, to give such a
description of his concept of the next epoch in evolution as would
enable us to compare it with the present and to measure the difference,
it is probable that every Socialist makes, privately at least, his own
forecast of the manner in which the new society must shape itself.

There is nothing Utopian or fantastic in trying to ascertain the
tendencies of economic development; nothing unscientific in trying to
read out of the pages of social evolution such lessons as may be
contained therein. So long as we bear in mind that our forecasts must
not take the form of plans for the arbitrary shaping of the future,
specifications of the Cooeperative Commonwealth, but that they must, on
the contrary, be based upon the facts of life--not abstract principles
born in the heart's desire--and attempt to discern the tendencies of
social and economic evolution, we are upon safe ground. Such forecasts
may indeed be helpful, not only in so far as they provide us with a more
or less concrete picture of the ideal to be aimed at, but also, and even
more important, in that they at once enable us to gauge from time to
time the progress made by society toward the realization of