se, in certain circumstances, a means of production, just as
surely as a powerful planing machine is, the difference being in degrees
of efficiency. So a market basket is a means of distribution quite as
surely as an ocean steamship is; a wheelbarrow quite as much as a
locomotive. They differ in degrees of efficiency, that is all. The idea
that the housewife in the future, when she wants to sew a button upon a
garment, will be obliged to go to some department and "take out" a
needle, having it properly checked in the communal accounts, and being
responsible for its return, is, of course, worthy only of opera bouffe.
So is the notion of the state owning wheelbarrows and market baskets and
making their private ownership illegal. "The socialization of _all_ the
means of production, distribution, and exchange," literally interpreted,
is folly. But none of those using the phrase must be regarded as
seriously contemplating its literal interpretation. For many years the
phrase was included in the statement of its "Object" by the English
Social Democratic Federation, and even now it appears in a slightly
modified form, the word "all" being omitted,[181] perhaps because of its
tautological character. For several years the writer was a member of the
Federation, actively engaged in the propaganda, and how we spent much of
our time explaining to popular audiences in halls and upon street
corners that the socialization of jackknives, needles, sewing machines,
market baskets, beer mugs, frying pans, and toothpicks was not our aim,
is a merry memory.

When this is understood, the nightmare of the bureaucracy of Socialism
vanishes. It is no longer necessary to fret ourselves asking how a
government is to own and manage everything without making slaves of its
citizens. The question propounded by that venerable and distinguished
Canadian scholar, Professor Goldwin Smith,[182] whether a government can
be devised which shall hold all the instruments of production,
distribute to the citizens their tasks, pick out inventors,
philosophers, artists, and laborers, and set them to work, without
destroying personal liberty, loses its force when it is remembered that
Socialism involves no such necessity.

The Socialist ideal may be said to be a form of social organization in
which every individual will enjoy the greatest possible amount of
freedom for self-development and expression; and in which social
authority will be reduced to the minimum ne