The Importance of Common Effort in Socialism

As society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can be performed with better results by common effort. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to decide when this point is reached. Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless because of the failure to agree on terminology. I am a strong individualist, by personal habit, inheritance and conviction. But it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the state, the community, the persons acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.