SOCIALISM UNAVOIDABLE
stern logic of necessity and produce a Western
Revolution, which will benefit by the Russian
experience, react upon Russia and lead ultimately
to a world understanding.
What is it that the Atlantic world finds most
objectionable in the Soviet world of to-day ? Is
it any disapproval of collectivism as such ?
Only in the case of a dwindling minority of rich
and successful men—and very rarely of the sons
of such people. Very few capable men under
fifty nowadays remain individualists in political
and social matters. They are not even funda-
mentally anti-Communist. Only it happens that
for various reasons the political life of the com-
munity is still in the hands of unteachable*
old-fashioned people. What are called " demo-
cracies " suffer greatly from the rule of old men
who have not kept pace with the times. The ;
real and effective disapproval, distrust and »
disbelief in the soundness of the Soviet system
lies not in the out-of-date individualism of these
elderly types, but in the conviction that it can
never achieve efficiency or even maintain its \
honest ideal of each for all and all for each,
unless it has free speech and an insistence upon
legally-defined freedoms for the individual within
the collectivist framework. We do not deplore
the Russian Revolution as a Revolution. We
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