THE GREAT MAN'S THEORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 148, 25 June 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE GREAT MAN'S THEORY.

MR W. 11. MALLOCK SAYS SOCIALISM MEANS SLAVERY.

The rehabilitation of the 'great man theory' is the purpose of Mr W, H. Mallock's new book 'Aristocracy and Evolution.' By aristocracy he explains in his preface that he means the exceptionally gifted and efficient minority, no matter what the position in which its members may have been born, or what the sphere of social progress in which their exceptional efficiency shows itself. Mr Mallock's great man is not the same as the lit test survivor, for while the latter by surviving raises the general level of the race and promotes slow progress by living whilst others die, the former promotes rapid progress by being superior to his contemporaries and by helping others to live, a.z., not only by Avhat he does himself, but by Avhat he helps others to do. With Mr Mallock the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and so the measure of a man's greatness as an agent of social progress is the overt results actually produced by him. Mr Mallock takes up a position half way betAveen Carlyle and Herbert Spencer. He comes to the conclusion that the increase of the. wealth of the community depends upon the control exercised by the great men upon the productive actions of the mass. There are two means only by Avhich the great man can influence the actions of others, the slave system and the capitalistic .vage system. The former is impossible, therefore the latter is essential to the progress of modern civilisation. The Socialists, therefore, AA'ho Avould reject the Avage system must replace it by a system of slavery in Avhich the many Avould be tyranised over by a bureaucratic feAv, who Avould retain their control by compulsory poAvers granted them by the State; in other Avords, the capitalists, 'the monopolists of business ability' would be given back to society in the guise of officials of the bureaucratic State, armed by the State with the industrial poAvers of slave owners.

There have been three marked stages in the sequence of changes of the industrial systems of the Avorld— slavery, feudalism, and capital—which all agree with one another in being systems under Avhich the feAv, the strongest, the most intellectual, the most energetic, not only controlled the actions of the average many, but received for their exceptional action a correspondingly exceptional recompense. 'The human race progresses because and when tbe strongest human poAvers and the highest human faculties lead it; such powers and faculties are embodied in and monopolised by a minority of exceptional men; these men enable the majority to progress, only on condition that the majority submit themselves to their, control, and if all the rulingclasses of to-day could he disposed of in a single massacre and nobody left but those who at present call themselves the Avorkers, these workers would be as helpless as a flock of shepherdless sheep, until out of themselves a neAv minority had been evolved, to Avhose order'the majority Avould have to submit themselves, precisely as they submit themselves to the orders of the ruling classes now, and Avhose rule, like the rule of all neAv masters, Avould be harder and more arbitrary and less humane than the rule of the old.'

That is the result of Mr Mallock's sociological investigations expressed in his usual lucid style and pointed by happy illustrations from ©very-day life. Messrs Herbert Spencer and Kidd, the Fabians, and many others will no doubt have a word to say in antagonism to Mr Mallock, but Aristocracy and Evolution,' whether its conclusions recommend themselves to us or not, will stimulate the thoughts of*all who are interested in the evolution of our complex society and desire to see its glaring inequalities redressed—if possible. .