Excerpt from Twentieth Century Socialism: What It Is Not; What It Is How It May Come

Each of the two volumes on Government was devoted, as Evolution and Effort had been, to establish ing firmly a specific proposition. When Mr. Kelly began writing the first volume, which bore the sub-title J us tice, he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at Columbia University and was intensely interested in the movement for the reform of municipal politics in New York city. Believing that adequate organization was the chief need, he had founded the City Club and the subsidiary Good Government Clubs. In the dis cussions which this movement called forth, he says One fact stood out with startling conspicuousness. Not one out of a thousand was able to formulate a clear idea as to the principles upon which he stood; upon one measure he was an Individualist; upon another, a Col lectivist; one day he was for strong governmental action; the next for liberty of contract; and of those who pre sented the claims of expediency and justice respectively, no one was able. To say what justice was.

It seemed, therefore, to Mr. Kelly that on the theoret ical side we needed first, and above all else, a clear con ception of justice as an end to be attained. For con elusions already arrived at in Evolution and Effort made it impossible for him to believe that justice is satisfied by merely rewarding every man according to his per formance. Seeing in evolution possibilities beyond present attainment, he believed that a way should be found to enable every man to achieve his potential performance. Thus his notion of justice, derived from the principle of evolution, became substantially identical with that which had been set forth two thousand years ago by Plato in The Republic. TO quote Mr. Kelly's own words: Justice may, then, be described as the effort to eliminate from our social conditions the effects of the inequalities Of Nature upon the happiness and advancement of man, and particularly to create an artificial environment which shall serve the individual as well as the race, and tend to perpetuate noble types rather than those which are base.

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