At the present time two great tendencies are visible in our social organization.
- On the one hand, the threads of social life are growing closer, and organization, as regards the simple and common means of subsistence, is increasing.
- On the other hand, as regards the things that most closely concern the individual person, the sphere of freedom is being perpetually enlarged.
Instead of every man digging a well for his own use and at his own free pleasure, perhaps in a graveyard or a cesspool, we consent to the distribution of water by a central executive. We have carried social methods so far that, instead of producing our own bread and butter, we prefer to go to a common bakery and dairy. The same centralizing methods are extending to all those things of which all have equal need.
On the other hand, we exercise a very considerable freedom of individual thought. We claim a larger and larger freedom of individual speech and criticism. We worship any god we choose, after any fashion we choose.
The same individual freedom is beginning to invade the sexual relationships. It is extending to all those things in regard to which civilized men have become so variously differentiated that they have no equal common needs.
These two tendencies, so far from being antagonistic, cannot even be carried out under modern conditions of life except together.
It is only by social co-operation in regard to what is commonly called the physical side of life that it becomes possible for the individual to develop his own peculiar nature.
The society of the future is a reasonable anarchy founded on a broad basis of Collectivism.