"Surely," I said, "you wouldn't approve anything like
that!"
"But why not?"
"Because, it would be Socialism."
She looked at me startled. "Is that Socialism?"
"Of course it is. It's the essence of Socialism."
"But then--what's the harm in it?"
I laughed. "I thought you said that Socialism was a menace, like
divorce!"
I had my moment of triumph, but then I discovered how fond was the
person who imagined that he could play with Sylvia. "I suspect you
are something of a Socialist yourself," she remarked.
She told me a long time afterwards what had been her emotions during
these early talks. It was the first time in her life that she had
ever listened to ideas that were hostile to her order, and she did
so with tremblings and hesitations, combating at every step an
impulse to flee to the shelter of conventionality. She was more
shocked by my last revelation than she let me suspect. It counted
for little that I had succeeded in trapping her in proposing for
herself the economic programme of Socialism, for what terrifies her
class is not our economic programme, it is our threat of
slave-rebellion. I had been brought up in a part of the world where
democracy is a tradition, a word to conjure with, and I supposed
that this would be the case with any American--that I would only
have to prove that Socialism was democracy applied to industry.
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