III. Capitalism and Social Ideas

One of the conditions of the social organism's life is that those who can serve the community through their individual abilities should not be deprived of using their free initiative. Where such service requires that the means of production be freely at their disposal, the hindering of this free initiative would only be harmful to the general social interest. The usual argument, that the entrepreneur needs the prospect of profit as an incentive, and that this profit is closely related to ownership of the means of production, is rejected here. The kind of thinking from which the opinions expressed in this book derive, that there is a further evolution of social conditions, must see in the liberation of spiritual life from the political and economic sectors the possibility that this form of incentive can cease to exist.