The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Wilde uses this term, which traditionally refers to the inner workings of the Christian church or clergy, to denote organized religion in general; Wilde applies it to Judaism in the second-to-last paragraph to evoke the kind of power the religious authorities of Jesus’s day wielded. In the context of Wilde’s claims about authority, the term is pejorative and contrasts with any authentic inward impulse toward Christianity, or spirituality in general.

Wilde uses this term to encompass his philosophy of how the individual can (or should be able to) define themself and develop and express their personality free of outside influence. Wilde’s principal interest in socialism is his belief that it would facilitate individualism, which Wilde sees as the goal of life itself, by freeing people from material want and the social obligations that material want creates. This argument runs counter to a philosophical tradition that associates independence with private property—a view Wilde directly addresses when he writes that capitalism substitutes acquisition for personality, making “gain not growth [individualism’s] aim” (16). Such passages attempt to decouple from capitalism any positive associations of individualism, rerouting them toward socialism.

Socialism is an umbrella term for various ideologies that advocate collective (rather than private) ownership of the means of production. Proponents of socialism have historically differed considerably on other questions, including implementation (e.g., revolution versus reform) and governmental structure (e.g., authoritarian versus libertarian). Wilde’s definition of socialism is broadly in line with the traditional definition. He defines socialism throughout his essay as a system in which private property is reallocated to create “public wealth” and in which the state becomes “the manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities” (36). Though he does not explore in detail how such a system would operate, his preference for anarcho-socialism is evident; insofar as a government’s role is to govern people, he does not believe there should be a government at all. Rather, people should be entirely free to pursue The Cultivation of Individualism. Freedom from material want is, however, a prerequisite for this kind of individualism, so Wilde juxtaposes images of ignorance and poverty with descriptions of the hypothetical artists who might exist under socialism, bolstering his argument that Socialism Supports Aestheticism.