An impracticable and a mischievous dream; for in the attempt to realise it, the community will almost inevitably be brought to the verge of civil war.

When the seeds of socialistic legislation, or even of socialistic agitation, are sown in a soil which is highly charged with the poison of individualism, the resulting crop will be class hatred and social strife.
No, we must change our standard of reality before we can hope to reform society.

Where the outward standard prevails, where material possessions are regarded as "the good things of life," the basis of society must needs be competitive rather than communal, for there will never be enough of those "good things" to satisfy the desires of _all_ the members of any community.

And even if the socialistic dream of state-ownership could be universally realised, the change--so long as the outward standard of reality prevailed--would not necessarily be for the better, and might well be for the worse.
Competition for "the good things of life" would probably go on as fiercely as ever; but it would be a scramble among nations rather than individuals, and it might conceivably take the form of open warfare waged on a titanic scale.[35] Even now there are indications that such a struggle, or series of struggles, if not actually approaching, is at any rate not beyond the bounds of possibility.

And on the way to the realisation of the collectivist ideal, we should probably have in each community a similar struggle for wealth and power among political parties,--a struggle which would generate many social evils, of which civil war might not be the most malignant.
But if we are to change our standard of reality we must change it, first and foremost, in the school.