Abstract

Bernard Bosanquet insisted that the truth of “moral socialism” — the doctrine that we all form part of a mutually dependent community and that we all have an obligation to put the common good ahead of our personal self-interest — follows necessarily from what we know about the nature of reality and from the logic of ethics. “Economic socialism”, the doctrine, in his view, that there ought to be a central bureaucracy on which all should depend for our continued well-being, indeed, perhaps, for our very existence, is, he urged, the antithesis of moral socialism and is, in fact, a peculiar form of individualism.