Question ID - 44756 | SaraNextGen Top Answer

Go through the passage below and answer the question that follow.

     This confusion concerns nothing less than the concept of socialism it-self. Itg may mean, and is foten used to describe, merely he ideals of social justice, greater equality and security which are the ultimate aims of socialism. But is means also the particular method by which most socialist hope to attain these ends and which many competent people regard as the only methods by which they can be fully and quickly attained. In this sense socialism means the abolition of private enterprise, of private ownership of the means of production, and the creation of a system of ‘planned economy’ in which the entrepreneur working for profit is replaced by a central panning body.

     There are many people Who call themselves socialists although they care only about the first, who fervently believe in those ultimate aims of socialism but neither care not understand how they can be achieved and who are merely certain they must be achieved. Whatever the cost. But to nearly all those to whom socialism is not merely a hope but an object of practical politics, die characteristic methods of modern Socialism are as essential as ma ends themselves. Most people, on the other hand, who value die-ultimate ends of socialism no less than the socialists, refuse to support socialism because of the dangers of other values they see in the methods proposed by the socialists. The dispute about socialism has thus become largely a dispute about means and not about ends although the question whether the different ends of Socialism can be simultaneously achieved is also involved.

     This would be enough to create confusion. And the confusion has been further increased by the common practice of denying that those who repudiate the means value the ends. But mis is not all. The situation is still more complicated by the fact that the same means, the ‘economic planning’ which is the prime instrument for socialist reform, can be used for many other purposes. We must centrally direct economic activity if we want to make the distribution of income conform to current ideas of social justice, “Planning”, therefore, is wanted by all those who demand that ‘Production for use’ be substituted for production for profit. But such planning is no less indispensable if the distribution of incomes, is to be regulated in a way which to us appears to be the opposite of just. Whether we should wish that more of the good things of this world should go to some racial elite, the Nordic men, or the members of a party or an aristocracy, the methods which we shall have to employ are the same as those which could ensure an equalitarian distribution.

     It may, perhaps, seem unfair to use the term socialism to describe its methods rather than its aims, to use for a particular method a term which for many people stand for an ultimate ideal. It is probably preferable to describe the methods which can be used for a great variety of ends as collectivism and to regard Socialism as a species of that genus. Yet, although to most Socialists only one species of collectivism will represent true Socialism, it must always be remembered that socialism is a species of collectivism and that therefore everything which is true for collectivism as such must apply also to Socialism. Nearly all the points which are disputed between Socialists and Liberals concerns the methods common to all forms of collectivism and not the particular ends for which the socialists want to use them, and all the consequences with which we shall be concerned in this book follow from the methods of collectivism irrespective of the ends for which they are used. It must also not be forgotten that Socialism is not only by far the most important species of collectivism r ‘planning’. But that it is Socialism which has persuaded liberal minded people to submit once more to that regimentation of economic life which they had overthrown because, in the words of Adam Smith, if puts governments in a position where “to support, themselves they are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.”

Amongst the options given below, the one most opposite to the ideology being advocated by the author
(a)	Fascism	(b)	Democratic socialism
(c)	Marxism	(d)	Fabian socialism