社会主义下人的灵魂 (1891)

社会主义下人的灵魂（The Soul of Man under Socialism）是1891年奥斯卡·王尔德创作的一篇散文。在这篇散文当中，王尔德阐释了自由意志社会主义的世界观以及对慈善的批判。王尔德读了彼得·阿列克谢耶维奇·克鲁泡特金的作品后转向了无政府主义哲学，从而创造了此文。

"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" is an 1891 essay by Oscar Wilde in which he expounds a libertarian socialist worldview and a critique of charity. The writing of "The Soul of Man" followed Wilde's conversion to anarchist philosophy, following his reading of the works of Peter Kropotkin.

In "The Soul of Man" Wilde argues that, under capitalism, "the majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism—are forced, indeed, so to spoil them": instead of realising their true talents, they waste their time solving the social problems caused by capitalism, without taking their common cause away. Thus, caring people "seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it" because, as Wilde puts it, "the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible."

Overview

Wilde did not see kindness or altruism per se as a problem; what worried him was its misapplication in a way which leaves unaddressed the roots of the problem: "the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good" while preserving the system.

Wilde's deepest concern was with man's soul; when he analysed poverty and its causes and effects in "The Soul of Man under Socialism" it was not simply the material well-being of the poor that distressed him, but how society does not allow them to reach a form of self-understanding and enlightenment. He adopted Jesus of Nazareth as a symbol of the supreme individualist. Wilde advocated socialism, which, he argued, "will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism" and "substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure material well being for each member of the community."

Juliet Jacques has noted that the essay does not make any suggestions regarding political action to bring about socialism: rather it discusses the possible life of artists in a hypothetical socialist society in which private property had been abolished. Wilde examined the political conditions necessary for full self-development and devotion to art, arguing, "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine." He observed that in contemporary Victorian capitalist society, a small minority of men such as Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo "have been able to realise their personality more or less completely" because they had access to private wealth and therefore had no need to engage in wage labour. He argued that the abolition of private property would lead to a society in which individuals would focus on personal growth instead of the accumulation of wealth.

He made a point of differentiating "individual" socialism from "authoritarian" (government-centered) socialism, advocating a more libertarian approach, "What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first."