Analysis Of Oscar Wilde's The Soul Of Man Under Socialism

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Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” despite its title, advocated not socialism but anarchism. Socialism is a form of economy where the public owns and manages the resources of society while anarchism is a political ideology where individuals govern their own selves and freely group themselves to produce social wealth. Wilde’s society would have no family, no laws, no punishments, no prisons, in short no authority over the individual. In the utopia created by Wilde, everything required or beneficial was to be manufactured by communally owned machines, while people were to be left free to choose their own occupations, cultivating leisure and pleasure, “the making of beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight” (176).
Wilde’s proposal for the joint possession of the means of production and the dissolution of private property wasn't built on the principles of selflessness or the brotherhood of man. In actuality, the main benefit of socialism (to use Wilde’s chosen term) was to be that it would alleviate everyone from the “sordid necessity of living for others”(174).
Though established in deeply compassionate principles, Wilde’s essay has nothing to do with sentimentality. Many were forced to work as “beasts of burden,”(175) because many were left on the edge of starvation due to competitive capitalism. Mankind’s lives lacked “grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilization, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy in life” (175). Charity bolstered an unethical system by reducing the unfavorable effects, using private property to mend the problems caused by the establishment of private property. Instead of glamorizing the lower class, Wild...

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...s Wilde deems it, is characterized by mankind’s inability to succumb to the “Tyranny of want,” (175) while also achieving their own creative aspirations.
In Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay, “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” he conveys an artistic and moral socialism, based on the concepts of change and the fulfillment of one’s own potential. It indicates the intellectual framework such that it craves a moral and beautiful life that differed from the industrial-oriented society of its time. Wilde’s argument was with the conditions that were required for a prosperous life and his beliefs that the difficulties of contemporary human life still resound today. By releasing artists from the limitations placed on society for the need of a financial income to support, socialism will make way for the individual to finally pursue one’s artistic goals due to their newfound freedom.

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