Sec. 11. #Competition modified by authoritative distribution.# Authority is, after force, the oldest and was the earliest widely operative method of distribution.  It shades into force, status, and charity in manifold ways, but it is essentially the assignment of a common, or social, income to individuals by some person or persons chosen, or accepted, by the society to perform this function.  Thus it may be distinguished from force, which takes for itself what belongs to another; and from charity, which gives to another what belongs to one’s self; and from status, which transmits claims to income from one generation to another by a fixed impersonal rule, not by a personal judgment in the particular case.

Authoritative distribution is the dominant method in patriarchal tribes, in communal societies, and in monastic and other religious orders.  Each person works at what he is commanded to do, and some one in authority (patriarch, head of the community, father of the monastic order) portions out the tasks and the rewards.  In the family this rule largely prevails, and even after the children have come to years of discretion they not infrequently accept, from habit or affection, the will of the parents, and give up their entire wages to receive back a portion.  The method of charitable distribution while the child is young gradually changes to authoritative distribution after the child becomes a worker.  The untrained and indocile youth, however, is made the subject of compulsory distribution.

The collection and distribution of taxes is by public authority.  No attempt is made to give back an exact equivalent to each taxpayer.  The money is taken and spent by authority.  The new forms, or at least the new extensions, of taxation, especially of incomes and inheritances at progressive rates, are very important examples of authoritative distribution.[14] The courts sometimes find themselves obliged to apply the method of authoritative distribution, altho they do it unwillingly.  They try to confine their efforts to interpreting the contracts men have voluntarily entered into, and they avoid, so far as possible, the making of contracts or the fixing of rates.  Authoritative distribution is exemplified in the work of many commissions appointed by law to fix rates or settle disputes, such as boards of conciliation and arbitration and railway commissions.

Sec. 12. #Meanings of socialism.# Our reason for leaving to the last the discussion of authority as a method of distribution is not that it appeared last in historical development, but that it now is the most strongly advocated as an alternative of competition.  One of the most striking developments of opinion in the nineteenth century was that favoring an increasing use of authority in distribution.  This was meant not merely to supplement and modify competition, but to displace it completely, or (in the more moderate program) in large part.  This opinion, or plan, has appeared under a variety of names, the main ones being communism, collectivism, social-democracy, and socialism, of which the last name has just now the greatest vogue.  Socialism is a word of manifold meanings no one of which is generally accepted.  Discussion is therefore often a Babel of tongues.