Summary
Wilde opens with the claim that the chief advantage of Socialism is that it would relieve us from living for others. A few, such as Darwin, Keats, Renan and Flaubert, have kept out of reach of others' claims and realised what was in them, but most people spoil their lives with an exaggerated altruism, moved by the poverty around them. Their remedies, keeping the poor alive or amusing them, only prolong the disease, just as the worst slave-owners were the kind ones. It is immoral, he says, to use private property to relieve the evils that private property causes. Under Socialism no one will live in fetid dens, and a frost will not throw a hundred thousand men out of work.
Socialism matters because it will lead to Individualism, and it must not be Authoritarian. At present property lets a few poets, philosophers and men of science realise themselves, while the poor do the work of beasts of burden. Wilde admires the poor who are ungrateful, discontented and rebellious, since "Disobedience" is "man's original virtue", and says that recommending thrift to the poor is like advising a starving man to eat less. Agitators are necessary because no class is conscious of its own suffering: slavery in America was ended by Abolitionists in Boston, not by the slaves. Every man must be free to choose his own work, and all association must be voluntary.
Private property has harmed Individualism by confusing a man with what he possesses, so that man thought "the important thing was to have" and not "to be". English law punishes offences against property more harshly than offences against the person, and a rich merchant can be ruined by a change in the wind. Once property is abolished, people will live rather than merely exist. Wilde says the full personality has so far appeared only in art: Caesar was insecure, Marcus Aurelius staggered under the empire, and Byron wasted his strength fighting English Philistinism. The perfect personality will grow like a flower, have nothing and yet have everything, and be as wonderful as a child.
Wilde then turns to Christ, whose message to man was "Be yourself". Christ tells the wealthy young man to give up property because it hinders his perfection, praises the woman who pours costly perfume on his hair, and rejects the claims of family life. To lead a Christlike life is to be perfectly oneself, whether like Father Damien among the lepers, Wagner in music or Shelley in song. The State must therefore give up governing: despotism, oligarchy and democracy all fail, and all authority degrades. With authority, punishment will pass away, since "Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime", and jealousy, bound up with property, will die out.
The State is to make what is useful and the individual what is beautiful. Wilde mocks talk of the dignity of manual labour: sweeping a slushy crossing in an east wind is disgusting, and should be done by a machine. At present one man owns a machine that does the work of five hundred, who starve; owned by all, machinery would free humanity for cultivated leisure. Civilisation requires slaves, and the future of the world depends on the slavery of the machine. If this is Utopian, so be it: a map without Utopia is not worth glancing at.
Art is the most intense mode of Individualism, and the artist who supplies the public's demand becomes a mere craftsman. "Art should never try to be popular"; the public should make itself artistic. Poetry has escaped in England because the public do not read it, while the novel and the higher drama have suffered. The public use Shakespeare and the classics as bludgeons against new work, and call it "unintelligible" when it is new and "immoral" when it is true; Wilde also dissects "morbid", "exotic" and "unhealthy". Journalism, which has replaced the rack, now governs, and the worst prying into private lives comes from earnest, serious journalists rather than the Society papers. Against this Wilde sets Irving at the Lyceum, Thackeray's "Esmond", George Meredith and the revolution in house decoration, all achieved by artists who ignored public taste. The spectator's proper mood is receptivity.
The best government for the artist is none. Of the three despots, Prince, Pope and People, the last is worst: Dante suffered at Verona, Tasso in Ferrara, and Cellini was imprisoned by a Pope, but the People bribe and brutalise. Wilde admits his scheme is unpractical and against human nature, and says that is why it is worth carrying out, because human nature changes. True Individualism is unselfish: selfishness is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Sympathy with joy is finer than sympathy with pain. Christ's Individualism could be realised only through pain because he made no attempt to reconstruct society; the modern world, using Socialism and Science, will reach it through joy, and "The new Individualism is the new Hellenism."