The Common Sense of Socialism Part 12

_And I ask you, Jonathan Edwards, as a fair-minded American, what you would think of it if the Socialists charged Christianity with being opposed to the family and the home? It would not be true of Christianity and it is not true of Socialism._

But there is another form of argument which is sometimes resorted to.

The history of the movement is searched for examples of what is called free love. That is to say that because from time to time there have been individual Socialists who have refused to recognize the ceremonial and legal aspects of marriage, believing love to be the only real marriage bond, notwithstanding that the vast majority of Socialists have recognized the legal and ceremonial aspects of marriage, they have been accused of trying to do away with marriage.

Our opponents have even stooped so low as to seize upon every case where Socialists have sought divorce as a means of undoing terrible wrong, and then married other husbands and wives, and proclaimed it as a fresh proof that Socialism is opposed to marriage and the family.

When I have read some of these cruel and dishonest attacks, often written by men who know better, my soul has been sickened at the thought of the cowardice and dishonesty to which the opponents of Socialism resort.

Suppose that every time a prominent Christian becomes divorced, and then remarries, the Socialists of the country were to attack the Christian religion and the Christian churches, upon the ground that they are opposed to marriage and the family, does anybody think that _that_ would be fair and just? But it is the very thing which happens whenever Socialists are divorced. It happened, not so very long ago, that a case of the kind was made the occasion of hundreds of editorials against Socialism and hundreds of sermons. The facts were these: A man and his wife, both Socialists, had for a long time realized that their marriage was an unhappy one. Failing to realize the happiness they sought, it was mutually agreed that the wife should apply for a divorce. They had been legally married and desired to be legally separated. Meantime the man had come to believe that his happiness depended upon his wedding another woman. The divorce was to be procured as speedily as possible to enable the legal marriage of the man and the woman he had grown to love.

Those were the facts as they appeared in the press, the facts upon which so many hundreds of attacks were made upon Socialism and the Socialist movement. Two or three weeks later, an Episcopal clergyman, not a Socialist, left the wife he had ceased to love and with whom he had presumably not been happy. He had legally married his wife, but he did not bother about getting a legal separation. He just left his wife; just ran away. He not only did not bother about getting a legal separation, but he ran away with a young girl, whom he had grown to love. They lived together as man and wife, without legal marriage, for if they went through any marriage form at all it was not a legal marriage and the man was guilty of bigamy. Was there any attack upon the Episcopal Church in consequence? Were hundreds of sermons preached and editorials written to denounce the church to which he belonged, accusing it of aiming to do away with the monogamic marriage relation, to break up the family and the home?

Not a bit of it, Jonathan. There were some criticisms of the man, but there were more attempts to find excuses for him. There were thousands of expressions of sympathy with his church. But there were no attacks such as were aimed at Socialism in the other case, notwithstanding that the Socialist strictly obeyed the law whereas the clergyman broke the law and defied it. I think that was a fair way to treat the case, but I ask the same fair treatment of Socialism.

So far, Jonathan, I have been taking a defensive att.i.tude, just replying to the charge that Socialism is an attack upon the family and the home. Now, I want to go a step further: I want to take an affirmative position and to say that Socialism comes as the defender of the home and the family; that capitalism from the very first has been attacking the home. I am going to turn the tables, Jonathan.

When capitalism began, when it came with its steam engine and its power-loom, what was the first thing it did? Why, it entered the home and took the child from the mother and made it a part of a great system of wheels and levers and springs, all driven for one end--the grinding of profit. It began its career by breaking down the bonds between mother and child. Then it took another step. It took the mother away from the baby in the cradle in order that she too might become part of the great profit-grinding system. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s might be full to overflowing with the food wonderfully provided for the child by Nature; the baby in the cradle might cry for the very food that was bursting from its mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but Capital did not care. The mother was taken away from the child and the child was left to get on as best it might upon a miserable subst.i.tute for its mother's milk.

Hundreds of thousands of babies die each year for no other reason than this.

There will never be safety for the home and the family so long as babies are robbed of their mothers' care; so long as little children are made to do the work of men; so long as the girls who are to be the wives and mothers are sent into wifehood and motherhood unprepared, simply because the years of maidenhood are spent in factories that ought to be spent in preparation for wifehood and motherhood. Here is capitalism cutting at the very heart of the home, with Socialism as the only defender of the home it is charged with attacking. For Socialism would give the child its right to childhood; it would give the mother her freedom to nourish her babe; it would give to the fathers and mothers of the future the opportunities for preparation they cannot now enjoy.

I ask you, friend Jonathan, to think of the tens and thousands of women who marry to-day, not because they love and are loved in return, but for the sake of getting a home. Socialism would put an end to that condition by making woman economically and politically free. Think of the tens of thousands of young men in our land who do not, dare not, marry because they have no certainty of earning a living adequate to the maintenance of wives and families; of the hundreds of thousands of prost.i.tutes in our country, the vast majority of whom have been driven to that terrible fate by economic causes outside of their control.

Socialism would at least remove the economic pressure which forces so many of these women down into the terrible h.e.l.l of prost.i.tution. I ask you, Jonathan, to think also of the thousands of wives who are deserted every year. So far as the investigations of the charity organizations into this serious matter have gone, it has been shown that poverty is responsible for by far the greatest number of these desertions. Socialism would not only destroy the poverty, but it would set woman economically free, thus removing the main causes of the evil.

Oh, Jonathan Edwards, hard-headed, practical Jonathan, do you think that the existence of the family depends upon keeping women in the position of an inferior cla.s.s, politically and economically? Do you think that when women are politically and economically the equals of men, so that they no longer have to marry for homes, or to stand brutal treatment because they have no other homes than the men afford; so that no woman is forced to sell her body--I ask you, when women are thus free do you believe that the marriage system will be endangered thereby? For that is what the contention of the opponents of Socialism comes to in the last a.n.a.lysis, my friend. Socialism will only affect the marriage system in so far as it raises the standards of society as a whole and makes woman man's political and economic equal. Are you afraid of _that_, Jonathan?

(4) Socialism is not opposed to religion. It is perfectly true that some Socialists oppose religion, but Socialism itself has nothing to do with matters of religion. In the Socialist movement to-day there are men and women of all creeds and all shades of religious belief. By all the Socialist parties of the world religion is declared to be a private matter--and the declaration is honestly meant; it is not a tactical utterance, used as bait to the unwary, which the Socialists secretly repudiate. In the Socialist movement of America to-day there are Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants, Spiritualists and Christian Scientists, Unitarians and Trinitarians, Methodists and Baptists, Atheists and Agnostics, all united in one great comrades.h.i.+p.

This was not always the case. When the scientific Socialist movement began in the second half of the last century, Science was engaged in a great intellectual encounter with Dogma. All the younger men were drawn into the scientific current of the time. It was natural, then, that the most radical movement of the time should partake of the universal scientific spirit and temper. The Christians of that day thought that the work of Darwin and his school would destroy religion.

They made the very natural mistake of supposing that dogma and religion were the same thing, a mistake which their critics fully shared.

You know what happened, Jonathan. The Christians gradually came to realize that no religion could oppose the truth and continue to be a power. Gradually they accepted the position of the Darwinian critics, until to-day there is no longer the great vital controversy upon matters of theology which our fathers knew. In a very similar manner, the present generation of Socialists have nothing to do with the attacks upon religion which the Socialists of fifty years ago indulged in. The position of all the Socialist parties of the world to-day is that they have nothing to do with matters of religious belief; that these belong to the individual alone.

There is a sense in which Socialism becomes the handmaiden of religion: not of creeds and theological beliefs, but of religion in its broadest sense. When you examine the great religions of the world, Jonathan, you will find that in addition to certain supernatural beliefs there are always great ethical principles which const.i.tute the most vital elements in religion. Putting aside the theological beliefs about G.o.d and the immortality of the soul, what was it that gave Judaism its power? Was it not the ethical teaching of its great prophets, such as Isaiah, Joel, Amos and Ezekiel--the stern rebuke of the oppressors of the poor and downtrodden, the scathing denunciation of the despoilers of the people, the great vision of a unified world in which there should be peace, when war should no more blight the world and when the weapons of war should be forged into plowshares and pruning hooks? Leaving matters of theology aside, are not these the principles which make Judaism a living religion to-day for so many?

And I say to you, Jonathan, that Socialism is not only not opposed to these things, but they can only be realized under Socialism.

So with Christianity. In its broadest sense, leaving aside all matters of a supernatural character, concerning ourselves only with the relation of the religion to life, to its material problems, we find in Christianity the same great faith in the coming of universal peace and brotherhood, the same defense of the poor and the oppressed, the same scathing rebuke of the oppressor, that we find in Judaism. There is the same relentless scourge of the despoilers, of those who devour widows houses. And again I say that Socialism is not only not opposed to the great social ideals of Christianity, but it is the only means whereby they may be realized. And the same thing is true of the teachings of Confucius; Buddha and Mahomet. The great social ideals common to all the world's religions can never be attained under capitalism. Not till the Socialist state is reached will the Golden Rule, common to all the great religions, be possible as a rule of life. No ethical life is possible except as the outgrowing of just and harmonic economic relations; until it is rooted in proper economic soil.

No, Jonathan, it is not true that Socialism is antagonistic to religion. With beliefs and speculations concerning the origin of the universe it has nothing to do. It has nothing to do with speculations concerning the existence of man after physical death, with belief in the immortality of the soul. These are for the individual. Socialism concerns itself with man's material life and his relation to his fellow man. And there is nothing in the philosophy of Socialism, or the platform of the political Socialist movement, antagonistic to the social aspects of any religion.

(5) I have already had a good deal to say in the course of this discussion concerning the subject of personal freedom. The common idea of Socialism as a great bureaucratic government owning and controlling everything, deciding what every man and woman must do, is wholly wrong. The aim and purpose of the Socialist movement is to make life more free for the individual, and not to make it less free. Socialism means equality of opportunity for every child born into the world; it means doing away with cla.s.s privilege; it means doing away with the owners.h.i.+p by the few of the things upon which the lives of the many depend, through which the many are exploited by the few. Do you see how individuals are to be enslaved through the destruction of the power of a few over many, Jonathan? Think it out!

It is in the private owners.h.i.+p of social resources, and the private control of social opportunities, that the essence of tyranny lies. Let me ask you, my friend, whether you feel yourself robbed of any part of your personal liberty when you go to a public library and take out a book to read, or into one of our public art galleries to look upon great pictures which you could never otherwise see? Is it not rather a fact that your life is thereby enriched and broadened; that instead of taking anything from you these things add to your enjoyment and to your power? Do you feel that you are robbed of any element of your personal freedom through the action of the city government in making parks for your recreation, providing hospitals to care for you in case of accident or illness, maintaining a fire department to protect you against the ravages of fire? Do you feel that in maintaining schools, baths, hospitals, parks, museums, public lighting service, water, streets and street cleaning service, the city government is taking away your personal liberties? I ask these questions, Jonathan, for the reason that all these things contain the elements of Socialism.

When you go into a government post-office and pay two cents for the service of having a letter carried right across the country, knowing that every person must pay the same as you and can enjoy the same right as you, do you feel that you are less free than when you go into an express company's office and pay the price they demand for taking your package? Does it really help you to enjoy yourself, to feel yourself more free, to know that in the case of the express company's service only part of your money will be used to pay the cost of carrying the package; that the larger part will go to bribe legislators, to corrupt public officials and to build up huge fortunes for a few investors? The post-office is not a perfect example of Socialism: there are too many private grafters battening upon the postal system, the railway companies plunder it and the great ma.s.s of the clerks and carriers are underpaid. But so far as the principles of social organization and equal charges for everybody go they are socialistic. The government does not try to compel you to write letters any more than the private company tries to compel you to send packages. If you said that, rather than use the postal system, you would carry your own letter across the continent, even if you decided to walk all the way, the government would not try to stop you, any more than the express company would try to stop you from carrying your trunk on your shoulder across the country. But in the case of the express company you must pay tribute to men who have been shrewd enough to exploit a social necessity for their private gain.

Do you really imagine, Jonathan, that in those cities where the street railways, for example, are in the hands of the people there is a loss of personal liberty as a result; that because the people who use the street railways do not have to pay tribute to a corporation they are less free than they would otherwise be? So far as these things are owned by the people and democratically managed in the interests of all, they are socialistic and an appeal to such concrete facts as these is far better than any amount of abstract reasoning. You are not a closet philosopher, interested in fine-spun theories, but a practical man, graduated from the great school of hard experience. For you, if I am not mistaken, Garfield's aphorism, that "An ounce of fact is worth many tons of theory," is true.

So I want to ask you finally concerning this question of personal liberty whether you think you would be less free than you are to-day if your Pittsburg foundries and mills, instead of belonging to corporations organized for the purpose of making profit, belonged to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and if they were operated for the common good instead of as now to serve the interests of a few. Would you be less free if, instead of a corporation trying to make the workers toil as many hours as possible for as little pay as possible, naturally and consistently avoiding as far as possible the expenditure of time and money upon safety appliances and other means of protecting the health and lives of the workers, the mills were operated upon the principle of guarding the health and lives of the workers as much as possible, reducing the hours of labor to a minimum and paying them for their work as much as possible? Is it a sensible fear, my friend, that the people of any country will be less free as they acquire more power over their own lives? You see, Jonathan, I want you to take a practical view of the matter.

(6) The cry that Socialism would reduce all men and women to one dull level is another bogey which frightens a great many good and wise people. It has been answered thousands of times by Socialist writers and you will find it discussed in most of the popular books and pamphlets published in the interest of the Socialist propaganda. I shall therefore dismiss it very briefly.

Like many other objections, this rests upon an entire misapprehension of what Socialism really means. The people who make it have got firmly into their minds the idea that Socialism aims to make all men equal; to devise some plan for removing the inequalities with which they are endowed by nature. They fear that, in order to realize this ideal of equality, the strong will be held down to the level of the weak, the daring to the level of the timid, the wisest to the level of the least wise. That is their conception of the equality of which Socialists talk. And I am free to say, Jonathan, that I do not wonder that sensible men should oppose such equality as that.

Even if it were possible, through the adoption of some system of stirpiculture, to breed all human beings to a common type, so that they would all be tall or short, fat or thin, light or dark, according to choice, it would not be a very desirable ideal, would it? And if we could get everybody to think exactly the same thoughts, to admire exactly the same things, to have exactly the same mental powers and exactly the same measure of moral strength and weakness, I do not think _that_ would be a very desirable ideal. The world of human beings would then be just as dull and uninspiring as a waxwork show.

Imagine yourself in a city where every house was exactly like every other house in all particulars, even to its furnis.h.i.+ngs; imagine all the people being exactly the same height and weight, looking exactly alike, dressed exactly alike, eating exactly alike, going to bed and rising at the same time, thinking exactly alike and feeling exactly alike--how would you like to live in such a city, Jonathan? The city or state of Absolute Equality is only a fool's dream.

No sane man or woman wants absolute equality, friend Jonathan, for it is as undesirable as it is unimaginable. What Socialism wants is equality of opportunity merely. No Socialist wants to pull down the strong to the level of the weak, the wise to the level of the less wise. Socialism does not imply pulling anybody down. It does not imply a great plain of humanity with no mountain peaks of genius or character. It is not opposed to natural inequalities, but only to man-made inequalities. Its only protest is against these artificial inequalities, products of man's ignorance and greed. It does not aim to pull down the highest, but to lift up the lowest; it does not want to put a load of disadvantage upon the strong and gifted, but it wants to take off the heavy burdens of disadvantage which keep others from rising. In a word, Socialism implies nothing more than giving every child born into the world equal opportunities, so that only the inequalities of Nature remain. Don't you believe in _that_, my friend?

Here are two babies, just born into the world. Wee, helpless seedlings of humanity, they are wonderfully alike in their helplessness. One lies in a tenement upon a mean bed, the other in a mansion upon a bed of wonderful richness. But if they were both removed to the same surroundings it would be impossible to tell one from the other. It has happened, you know, that babies have been mixed up in this way, the child of a poor servant girl taking the place of the child of a countess. Scientists tell us that Nature is wonderfully democratic, and that, at the moment of birth, there is no physical difference between the babies of the richest and the babies of the poorest. It is only afterward that man-made inequalities of conditions and opportunities make such a wide difference between them.

Look at our two babies a moment: no man can tell what infinite possibilities lie behind those mystery-laden eyes. It may be that we are looking upon a future Newton and another Savonarola, or upon a greater than Edison and a greater than Lincoln. No man knows what infinitude of good or ill is germinating back of those little puckered brows, nor which of the cries may develop into a voice that will set the hearts of men aflame and stir them to glorious deeds. Or it may be that both are of the common clay, that neither will be more than an average man, representing the common level in physical and mental equipment.

But I ask you, friend Jonathan, is it less than justice to demand equal opportunities for both? Is it fair that one child shall be carefully nurtured amid healthful surroundings, and given a chance to develop all that is in him, and that the other shall be cradled in poverty, neglected, poorly nurtured in a poor hovel where pestilence lingers, and denied an opportunity to develop physically, mentally and morally? Is it right to watch and tend one of the human seedlings and to neglect the other? If, by chance of Nature's inscrutable working, the babe of the tenement came into the world endowed with the greater possibilities of the two, if the tenement mother upon her mean bed bore into the world in her agony a spark of divine fire of genius, the soul of an artist like Leonardo da Vinci, or of a poet like Keats, is it less than a calamity that it should die--choked by conditions which only ignorance and greed have produced?

Give all the children of men equal opportunities, leaving only the inequalities of Nature to manifest themselves, and there will be no need to fear a dull level of humanity. There will be hewers of wood and drawers of water content to do the work they can; there will be scientists and inventors, forever enlarging man's kingdom in the universe; there will be makers of songs and dreamers of dreams, to inspire the world. Socialism wants to unbind the souls of men, setting them free for the highest and best that is in them.

Do you know the story of Prometheus, friend Jonathan? It is, of course, a myth, but it serves as an ill.u.s.tration of my present point.

Prometheus, for ridiculing the G.o.ds, was bound to a rock upon Mount Caucasus, by order of Jupiter, where daily for thirty years a vulture came and tore at his liver, feeding upon it. Then there came to his aid Hercules, who unbound the tortured victim and set him free. Like another Prometheus, the soul of man to-day is bound to a rock--the rock of capitalism. The vulture of Greed tears the victim, remorselessly and unceasingly. And now, to break the chains, to set the soul of man free, Hercules comes in the form of the Socialist movement. It is nothing less than this; my friend. In the last a.n.a.lysis, it is the bondage of the soul which counts for most in our indictment of capitalism and the liberation of the soul is the goal toward which we are striving.

It is to-day, under capitalism, that men are reduced to a dull level.

The great ma.s.s of the people live dull, sordid lives, their individuality relentlessly crushed out. The modern workman has no chance to express any individuality in his work, for he is part of a great machine, as much so as any one of the many levers and cogs.

Capitalism makes humanity appear as a great plain with a few peaks immense distances apart--a dull level of mental and moral attainment with a few giants. I say to you in all seriousness, Jonathan, that if nothing better were possible I should want to pray with the poet Browning,--

Make no more giants, G.o.d-- But elevate the race at once!

But I don't believe that. I am satisfied that when we destroy man-made inequalities, leaving only the inequalities of Nature's making, there will be no need to fear the dull level of life. When all the chains of ignorance and greed have been struck from the Prometheus-like human soul, then, and not till then, will the soul of man be free to soar upward.

(7) For the reasons already indicated, Socialism would not destroy the incentive to progress. It is possible that a stagnation would result from any attempt to establish absolute equality such as I have already described. If it were the aim of Socialism to stamp out all individuality, this objection would be well founded, it seems to me.

But that is not the aim of Socialism.

The people who make this objection seem to think that the only incentive to progress comes from a few men and their hope and desire to be masters of the lives of others, but that is not true. Greed is certainly a powerful incentive to some kinds of progress, but the history of the world shows that there are other and n.o.bler incentives.

The hope of getting somebody else's property is a powerful incentive to the burglar and has led to the invention of all kinds of tools and ingenious methods, but we do not hesitate to take away that incentive to that kind of "progress." The hope of getting power to exploit the people acts as a powerful incentive to great corporations to devise schemes to defeat the laws of the nation, to corrupt legislators and judges, and otherwise a.s.sail the liberties of the people. That, also, is "progress" of a kind, but we do not hesitate to try to take away that incentive.

Even to-day, Jonathan, Greed is not the most powerful incentive in the world. The greatest statesmans.h.i.+p in the world is not inspired by greed, but by love of country, the desire for the approbation and confidence of others, and numerous other motives. Greed never inspired a great teacher, a great artist, a great scientist, a great inventor, a great soldier, a great writer, a great poet, a great physician, a great scholar or a great statesman. Love of country, love of fame, love of beauty, love of doing, love of humanity--all these have meant infinitely more than greed in the progress of the world.

(8) Finally, Jonathan, I want to consider your objection that Socialism is impossible until human nature is changed. It is an old objection which crops up in every discussion of Socialism. People talk about "human nature" as though it were something fixed and definite; as if there were certain quant.i.ties of various qualities and instincts in every human being, and that these never changed from age to age.

The primitive savage in many lands went out to seek a wife armed with a club. He hunted the woman of his choice as he would hunt a beast, capturing and clubbing her into submission. _That_ was human nature, Jonathan. The modern man in civilized countries, when he goes seeking a wife, hunts the woman of his choice with flattery, bon-bons, flowers, opera tickets and honeyed words. Instead of a brute clubbing a woman almost to death, we see the pleading lover, cautiously and earnestly wooing his bride. And that, too, is human nature. The African savages suffering from the dread "Sleeping Sickness" and the poor Indian ryots suffering from Bubonic Plague see their fellows dying by thousands and think angry G.o.ds are punis.h.i.+ng them. All they can hope to do is to appease the G.o.ds by gifts or by mutilating their own poor bodies. That is human nature, my friend. But a great scientist like Dr. Koch, of Berlin, goes into the African centres of pestilence and death, seeks the germ of the disease, drains swamps, purifies water, isolates the infected cases and proves himself more powerful than the poor natives' G.o.ds. And that is human nature.

Outside the gates of the Chicago stockyards, I have seen crowds of men fighting for work as hungry dogs fight over a bone. That was human nature. I have seen a man run down in the streets and at once there was a crowd ready to lift him up and to do anything for him that they could. It was the very opposite spirit to that shown by the brutish, snarling, cursing, fighting men at the stockyards, but it was just as much human nature.

The great law of human development, that which expresses itself in what is so vaguely termed human nature, is that man is a creature of his environment, that self-preservation is a fundamental instinct in human beings. Socialism is not an idealistic attempt to subst.i.tute some other law of life for that of self-preservation. On the contrary, it rests entirely upon that instinct of self-preservation. Here are two cla.s.ses opposed to each other in modern society. One cla.s.s is small but exceedingly powerful, so that, despite its disadvantage in size, it is the ruling cla.s.s, controlling the larger cla.s.s and exploiting it. When we ask ourselves how that is possible, how it happens that the smaller cla.s.s rules the larger, we soon find that the members of the smaller cla.s.s have become conscious of their interests and the fact that these can be best promoted through organization and a.s.sociation. Thus conscious of their cla.s.s interests, and acting together by a cla.s.s instinct, they have been able to rule the world.

But the workers, the cla.s.s that is much stronger numerically, have been slower to recognize their cla.s.s interests. Inevitably, however, they are developing a similar cla.s.s sense, or instinct. Uniting in the economic struggle at first, and then, in the political struggle in order that they may further their economic interests through the channels of government, it is easy to see that only one outcome of the struggle is possible. By sheer force of numbers, the workers must win, Jonathan.

The Socialist movement, then, is not something foreign to human nature, but it is an inevitable part of the development of human society. The fundamental instinct of the human species makes the Socialist movement inevitable and irresistible. Socialism does not require a change in human nature, but human nature does require a change in society. And that change is Socialism. It is perhaps the deepest and profoundest instinct in human beings that they are forever striving to secure the largest possible material comfort, forever striving to secure more of good in return for less of ill. And in that lies the great hope of the future, Jonathan. The great Demos is learning that poverty is unnecessary, that there is plenty for all; that none need suffer want; that it is possible to suffer less and to live more; to have more of good while suffering less of ill. The face of Demos is turned toward the future, toward the dawning of Socialism.

XI

WHAT TO DO